It was a whole two weeks after the Boy's experience at the theatre, and
though the echoes of that mysterious voice still rang through all his
dreams at night, and most of his waking hours, he had not heard its lilt
again.
Paul Verdayne smiled to himself to note the youngster's sudden interest
in society. He had not--strange as it may seem--been told a word of the
experience, but he was not curious. He certainly knew the world, if
anyone knew it, and though he was sure he recognized the symptoms, he
had too much tact to ask, "Who is the girl?"
"Let the Boy have his little secrets," he thought, remembering his own
callow days. "They will do him good."
And though the Boy felt an undue sense of guilt, he continued to keep
his lips closed and his eyes and ears open, though it often seemed so
utterly useless to do so. Sometimes he wondered if he had dropped to
sleep, there behind the hawthorn hedge that afternoon, and dreamed it
all.
Verdayne and the Boy were sitting at luncheon at the Savoy. Sir Charles
and Lady Henrietta had gone down to Verdayne Place for a week, and the
two men were spending most of their time away from the lonely house in
Berkeley Square.
That day they were discussing the Boy's matrimonial prospects as
proposed by the Grand Duke Peter--indeed, they were usually discussing
them. The Boy had written, signifying his acceptance and approval of the
arrangements as made. Nothing else was expected of him for the present,
but his nature had not ceased its revolt against the decree of Fate, and
Paul Verdayne shared his feeling of repugnance to the utmost. Perhaps
Verdayne felt it even more acutely than the young Prince himself, for he
knew so much better all that the Boy was sacrificing. But he also knew,
as did the poor royal victim himself, that it was inevitable.
"I don't wonder at the court escapades that occasionally scandalize all
Europe," said the Boy. "I don't wonder at all! The real wonder is that
more of the poor slaves to royalty do not snap the chains that bind
them, and bolt for freedom. It would be like me,--very like me!"
And Verdayne could say nothing. He knew of more reasons than one why it
would be very like the Boy to do such a thing, and he sighed as he
thought that some time, perhaps, he might do it. And yet he could not
blame him!
"Father Paul," went on the Boy, his thoughts taking a new turn, "you are
a bachelor--a hopeless old bachelor--and you have never told me why. Of
course there's a woman or two in it! We have talked about everything
else under the sun, I think--you and I--but, curiously enough, we have
never talked of love! Yet I feel sure that you believe in it. Don't you,
Father Paul? Come now, confess! I am in a mood for sentiment to-day, and
I want to hear what drove you to a life of single blessedness--what made
my romantic old pal such a confirmed old celibate! I don't believe that
you object to matrimony on general principles. Tell me your love-story,
please, Father Paul."
"What makes you so certain that I have had one, Boy?"
"Oh, I don't know just why, but I am certain! It's there in your lips
when you smile, in your eyes when you are moved, in your voice when you
allow yourself to become reminiscent. You are full of memories that you
have never spoken of to me. And now, Father Paul--now is the accepted
time!"
For a moment Verdayne was nonplussed. What could he reply? There was
only one love-story in his life, and that one would end only with his
own existence, but he could not tell that story to the Boy--yet!
Suddenly, however, an old, half-forgotten memory flashed across his
mind. Of course he had a love-story. He would tell the Boy the story of
Isabella Waring.
So, as they sat together over their coffee and cigarettes, Verdayne told
his young guest about the Curate's daughter, who had all unconsciously
wielded such an influence over the events of his past life. He told of
the girl's kindness to him when he had broken his collarbone; of her
assistance so freely offered to his mother; of her jolly, lively
spirits, her amiable disposition and general gay good-fellowship; and
then of the unlucky kiss that had aroused the suspicion and august
displeasure of Lady Henrietta, and had sent her erring son a wanderer
over the face of Europe--to forget!
He painted his sadness at leaving home--and Isabella--in pathetic
colors. Indeed, he became quite affecting when he pictured his parting
with Isabella, and when in repeating his parting words, he managed to
get just the right suspicion of a tremble into his voice, he really felt
quite proud of his ability as a story-teller.
The Boy was plainly touched.
"What foolishness to think that such a love as yours could be cured
merely by sending you abroad!" he said.
"Just what I thought, Boy--utter folly!"
"Of course it didn't cure you, Father Paul. You didn't learn to forget,
did you? Oh, it was cruel to send you away when you loved her like
that! I didn't think it of Aunt Henrietta--I didn't indeed!"
"Oh, you mustn't blame mother, Boy. She meant it for the best, just as
your Uncle Peter now means it for the best for you and yours. She
thought I would forget."
"Was she very, very beautiful, Father Paul? But of course she was, if
_you_ loved her!"
"She was pretty, Boy--at least I thought so."
"Big or little?"
"Tall--very tall."
"I like tall, magnificent women. There's something majestic about them.
I hope the Princess Elodie"--and the Boy made a wry face--"will be
quite six foot tall. I could never love a woman small either in body or
mind. I am sure I should have liked your Isabella, Father Paul. Majestic
women of majestic minds for me, for there you have the royal stamp of
nature that makes some women born to the purple. Yes, I am sure I should
have liked Isabella. Tell me more."
Paul Verdayne smiled. He should hardly have considered Isabella Waring
in any degree "majestic"--but he did not say so.
