CHAPTER XXVI--DREAMING OF LOVE

The immediate outcome of this was money--more money than Eden Row had

ever imagined. Mrs. Sheerug refused to leave Orchid Lodge.

“I’ll help you splash,” she told Alonzo, “but I won’t move out of Orchid

Lodge.”

As a compromise, Orchid Lodge was re-decorated in violent colors, and a

carriage and pair waited before it. Mrs. Sheerug used her carriage for

hunting up invalids that she might dose them with medicines of her own

invention. She inclined to the garish in her method of dress, wearing

yellow feathers and green plush, as in the old days when Jimmie Boy had

dashed to the window to make sketches of her for the faery-godmother.

And to him she was a faery-godmother, for she bought his pictures and

insisted on having an exhibition of them at The Beauty Palace.

“Ah, my dear,” she would say, crossing her hands, “God sends us poverty

that we may be kind when our money comes.”

Was she happy? Teddy wondered. Sometimes he fancied that she coveted

the days of careless uncertainty and happy-go-lucky comfort. One of her

chief hobbies had been taken from her: it was no longer possible to get

into debt And her gifts didn’t mean so much, now that her giving could

be endless. It would be absurd for the wife of the great Alonzo Sheerug

to produce black bottles from under her mantle and thrust them at people

with the information that the contents would “build you up.” She had

to send whole cases of wine now, and there wasn’t the same personal

pleasure.

She had saved the spare-room from the imagination of the decorators.

More than once Teddy caught her there, shuffling about in her woolen

slippers and plum-colored dressing-gown. She seemed more natural like

that It was so that he loved her best.

For him the success of Beauty Incorporated brought two results: an

income and a friend. Mr. Sheerug had rewarded his escapade at Brighton

by allotting him shares in the company. The boom increased their value

beyond all expectations; he found himself possessed of over three

hundred pounds per annum. But the more valuable result was the knowledge

of life which he gained from his friendship with Madame Josephine.

To the world in general she was a notorious woman who had sinned

splendidly and with discretion. She seemed to deny the advantages of

virtue. Was she not beautiful? Was she not young? Hadn’t she wealth?

Teddy had come to an age when youth tests the conventions; it was Madame

Josephine who answered his doubts on the subject.

The Madame Josephine he knew was a white-haired old lady who liked him

to treat her as a grandmother. She would talk to him by the hour about

books and dead people, and sometimes about love.

There was an adventure in going to see her, for she only dared to be old

in his presence--to the rest of the world it was her profession to be

young. As Duke Nineveh was always telling her, appearances had to be

kept up.

She had a secret room at the top of her house to which Teddy alone

was admitted. The servants were ignorant of what went on there. They

invented legends.

He had to speak his name distinctly; then a chair would be pushed back,

footsteps would sound, and the key would turn. The moment he was across

the threshold, the lock grated behind him. And there, after all these

mysteries, was an old lady, sweet-featured and wistful-looking--an old

lady who an hour before had been admired for her youth by the London

crowds.

Hanging from the ceiling was a cage with a canary. On the sill were

flower-boxes. From the window, across trees, one could catch a glimpse

of Kensington Gardens and the blown petals of children. It was an old

lady’s room, filled with memories. On the walls were faded photographs

with spidery signatures; on the table a work-basket; beside the table a

rocking chair.

“Here’s where my soul lives,” she said. “The other person, phew!” Her

hands opened expressively. “She’s the husk. Those who live to please,

must please to live, Teddy. It’s a terrible thing to have to go on

shamming when you’re seventy--shamming you’re gay, shamming you’re

flippant, shamming you’re wicked. So few things matter when you’re

seventy. Money doesn’t.”

She caught the question in his eyes. “Ah, my dear, but when all your

life has been lived for adoration, you miss it The poison’s in the

blood. At my age one has to pay a long price even for what looks like

love.”

That was the nearest she ever came to explaining her relations with

Duke Nineveh. She liked to forget him when Teddy was present. It was the

ideality of the boy that appealed to her. She wanted to give wisdom

to his sentiment, to forewarn his courage and to save him from

disappointment It was a strange task for a woman with her record--a

woman who had lived garishly, and was remembered for the careers she

had ruined. Little by little she drew from him the story of Vashti, and

later of Desire.

He looked up at her smiling, trying to treat his confession lightly.

“Curious how people come into your life and make your dreams for you.”

She bent over him, taking his hands gently. “Curious! Not curious.

People are the most real dreams we have.”

“Yes, but----” He hesitated. “Desire’s not as I remember her any longer.

She’s growing up. I wonder what she’s like. If I met her, I might not

recognize her. We might pass in the street, my dream and I. And yet----”

He lifted his face to hers. “You know I still think of her--of the

price. It’s idiotic, because,” his voice fell, “I know nothing about

girls.”

She drew him closer. “D’you know what women need most in this world?

Kindness. Good men, like you’ll be,” she seemed to remember, “they’re

harsh sometimes. They make women frightened. A good man’s always better

than the best woman--that’s a truth that few people own to themselves.

If you do find her or any one else, don’t judge--try to understand.” And

later, “Never try to be fair to a woman, Teddy; when a good man tries to

be fair, he’s unjust.”

From time to time, as they sat together in that locked room, she told

him of herself. She gave him glimpses of passion and the despair of its

ending. “It doesn’t pay. It doesn’t pay,” was the burden of what she

said. One night, it was four years since he had known her, they forgot

to turn on the light. Across the ceiling, like a phantom butterfly, the

flare from the street-lamps fluttered.

“None of those others that I have told you about were love,” she

whispered. “There was a good man in my life once. Whenever you see a

woman like me, you may be sure of that. It’s the good men who make us

women bad; they expect too much--build their dreams too high. There was

a man----” She fell silent “You’re like him. That’s why.”

When he was leaving, she put her arms about him. “When you find her,

don’t try to change her. Women long to be trusted. Be content to love.”

For the time being he tried to satisfy his heart-with work. His passion

to be famous connected itself with his passion to love. He had an

instinct that he must win fame first, and that all the rest would

follow.

Much of what Madame Josephine told him about women he applied to Vashti.

It made him look on all women with new eyes--the eyes of pity for their

frailty. And all these emotions he wove about the figure of Desire.

In the writing of his first book--the book which brought him immediate

success, _Life Till Twenty-one_--was un-cannily conscious of her

presence. He would find himself leaving off in a sentence to sketch her

face for one of those quaint little marginal drawings. It was as though

she had come into the room; by listening intently, he would be able

to hear her breathe. Working late at night, he would glance across

his shoulder, half expecting to find her. He told himself that she was

always standing behind him; why he never saw her was because she dodged

in front when he turned his head. It was the old game that she had

played in the farmhouse garden, when she had hidden in the bushes at the

sound of his coming. He explained these fancies by telling himself that

somewhere, out there in the world, she was remembering, and that her

thoughts, flying across the distance, had touched him.

BOOK II--THE BOOK OF REVELATION

CHAPTER I--THE ISLAND VALLEY

It was a golden summer’s evening. In his little temperamental car

he was chugging through the Quantock Hills. His car was temperamental

chiefly because he had picked it up as a bargain second hand. In his

wanderings of the last month he had established a friendship with it

which was almost human, as a man does with a piece of machinery when he

is lonely.

When the tour had first been planned it had included Ruddy; but at the

last moment Ruddy had joined a pierrot-troupe, leaving Teddy to set off

by himself. That vacant place at his side reproached him; a two-seater

is so obviously meant for two persons. He had told himself faery-tales

about how he might fill it. Sometimes he had invented a companion

for himself--a girl with gray eyes and bronze-black hair. She seemed

especially real to him when night had fallen and the timid shadows of

lovers pressed back into the hedges as his lamps discovered them on the

road ahead.

For the past month his mind had been ablaze with an uplifted sense of

beauty. He had come down from London by lazy stages, halting here a

day and there a day to sketch. Every mile of the way the air had been

summer-freighted; the freedom of it had got into his blood. Everywhere

that he had gone he had encountered new surprises--gray cathedral

cities, sleepy villages, the blue sea of Devon; places and things of

which he had only heard, and others which he hadn’t known existed.

Dreams were materializing and stepping out to meet him. Eden Row, with

its recluse atmosphere, was ceasing to be all his world. His emotions

gathered themselves up into an urgent longing--to be young, to live

intensely, to miss nothing.

To-day he had crossed Exmoor, black with peat and purple with heather,

and was proposing to spend the night at Nether Stowey. He had chosen

Nether Stowey because Coleridge had lived there. He had sent word to

his mother that it was one of the points to which letters could

be forwarded. When he had written his name in the hotel book, the

proprietress looked up. “Oh, so you’re the gentleman!”

“Why? Have you got such stacks of letters for me?”

“No. A telegram.”

He tore it open and read, “_However late, push on to-night to The

Pilgrims? Inn, Glastonbury_.” The signature was “Madame Josephine.”

He looked to see at what time it had been received. It had arrived at

three o’clock; so it had been waiting for him five hours.

“I’m sorry I shan’t need that room,” he said. “How far is it to

Glastonbury?”

“About twenty-three miles. I suppose you’ll stay to dinner, sir? It’s

being served.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Without loss of time, he cranked up his engine, jumped into his car and

started.

“_However late, push on to-night to Glastonbury_.” Why on earth? What

interest could Madame Josephine have in his going to Glastonbury, and

why to-night so especially? He had planned to go there to-morrow--to

make a dream-day of it, full of memories of King Arthur and

reconstructions of chivalrous history and legend. He had intended

reading _The Idyls of the King_ that evening to key himself up to the

proper pitch of enthusiasm. It seemed entirely too modern and not quite

decent, to go racing at the bidding of an unexplained telegram into “The

Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.”

As he hummed along through the green-gold country he gave himself up to

the mood of enchantment. In the transforming light of the fading sunset

it seemed certain that a bend in the road would bring to view champions

of The Round Table riding together.

He smiled and shook his head at himself; he hadn’t grown much older

since those old days at Ware. It was this sight that he and Desire had

expected--the sight of knights in clanking armor and ladies with flowing

raiment, sauntering together in a magic world. It had seemed to them

that the enraptured land which their hearts-imagined, must lie just

a little further beyond the hills and hedges. To find it, it was only

necessary to go on and on.

He recalled how he had read to her those legends as they had lain side

by side, hidden in tall meadow-grasses from Fanner Joseph. He remembered

how they had quarreled when she had said, “I like Sir Launcelot best.”

“But you mustn’t. King Arthur was the good one. If Sir Launcelot hadn’t

done wrong, everything would have been happy always.”

“Yes, but if everything had been happy always, there wouldn’t have been

any story, Teddy. I know why you don’t like my loving Sir Launcelot:

it’s because you’re a King Arthur yourself.”

He laughed. How hurt he had felt at her accusation that he was a proper

person!

And there was another memory: how, after playing at knights and ladies,

she had tried to make him declare that she was beautiful. “Do you think

I’m beautiful, Teddy?” And he, intent on keeping her vanity hungry, “You

have beautiful hands.”

He had always promised himself that some day, if they ever met, one of

the first places they would visit should be Glastonbury. It would add a

last chapter to those chivalrous games which they had played together as

children.

Far away in the orchard valley lights were springing up. Out of the

misty distance came the lowing of cattle. Like a cowled monk, with

peaceful melancholy, the gloaming crept across the meadows.

As he approached the town, it came as something of a shock to notice

that its outskirts bore signs of newness. But as he drove into the

heart of it, medieval buildings loomed up: gray, night-shrouded towers;

stooping houses with leaded windows; the dusky fragrance of ivy, and

narrow lanes which turned off into the darkness abruptly. Somewhere

in the shadows was Chalice Hill, where the cup of the Last Supper lay

buried. Not far distant, within the Abbey walls, the coffin of King

Arthur was said to have been found. His imagination thrilled to the

antiquity of the legend.

With reluctance he swung his mind back to the present. Pulling up

outside The Pilgrims’ Inn, he left his car and entered.

“If you please, has any one been inquiring for me? My name’s Gurney.”

The landlady inspected him through the office-window. She was a

kind-faced, motherly woman; the result of her inspection pleased her.

She laid down her pen.

