It was nearly an hour later, when Craighouse was wandering about the
lawns in the glistening moonlight, that he heard the rustle of skirts
behind him. It was Lady Dorothy, and her eyes were shining like
twin-stars.
"I thought you would be here," she said. "It is a night that draws one
to it."
"It is a night for memories," he said quietly. "What bitter-sweet
things they have become since we had war!"
"Yes;" and she sighed.
For a little time they spoke of the sorrows and the tragedies of their
world; they talked of Oaklands, which would pass from her family
because there was no heir; they played on the minor chords of life, and
in their voices the melancholy elegy for beautiful things that had died
found expression in their hushed and murmuring tones.
But they were young, and in the heart of youth there is always Spring;
and the witchery of a moonlight night was calling to it. The minor
strains trembled into silence, and the melody of hearts that are young
took its place. She had deep-blue eyes that were never meant for tears,
and he had a nature that responded to the beauty of life as an Æolian
harp to the moods of the wind.
As men and maids have done for generations, they talked of themselves.
(A dangerous topic when the moon is making fairy-rings upon the grass.)
They traced their friendship from his first visit, and lightly touched
on the weary hours when she watched by his bedside in France. They
laughed, they sighed, and once their fingers touched by accident, and
he felt a thrill as the hot blood rushed to his cheeks. He experienced
a sudden resentment against her wild-rose coloring, the marble fullness
of her throat, and the luxury of silky, brown hair which held a vagrant
moonbeam in a lingering caress. It was a protest of the brain to the
senses against the allurement of beauty.
"We must never meet again," he said severely.
"You are right," she answered wistfully, and something like a smile
lurked mischievously in the corners of her mouth. The moon plays havoc
with men, but lends great discernment to the daughters of earth.
Another half-hour passed, full of words that meant so little and
silences that meant so much. Then, with a quick contraction of his
shoulders and a deepening frown, he turned and faced her squarely.
"I came to your home," he said, "to gather material for satire. I found
it in your parents--in your brothers--in you. In my room are ten
completed articles which I am going to send to New York. They are my
impressions of the English. They will be published as the psychology of
England studied under the microscope of a satirist."
"And I form one of your satirical studies?"
"Yes. I referred to you as Galatea, and to myself as Pygmalion. You
supply the feminine interest which is so necessary. I pictured you as a
statue amidst stifling conventionality, and I was the artist who tried
to bring you to life."
"With what success?"
He thrust his hands into his pockets, and his shoulders drooped
listlessly. "The artist," he said, "fell in love with her the moment
the marble became human. He was a fool."
"I am so sorry," she said gently; and for a brief moment--a very brief
moment--her hand rested in his. Whereupon the moon was constrained to
disappear behind a cloud to hide her smile. "And what happened to her?"
"Oh," he said, "being a woman, she decided to torture Pygmalion. She
came out on the lawn at night with him, and, by the music of her voice
and the charm of her beauty, inflicted an hour's exquisite pain. I am
like a man," he said, with an abrupt descent from the impersonal, "who
knows that on the morrow he will be stricken with blindness, and is
looking for the last time on a sunset." Whereupon Captain Craighouse
sighed like the classic furnace, and Lady Dorothy Oaklands smiled
again, though her eyes were glistening with a mysterious dew.
"To-morrow morning," he went on, "the sculptor, sometimes known as Don
Quixote, is going away to forget about the statue. It is the only thing
he can do."
Her eyes were lowered to the ground. "The woman--Galatea," she
murmured--"she just forgets, I suppose?"
"Women forget easily," he said, and thought he spoke the truth.
"Listen," she said, and her voice was so soft that he could just make
out the half-whispered words; "let me tell you the real story of
Pygmalion and Galatea. When the marble became life, she loved the
artist who had created her soul. But he didn't return her love; it had
been an experiment with him. So the woman in her froze and died, and
Galatea became a statue again."
He caught her hands in his, and his eyes flashed like brilliants.
"Dorothy!" he cried, "you are not jesting? You are not just--cruel?"
She said nothing; but, oh, what eloquence sometimes lies in a woman's
silence! Then did Captain Craighouse of New York say many things which
would look absurd in the cold medium of print, but which sounded like
sweet music to his companion on that moonlight August night. He likened
her to a motif that remained in his life as a melody that haunts the
memory. He told her he would scale the heights of fame to cast its
laurels at her feet.
"You stupid boy," she laughed caressingly; "as if anything you could
ever do would be finer than just this--that you are fighting for your
country!"
In some mysterious way his hands reached her shoulders; and in an
equally inexplicable manner she was suddenly in his arms, and her hot
cheek was against his.
"Lawrence dear," she murmured, "Galatea only knew one thing about
Pygmalion--that he had brought her into being, and so she loved him.
That was all."
And the moon, feeling that her evening had been a complete success,
disappeared behind a cloud, and stayed there.