Great House by day was a mere pile of bleak grey stone, set in a
wind-bitten garden. Selfish lovers, the sun and the wind took, but gave
little. But at night the place seemed to come into its own. The
straggling larch plantations took on mystery from the dark, the
shivering birches took on grace, the sandy paths shone silver as if for
the tread of unseen feet. By day everyone stayed away from the house as
much as possible; only by night was it a home, with laughter and song
and the light of welcoming windows. All that the day denied the night
bestowed. And it was at night that Launce made his plans and
discoveries.
It was one of these plans that led him, after being safely bestowed in
bed by Mrs. Annerley, to rise and wrap himself in a coat and seek the
garden by devious ways, with a small bottle in his pocket and the two
white mice for company. The bottle contained the dregs of wine glasses,
secured and preserved with some difficulty. He was going to try the
effect of a ceremonial libation on the little faun.
His step from the door-sill to the gravel had the nature of a plunge
from land to water, so different was the hush outside, to the ordered,
companionable stillness of the house. His heart beat high. The night was
one of heavy calm, the sea beneath the sandy terraces was almost silent.
A few stars showed, and the hollow sky was full of the wandering cries
of peewits wheeling inland above the salt marshes and the crumbling
dunes. The little faun was very cold and very still in the dark. He laid
the little silken, throbbing bodies of the mice in the curved stone
fingers, and they cowered there without a movement.
“There’s no dancing to-night,” said Launce to himself, leaning his
little dark face above the drowsing face of stone. Nothing moved in the
plantations; nothing flickered on the lawn. Faunus was no more than a
cunning stone carved long ago by men forgotten. “He’s not here
to-night,” said Launce gravely to the mice, “he’s gone away. I must make
haste.”
The mice cuddled closer. All sense of imminent life was gone from the
faun. Launce glanced into the darkness. Was he free of the stone at
last, let loose, a little flitting shape, stone-white yet shadowy—a
swift beast-shape half-fashioned into man—snuffing at Lucia’s bed of
daffodils, cutting down the irises with heedless hooves, peering into
the windows with wrinkled eyelids, calling wordlessly in the night—a
happy thing of darkness, knowing neither hope nor regret? Launce took
out some rose-leaves from the pot-pourri jar, and the bottle of wine; he
drew the cork with his teeth, and it squeaked and made him jump. He held
it in readiness.
“O Faun,” whispered Launce, shakily, in a desperate hurry, “I salute
you. Hail, O Faun. Drink, and remember. Vale.” And he poured out the
wine.
He stood staring, waiting for the miracle, and the wine ran in a dark
stain on the little faun’s breast, as if he were hurt to death. There
came no wonder but the wonder of the wind.
The hush seemed to thrill, and the herald of the great gust ran rustling
through the garden, stirring the leaves to the sound of innumerable
little hurrying hooves. Launce felt that he was ringed round by hundreds
of capering creatures suddenly imprisoned. But the force let loose was
only the wind.
The great gust seemed to leap from the heart of the sky. The stars
reeled and went out. Sand and surf the wind caught up as with hands and
flung across the wall. For a moment all the powers of the night seemed
to be let loose in storm and ruin. Then with a great voice they passed
out to sea, and there was stillness again, save for the noise as of
numberless little pattering feet among the restless leaves. Launce
snatched the mice and ran up the larch plantation like a rabbit, toward
the lighted windows of the house. The whole night and all it held seemed
to be sweeping after him on threatening wings.
There were voices and footsteps on the gravel, and a beam of light from
the gun-room window. His godfather and uncle Will were walking there and
talking together. Launce, a mouse in each hand, was just going to fling
himself upon them regardless of the result, when something in his
uncle’s voice, something in the younger man’s attitude as he listened,
held him back. Just what was passing he neither saw nor heard. But he
saw Geoffrey swing round as quick as thought and strike the other
heavily.
Launce fell on his knees in the shadow of the trees. He was too
frightened to move. He longed to hide his eyes or his ears, but he had
to hold the restless little mice. His world was breaking and falling.
His uncle caught the raised hand, and his own was swung back for the
answering blow. Launee could see Geoffrey’s face, steady and white as he
waited for it, his uncle’s flushed and dark. “Are you mad, Geoffrey?” he
asked, breathlessly.