“Gurney! No. Not that I remember.”

“Puzzling!” He took her into his confidence, handing her the telegram.

“I received that at Nether Stowey. I was going to have stayed there, and

should have come on here to-morrow. But you see what it says, ’However

late, push on to-night to The Pilgrims’ Inn, Glastonbury.’ So--so I

pushed on.” He laughed.

“This Madame Josephine who signs it,” the landlady was turning the

telegram over, “d’you know her?”

“Oh, yes. I know her.”

“I asked because---- Well, ladies do play jokes cm gentlemen. And we’ve

a lot of actor-folk in Glastonbury at present--larky kind of people.

I don’t take much stock in them myself. Shouldn’t think you did by the

look of you.”

“I don’t.”

The landlady put her elbows on the desk and crouched her face in her

hands. “I didn’t think you would. These people, they’ve been here a week

for the Arthurian pageant Some of them stay with me; I’ve seen all I

want of ’em. Too free in their manners, that’s what I say. It don’t

seem right for girls and men to be so friendly. I wasn’t brought up that

way. It puts false notions into girls’ heads, that’s what I say. I

suppose you’ve dined already?”

“I haven’t. I hope it won’t put you to too much trouble.”

She led the way through the low-ceilinged hostel, explaining its history

as she went. How in the middle-ages it had been the guest-house of the

Abbey and the pilgrims had stayed there at the Abbot’s expense. How they

had two haunted rooms upstairs, in one of which Anne Boleyn had slept.

How the walls were tunneled with secret stairways which led down to

subterranean passages. When the meal had been spread she left him,

promising to let him know if there were any inquiries.

Odd! All through dinner he kept thinking about it. To have found out

where to reach him Madame Josephine must have inconvenienced herself.

Probably she’d had to send to Orchid Lodge, and Orchid Lodge had had to

send to his mother. She wouldn’t have done all that unless her reason

had been important.

He went down to the office. “Has any one called yet?”

“Not yet.”

He glanced at the clock; it was ten. Nobody would come now. He walked

out into the High Street to garage his car and to take a stroll before

turning in to bed.

The town lay silent. Here and there a faint light, drifting from a

street-lamp or from behind a curtained window, streaked the darkness. No

people were about. Stars, wheeling high above embattled house-tops, were

the only traffic.

“The Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any

snow.” The words sang themselves over as he wandered. What if the

telegram had been a bait to lure him back into the past? What if the

door of forgotten ages had opened to him and closed behind him, as in

William Morris’s romance of _The Hollow Land?_

He played with the fancy, embroidering its extravagance. To-morrow he

would awake in the ancient hostel to find that the landlady had changed

into a fat old abbot. Pilgrims would be passing to and fro below his

window; ladies on palfreys and palmers whose sandaled feet had brought

them home from the Holy Land. What if he should remain a captive to the

past and never find his way into the present?

He drew up sharply. Wailing music came to him, made by instruments that

he had never heard before. It rose into a clamor and sank away sobbing.

He tried to follow it, but it seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all in

the same moment It lost itself in the echoing of overhanging walls. At

last, turning down a passage, he traced it to a barnlike building. As he

got there the doors were flung wide and people came pouring out.

He was amused; he had almost been persuaded that he had stumbled on

the supernatural. Glancing in, he saw the orchestra gathering up their

old-fashioned horns and wind-instruments. The curtain bad been partly

raised; slipping from under it the performers, still in costume, were

climbing down and mingling with the thinning audience. For the moment

the audience seemed the unreal people and the performers the people of

his world.

He went out into the darkness and stood back a little from the passage

that he might retain the medieval illusion as they passed. He made

guesses at their characters. Here came Sir Galahad in silver armor,

joking with Merlin, who carried his beard across his arm to prevent it

from sweeping the ground. King Arthur, with his sword rattling between

his legs, was running to catch up with Sir Launcelot. The girls were

more difficult to identify; in their long robes, with their bare arms

and plaited hair, there was nothing to distinguish them. As he watched,

he saw one with a crown upon her head. The stones in it glinted as she

approached. Queen Guinevere, he thought.

She was supple and slight and tall. She walked unhurriedly, with an

air of pride, as though she had not yet shaken off her part. A man

accompanied her. He was speaking earnestly; she gazed straight before

her, taking little notice of what he said. Her hair was brushed back

from her forehead to reveal the curve of her ears and the gleam of her

shoulders. Her garment was of green and gold, caught in at the waist

with a golden girdle; on her feet were golden sandals, which twinkled.

The white intensity of her face and throat shone in the darkness. There

was an ardency about her that arrested attention.

“It can’t be helped,” she spoke shortly, “so there’s no use talking.

I’ve got to get there, whatever happens.”

Teddy followed her down the street. At the sound of her voice his heart

had quickened. He wished she would turn her head beneath a lamp that he

might see her clearly. Before The Pilgrims’ Inn there was a crowd; when

he came up to it she had vanished.

On entering, he found a scene which might have walked out of the brain

of Chaucer, so utterly were the costumes in keeping with the hostel. He

cast his eyes about, seeking for Queen Guinevere.

As he stood hesitating between pursuing his fancy further or going to

bed, the landlady came out from her office. Catching sight of him, she

elbowed her way towards him.

“News for me?” he asked.

“Not exactly.” She frowned slightly. “I thought you said you didn’t know

any of these actor-folk?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, there’s one of them in there,” pointing back into the office,

“who’s got a telegram. She says you’re the man she’s expecting, though

she wouldn’t know you from Adam. She says she’s sure you’re the man

because you’ve got a car.”

“I don’t think I am. But I’ll go and find out.”

The landlady smiled disapprovingly: “I begin to have my doubts about

you, sir.”

In the office the girl who had played the part of Guinevere was

standing. The moment he caught her eyes he was certain. Excitement ran

through him like a sword.

He felt himself trembling. He wanted to rush forward and claim her. He

wanted to go down on his knees to her. Most of all, he wanted to see her

recognize him. But she stood there smilingly distant and gracious.

“I’m so sorry to trouble you,” she said. “I’m afraid our introduction’s

a trifle unconventional, but I’m in rather a pickle. You see, I want to

go to London to-night. In fact, I must go to London, and there are no

trains till to-morrow. I have a friend who’s---- But there, read my

telegram. It’ll save explan---- to London to-night. In fact, I must go to

London, and there are no trains till to-morrow. I have a friend

who’s---- But there, read my telegram. It’ll save explanations.”

He took it from her hand and read:

“_Dear little D.--Got to sail New York to-morrow. Train leaves Euston

at twelve. Have booked your berth. Ask for a man at Pilgrims’ Inn with

telegram signed Madame Josephine. Madame Josephine says, if you ask him

nicely, he’ll bring you to London in his car. Tell him she suggested.

Awful sorry to rush you. Real reason Horace too pressing. My excuse

engagement with Freelevy. Love and kisses. Fluffy._”

As he reached the end, she came close and took it from him. He could

hear the circlet about her waist jingle; her breath touched him.

“Your hand’s trembling most awfully.” she laughed. “Is it too much of

a shock?” And then, before he could answer: “Madame Josephine keeps The

Beauty Palace. We go there to be glorified. You know Madame Josephine,

don’t you?”

“Yes.” His voice hardly came above a whisper.

“Then, you are the man?”

Was he the man? He wanted to tell her. He had planned this meeting so

often--staged it with such wealth of romance and tenderness. And this

was how it had happened!

“Then, you are the man?”

Perhaps his nod didn’t carry sufficient enthusiasm. She began to explain

and apologize. She made the babies come into her gray eyes, the way she

used to as a child when she wanted anything. “I know it’s a lot to ask

of a stranger, robbing him of his night’s rest and all. But you see I

can’t help it. My friend, Fluffy, is an actress and---- Well, you know

what actresses are--she’s very temperamental Of course that part about

Freelevy may be true. He’s the great American producer. She wouldn’t

tell a downright fib, I’m sure. But the part about Horace is truer; I

expect he’s wanting to marry her and--and the only way she can think

of escaping him and not hurting his feelings---- You understand what I

mean, don’t you? As for me, I have a beautiful mother in America who let

me come abroad with Fluffy; so of course I have to go back with her. You

see, I’m not an actress yet--I’m only an amateur.” She rounded her eyes

and made them very appealing. “If I don’t sail to-morrow, I’ll have to

go back unchaperoned, and that---- Well, it wouldn’t be quite proper for

a young girl. So you will take me to London to-night, won’t you?”

He burst out laughing. If this wasn’t Desire, it was some one

extraordinarily like her--some one who knew how to use the same dear

inconsequent coaxing arguments. Who but Desire would urge the propriety

of a night ride to London with an unknown man to save the impropriety of

an unchaperoned trip across the Atlantic?

She spread her fingers against the comers of her mouth to prevent her

lips from smiling. “Why do you laugh? I rather like you when you laugh.”

He wasn’t going to tell her--at least, not yet. “I thought I’d strike a

bargain with you. If you’ll promise not to change that dress, I’ll take

you.”

“But why this dress?”

He hunched his shoulders. “A whim, perhaps.”

“All right. I’ll go up and pack.”

She walked slowly out of the office, her brows drawn together with

thought. At the door she turned:

“You remind me of some one I once knew. I can’t remember who it was. He

used to screw up his shoulders just like that.”

Before he could make up his mind whether or not to assist her memory,

she was gone.

CHAPTER II--A SUMMER’S NIGHT

He had hurried so as not to keep her waiting. By the time he had

brought his car round to the hotel the clocks were striking eleven. He

throttled down his engine; it didn’t seem worth while shutting it off,

since she might appear at any moment. Its muffled throbbing in the

shadowy street seemed the panting of his heart How impatient he was to

see her! Running up the steps, he peered into the hall.

The landlady approached him with a severe expression. “She sent word

for me to tell you she’d be down directly. These--these are strange

goings-on. Dangerous vagaries, I call them. It’s none of my business--me

not being your mother nor related; but I do hope you know what you’re

doing, young gentleman.”

The young gentleman laughed. “We shan’t come to any harm,” he assured

her.

The company was breaking up. The vaulted hall and passages echoed with

laughter, the jingling of armor and snatches of songs. Knights and

ladies were bidding each other extravagant farewells, enacting the

gallantries which went with their parts. Men dropped to one knee and

pressed their lips to slender hands. Flower faces drooped above them

mockingly--and not so mockingly after all, perhaps; for when the Pied

Piper of Love makes his music, any heart that is hungry may follow.

Those of them who were stopping at the inn caught up their lighted

candles. By twos and threes, with backward glances, casting long shadows

on the wall, they drifted up the wide carved stairs. Others, who had

cheaper quarters, sauntered out into the summer stillness. The porter,

like a relentless guardian of morals, stood with his hand upon the door,

waiting sourly for the last of them to be gone.

Teddy followed them out. As the girls passed beneath the hotel windows,

they dragged on their escorts’ arms, raising their faces and calling

one final good-night to their friends who were getting into bed. Heads

popped out, and stared down between the stars and the pavement. All

kinds of heads. Heads with helmets on. Close-cropped ordinary heads.

Heads which floated in a mist of trailing locks. Some one struck up

a song; there, in the medieval moonlit street, these romance people

danced. Away through the shadows they danced, the booming accompaniment

of the men’s voices growing fainter, fainter, fainter, till at last even

the clear eagerness of the girls’ singing was lost.

When Teddy turned to reenter the inn, the porter had barred the door.

From the steep wall of windows which rose sheer to the stars all the

different kinds of heads had been withdrawn. The only sound was the

throb-throb-throbbing of the engine like the thump-thump-thumping of his

heart.

He sat down on the steps to wait for her. She was a terribly long while

in coming. It was nearly half-past eleven. Thirty minutes ago she had

sent him word that she would be down “directly.”

“Of course,” he told himself, “there’s no need for hurry. It’s about a

hundred and forty miles to London, and we’ve all the night before us.”