"She was charmingly healthy and robust--athletic, you know, and all
that--with light fluffy hair. I believe she used to wear it in a net.
Blue eyes, of course--thoroughly English, you know--and a fine comrade.
Liked everything that I liked, as most girls at that age didn't,
naturally. Of course, mother couldn't appreciate her. She wasn't her
style at all. And she naturally thought--mother did, I mean--that when
she sent me away 'for my health'"--the Boy smiled--"that I'd forget all
about her."
Verdayne began to think he wasn't telling it well after all. He looked
out of the window. It was getting hard to meet the frank look in the
Boy's blue eyes.
"Forget!" and there was a fine scorn in the tones of the young
enthusiast. "But you didn't! you didn't! I'm sure you didn't!"
The romantic story appealed strongly to the Boy's mood.
"But why didn't you marry her when you came back, Father Paul? Did she
die?"
"No, she didn't die. She is still living, I believe."
"Then why didn't you marry her, Father Paul? Did they still oppose it?
Surely when you came home and they saw you had not forgotten, it was
different. Tell me how it was when you came home."
And Paul Verdayne, in a voice he tried his best to make very sad and
heart-broken, replied with downcast eyes, "When I came home, Boy, I
found Isabella Waring ready to marry a curate, and happy over the
prospect of an early wedding. So, you see, my share in her life was
over."
The Boy's face fell. He had not anticipated this ending to the romance.
How could any woman ever have proved faithless to his Father Paul! And
how could he, poor man, still keep his firm, dauntless belief in the
goodness and truth of human nature after so bitter an experience as
this! It shocked his sense of right and justice--this story. He wished
he had not asked to hear it.
"Thank you for telling me, Father Paul. It was kind of you to open your
past life to me like this, and very unkind of me to ask what I should
have known would cost you such pain to tell. I am truly sorry for it
all, Father Paul. Thank you again--and forgive me!"
"It's a relief to open one's heart, sometimes, to one who can
sympathize," replied Verdayne, with a deep sigh. But he felt like a
miserable hypocrite.
Poor Isabella Waring! He had hardly given her a passing thought in
twenty years. And now he had vilified her to help himself out of a tight
corner. Well, she was always a good sort. She wouldn't mind being
used--or even misused--to help out her "old pal" this way. Still it made
him feel mean, and he was glad when the Boy dropped the subject and
turned again to his own difficulties.
But the mind of the young prince was restive, that day. Nothing held his
attention long. It seemed, like his eye, to be roving hither and
thither, seeking something it never could find.
"You have been to America, Father Paul, haven't you?" he asked.
America? Yes, Verdayne had been to America. It was in America that he
had passed one season of keenest anguish. He had good reason to remember
it--such good reason that in all their wanderings about the world he had
never seen fit to take the Boy there.
But something had aroused the young fellow's passing interest, and now
nothing would satisfy him save that he must hear all about America; and
so, for a full hour, as best he could, Verdayne described the country of
the far West as he remembered it.
"Nothing in America appealed to me so strongly as the gigantic
prairies," he said at last. "You were so deeply moved by our trip to
Africa, Boy, that you must remember the impression of vastness and
infinity the great desert made upon us. Well, in the glorious West of
America it is as if the desert had sprung to life, and from every grain
of sand had been born a blade of grass, waving and fluttering with the
joy of new birth. Oh, it is truly wonderful, Paul! Once I went there
with the soil of my heart scorched as dry and lifeless as the burning
sands of Sahara, but in that revelation of a new creation, some pulse
within me sprang mysteriously into being again. It could never be the
same heart that it once was, but it would now know the semblance of a
new existence. And I took up the burden of life again--albeit a strange,
new life--and came home to fight it out. The prairies did all that for
me, Boy!" He paused for a moment, and then spoke in a sadder tone. "It
was soon after that, Paul, that I first found you."
Paul Zalenska thought that he understood. That, of course, was after
Isabella Waring had wrecked his life. Cruel, heartless Isabella! He had
never even heard her name before to-day, but he hated her, wherever she
might be!
"There is a legend they tell out there that is very pretty and
appropriate," went on Verdayne, dreamily. "They say that when the
Creator made the world, He had indiscriminately strewn continents and
valleys, mountains and seas, islands and lakes, until He came to the
western part of America, and despite His omnipotence, was puzzled to
know what new glories He could possibly contrive for this corner of the
earth. Something majestic and mighty it must be, He thought, and yet of
an altogether different beauty from that in the rest of the
universe--something individual, distinctive. The seas still overflowed
the land, as they had through past eternities, awaiting His touch to
call into form and being the elements still sleeping beneath the
water--the living representation of His thought. Suddenly stretching out
His rod, He bade the waters recede--and they did so, leaving a vast
extent of grassy land where the majestic waves had so lately rolled and
tossed. And it is said that the land retains to this day the memory of
the sea it then was, while the grasses wave with a subtle suggestion of
the ocean's ebb and flow beneath the influence of a wind that is like no
other wind in the world so much as an ocean breeze; while the gulls,
having so well learned their course, fly back and forth as they did
before the mystic change from water into earth. Indeed, the first
impression one receives of the prairie is that of a vast sea of growing
vegetation!"
The Boy's eyes sparkled. This was the fanciful Father Paul that he
loved best of all.
"Some time we must go there, Father Paul. Is it not so?"
"Yes, Boy, some time!"