I HAVE HEARD THE PASSIONATE GALLOP OF THOSE FIERY-FOOTED STEEDS.
Ella was standing waiting for her outside the open door of a drawing
room. She was wearing a lovely evening dress with a corsage of white
lace covered with diamonds and sapphires. Her hair--it was of the
darkest brown and was very plentiful--was also glittering with gems
under the light that flowed through the open door. The same light showed
Phyllis how deathly white Ella’s face and neck were--how tumultuously
her bosom was heaving. She had one hand pressed to her side, and the
other on the handle of the door when Phyllis met her; and in that
attitude, even though the expanse of white flesh, with its gracious
curves that forced out her bodice, had no roseate tint upon it, she
looked lovely--intoxicating to the eyes of men.
Phyllis was certainly surprised. The hour was scarcely eleven, but Ella
had given no notice of her intention to pay a visit to her friend that
night. When the girl raised her hands with a laugh of admiration, of
pleasure, Ella grasped her hands with both of her own and drew her into
the drawing room without a word. Then with a cry,--a laugh and a cry
mingled,--she literally flung herself into the girl’s arms and kissed
her convulsively a dozen times, on the throat, on the neck, on the
shoulder whereon her head lay.
“My darling, my darling!” she cried,--and now and again her voice was
broken with a sob,--“my darling Phyllis! I have come to you--I want to
be with you--to be near you--to keep my arms about you, so tightly that
no one can pluck us asunder. Oh, you don’t know what men are--they
would pluck us asunder if they could; but they can’t now. With you I
am safe--that is why I have come to you, my Phyllis. I want to be
safe--indeed I do!”
She had now raised her head from Phyllis’ shoulder, but was still
holding her tightly--a hand on each of her arms, and her face within an
inch of the girl’s face.
Phyllis kissed her softly on each cheek.
“My poor dear!” she said, “what can have happened to you?”
“Nothing--nothing! I tell you that nothing has happened to me,” cried
Ella, with a vehemence that almost amounted to fierceness in her voice.
“Would I be here with you now if anything had happened to me? tell me
that. I came to you--ah! women have no guardian angels, but they
have sisters who are equally good and pure, and you are my sister--my
sister--better than all the angels that ever sang a dirge over a lost
soul that they put forth no hand to save. You will not let me go,
darling Phyllis, you will not let me go even if I tell you that I want
to go. Don’t believe me, Phyllis; I don’t want to go--I don’t want to
be lost, and if I leave you I am lost. You will keep me, dear, will you
not?”
“Until the end of the world,” said Phyllis. “Come, dearest Ella, tell me
what is the matter--why you have come to me in that lovely costume. You
look as if you were dressed for a bridal.”
“A bridal--a bridal? What do you mean by that?” said Ella, with curious
eagerness--a suggestion of suspicion was in her tone. She had loosed her
hold upon the girl’s arms.
Phyllis laughed. She put a hand round Ella’s waist and led her to a
sofa, saying:
“Let us sit down and talk it all over. That is the lace you told me you
picked up at Munich. What a design--lilies!”
“The Virgin’s flower--the Virgin’s flower! I never thought of that,”
laughed Ella. “It is for you--not me, this lace. I shall tear it off
and--”
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” cried Phyllis. “I have heaps
of lace--more than I shall ever wear. What a lovely idea that is of
yours,--I’m sure it is yours,--sewing the diamonds around the cup of the
lilies, like dewdrops. I always did like diamonds on lace. Some people
would have us believe that diamonds should only be worn with blue
velvet. How commonplace! Where have you been to-night?”
“Where have I been? I have been at home. Where should a good woman be in
the absence of her husband, but at home--his home and her home?”
Ella laughed loud and long with her head thrown back on the cushion of
the sofa, and the diamonds in her hair giving back flash for flash to
the electric candles above her head. “Yes; I was at home--I dined at
home, and, God knows why, I conceived a sudden desire to go to the
opera,--Melba is the _Juliet_,--and forgetting that you were engaged
to the Earlscourts--you told me last week that you were going, but I
stupidly forgot, I drove across here to ask you to be my companion. Oh,
yes, I have been here since--since nine, mind that! nine--nine--ask the
servants. When I heard that you were dining out I thought that I was
lost--one cannot drive about the streets all night, can one? Ah! I
thought that God was against me now, as he ever has been; and as for my
guardian angel--ah! our guardian angels are worse than the servants of
nowadays who have no sense of responsibility. Thompson, your butler, is
worth a whole heavenful of angels, for it was he who asked me if I would
come in and wait for your return--ask him, if you doubt my word.”
“Good Heavens, Ella, what do you say? Doubt your word--I doubt your
word? You wound me deeply.”
“Forgive me, my Phyllis. I don’t quite know what I said. Ah, let me
nestle here--here.” She had put her head down to Phyllis’ bare neck
and was looking up to her face as a child might have done. “There is
no danger here. Now pet me, and say that you forgive me for having said
whatever I did say.”
Phyllis laughed and put her lips down among the myriad diamonds that
glowed amid the other’s hair, like stars seen among the thick foliage of
a copper beech.
“I forgive you for whatever you said,” she cried. “I, too, have
forgotten what it was; but you must never say so again. But had you
really no engagement for to-night that you took that fancy for going to
‘Romeo’?”