He was trying to decide to ring the bell, when the door opened noisily,

and the porter stumbled out, bringing her luggage. As he helped Teddy

strap it on the back of the car, he answered his questions gruffly:

“Doin’! I don’t know wot she’s doin’. Said she’d be down direckly, which

means whenever she chooses. The inkinsideration of these actresses beats

all. Hurry ’er! Me hurry ’er! No, mister, she’s not the hurryin’

sort; she hurries other folk instead. I don’t know wot the world’s

comin’ to, I’m sure. Thank you, sir.” He slipped the half-crown into his

pocket “She’s a ’andsome lady; I will say that for ’er.”

And then she appeared, standing framed in the doorway, with the weak

light from the hall throwing a golden mist about her. Over her head a

hood was drawn, shadowing her features. Her cloak was gathered round

her, so that beneath its folds she was recognizable only by her

slightness. He felt that, however she had disguised herself, there would

have been something in her presence that would have called to him.

“Have I kept you waiting long?” In the old days her apologies had always

taken the interrogative form; now, as then, she hurried on, not risking

an answer: “You see, I had to say ’good-by’ to everybody. It wouldn’t

have been kind to have slipped off and left them. I felt sure you’d

understand. And I did send down messages. You’re not cross?”

Cross! She spoke the word caressingly. Her voice sank into a trembling

laugh, as though she herself was aware of the absurdity of such a

question. Her explanation was totally inadequate, and yet how adorable

in its childlike eagerness to conciliate and to avoid unpleasantness!

“Cross! Why, of course not. I was only anxious--a tiny bit afraid that

you weren’t coming.”

He sounded so friendly that he convinced her. She sighed contentedly.

“Has it seemed _very_ long?”

He looked up from inspecting his lamps. She had come down the steps to

the pavement. The porter had entered the hotel; inside he was shooting

the last bolt into its socket.

He held his breath. In the moon-washed street after all these years he

was alone with her.

“Without you, waiting would always seem long.”

She started. Glanced back across her shoulder. The sounds on the other

side of the door had stopped. There was no retreat. Turning to him with

girlish dignity, she said: “It’s very kind of you to have offered to

help me, but---- I don’t want you to say things like that. We’ll enjoy

ourselves much better if we’re sensible.”

He felt a sudden shame, as though she had accused him of taking

advantage of her defenselessness. All the things he had been on the

point of telling her--he must postpone them. Presently she would

remember; her own heart would tell her.

“It was foolish of me,” he said humbly.

She laughed softly and shook back her head. Her hair lay upon her

shoulders like a schoolgirl’s. “There now, we understand each other.

Why do men always spoil things before they’re started by making stupid

love?”

“Do they?”

“Well, don’t they?” She smiled tolerantly. “Let’s be friends. If we’re

sensible, we can have such a jolly trip to London--such a lark. No more

sentimentals--promise---- Shake hands on it.”

As she held out both her hands, the cloak fell open, revealing her

pageant costume. She noticed that his eyes rested on it. “Yes, I kept my

bargain--even to the sandals.” The glimmer of her feet peeped out for a

second beneath the hem of her skirt. “Now, how about making a start?”

He helped her into the seat which, up to now, had reproached him with

its emptiness. He didn’t have to imagine any longer.

He climbed in beside her. “Are you warm?”

“Very comfy.”

“What time do you want to get there? I can get you there by seven or

eight, doing twenty an hour--that’s to say, if nothing goes wrong.”

“Do me splendidly. I ought to tell you while I remember: I think this is

awfully decent of you.”

“Not decent at all” He hesitated. “It’s not decent because--well,

because I always told myself that I’d do something like this some day.”

“Remember your promise.” She held up a warning finger.

“You didn’t let me finish. What I meant to say was that, ever since I

was a little kid, I’ve played at rescuing princesses.”

She looked up at him searchingly, then bit her lip to keep back her

thoughts. “What a queer game to play!” That was all.

Like a robber bee, seeking honey while the garden of the world slept,

the car sped humming through the silver town. Gray, shuttered houses

faded upon the darkness like a dream that was spent. They were in the

open country now, the white road before them, trees and hedges leaping

to attention like lazy sentinels as the lamps flared on them, and

throwing themselves down to rest again before the droning of the engine

was gone.

“‘The Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any

snow.’ Know that?”

She nodded. “It sounds so peaceful, doesn’t it? Like a cold hand laid on

an aching forehead. That’s the way those words have felt to me sometimes

in the glare and bustle of New York. They’ve come to me when I’ve been

walking up Fifth Avenue, and it’s been like a door opening into a green

still orchard, somewhere inside my head.”

“You’re sorry to leave it? Why should we leave it? Let’s turn back.”

He slowed down the car.

“Oh, you foolish! I’ve got to catch my boat to-morrow. And besides----”

She paused and reflected. “Besides, I’m never so very sorry to leave

anything. I’m an odd girl” (The same old phrase, “D’you think I’m an odd

child, Teddy?”) “I’m never too sorry to say good-by. I want to push on

and on. I’m always looking ahead.”

“To what?”

“Things.” She glanced away into the vagueness of the ghostly meadows.

“The kind of things that people do look forward to.”

He wanted to get her to talk about herself--about her past. He could

make sure, then, and tell her--tell her everything without frightening

her. So he said: “I don’t mean people. I mean girls. What kind of things

do girls look forward to?”

Had she shared his hours of remembering? Had it really been her thoughts

that had touched him in that little room in Eden Row? He stooped his

head nearer to listen. It seemed to him that, above the throbbing of the

engine, he could hear the blood dripping in his heart.

She stared into his eyes with her old suspicion--the veiled stare, half

hostile, which a girl gives a man when she fears that he is going to

kiss her.

“Girls look forward to--what kind of things?” she echoed. “I can’t tell.

The same kind of things that men look forward to, I expect. The surprise

things, and--yes, the excitements, most of all.”

“Like our meeting--it was a surprise thing, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” She slipped back her cloak from her white shoulders.

“Heaps of things are surprise things like that.”

It was as though she had said, “This meeting of ours--it’s of no

importance.” He loved her for the way she was treating him. He knew

now why she had dared to risk herself with a man who, so far as her

knowledge went, was a complete stranger.

They both fell silent. He felt that there was only one thing that he

could talk about, and he didn’t know when or where to start. He wanted

above all things to say nothing only to take her in his arms; to kiss

her lips, her hair, her hands and to kneel to the little sandaled feet

that peeped out from below her queenly robe. He hardly dared to look at

her lest, then and there, he should leave the wheel and do it. All that

his heart asked was to be allowed to touch and reverence her.

As he stared between the rushing eyes of the car, watching the road

ahead, his imagination painted pictures on the darkness. He saw her

lifting her arms about his neck. He saw her lying close against his

breast. He heard her whispering broken phrases--words which said so much

by leaving so much unsaid. But whenever he stole a glance at her, he saw

her gray eyes closed like a statue’s and her white hands folded.

He was wasting time--it would so soon be morning. She was going to

America. She must not go, and yet he was helping her. If he could only

find words to tell her. He had never thought it would be so difficult.

Ah, but then he had imagined a child-Desire, just grown a little taller.

But this Desire was different--so self-possessed and calm, with so many

new interests and unknown friends estranging her from the faery-Desire

of the farmhouse garden.

They passed through Wells, where the cathedral lay like a gigantic

coffin beneath the stars. Having panted up the steep ascent beyond the

town, they commenced the twenty-mile downhill run to Bath.

He heard a stirring beside him. Her eyes were open, quite near to his

and shining with friendliness.

“What’s the matter? We’ve both gone silent.”

“I thought you were tired, so I didn’t disturb you.”

“Tired! Perhaps I was. But I’m all right now. Isn’t it magic with all

the stars, and the mist and the being away from every one? Don’t you

want to smoke? Here, I’ll hold the wheel while you light a cigarette.

Yes, I know how.”

She leant across him to do it, her shoulder resting against his arm. The

wind of their going fluttered her hair against his cheek. For a moment

he was possessed with a mad longing to crush her to him.

“Haven’t you a match?”

She seemed utterly unconscious of her power to charm; yet instinctively

she used it.

“All right?” she asked. “I wonder whether you’d mind----” Her finger

went up to her mouth and her gray eyes coaxed him.

“I shouldn’t mind anything.”

She shook her head emphatically. “No. I won’t do it. People remember

first impressions. You’d think me fast.”

“I shouldn’t I couldn’t ever think that.”

“Are you sure? Well, may I----?” She made a gesture imitative of

withdrawing a cigarette from her lips. “I don’t smoke often--only when I

feel like it. And, oh, I do feel so happy to-night.”

She lit her cigarette from his, steadying herself with her hand on his

shoulder. Then she lay back, staring up at the fleecy sky where the moon

tipped clouds to a silver glory. She began to sing softly between her

puffs:

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of a whole world dies

With the dying sun.”

She sang the same verse over three times, pausing between each singing

as if she were repeating a question.

“Don’t you know the second verse?” he asked unsteadily.

“Yes, I know it.”

“Won’t you sing it? The whole meaning of life and everything is in the

last two Unes.”

“D’you really want me to? I don’t care for it so much because it’s about

love. I don’t think love ever made anybody happy.”

For a moment he was tempted to argue this heresy. “But sing it,” he

urged.

In a soft sleepy voice she sang:

“The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole world dies

When love is done.”

He waited for her to repeat it When she remained silent, he stopped the

car. She turned to him lazily: “Something gone wrong with the engine?”

He was certain she knew what had gone wrong, and was equally certain

that she was wilfully pretending to misunderstand him. Far below in the

valley, like a faeryring, the lights of Bath winked and twinkled. The

silence, after the sound of their going, breathed across the country

like a prolonged sighing. How should he tell her? How did men speak

to the women they loved? He turned aside from his purpose and

procrastinated. “Sing it again,” he pleaded, “the last verse. Now, that

everything’s quiet.”

“No.” She sat up determinedly. “It’s very beautiful; especially that

part about light dying when love is done. But it isn’t true. People

love heaps of times, and each new time they get more sensible. It’s like

climbing a ladder: you see more as you go higher. Besides, that last

verse makes me cry.”

“Love makes people happy.” His voice was low and trembling. “You

shouldn’t pretend to be a cynic. You’re too beautiful.”

“Oh, well, perhaps you are right, but----” She threw away her cigarette.

“Please be nice. You don’t know what things I’ve had done to me to make

me talk like that” She touched him on the arm ever so lightly: “When

we’re traveling, we talk so much better. Hadn’t we better be going?” And

then, when they were again humming down the long hill, with the white

lamps scything the shadows: “This really is fun. It’ll be something to

remember.”

“Something to talk about together,” he said.

She cuddled herself down into the seat. “Not much time for that with

me sailing for America. But you’ve not told me what you think of my

telegram. Wasn’t it a quaint, jumpy message? That’s just like Fluffy

to decide a problem in five minutes that other people would take five

months over. If she finds that anything’s worrying her, she moves away

from it This Horace, he’s Horace Overbridge, the playwright, and he’s

in love with her. Ever since we landed in April they’ve been going about

together, having motor-trips into the country and picnics on the river,

and--oh, so many good times. Of course I’ve been there, too, to take

care of her. But the trouble is he wants to marry her and, if he did,

he’d never let her do what she likes. He can’t understand that it

means just as much to her to be an actress as it does to him to be a

playwright Men aren’t very understanding. Of course, while they’re not

even engaged, he raves about her acting and helps her all he can. But

she knows perfectly well that all that would end with marriage. And then

she doesn’t love him. So you see----”

“But you said she’d let him take her about and give her good times.”

“Why, certainly. If a man chooses to do that it’s his own affair. And

then Fluffy’s very dear and beautiful, and she wouldn’t let many men be

in love with her. You did sound shocked when you said ‘But!’”

“I was thinking that she hadn’t played fair. She must have led him on.

You don’t think that’s fair, do you?”

“Fair!” She pursed her lips. “He enjoyed himself while it lasted, and

it’s his own fault if he’s spoilt it.” She threw back her head and

trilled gayly. “Oh, I can see her stamping her little foot and saying,

’No. No. No, Horace.’ And then, I expect, she jumped straight into

a cab and booked our berths on the very first ship that was sailing.

You--you don’t approve of her?”

“I don’t know her. It wasn’t very thoughtful of her to give you such

short notice.”

“But if I don’t mind--you see, it’s my business.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Then I have no right to mind. But I’m

wondering where you’d have been if I hadn’t turned up.”