There was no answer. To the frightened boy, unwillingly listening, it
seemed a silence so dead that the thudding of his own heart must be
heard. The night was calm again, yet the whole of life as he knew it was
in disorder.
“Are you mad, Geoffrey?” asked William again, but in a different voice.
Geoffrey’s face seemed to be a little raised, a little paler, but again
there was no answer.
William’s fist dropped; he stepped back, and passed his hand over his
forehead in a bewildered way. “It’s a queer thing,” he said, rather
unsteadily, “but I can’t hit you back. You’re like a younger brother,
you know, Geoff. I can’t hit you.”
And at that a sort of fury seemed to flash into the younger man’s face.
“You must,” he cried, hoarsely.
“Gad, but I can’t, my good fellow,” said William, with a twisted sort of
smile, putting his hands in his pockets. “After all, ’tis not the first
time we’ve hit each other.”
“This is different, and you know it.”
“Yes. But I daresay it was my fault. I had no right to question you.”
“You have no right to shame me so.”
“Hey?”
“I say,” cried Geoffrey, passionately, “you have no right to shame me
so. I was in the wrong, and you know it. You’ve no right to keep me in
the wrong forever.”
“D’you want me to call you out? Geoff, Geoff, what the devil’s the
matter with you to-night?”
“The devil, perhaps, as you say. I’m not drunk. And strike you must, or
that blow of mine will stand between us forever. If you of your
generosity forget it, shall I—? Strike me, Will, strike me—hard.”
William raised his hand slowly, and slowly lowered it. “If you’re not
drunk with wine, you are with something else, I think,” he said,
roughly. “I cannot hit you when I’m not in a rage, and that’s the end of
it. Go and get Simmons to pump on your head.”
“It’s not the end of it. Here, then, strike with this.” He caught up a
heavy hunting-crop from the window-sill of the gun-room, and thrust it
into William’s hand. “Strike with this.”
“I will not—”
“It would not be the first time you had thrashed me.”
“This is different, and you know it—”
“I know it.” He slipped off his coat, and stood. “Hit with that,” he
said, between his teeth.
Fired by the fierier soul, William raised the whip and struck, hastily
and heedlessly, all bewildered. It was a whip used for Monseigneur in
his vicious moods, and a little flick of rending linen and a thread of
scarlet followed across Geoffrey’s shoulders. William flung down the
whip with an oath. “There, you madman,” he cried, “I’ll do no more,” and
for an instant it seemed to the trembling boy that he had Geoffrey in
his arms.
They stood silent, with only the dim stars and the cries of the peewits
above the garden. The wind had died down again and all the leaves were
still.
“Geoff,” said William at last, almost in a whisper, “is it Lucia?”
Geoffrey raised his eyes slowly. “You shall have the truth to-night, if
you never have it again. To-night, there’s no honour in a lie. Yes.”
“I should have guessed. Since—Italy?”
“I do not know. Since we came here, something that slept seemed to wake.
As the tide covers that beach there—I could not help it. I fought it.
If she knows, it is not from any word of mine, Will.”
“You need not tell me that, thank God.”
Geoffrey groaned. “But it was no use, so I was going. I must go
to-morrow.”
“Yes, you must go at once. I’m all at sea. Don’t think I’m not sorry.
I’m so damnably sorry I don’t know what to say. This marrying and giving
in marriage always costs something; I’d rather it had cost my right hand
than you. Gad, this is a queer way of talk. I suppose I ought to want to
murder you. But I love you and trust you, Geoff, to the hilt. And you’ll
go to-morrow—?”
“Yes. I shall never come back.”
“So it is as bad as that? I hope Lucia guesses nothing. She is a
tender-hearted child, and it would distress her terribly. This is a
queer life, Geoff, and it will be a queer house without you somewhere
about half the time. There’s always a price to pay.”
“Yes, there is always a price to pay. This time I pay it,” said
Geoffrey, turning away. But he came back. “Give me one thing out of all
you have,” he said steadily, “I was to ride with her to-morrow morning.
May I have that—still?”
For a moment William was silent. Then his face cleared. “After all, she
might suspect and be distressed if you did not. Yes, yes, go, Geoff. I
told you I trusted you. God help you.”
“God help us all,” said Geoffrey, looking at him strangely, and caught
up his coat, and went. As he passed, the sky seemed to thrill once more,
and the heralding air breathed through the garden, waking the leaves to
a sound of innumerable soft voices and following feet.