“No engagement? Had I no engagement, do you ask me?” cried Ella. “Oh,
yes, yes! I had an engagement, but I broke it--I broke it--I broke it,
and that is why I am here. Whatever may come of it, I am here, and here
I mean to stay. I am safe here. At home I am in danger.”
Phyllis wondered greatly what had come to her friend to make her talk in
this wild strain.
“Where were you engaged?” she inquired casually. She had come to the
conclusion that there was safety in the commonplace: she would not
travel out of the region of commonplaces with Ella in her present state.
“Where was I engaged? Surely I told you. Didn’t I say something about
the opera--‘Romeo and Juliet’?--that was to be the place, but I came to
you instead. Ah, what have we missed! Was there ever such a poem written
as ‘Romeo and Juliet’? Was there ever such music as Gounod’s? I
thought the first time that I went to the opera that it would spoil
Shakspere--how could it do otherwise? I asked. Could supreme perfection
be improved upon? Before the balcony scene had come to an end I found
that I had never before understood the glory of the poem. Ah, if you
could understand what love means, my Phyllis, you would appreciate the
poem and the music; the note of doom runs through it; that--that is
wherein its greatness lies--passion and doom--passion and doom--that is
my own life--the life of us women. We live in a whirlwind of passion,
and fancy that we can step out of the whirlwind into a calm at any
moment. We marry our husbands and we fancy that all the tragedy of human
passion is over so far as we are concerned. ‘The haven entered and the
tempest passed.’ Philip Marston’s terrible poem,--you have read it,--‘A
Christmas Vigil’? ‘The haven entered,’--the whirlwind of passion has
been left far away, we fancy. Oh, we are fools! It sweeps down upon us
and then--doom--doom!”
“My poor dear, you are talking wildly.”
“If you only understood--perhaps you will some day understand, and then
you will know what seems wild in my speech is but the incoherence of a
poor creature who has been beaten to the ground by the whirlwind, and
only saved from destruction by a miracle.”
She had sprung from her place on the sofa and was pacing the room, her
diamonds quivering, luminous as a shower of meteors--that was the fancy
that flashed from her to Phyllis. Meteors--meteors--what a splendid
picture she made flashing from place to place! Meteors--ah, surely there
was the meteor-bird flashing across the drawing room!
“Come and sit down, my dear Ella,” said Phyllis. “You are, as you know,
quite unintelligible to me.”
“Unintelligible to you? I am unintelligible to myself,” cried Ella. “Why
should I be tramping up and down your room when I might be at this very
moment----” She clutched Phyllis’ arm. “I want to stay with you all
night,” she whispered. “I want to sleep in your bed with you, Phyllis. I
want to feel your arms around me as I used to feel my mother’s long ago.
Whatever I may say, you will not let me go, Phyllis?”
“I will load you with chains,” said Phyllis, patting her lovely hair--it
was no longer smooth. “Why should you want to go away from me? Cannot we
be happy together once again as we used to be long ago?”
“How long ago that was! And we read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ together, and
fancied that we had gone down to the very depths of its meaning. We
fancied that we had sounded the very depths of its passion and pathos.
We were only girls. Ah, Phyllis, I tell you--I, who know--I, who have
found it out,--I tell you that the tragedy is the tragedy of all lovers
who have ever lived in the world. I tell you that it is the tragedy of
love itself. ‘Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds!’ That is the poem
that the heart of the lover sings all day--all day! I have heard
it--my heart has sung it. I have heard the passionate gallop of those
fiery-footed steeds. I have listened to them while my heart beat in
unison with their frantic career--all day counting the moments with
fiery face, and then--then--something that was not passion forced me to
fly from it for the salvation of my soul. I was a fool! Why am I here,
when I should be where he----What is the hour? Why, it is scarcely
twelve o’clock! Did I say nine in my letter? What does it matter? I
wonder if on that wonderful night--Gounod translated its glory into
music--Juliet kept her lover waiting for three hours.”
“What are you doing?” cried Phyllis, rising.
Ella had picked up her theatre wrap--it was a summer cloud brocaded with
golden threads of quivering sunlight, and had flung it around her.
She held out a hand to Phyllis. Phyllis grasped her round the waist.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“To hell!”
She had whispered the words, and at their utterance Phyllis gave a cry
of horror and covered her face with her hands.
Had she seen a suggestion of the satyr in the expression of that lovely
face before her?
In the pause that followed the sound of footsteps upon the stairs
outside was heard; the sound of footsteps and of men’s friendly
laughter. Some persons were in the act of ascending.
“My God!” whispered Ella. “He has followed me here!”
“Hush!” said Phyllis. “Papa is bringing someone to us.”
“Whom--whom?”
They were both standing together in the middle of the room, both having
their eyes fixed on the door, when the door opened and Mr. Ayrton
appeared, having by his side a man with iron-gray hair and a curiously
pallid face.
At the sight of that man Ella’s hands, that had been holding her wrap
close to her throat, feeling for its silver clasp, fell limp, and the
splendid mass of white brocade slipped to the floor and lay in folds
about her feet, revealing her lovely figure sparkling from the hem of
her dress to the top of her shapely head.