“I! Oh, I’d have hired a car, I suppose, and Fluffy’d have had to pay

for it, or Horace, or somebody.--I wish I could remember who it was

shrugged his shoulders the way you do.”

“Perhaps it was----”

He glanced at her and broke off. This didn’t seem the propitious time

to assist her memory. She was frowning. He had displeased her. The

flippancy of Fluffy’s way of loving had cheapened all passion for the

moment.

They were coming into Bath, with its narrow streets and wide spaces, its

fluted columns and Georgian mansions.

“When we get into the country on the other side,” he thought, “I’ll tell

her.”

But on the other side he found that her eyes were shut She lay curled

up, with her child’s face turned towards him and her cheek pillowed

against her hand.

“Desire,” he whispered. “Desire.”

She sighed, but her eyes did not open.

“It’s Teddy. Don’t you remember?”

She did not stir.

Very tenderly, lest he should wake her, he tucked her cloak closer, and

buttoned it across her breast. By degrees he pulled the hood up over

her ears and forehead. He stooped to kiss her, but drew back at the last

moment To kiss her, sleeping, seemed too much like theft; “I love you,

dearest,” he whispered. “I love you.”

She made no answer.

He drove on, dreaming, through the summer night.

CHAPTER III--A SUMMER’S MORNING

Stars were weakening in their shining. He wished she would wake up. It

was still night, but almost imperceptibly a paleness was spreading. The

sky looked mottled. As he passed through an anonymous, shrouded village

a clock was striking. One, two, three! If he kept up this pace, they

would be in London, at the latest, by seven.

He began to calculate his respite. The boat-train left Euston at noon;

if she allowed him to stay with her to the very last moment, he had--how

much? About nine hours more of her company.

But probably she wouldn’t let him stay with her. She’d have packing

to do. This Fluffy person would want to carry her off and gossip about

Horace--what he had said to her and what she had said to him, and how

thoroughly justified she was in her treatment of him. And so--he

widened his mouth bitterly--and so she would blow out of his life like

thistledown. This splendid meeting, which had been the dream of

his boyhood, would be wasted--cold-shouldered into oblivion by.

trivialities.

In his desperation he invented a dozen mad schemes for detaining her. It

was on the cards that his car might break down. Unfortunately it showed

every healthy sign of living beyond its reputation. Well, if it didn’t

do it voluntarily, he might help it--might lose a spark-plug or loosen

something. _He might_, but it wasn’t in him to do it. The moment he met

her truthful gray eyes he’d be sure to shrive his conscience--then she’d

detest him. No, if he was going to be a young Lochinvar, he had far

better play the game boldly--swing off into side-roads and, when she

wakened, explain to her laughingly: “You won’t catch your boat now,

little Desire. I’ve made you lose it on purpose because--because I love

you.”

Humph! And she’d be amiable, wouldn’t she? Some men might be able to

carry that off. He couldn’t. He’d feel a cur; he’d look it. So he drove

on through the darkness, cursing at every new mile-stone because it

brought him nearer to the hour of parting.

He wished to heaven she would wake up. While he fumed and fretted, he

built topply air-castles. Couldn’t he marry her--propose clean off the

bat and get it over? Such things had happened. The idea allured him. He

began to reckon his finances to see whether he could afford it. He had

saved seven hundred pounds from his Beauty Incorporated dividends; every

year there would be three hundred more. Then he had his future. His

work was in demand. Several commissions had been offered him.

No fiction-writer since Du Maurier, so the critics told him, had

illustrated his own stories quite so happily. His next book was going

to make him famous--he was sure of it. Oh, yes, so far as money went, he

was eligible.

From somewhere at the back of his mind a wise voice kept warning: “You

have to live all your life with a woman; marrying’s the least part of

marriage. Go slowly. How d’you know that she isn’t another Fluffy?”

It was just as though Mrs. Sheerug were talking. He argued angrily

against her disillusions. “But she’s not selfish like Vashti; and,

anyway, you weren’t fair to Vashti. You wouldn’t believe that she was

good--you wouldn’t even let Hal believe it. That was why he lost her.”

Then Madame Josephine took a hand: “When you find her, don’t try to

change her. Women long to be trusted. Be content to love.”

He gasped. What a lot Madame Josephine knew about men and women. He was

doing what all men did--and he had promised himself so faithfully to be

the exception. Already he was wanting to change Desire: wanting to make

her give up such friends as Fluffy; wishing she didn’t smoke cigarettes,

though so long as she wasn’t married to him he found it rather

fascinating; feeling shocked that she had trusted a strange man

so carelessly, though, when he happened to be her chance-selected

companion, he had been glad to profit by her carelessness.

And then--he didn’t like to own it--he felt piqued by her lack of

curiosity. She had taken him so quietly for granted. She hadn’t asked

who he was, or why he, of all men, had been sent to her rescue. Any man

would have done, provided he had had a car. It was A Man with A Car

that she had wanted. When the emergency was ended and he had served his

purpose, she would dismiss him with a polite “Thank you,” and put him

out of her memory. Thistledown--that was what she was.

He bent over her. Still sleeping! Her red lips were parted, the glint

of her white teeth showing. One hand was beneath her cheek, the other

against her breast like a crumpled petal. Below her eyes the long lashes

made shadows. How sweet she was, how fragile, how trusting--how like

the child-Desire who had snuggled into his arms in the woodland! With a

sudden revulsion he despised his fault-finding. Chivalry and tenderness

leapt up. He must make it a law with himself to believe the highest of

her, whatever happened or had happened.

He longed to waken her. He imagined how her eyes would tremble on him if

she awoke to find him bent above her hands. But would they? Because he

wasn’t sure, he cursed his inherited reticence.

Out of the east, driving his misty sheep before him, the shepherd of the

dawn came walking. Like a mischievous dog, with his red tongue lolling,

the sun sprang up and scattered the flock through many pastures.

Still she slept.

Outside Reading the engine went wrong. For a moment he hoped---- But,

no, it was nothing serious. In making adjustments he made much more

noise than was necessary. She did not rouse.

Nearly five o’clock! Other people would claim her in two hours. For

the next forty minutes that thought, that other people would claim her,

provided him with exquisite torture. Some of those other people would be

men--how could any man be near her without loving her?

He reached Maidenhead and came to the bridge--came to the river winding

like a silver pathway between nose-gays of gayly painted houseboats.

“Ho-ho!”

Jamming on the brakes in the middle of the bridge, he brought the car

to a halt. Her hand fluttered up to her mouth in a pretty pretense at

checking the yawn. She rubbed her eyes. “Morning! Didn’t I choose a good

place to wake up? Where are we?” She sat upright. “My, but I am cramped.

And, oh, look at my dress! It’ll embarrass you most horribly when we get

to London. The police’ll think you’re eloping with a faery.”

He crouched above the wheel, clutching it tightly, fearing what he might

do with his hands. Her casual cheerfulness stifled his words. It was

like a blow across his lips. What he had intended to say was so serious.

His eyes felt hot. He had a vision of himself as a wild unkempt

being, almost primeval, who struggled and panted. He was filled with

a sickening sense of self-despising and dreaded lest at any moment he

might hear her laughing.

“What a shame!” She stroked his sleeve gently. Her voice was concerned.

“I am a little beast. You’ve been at it all night while I’ve been----”

She rippled into laughter. “Do tell me whether I snored. Why don’t you

say something? You’ll get me frightened; you look most awfully strange

and funny.” And then, softly: “Poor you! You’re very tired.”

He was like a man turned to stone. She listened for any sound of

footsteps; she might need help. Except for the sunshine, the lapping of

the river and the careless singing of birds, the whole world was empty.

She swept the hair back from her forehead and gazed away from him. She

mustn’t let him know that he’d upset her.

“The river! Isn’t it splendid? And all the little curly mists. Why, this

must be Maidenhead. Yes, there’s the place where we hired the boat when

I came here with Horace and Fluffy. I hate to leave it, but---- We’d

better be getting on to London, hadn’t we?”

He didn’t answer. Slowly she turned and regarded him. Was he sulky, or

ill, or----?

“I’m doing my best to be pleasant.” There was a hint of tears in the

way she said it. “You won’t let me help you--won’t tell me what’s the

matter. I suppose that’s because I look untidy and ugly.”

“Princess!”

Tremblingly he seized her hands. She drew back from him: “Oh, please!

You’re hurting.”

His eyes had touched hers for a second, penetrating their cloudiness. He

let her slip from his grasp. “I’m sorry. I thought--I thought you were

some one else.”

He was on the point of starting when she rose and jumped out

“I’m stiff. Let’s say ’Good-by’ to the dear old Thames. It won’t take

a minute.” And then, over her shoulder, as she leant across the parapet:

“You thought I was some one else. Who knows? Perhaps I am.”

All that he could see of her was her slight figure and the back of her

pretty head. He went and stood near her, within arm-stretch.

Without looking at him she asked a question. “Why do you beat about the

bush? Last night you had something on your mind that you wouldn’t tell.

This morning it’s worse. What makes you so timid? I’m only a girl.”

“Because----”

“Go on.”

“Because it’s something that would offend you if you weren’t----”

She shook her head. “I’m never offended. I’m too understanding.

Perhaps---- Were you fond of this some one?”

“Fond, I?” The river grew blurred “It was years ago. I was a boy and she

was only a little girl. It’s like a story--like some one I read about,

and then went out to try and discover.”

A market-cart rumbled across the bridge, mountain-high with vegetables.

When the sound of its going had died out, she moved closer.

“I knew a boy once who called me ’Princess.’ He used to tell me--it

was a queer, dear thing to tell me--he used to tell me that the babies

came into my eyes when I was happy. But that was only when I’d been

awfully nice to him.” When he stared at her, she nodded. “Really. He

did. I’m not joking.”

How long had she recognized him? Had she been cruel on purpose? Had she

kept him on tenter-hooks for her own diversion? He laughed softly. It

wasn’t quite the rushing together of two souls that imagination had

painted. And yet, there were compensations: the sleeping houses with

their blinds discreetly lowered; the sparkling river; the spray of

plunging clouds; on the bridge, suspended between sky and river,

this pale queenly sprite of a girl. The golden girdle about her waist

jingled. He took no notice the first time and the second; but the third

it seemed a challenge. He reached out his arm.

Tossing back her hair, she slipped from him. “Not allowed. You go too

fast; you were too slow at first. Why on earth didn’t you tell me last

night, instead of---- Think what a splendid time we might have had. And

now we’ve only a few hours.”

He seized her hands and held them, palm to palm. This time she made no

complaint that he hurt. “You’re not going.” He was breathing quickly.

“You’re never going unless----”

Her half-closed eyes mocked him with their old impishness. “But you

mustn’t hold me like that. It isn’t done in the best families--not in

public, anyway--even by the oldest friends.”

She broke from him and stepped into the car. “Let’s be nice to each

other. We haven’t been very nice yet.”

Very nice! He’d sat up all night and tossed his holiday plans to the

winds for her. He grinned to himself as he cranked the engine. This was

the same Desire with a vengeance--the old Desire who had tried to make

people ask pardon when she was the offender.

They were traveling again. His hands were occupied; he could make love

to her with nothing more alarming than words. She felt safe to lower her

defenses.

“You were just a little judging last night.”

“Was I?”

“Just a little. About Fluffy. You don’t even know her We were stupid to

quarrel.”

“It wasn’t as bad as that.”

“It was. You were, oh, so extremely righteous. But I’d have been just

as angry in your defense, or any one else’s whom I liked. I make a loyal

little friend.”

“Would you truly quarrel in my defense?”

She patted his hand where it rested on the wheel “Of course I would. But

last night you hurt me so much that---- I wonder if I dare tell you. You

see, it hurt all the more because we’d only just met. I pretended----”

He finished her sentence: “To be asleep.”

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

“Then you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“What I said when I buttoned your cloak about you?” She made her eyes

innocently wide. “Did you do that? That was kind.”

She was dodging him. He knew it; yet he wondered. Had she heard him

whisper that he loved her? If she had---- He glanced sideways; all he

saw was the gleam of her throat through her blowy hair.

