The parti-colored harlequin and the young Chinese lady in blue silks are
walking the Italian gardens, talking about nothing in particular.
Ted has managed to discuss the moon--it is high now, a round white
lustre--the night, which is warm--the art of garden decoration, French,
English and Italian--the pleasantness of Southampton after New York--all
with great nervous fluency but so completely as if he had met Elinor for
the first time ten minutes ago that she is beginning to wonder why,
if he dislikes her as much as that, he ever suggested leaving the
dance-floor at all.
Ted, meanwhile, is frantically conscious of the fact that they have
reached the end of the garden, are turning back, and still he is so
cripplingly tongue-tied about the only thing he really wishes to say
that he cannot even get the words out to suggest their sitting down. It
is not until he stumbles over a pebble while passing a small hard marble
seat set back in a nest of hedge that he manages to make his first
useful remark of the promenade.
“Ah--a bench!” he says brightly, and then, because that sounded so
completely imbecile, plunges on.
“Don't you want to sit down a minute, Elinor?--I--you--it's so cool--so
warm, I mean--” He closes his mouth firmly--what a _ghastly_ way to
begin!
But Elinor says “Yes” politely and they try to adapt themselves to the
backless ornamental bench, Ted nervously crossing and recrossing his
legs until he happens to think that Elinor certainly never would marry
anybody with St. Vitus' Dance.
“Can't tell you how nice it's been this time, Elinor. And you've been--”
There, things are going better--at least, he has recovered his voice.
“Why, you know how much we love to have you, Ted,” says Elinor and Ted
feels himself turn hot and cold as he was certain you never really did
except in diseases. But then she adds, “You and Ollie and Bob Templar,
and, oh, all Peter's friends.”
He looks at her steadily for a long moment--the blue silks of her
costume suit her completely. She is there, black hair and clear eyes,
small hands and mouth pure as the body of a dream and elvish with
thoughts like a pansy--all the body of her, all that people call her.
And she is so delicately removed from him--so clean in all things where
he is not--that he knows savagely within him that there can be no real
justice in a world where he can even touch her lightly, and yet he must
touch her because if he does not he will die. All the things he meant to
say shake from him like scraps of confetti, he does not worry any more
about money or seeming ridiculous or being worthy, all he knows at all
in the world is his absolute need of her, a need complete as a child's
and so choosing any words that come.
“Listen--do you like me?” says the particolored harlequin and all the
sharp leaves of the hedge begin to titter as wind runs over them at one
of the oldest and least sensible questions in the world.
The young Chinese lady turns toward the harlequin. There is some
laughter in her voice and a great deal of surprise.
“Why, Ted, of course--why, why shouldn't I?--You're Peter's friend
and--”
“Oh, I don't mean _that_!” The harlequin's hands twist at each other
till the knuckles hurt, but he seems to have recovered most voluble if
chaotic powers of speech.
“That was silly, asking that--but it's hard--when you care for anybody
so much you can't _see_--when you love them till they're the only
thing there _is_ you care about--and you know you're not fit to touch
them--not worthy of them--that they're thousands of times too good for
you but--oh, Elinor, Elinor, I just can't stand it any more! Do you love
me, Elinor, because I love you as I never loved anything else in the
world?”
The young Chinese lady doesn't seem to be quite certain of just what is
happening. She has started to speak three times and stopped each time
while the harlequin has been waiting with the suspense of a man hanging
from Heaven on a pack-thread. But then she does speak.
“I think I do, Ted---oh, Ted, I know I do,” she says uncertainly--and
then Oliver, if he were there, would have stepped forward to bow like an
elegant jack-knife at the applause most righteously due him for perfect
staging, for he really could not have managed better about the kiss
that follows if he had spent days and days showing the principals how to
rehearse it.
And then something happens that is as sudden as a bubble's going to
pieces and most completely out of keeping with any of Oliver's ideas
on how love should be set for the theatre. For “Oh, what am I _doing_?”
says the harlequin in the voice of a man who has met his airy double
alone in a wood full of ghosts and seen his own death in its face, and
he crumples into a loose bag of parti-colored silks, his head in his
hands. [Illustration: The Young Chinese Lady is Shrinking Inside
Her Silks] It would be nothing very much to any sensible person, no
doubt--the picture that made itself out of cold dishonorable fog in the
instant of peace after their double release from pain. It was only the
way that Elinor looked at him after the kiss--and remembering the last
time he saw his own diminished little image in the open eyes of a girl.
The young Chinese lady is shrinking inside her silks as if frost had
touched her--all she knows is that she doesn't understand. And then
there is the harlequin looking at her with his face gone suddenly
pinched and odd as if he had started to torture himself with his own
hands; and the fact that he will not touch her, and what he says.
“Oh, Elinor, darling. Oh, I can't tell you, I can't.”
“But what _is_ it, Ted?”
“It's this--it's what I meant to tell you before I ever told you I loved
you--what I haven't any right not to tell you--and I guess that the fact
I didn't, shows pretty well what sort of a fellow I am. Do you really
think you know about me, dear--do you really think you do?”
“Why, of course, Ted.” The voice is still a little chill with the fright
he gave her, but under that it is beautifully secure.
“Well, you don't. And, oh Lord, why couldn't it have happened before I
went to France!--because then it would have been all different and I'd
have had some sort of a right--not a right, maybe--but anyhow, I could
have come to you--straight. I can't now, dear, that's all.”
The voice halts as if something were breaking to pieces inside of it.
“I can't bring you what you'd bring me. Oh, it isn't
anything--physically--dangerous--that way--I--was--lucky.” The words
space themselves as slowly as if each one of them burnt like acid as
it came. “It's--just--that. Just that--while I was in France--I went
over--all the hurdles--and then a few more, I guess--and I've got
to--tell you about it--because I love you--and because I wouldn't dare
love you, even--if I didn't--tell you the truth. You see. But, oh my
God, I never thought it would--hurt so!” and the parti-colored body of
the harlequin is shaken with a painful passion that seems ridiculously
out of keeping with his motley. But all that the young Chinese lady
feels is that for a single and brittle instant she and somebody else
had a star in their hands that covered them with light clean silver, and
that now the conjuror who made the star out of nothing and gave it to
her is showing her just why there never was any star. Moreover, she has
only known she was in love for the last five minutes--and that is hardly
long enough for her to discover that love itself is too living to be
very much like any nice girl's dreams of it--and the shock of what Ted
has said has brought every one of her mother's reticent acid hints on
the general uncleanliness of Man too prickling-close to her mind. And
she can't understand--she never will understand, she thinks with dull
pain.
“Oh how _could_ you, Ted? How _could_ you?” she says as he waits as a
man walking the plank might wait for the final gentle push that will
send him overboard.
“Oh, I know it was fine of you to tell me--but it's just spoiled
everything forever. Oh, Ted, how _could_ you?” and then she is
half-running, half-walking, up the path toward the porch and all she
knows is that she must get somewhere where she can be by herself. The
harlequin does not follow her.