His mind went back across the years. How much he had lost of her--a

child then, a woman now! If they were to bridge the gulf, it would be

wiser to start with memories.

“I found what you’d written on the window--found it next morning, after

you’d left.”

“Did I write anything? It’s so long ago. How wonderful that you should

have remembered!”

“Not wonderful at all. If you’d meant it, you’d remember.”

She had gone too far with her evasions. Snuggling closer, their

shoulders touching, she bent across him till their eyes met.

“I did mean it then. But you shouldn’t expect a girl to own it. I can

prove to you that I meant it. I wrote, ’I love you,’ and then, lower

down, ’I love you.’ I’ve--I’ve often thought about you, and about----

What times we had! D’you remember the bird-catcher and Bones? Poor

Bones! How jealous you were of him, and I expect he’s dead.” She

laughed: “So you needn’t be jealous any longer. And d’you remember how

I would bathe? Shocking, wasn’t it? I thought it would change me from

a girl to a boy. And how I called you King Arthur once, and made you

angry? I think---- No, you won’t like me to say that.”

He urged her.

“I think you’re still a King Arthur or else--you wouldn’t have objected

to Fluffy, and you wouldn’t have made such a mess about recognizing me.”

Stung by the old taunt he grew reckless. “I did tell you. You heard what

I said, but you tricked me by pretending you were sleeping.”

“A Sir Launcelot wouldn’t have, been put off by pretense. He’d have

shaken me by the shoulders. Oh, don’t look hurt. Let’s talk of something

else. What d’you suppose I’ve been doing with myself?”

As they drove through the morning country, between hedges cool with dew

and fragrant with opening flowers, she told him.

“After my father had kidnaped me” (so she knew that Hal was her father!)

“my beautiful mother took me to America. Sometimes we traveled in

Europe, but she was afraid to bring me to England so long as I was

little. This summer’s the first time I’ve been back. She let me come

with Fluffy. I’m going to be an actress--going to start next fall in New

York, I expect, if my mother allows me. Fluffy’s promised to help. She’s

a star. Janice Audrey’s her real name. You must have heard of her. No!

Oh, well, she’s quite famous, even if you haven’t. So you see why it’s

so important for me to sail with her.”

“You’re not going to sail with her.”

“I am.” She caught her breath and gazed at him wonderingly. “How

foolish of you! That’s why we’ve driven all night, and----”

“You’re not going to now.”

She threw herself back in the seat a little contemptuously. “It’s

nonsense to discuss it. I’d like to know what makes you say it.”

“Because----- It’s difficult to tell you. Because I couldn’t bear to

lose you the moment we’ve met. I don’t think--well, of course, you can’t

understand what you’ve been in my life. Don’t laugh, Desire; I’m not

flirting--not exaggerating. I’ve always believed that I’d find you. I’ve

lived for that. I’ve worked, and tried to be famous and worthy so

that--so that you’d like me. I had an idea that somewhere, far out in

the world, you were thinking of me and waiting for me.” He glanced at

her shyly. “Were you?”

She was sitting motionless, staring ahead.

“Were you?”

Tears came into her eyes. “It’s very beautiful--what you’ve told me. It

makes me feel---- Oh, I don’t know--that I wish I were better. You see,

you’ve thought of me as a dream-person, as some one very wonderful. I’m

only a reality--an ordinary girl with a little cleverness, who wants to

be an actress. Yes, I’ve thought about you sometimes. Mother and I have

often talked about you--but not in the way you mean, I expect.”

He thrilled. She had thought about him. She owned it “You couldn’t be

better than you are,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “You haven’t known me long enough. I’m

disappointing.”

He smiled incredulously.

“But I am,” she pouted, with a touch of petulance. “Then I’ll have

to know you long enough. You’ll have to give me the chance to be

disillusioned; that’s only fair. All the while you were sleeping I was

planning a way to keep you from going. At first I hoped the car would

break down. When it didn’t, I was tempted to loosen something so that

we’d get stuck on the road. Not at all a King Arthur trick, that! But

I couldn’t bring myself to do it after you’d trusted me. Then I thought

I’d run off with you--let you wake up in Devon, miles from any railway,

with no time to get back. Somehow, from what I remembered of you,

I didn’t think that that would make you pleasant. Then I had a mad

notion.”

“What was it?”

“You won’t laugh at me?”

“Honest Injun. I promise.”

“I thought I’d propose to you the moment you woke and we’d get married.”

“You thought of that all by your little self!” Her voice rose in a

clear carol of music. “You quaint, funny person.” Catching her humor,

he joined in her laughing. “It seemed tremendously possible while you

slept. I even reckoned up my bank-account. But I’ve a real scheme now.

When we ran away from Fanner Joseph, I was going to take you to my

mother. D’you remember?”

“Well?”

“Let’s pick up our adventure where we dropped it. I’ll take you to her.”

“Dreamer! What about my sailing, and my mother waiting for me, and

Fluffy?”

“Oh, hang Fluffy! She’s always intruding.”

“That’s not kind. Besides, I don’t want Fluffy hanged. If she were, she

couldn’t help me to be an actress.”

“But you’re not going to be an actress. I’d hate to think of you being

stared at by any one who could pay the money. An actress marries the

public, but you---- Look here, I’m serious.”

“You think you are. I never met any one like you. You weave magic cloaks

in your imagination and try to make live people wear them. If the magic

cloaks don’t fit, you’ll be angry. So don’t weave one for me; I warn

you. What’s the time? Then in less than seven hours I sail for America.”

He felt like a kite, straining toward the clouds, which the hand of a

child was dragging down to earth. Her voice uttered prose, but her eyes

smiled poetry. She seemed to be repeating disenchanted phrases which

she had borrowed without comprehending. Every time he looked at her she

inspired him to flights; but she refused to follow him herself. Because

of that he fell silent.

Streets commenced. The smoke of freshly kindled fires boiled and bubbled

against the sky. Frowsy maids knelt whitening doorsteps, as though

saying their prayers. Blinds shot up at second-story windows. The world

was getting dressed. It was the hour when dreams ended.

Desire drew her cloak closer, hiding the green and gold of her romance

attire.

“I didn’t mean to be horrid. Don’t think that I don’t appreciate----”

Whatever it was she said was lost in the clatter of a passing tram.

“You weren’t horrid.” He spoke quietly. “Even if you had been, I

deserved it. I’ve been,” he hesitated and shrugged his shoulders

expressively, “just a little mad. What’s the address? Where am I to

drive you?”

They had entered Regent’s Park. For a moment the spell of the country

returned. In fields, beyond the canal, sheep were grazing.

“Can’t we go more slowly?” She touched his arm gently.

“We can. But, if we do, I’ll have more time to make a fool of myself,

and I’ve done that pretty thoroughly.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But I have and I owe you an apology. You see, all my life you’ve been

an inspiration. I’ve imagined you so intensely that I couldn’t treat you

politely as a stranger--as what you call a ’real’ person.”

Her face trembled. All the mischief had gone out of it. Her hands moved

distressfully as though they wanted to caress him, but didn’t dare. She

crouched her chin against her shoulder and gazed away through the sun

and shadows of the park.

“I don’t want you to be polite to me,” she faltered. “I don’t think you

understand how difficult it is to be a girl. We neither of us know quite

what we want.” She looked at him wistfully. “Disappointed in me already!

Didn’t I warn you? And yet, if you’d take the trouble to know me, you’d

find that I’m not--not so bad and heartless.”

“Little Desire, I never thought you were bad and heartless--never for

one moment.”

The babies came into her eyes and her finger went childishly to her

mouth. “No, you wouldn’t have the right to; but I’m ever so much nicer

than you suspect.”

He slowed down the engine. His face had gone white beneath its tan. They

were both stirred; they seemed to listen to the beating of each other’s

heart “Give me another chance,” he urged unsteadily.

“But how? I must sail.” She gazed at him forlornly. “Here we are. You

were going past it.”

They drew up before a tall, buff-colored house, standing in a terrace.

As though glad to escape from their emotional suspense, she jumped out

the moment they had stopped, ran up the steps and rang the bell. While

she waited for her ring to be answered, she kept her back towards him.

The door was opened by a maid in a white cap and apron.

“Hulloa, Ethel! So you see I’ve got back. How’s Miss Janice? Busy

packing?”

“Still in bed, Miss Desire. I was just going up to help her dress.”

“Out last night with Mr. Horace?”

“Yes. He’s to be here to breakfast He’s going to the station to see you

off.”

“All right. I’ll be in in a moment You needn’t stop.”

She came tripping down the steps to Teddy. He had got out of the car

and had been standing watching her. He had feared that she would glance

across her shoulder and dismiss him with a nod.

She rested her hand upon his arm and looked up at him timidly with an

expression that was more than pity. The leaves of the park fluttered and

the flakes of sunlight fell.

“If I wasn’t going----” The rumble of London shook the heavy summer

stillness, hinting at adventures awaiting their exploring. “If only I

wasn’t going---- I’m beginning to like you most awfully, the way I did

once when---- But I must go. I can’t help it You’ll stay to breakfast,

won’t you? Then we can drive to the station together.”

“I’d like to. But would they like it?”

“Who? Fluffy and Horace? I don’t suppose so.”

“Then breakfast with me somewhere else?”

She played with the temptation, raising his expectations. Then, “No.

I’ve too much to do--packing and all sorts of things. Perhaps you’re

right We’d be awkward with each other before them. We’d better say

’Good-by’ now.”

But she didn’t say it. Her hand still rested on his arm and the

gold-green leaves of the park fluttered.

“I can’t let you go like this,” he whispered hoarsely.

“No. I know it. But what can we do? Poor you! I’m so sorry.”

Her mood changed swiftly. “Oh, how stupid we are! Give me a pencil and

some paper. Now put your foot on the step of the car and make a table

for me.”

As she stooped to his knee to write, her hair fell back, exposing the

whiteness of her neck. The familiarity with which she was filling these

last moments sent all his dreams soaring. The daintiness, the slimness,

the elfin beauty of her quickened his longing. His instinct told him

that she was hoping that he would kiss her; but he guessed that, if he

did, she would repulse him. “You go too fast for me,” she had said.

Once again his imagination wove a magic garment and flung it about her

shoulders. There was no one like her. She was called Desire because she

was desired. If love could compel love, she should come into his life.

He vowed to himself that he would win her.

“There.”

As he took the paper from her, their fingers touched and clung together.

“What’s this? Your New York address? You mean that we can write to each

other?”

Her eyes mocked his trouble with tenderness. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what?”

“That you’ll know where to find me when you come to America.”

“But I can’t I----”

She broke from him and ran up the steps. As she crossed the threshold

she let her cloak slip from her. He saw again for one fleeting moment

her sandaled feet and her pageant costume.

The door was closing. Before it shut she kissed the tips of her fingers

to him.

“You can if you really care.”

CHAPTER IV--HAUNTED

He eyed the windows furtively, hoping to catch her peering out. He

commenced to tinker with his engine to give himself an excuse for

delaying. Why hadn’t he accepted her breakfast invitation? Without her

he felt utterly desolate.

Perhaps, if he stayed there long enough, she would come to him. The

door would open and he would hear her saying shyly, “Ha! So it did break

down!” Of course the sensible thing to do would be to walk boldly up the

steps and ask for her. But love prefers strategy.

A man came strolling along the terrace. He was in gray flannels, wore a

straw hat and was swinging a cane jauntily. He had a distinct waist-line

and humorous blue eyes. He was the kind of man who keeps a valet.

“Hulloa! Something wrong?”

Teddy unstooped his shoulders. “Nothing much. Nothing that I can’t put

right.”

“Well, I’m going in here.” The man glanced across his shoulder at the

house. “If it’s water you want or anything like that, or if you’d care

to use the phone----”

Teddy flushed scarlet beneath his tan. So this cheerful looking person

was Horace who, cooperating with Fluffy, had set an example that had

cheapened all love’s values?

“I won’t trouble you. Thanks all the same.”

Had he dared, he would have accepted the proffered assistance. But

Desire would guess; they all would guess that he had acted a lie to

gain an entrance. Contempt for the foolishness of his situation made him

hurry. The car made a miraculous recovery--so miraculous that the blue

eyes twinkled with dawning knowledge.

“Come a long way to judge from the dust! From Glastonbury, perhaps?”

Teddy jumped to the seat and seized the wheel. “Yes, from Glastonbury,”

he said hastily.

As he drove away he muttered, “Played me like a trout! He’s no cause to

laugh when he’s been refused himself.”

From the end of the terrace, he glanced back. The man, with leisurely

self-possession, was entering the house. He felt for him the impotent

envy that Dives in torment felt, when he saw Lazarus lying on Abraham’s

bosom. He tried to jeer himself out of his melancholy. “I’m very young,”

he kept saying. But when he imagined the party of three at breakfast, he

could have wept.

Now that she had vanished, he remembered only her allurement. Her faults

became attractions: her coldness was modesty; her defense of Fluffy,

loyalty; her unreasonable request that he should come to America, love.

What girl would expect a man to do that unless she loved him?

The reality of his predicament began to grow upon him. This wasn’t a

romance or a dream he had invented; it had happened.

In a shadowed spot, overlooking the canal, he halted the car. He must

think matters out--must get a grip on himself before he went further.

Water-carts were going up and down. Well-groomed men were walking

briskly through the park on their way to business. Boys and girls on

bicycles passed him, going out by way of Hampstead for a day in the

country. The absolute normality of life, its level orderliness, thrust

itself upon him. He looked at the sedate rows of houses, showing up

substantially behind sun-drenched branches. He saw their window-boxes,

their whitened doorsteps, their general appearance of permanency. The

men who lived in those houses wouldn’t say to a girl, “I love you,” in

the first half-dozen hours of acquaintance. But neither would the girls

say to a seven-hour-old lover, “Come to America”; they wouldn’t even

say, “Run down to Southend,” for fear of being thought forward.

How distorted the views seemed to him now that he had held on the

journey up from Glastonbury! They were the result of moonlight and of

the pageant emotions stirred by a medieval world. How preposterously he

had acted!

He tried to put himself in Desire’s place that he might judge her

fairly. Irresponsible friends send her a telegram, saying that a man

is coming to fetch her. Of course she believes that the man is to be

trusted; but the first thing he does is to make love. In spite of that,

she has to go with him; he is her one chance of getting to London. He

at once commences to take advantage of her; she gets frightened and

pretends to go to sleep in order to escape him. In the morning she

discovers that he’s an old friend, but there’s too little time to

replace the bad impression. At the last moment she feels sorry for

him--begins to feel that she really does care for him; so she says the

only thing possible under the circumstances, “Come to America.”

Obviously she wasn’t going to give herself away all at once. In that

she had been wise, for, though he had wanted her to, he knew that if she

had, she would have lowered her value.

But he wished she had shown more curiosity. She’d talked all about

herself and hadn’t asked him a single question. She hadn’t even called

him by his name--not once.

Then the cloud of his depression lifted. The truth came home to him in

a flash: all these complaints and this unhappiness were proofs positive

that at last he was in love. The splendor of the thought thrilled

him--in love. The curtain had gone up. His long period of lonely waiting

was ended. For him the greatest drama that two souls can stage had

begun. Whither it would lead he could not guess. Everything was a blank

except the present, and that was filled with an aching happiness. She

was going from him. Already she was out of sight and sound; in a few

hours he would be cut off from all communication with her. Yet he was

happy in the knowledge that, however uncertain he might be of her, he

belonged to her irrevocably. He longed to give himself to her service in

complete self-surrender. His work, his ambitions, everything he was or

could be, must be a gift for her. But how to make her understand this,

while there was yet time?

He drove out of the park, passing by her house. Of her there was no

sign. He wondered what they were doing in there. Was the man with the

blue eyes taking his place and helping to strap her trunks? Or was

he making love to Fluffy, while Desire looked on wistfully and

wished--wished what he himself was wishing?

“You were a little judging?”

Yes, he had been judging. It had all taken place so differently from

anything that he had conjectured. She herself was so different from the

Desire he had imagined. All these years he had been preparing for her

coming, but to her his coming had been an accident. That had hurt--hurt

his pride, to have to acknowledge that she had almost forgotten the old

kindnesses. And then she had tantalized him---had taken a pleasure in

treating him lightly. Perhaps all girls did that; it might be their way

of defending themselves. Probably she hadn’t meant one half of what she

had said, and had been trying to shock him. He couldn’t bear that she

should think him narrow or censorious. The more he condemned himself,

the more he longed to convince her of his breadth and generosity.

He found a florist’s and ordered a quantity of flowers.

“Shall I enclose your card, sir?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He was afraid that, if she knew for certain they were from him, she

might not accept them.

“The lady’s leaving Euston on the boat-train for Liverpool, so you must

get them to her at once.”

“You shall see the boy start, sir. Going on a liner, is the lady, sir?”

“Yes, to America.”

“Then, may I make a suggestion?” Desire would have said that the florist

was very understanding; he rubbed his hands and looked out of the window

to avoid any needless causing of embarrassment. “If I might make a

suggestion, sir, I would say it would be very nice to send the lady

seven bouquets--one for every day of the voyage.”

“But can it be done? I mean, will the flowers keep fresh?”

“Oh, yes, sir. It’s quite the regular thing. We pack them in seven boxes

and we mark each box for the day on which it’s to be opened. We send

instructions with them for the lady to give to the purser, to keep

them on ice. Usually we slip five shillings into the envelope with the

instructions. Then the lady finds her bouquet waiting for her on her

plate each morning with her breakfast. The idea is that she’ll think

of the gentleman who sent them.” This florist understood too much. He

treated love as a thing that happened every day, which, of course, it

didn’t. Teddy assumed an off-hand manner. “If it won’t take too long to

make up the bouquets, I’ll have them as well.”

“As well as the cut flowers?”

“Yes.”

He helped to select the rosebuds, orchids and violets that were to lie

against her breast It gave him a comforting sense of nearness to her.

When the man’s back was turned he stooped to catch their fragrance and

brushed his lips against their petals. Perhaps she might do the same,

and her lips would touch the flowers where his had touched. By subtler

words than language they would explain to her his love. When she landed

in that far-away New York, he would be with her, for the flowers would

have kept his memory fresh.

“Certain you won’t send your card, sir? It’s quite etiquette, I assure

you.”

He shook his head irritably. The man took the hint and became absorbed

in his own affairs. The boxes were tied up, the bill settled. Teddy

watched the boy bicycle away on his errand and envied him the privilege

of ringing her door-bell.

Breakfast! He hadn’t had any. He was too excited to feel hungry. He

didn’t want to go home yet; he’d have to explain the abrupt ending of

his holiday. He was trying to make up his mind to go to the station

to see her off. As he drove about, killing time, he came to Trafalgar

Square. That made him think of Cockspur Street and the shipping offices.

He pulled up at Ocean House to find out what boats were sailing on that

day. There were three of them, any one of which might be hers. A mad

whim took him. Of course it was out of the question that he should go to

America. How could he explain such a voyage to his parents? He couldn’t

say, “I met Desire for a handful of hours and I’m in love.” Besides, he

would never let any one suspect that he was in love. He wouldn’t even be

able to mention his night ride from Glastonbury. It would sound improper

to people who weren’t romance-people. He could see the pained look

that would steal into his mother’s eyes if he told her. Nevertheless,

although it was quite impossible, he asked for a list of sailings and

made inquiries as to fares.

Then he drove to Gatti’s for breakfast and a general tidy-up. Something

was the matter with the mirrors this morning. He saw himself with humble

displeasure. Until he had met Desire, he had felt perfectly contented

with his appearance; he had found nothing in it at which to take

offense. But now he began to have a growing sense of injury against the

Almighty. As he sat in the mirrored room, waiting for his meal to be

served, his reflections watched him from half-a-dozen angles. They

seemed to be saying to him, “Poor chap! May as well face up to the fact.

This is how you look; and you expect her to love you.”

He compared himself with her. He thought of her eyes, her lips, her

hair, the grace of her figure, the wonderful smallness of her hands. Her

voice came back to him--the sultry, emotional, coaxing way she had of

using it The arch self-composure of her manner came back--the glances

half-mocking, half-tender which she knew how to dart from under her long

lashes. She was more elf than woman.

All her actions and speech were unconsciously calculated to win

affection. Her beauty was without blemish; the memory of her filled him

with self-ridicule. He regarded himself in the mirrors with sorrowful

despising. His face was too long, his eyes too hollow, his mouth too

sensitive--nothing was right. How could she ever bring herself to love

him? How monstrous it seemed to him now that he should have dared to

criticize her! There was only one way to win her approbation--to make

her admire his talent A thought struck him. Leaving his meal untasted,

he ran out in search of a bookshop.

“A copy of _Life Till Twenty-One_. Yes, by Theodore Gurney. Can you

deliver it?... No, that’s too late. It’s got to be there by eleven. If

you can send a boy now, I’ll give him half-a-crown for his trouble. I’ll

drive him in my car to within a hundred yards of the house. It’s most

important. The people who want it are sailing for America.”

As the shopman wrapped it up, he remarked, “You were in luck to get a

copy. There’s been a run on it. The publishers are out of stock. This is

our last one.”

Once again he came within sight of her house. At a discreet distance he

set his messenger down and saw the book delivered. His heart fluttered

as the door opened; she might--it was just possible--she might come out.

But no, all he had was a fleeting glimpse of the maid in the white cap

and apron.

The moment the deed was done, he was assailed by trepidations. It might

seem egotistical to her, bad taste, vaunting. He could almost hear her

laughing. Oh, well, if she troubled to read it--and surely she would do

that out of curiosity--she would learn exactly how much she had meant

to him. She would see her own face looking out from the pen-and-ink

drawings that dodged up and down the margins.

Within the next hour he sent her three telegrams. The first simply gave

his address in Eden Row. The second said, “Please write to me.” The

third was a bold optimism, “Perhaps coming.” After that he had to stop,

for the time was approaching when she would be leaving for the station.

The signing of the telegrams gave him much difficulty. The first bore

his signature in full, “Theodore Gurney”; the next was less formal,

“Theodore”; the last touched the chord of memory, “Teddy.” His

difficulty had arisen because he couldn’t remember that she had called

him anything.

She lived in his thoughts as a phantom--too little as a creature of

flesh and blood. Within the brief space that had elapsed since he had

touched her, she had become again a faery’s child. The sound of her

laughter was in his ears. He imagined how her finger had gone up to her

mouth and the babies had come into her eyes, each time the bell had rung

and something fresh had been handed in to her. “Very queer and dear of

him,” she had said--something like that.

It was nearly twelve. He was torn between his anxiety to see her and his

shyness at intruding. If he had had only her to face, he would have gone

to Euston; but she’d be surrounded by friends. When it was too late, he

cursed his lack of enterprise.

Perhaps she had sent him an answer to his telegrams. He hurried back

to Eden Row. As he came in sight of the tree-shadowed street, with the

river gleaming along its length and the staid, sleepy houses lining its

pavement, the calm normality of an orderly world again accused him. To

have suggested to Eden Row a trip to America merely to see a girl would

have sounded like an affront to its sanity. As he passed by Orchid

Lodge, the carriage-and-pair was waiting for Mrs. Sheerug to come out.

For fifteen years she had been going through the same curriculum of

self-imposed duties--playing her harp, working at her tapestries,

scattering her philanthropies. How could he say to her, “I’m going to

America,” without stating an adequate reason?

His mother met him in the hall. “Why, Teddy, back! What’s the matter?

You didn’t send us warning.”

“I got tired of roving,” he said. “Has anything come?”

“Come! No. I forwarded your last letters to Glastonbury. I thought you

were to be there this morning.”

“So I was to have been, but--I changed my mind suddenly.”

“You look awfully tired.”

“I am.” He forced a laugh. “I haven’t slept. I drove all night for

the fun of it. I think I’ll go and lie down.” In the room where he had

passed his boyhood dreaming of her, he sat down to wait for her message.

He looked out of the window. How unaltered everything was, and yet how

different! The pigeons fluttered. In the studio at the bottom of the

garden he could make out the figure of his father, standing before his

easel. Across the wall, Mr. Yaffon carried cans of water back and forth

among his flowers. He remembered the great dread he had had that nothing

would ever happen. And now it had happened--money, reputation, and at

last Desire. He ought to be feeling immensely glad; he was in love--the

make-believe passions of childhood on which he had fed his imagination

were ended. The real thing had come. If he could only have one sign from

her that she cared----

He listened. Every time he heard the bell ring he went out on to the

landing and called, “Anything for me? What is it?”

Afternoon lengthened out. He manufactured reasons for her silence. She

had probably intended to telegraph him from Euston, but had been rushed

at the last minute. She would do it from Liverpool before she sailed.

That would mean that he would hear from her by seven. Anyway she had his

flowers and she had his book--so many things to remind her of him. He

pictured her curled up in a corner of the railway-carriage, blind to the

flying country, deaf to what was going on about her, smiling over the

pages of _Life Till Twenty-One_, and recognizing what poetry he had

brought to his loving of her. She wouldn’t be hard on him any longer for

his behavior on the ride from Glastonbury. She would understand why he

hadn’t liked her to speak of love as though it were flirtation. Perhaps

already she was feeling a little proud of him--nearly as proud as he

felt of her.

Seven struck on the clock downstairs. Eight, nine, ten! No message would

come till morning now; but he would not let himself believe that she had

not sent one. Probably she had given it to Horace, and he had slipped

it into his pocket and forgotten. Something like that! Or else, being a

girl and afraid to appear forward, she would write a letter on the ship

and send it ashore by the pilot. A letter would seem to her so much less

important than a telegram.

His mother looked in on her way to bed. “Still up? You’ve been hiding

all evening. What have you been doing? Working?”

She slipped her arm about his neck and laid her face against his cheek.

She was trying to sympathize--trying to draw him out. What did she

suspect? Instinctively he barricaded his privacy. He felt a cruel

shame that his secret should be guessed. Why he should feel ashamed of

love--of love which was so beautiful--he could not tell. “What have you

been doing, Teddy?”

He smiled cheerfully. “Doing! I’ve had an idea. A good one. I’ve been

thinking it out.”

“For your next book?”

“Perhaps.”

When she was gone, he turned out his light. He knew she would be

watching for its glow against the trees. If she did not see it, she

would believe him sleeping and her mind would be at rest. Then he seated

himself by the open window in the darkness.

He thought of Vashti, who had not married Hal. Did Desire know that her

mother had not married? He remembered the horror he had felt when he had

learnt that fact--the chivalrous pity for Desire it had aroused. It

was then that he had planned, when he became a man, to help her in the

paying of the price. And now----

He smiled frowningly. She didn’t seem to need his help. She was the

happiest, most radiant person he had ever met. She had found the

intenser world, for which he had always been searching--the world which

is forever somewhere else. His world--his poor little world, which he

had tried to make so fine that he might offer it to her--his world

seemed dull in comparison.

“Come to America,” she had said, as though the people she knew were

those lucky persons who are at all times free to travel, and never need

to trouble about expense. It hadn’t seemed to enter her head that he

might have obligations or a living to earn. She hadn’t even inquired;

she had just said, “Come to America,” as another might say, “If you care

to call, you’ll find me at home on Fridays.”

He adored her the more, as is the way with lovers, for the magnificent

inconsequence of her request. It was the standard she set for his need

of her--the proof she required. The more he thought, the more certain he

was of that.

Next morning brought neither telegram nor letter. All day he stayed

at home, fearing that, if he went out, something might arrive in his

absence. Her silence drove him to distraction. Could it be that she was

offended? Was she annoyed because he had put her into a book? Had she

expected him to turn up at Euston for a final farewell? He must get some

word to her. There were three ships, any one of which might be carrying

her. He went out that evening and addressed a wireless message to her on

each of them: “Thinking of you. Longing to hear from you. Love.” He felt

very discomforted when the clerk, before accepting them, insisted on

reading them over aloud. Again he hoped vainly that she might guess his

suspense--perhaps gauge his by her own--and return a wireless. Nothing.

The next three weeks were the longest in his memory. He became an expert

on transatlantic sailings. Every day he covered several pages to her.

He filled them with sketches; he put into them all the emotion and

cleverness of which he was capable. He said all the tender and witty

things he had intended to say to her when they met.

He burlesqued his own shyness. He recalled happenings of the old

farmhouse days which even he had all but forgotten. As an artist he knew

that he was outdoing himself. His letters were masterpieces. He laughed

and cried over some of the passages in the same breath. They couldn’t

fail to move her. When three weeks had elapsed he began to look for an

answer. None came. It was as though she mocked him, saying: “Come to

America if you really care.”

He grew hurt. For a month he tried the effect of not writing. Then he

tried to forget her, and did his best to become absorbed in his work.

But the old habits of industry had lost their attraction; every day was

a gray emptiness. His quietness seemed irrecoverable. She haunted him.

Sometimes the wind was in her hair and her face was turned from him.

Sometimes her gray eyes watched him cloudily, and her warm red lips

pouted with tender melancholy. He saw her advancing through the starlit

streets of Glastonbury, walking proudly in her queen’s attire. He

saw her in a thousand ways; every one was sweet, and every one was

torturing.

“This is love,” he told himself; “love which all the inspired people of

the world have painted and described and sung.”

The odd thing was that, much as it made him suffer, he would not have

been without it.

His mother noticed his restlessness and would have coaxed hi$ secret

from him, but his lips were obstinately sealed. He could not bring

himself to confess. He resorted to evasions which he felt to be

unworthy.

Gradually the determination grew up in him to go to America. He sought

for an excuse that would disguise his real purpose. It came to him in a

letter from a New York editor, offering prices, which sounded fabulous

by English standards, for a series of illustrated reminiscences of

childhood similar to those contained in _Life Till Twenty-one_.

He read the letter aloud at the breakfast table. “I’m going,” he said,

“to talk it over.”

“Going where?” his father questioned.

“To America.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

He let the subject drop for the time being; but a few days later he

walked out of Ocean House and whistled his way down Cockspur Street

to Trafalgar Square. He halted in the drowsy August sun and pulled

the ticket from his pocket to examine it. He could scarcely credit the

reckless length to which his infatuation had carried him.

He seemed to see her again, standing on the threshold in her

green-and-gold pageant costume, whispering tauntingly, “Come to America

if you really care.”

She would have to acknowledge now how much she meant to him. He couldn’t

wait to tell her. Crossing the street to Charing Cross Telegraph Office,

he cabled her the date of his arrival, the ship on which he was sailing

and the one word, “Coming.” Then he turned thoughtfully homeward, to

break the news to Eden Row.

Her masterly faculty for silence had conquered.

CHAPTER V--SUSPENSE

Not until the shores of England had faded behind him did he realize

the decisiveness of the step he had taken. Divorced from his familiar

surroundings, in the No-Man’s-Land of shipboard, he had an opportunity

of taking an outsider’s view of his actions. Now that there was no going

back, a fatalistic calm settled down on him. During the past weeks he

had lived in a tempest of speculations, of wild hopes and unreasonable

doubts. He had had to hide his emotions, and yet had dreaded lest they

were suspected. The fear of ridicule had been heavy upon him. He had

walked on tiptoe, always listening for a voice which never answered. Now

at last he regained self-possession.

Lying lazily in his steamer-chair, with the sun-dazzled vacancy of ocean

before him, the bigness of life came acutely home to him. Looking back

over his few years, he saw that the supreme need for great living is

charity--to be content to love, as Madame Josephine would put it. He saw

something else: that life has amazing recuperative powers and that no

single defeat is overwhelming. Disappointment only becomes overwhelming

when it is used for bitterness, as it was used by Hal.

“Life’s an eternal picking one’s self up and going forward,” he told

himself.

And so, if the unthinkable were to befall him, and he were to fail to

make Desire love him---- He couldn’t believe that love could ever fail

to awaken love--not the kind of love he had for her; but, lest that

disaster should happen and that he might prevent it from crushing

him, he tried not to take the purpose of his voyage too seriously. He

pretended to regard it cavalierly as an adventure. He schooled himself

in the knowledge that he might not be wanted. Except for her having

said, “Come to America if you really care,” he had no grounds for

supposing that she would want him. Why should he be anything to her? She

was only something to him because, by reason of her parentage, she

had appealed powerfully to his imagination at the chivalrous period of

adolescence. He had woven his dreams about her memory, clothed it with

affection and brought it with him up to manhood; then, by pure accident,

he had met her. She herself had warned him that he did not love the

actual Desire, but the magic cloak in which he had enfolded her.

Perhaps most men did that--worshiped a fantastic ideal, till they became

sufficiently humble to set out in search of reality.

It didn’t follow that, because the child-Desire had cared for him, the

Desire of twenty was still fond of him. It was that supposition that had

made him so precipitate in his own actions, and so unreasonable in his

expectations of hers. She had cared for him so little that she had been

in England since April and hadn’t troubled to discover him. Well, if he

found that she didn’t care for him now, he would make his business the

excuse for his voyage and return directly it was ended. He wasn’t going

to repeat Hal’s humiliating performance and give himself hopelessly. He

couldn’t, if he would. He knew that ultimately, if a woman didn’t choose

to make herself important, his work would take him from her. That, at

least, was his compensation for being an artist and over-sensitive:

when reality had made him suffer, his dreams would again claim him. So,

having assured himself many times that he was calm, he came to believe

that he was fortified against disillusion and would remain unshaken by

it.

He was living up to her test by coming to America--proving to her beyond

a doubt that he really did care. A few days would be sufficient to let

him know precisely how much that meant to her. At worst, he would have

enriched himself by an experience. And at best--at best, he would have

gained the thing which in all the world was most precious to him.

Thus armed with the cardboard weapons of a sham cynicism, he allowed

himself to wander, like a knight-errant, still deeper into the haunted

forest of his imagination. And there, as is the way with knight-errants,

he grew impatient with his caution. Why should he strive so desperately

to rein in his passion with doubts--this strange and wonderful passion

that was so new to him? Of course she had wanted him. At this very

moment she was thinking of him--ticking off the hours till they should

be together. If she hadn’t written, hadn’t cabled, had ignored him

entirely, it was because---- Perhaps because in the early stages women

show their love by hiding it, just as men show theirs by displaying it

A man’s excitement is to win; a woman’s to be won. Perhaps! He smiled

humorously; he had invented so many motives for her silence. The obvious

motive he had overlooked--that it was her silence that was compelling

him to her.

Probably his ardor had frightened her. Their introduction had been so

unusual that it afforded no basis for correspondence, though he had shut

his eyes to that. If Desire were here, and he were to ask her why she

hadn’t written, she would probably crouch her chin against her shoulder

and tell him, “It isn’t done in the best families.”

It wasn’t. But in New York conditions would be different. Vashti would

be there. Vashti for whom he had saved his marriage-box. Vashti who

could make Mrs. Sheerug believe that she was good only when she sang.

Vashti whose voice was like a beanstalk ladder by which lovers might

escape to the stars. Did she remember _The Garden Enclosed_, and how his

boyish kiss had changed her painted lips from an expression of brooding

to one of kindness? Odd to think of her as Desire’s mother! “My

beautiful mother!” Vashti would be generous; already he was counting on

her alliance. When Desire had her mother’s consent, she would no longer

want to conceal her affection.

His optimism caught fire. It was a wonderful world to which he was

sailing--a world of enchantment.- She might be on the dock to meet him.

Would she look very altered with her hair done like a woman’s? How would

a modern dress suit her? What fun it would be to go wandering through a

strange city at her side!

His thoughts ran madly ahead. Marriage!’ Where would they live? Would

Vashti want them to stay in America? Anyway, they’d go back to Eden Row

for their honeymoon. Hal would be happy at last In time he might meet

Vashti. They might learn to love each other afresh, and then----

He drew up sharply, assuring himself gravely that all these peeps into

the future were highly problematic. The chances were that in two weeks’

time he’d be sailing on the return-journey, doing his best to forget

that he had ever believed himself in love.

The blue trackless days passed quickly, while his mood alternated

between precautionary coldness and passionate anticipation. His thoughts

spread their wings, beating up into the unknown in broad flights of

fancy.

The last morning. He had scarcely slept. The throb of the engines

was slower. Overhead he could hear the creaking of pulleys, and the

commotion of trunks being raised from the hold and piled upon the deck.

He rose with the first flush of dawn to see the wraith of land stealing

nearer. He had the feeling that, in so doing, he was proving his

loyalty. Somewhere, over there to the westward, her eyes were closed and

she was dreaming of him. It was his old idea that their thoughts could

reach out and touch.

His heart was in his throat. He paced up and down in a vain endeavor to

keep it quiet. Gulls, skimming the foam with shrill cries, seemed

her messengers. Through the pearl-colored haze white shipping passed

noiselessly. The sun streamed a welcome.

As they crept up the harbor, he could no longer disguise his excitement.

It nearly choked him. He seemed disembodied; he was a pair of eyes. His

soul ran out before him. He felt sure she would be waiting for him.

He saw nothing of the panting little tugs, which pulled and shoved the

liner to her moorings. He hardly noticed the man-made precipices of New

York, rising like altar-steps to a shrine of turquoise. He was straining

his eyes toward the gaps in the dock-shed, white with clustered

indistinguishable faces. One of them must be hers. It seemed wrong that,

even at this distance, he should not be able to pick her out As they

moved slowly alongside, he kept persuading himself that he had found her

and waved furiously--only to realize that he had been mistaken.

He passed down the gang-plank with eager eyes, asking himself: “How

shall I greet her? What will she expect me to say to her?” On every

side, friends were darting forward, shaking hands, clasping each other

and not caring who witnessed their emotional gladness. At any minute he

might see her pressing through the crowd.

He had been searching for her for half-an-hour. “If your friends have

come to meet you,” an official told him, “they’ll look for you where

your baggage is examined. What’s your name? Gurney. Well, they’ll be

waiting for you under the letter G., if they’re waiting anywhere.”

His luggage had been passed by the inspector. The crowd was thinning.

The only people left were a few flustered passengers who were

having trouble with the customs. His hope was ebbing; after his high

anticipations he was suffering from reaction. Loitering disconsolately

by his trunks, he clutched obstinately at the skirts of his vanishing

optimism. His brain was fertile in producing excuses for why she had not

met him. The news that the ship had docked might not have reached her,

or it might have reached her too late. Perhaps at this very moment she

was hurrying to him, sharing his suspense.

He wouldn’t leave yet. It would seem as though he blamed her, didn’t

trust her, if she should arrive to find him gone.

Two hours had elapsed since he had landed. It wasn’t likely that she

would come now. As he drove to the Brevoort, he tried to explain the

situation to himself so that it might appear in its bravest aspect. She

must know that he had landed to-day; if his cable, telling her of his

coming, had failed to be delivered, he would have been notified. And if,

when she had received it, she hadn’t wanted him, she would have replied.

Therefore, she both wanted him and knew that he had landed. He came to

the conclusion that he had hoped for too much in expecting her to meet

him. Until he had got excited, he hadn’t really expected that. It was

only at the last minute that he had persuaded himself she would be

there. To have had to welcome him in public, knowing the purpose of his

voyage and knowing so little about him, would have been embarrassing.

She was waiting for him to go to her home where their meeting would be

private.

At the Brevoort, the telephone-clerk found the phone-number of her

address. He was trembling as he slipped into the booth. He was going

to hear her voice. What would she say to him--to his daring at having

accepted her challenge; and what would he say to her? He took up the

receiver.

“I’ve come, Desire. Who’s this? Can’t you guess? It’s the person you

used to call Teddy.”

He listened. There was a pause. “Hulloa! Are you there?”

Muffled and metallic the answer came back: “Yes.--But Miss Desire’s not

at home. This is Madame Jodrell’s maid speaking.--No. Madame Jodrell’s

gone out. She won’t be home to lunch. She didn’t say when I was to

expect her.--Has she gone to the dock to meet some one? No. I’m sure she

hasn’t. Will you leave a message?”

He repeated his name and gave her his address.

“I’ll tell whichever of them gets home first,” the distant voice assured

him; then he heard the click of the receiver hung up.

He was bewildered. Things grew more and more discouraging. Desire must

have mistaken the day of his arrival. If not, however pressing her

engagement, she would have left him some word of welcome.

He had a lonely lunch at a table looking out on Fifth Avenue. From

where he sat he caught a glimpse of Washington Square--a glimpse which

suggested both Paris and London. He was inclined to feel angry; the next

moment he was amused at his petulance. A lover was always in haste. He

wouldn’t let himself feel angry. It would be time enough for that if he

found that she’d led him on a wild-goose chase. Then anger would help

him to forget. In the meanwhile he must take Madame Josephine’s advice

and be content to love. “Women long to be trusted.” Perhaps all this

apparent indifference was a part of Desire’s test; she was trying to

discover how far he would trust her. When he thought of her cloudy gray

eyes, he felt certain that any seeming unkindness wasn’t intended. “I’m

far nicer than you suspect,” she had told him.

Then, from anger he became all tenderness. What did a little

postponement matter? It would make their meeting all the finer. He

wouldn’t ask her a single accusing question..That was the kind of

thing Hal would have done, spoiling available happiness by a remembered

grievance. Love, if it was worth anything, was a rivalry between two

people to be generous. The man had to set the example; the girl didn’t

dare.

As he passed out of the hotel, his eye caught a florist’s tucked away

behind the doorway. He ordered some lilies of the valley to be sent to

her. This time he inclosed his card. He smiled. If he took to sending

her presents at the rate he had in London, she’d have no excuse for not

knowing that he had landed.

“She feedeth among the lilies.” Where had he heard that? As he sauntered

up Fifth Avenue in the ripe September sunlight, the scene drew from

out the shadows of his memory: a little boy standing naked in a

stable-studio, while a piratical-looking wild-haired father worked upon

a canvas and chanted, “‘She feedeth among the lilies. She looketh forth

in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as

an army with banners. If a man give all his substance for love he

cannot...’” He remembered how his father had wagged his head at him:

“No, he cannot, Teddy. Yet many waters cannot quench love.”

“She feedeth among the lilies!” He wished he had sent her a different

kind of flower.

The magic of the streets took his interest--the elation of being in a

new country. He was conscious of a height, a daring, a vigor which were

novel in his experience. Mountains of concrete and steel met his gaze.

What kind of a people was this who raised soaring palaces, bigger than

cathedrals, and used them as offices? To get to the top must be a day’s

journey. The people who inhabited the highest stories must live among

the clouds and come down for week-ends. He watched the eagerness of

the keen alert faces which hurried past him on the pavements--the quick

tripping step of the girls, and the thin racing look of everybody. The

types of the faces were cosmopolitan, but their expression was one: they

all had the high-wrought look of athletes who were rushing to a future

which would not wait for them. He felt himself caught up, daunted, stung

into vitality, and whirled forward by a wave of monstrous endeavor.

That afternoon he visited the editor who was the excuse for his journey.

All the while, as he sat talking to him, he kept thinking: “The flowers

will have arrived by now. She’ll know that I have come.”

He talked prices which should have astounded him; but the only thought

he had was how much this influx of money and reputation would enable him

to do for her. When he had arranged the nature of his contributions, he

was on edge for his interview to end. The moment it was over, he dashed

to the elevator, found the nearest telephone and rang up his hotel.

“This is Mr. Gurney. Has a message been left for me?”

“None.”

Strange. There must be some reason. She would tell him when they met.

Should he call her up? Or go to her house and camp till she came back?

He shook his head. His pride warned him that that wouldn’t be policy.

The next sign must come from her. And then he wondered, was it right

to have either pride or policy when you were in love? It was pride and

policy that had made him waste his chances on that night drive from

Glastonbury.

He went to see his publisher, who was astonished by his youth and

had had no idea that he was in America. He found himself treated as a

personality--a man to be reckoned with. It was exhilarating, flattering;

but all that it meant to him was something to tell Desire to make her

glad. That was all that any success meant now.

It was five o’clock when he returned to his hotel. He went to the desk.

“Any message?”

The clerk glanced down the row of pigeon-holes and drew out a slip of

paper.

“A lady called you up.”

With nervous fingers he took it from him and read:

“Come to dinner seven forty-five. Vashti Jodrell.”

From Desire nothing!

CHAPTER VI--DESIRE’S MOTHER

The address which Desire had given him was on Riverside Drive. Shortly

after seven he left the Brevoort and climbed to the roof of a passing

bus. The polished asphalt of Fifth Avenue gleamed like a waterway. Round

and unwinking, like tethered moons, arc-lights shone in endless

lines. As he passed through Madison Square, he had a glimpse of

carnival--trolleys streaming like comets, and Broadway seething in a

blaze of light. Then, as though velvet curtains had fallen, again the

quiet.

With the secret magic and passivity of night, the city had undergone

a change. It had lost its haste. It went on tiptoe now. Tall buildings

stood silent as tombs, quarried from the granite of the dusk. Streets

had become orientalized. A spirit of poetry was abroad. Over the turrets

of this Babylon of a day the wings of Time brooded, shadowing its modern

glare with the pomp of a sombre and mysterious austerity. It had become

a metropolis of dreamers, as fitting a stage as Florence for any tale

that love might choose to tell.

Vashti! It was a far cry from this September night to the spare-bedroom

at Orchid Lodge, with the red winking eye of the winter’s fire, the

tapestry of Absalom swinging by his hair and the little boy sitting up

in bed, spellbound by the enchantment of a woman’s voice. A far cry to

the marriage-box, to the wistful consultations with Harriet and to that

same ecstasy of love, unfulfillable then, that he was dreaming now!

He wondered how much of his passion for Desire was the outcome of that

ghostly passion for her mother. It was like a faery-story which, with

pauses and diversions, had been telling itself throughout his life.

Vashti had been the enchantress who, by lifting her voice, had created

his hopes and his despairs. Her voice had lured Desire from him in the

darkened silence of the farmhouse. And now, with starry eyes, he was

going to her that she might give him back Desire.

The coolness and rustling of trees! To his left a river black and silent

To his right a rampart of houses, honey-combed with fire. Flitting on

speedy errands, cars darted through the shadows with staring eyes. He

caught glimpses of women, and of men who sat beside them. Men and women

always and everywhere together! Where were they going? What did they

talk about? With them lovers’ ways were an old story, but with him----

The conductor called from the top of the steps and pointed to an

apartment-house. While his name was being telephoned up, he took in his

surroundings. All this was familiar to her. He compared it with Eden

Row, and was filled with hesitations. Everywhere his eye detected

luxury. She might be wealthy. He had never thought of that; he had only

thought of what he could give her. Their ways of life must be utterly

divergent. What had he to offer? And he had come to America to marry

her!

He was told he was expected. The elevator shot up and halted; the boy

directed him to a door in the passage. As he stood waiting, he heard the

sound of a piano played softly. The moment he was admitted, the playing

stopped.

In a luxurious room illumined by a solitary shaded lamp, a woman was

seated with her hands upon the keyboard. The window was open and a

breeze rustled the curtains. Distant across the river in the abyss of

night lights twinkled like stars in an inverted firmament. The air was

filled with a summer fragrance: it drifted from a bowl of lilies of the

valley which had been placed on the piano beneath the lamp.

The woman turned her head slightly; he could just begin to see her

profile. Her voice reached him softly:

“Don’t speak. I was remembering. It pains, and yet it’s good to

remember--sometimes, Teddy.”

Her hands commenced to wander, picking out chords, starting little airs,

leaving them abruptly and starting them afresh.

“I wonder what you look like, and I’m afraid to find out. I’ve always

thought of you as still a little chap, and I don’t want to undeceive

myself. You used to be the faery-tale I told my little girl. ’Tell me

more about Teddy,’ she used to say. And then I’d invent such wonderful

stories. You were our dream-person.--She wouldn’t let you know that for

worlds; you mustn’t let her guess that you know. She’s like that--an odd

girl: she feels far more than she’ll ever express--goes out of her

way to make people misunderstand, to make them think she’s cold and

careless. It’s because---- Can you guess? It’s because she’s afraid

to love too much. Her mother let love have power over her and--she got

hurt. Oh, well!” She shrugged her white shoulders. “No use regretting.

Ah, this brings memories!”