The Project Gutenberg eBook, Contact and Other Stories, by Frances Noyes Hart

CONTACT AND OTHER STORIES

CONTACT
AND OTHER STORIES

BY
FRANCES NOYES HART

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, 1923, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY IN THE UNITED
STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY THE McCALL COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

First Edition

TO MY FATHER
FRANK BRETT NOYES

CONTENTS

CONTACT AND OTHER STORIES

“CONTACT!”

The first time she heard it was in the silk-hung and flower-scented peace of the little drawing room in Curzon Street. His sister Rosemary had wanted to come up to London to get some clothes—Victory clothes they called them in those first joyous months after the armistice, and decked their bodies in scarlet and silver, even when their poor hearts went in black—and Janet had been urged to leave her own drab boarding-house room to stay with the forlorn small butterfly. They had struggled through dinner somehow, and Janet had finished her coffee and turned the great chair so that she could watch the dancing fire (it was cool for May), her cloudy brown head tilted back against the rose-red cushion, shadowy eyes half closed, idle hands linked across her knees. She looked every one of her thirty years—and mortally tired—and careless of both facts. But she managed an encouraging smile at the sound of Rosemary’s shy, friendly voice at her elbow.

“Janet, these are yours, aren’t they? Mummy found them with some things last week, and I thought that you might like to have them.”

She drew a quick breath at the sight of the shabby packet.

“Why, yes,” she said evenly. “That’s good of you, Rosemary. Thanks a lot.”

“That’s all right,” murmured Rosemary diffidently. “Wouldn’t you like something to read? There’s a most frightfully exciting Western novel——”

The smile took on a slightly ironical edge.

“Don’t bother about me, my dear. You see, I come from that frightfully exciting West, and I know all about the pet rattlesnakes and the wildly Bohemian cowboys. Run along and play with your book; I’ll be off to bed in a few minutes.”

Rosemary retired obediently to the deep chair in the corner, and with the smile gone but the irony still hovering, she slipped the cord off the packet. A meagre and sorry enough array; words had never been for her the swift, docile servitors that most people found them. But the thin gray sheet in her fingers started out gallantly enough—“Beloved.” Beloved! She leaned far forward, dropping it with deft precision into the glowing pocket of embers. What next? This was more like; it began: “Dear Captain Langdon” in the small, contained writing that was her pride, and it went on soberly enough, “I shall be glad to have tea with you next Friday—not Thursday, because I must be at the hut then. It was stupid of me to have forgotten you; next time I will try to do better.” Well, she had done better the next time. She had not forgotten him again—never, never again. That had been her first letter; how absurd of Jerry, the magnificently careless, to have treasured it all that time, the miserable, stilted little thing! She touched it with curious fingers. Surely, surely he must have cared, to have cared so much for that!

It seemed incredible that she hadn’t remembered him at once when he came into the hut that second time. Of course she had only seen him for a moment and six months had passed, but he was so absurdly vivid, every inch of him, from the top of his shining, dark head to the heels of his shining, dark boots—and there were a great many inches! How could she have forgotten, even for a minute, those eyes dancing like blue fire in the brown young face, the swift, disarming charm of his smile, and, above all, his voice—how, in the name of absurdity, could any one who had once heard it ever forget Jeremy Langdon’s voice? Even now she had only to close her eyes, and it rang out again, with its clipped British accent and its caressing magic, as un-English as any Provençal troubadour’s! And yet she had forgotten; he had had to speak twice before she had even lifted her head.

“Miss America—oh, I say, she’s forgotten me, and I thought that I’d made such an everlasting impression!” The delighted amazement reached even her tired ears, and she had smiled wanly as she pushed the pile of coppers nearer to him.

“Have you been in before? It’s stupid of me, but there are such hundreds of thousands of you, and you are gone in a minute, you see. That’s your change, I think.”

“Hundreds of thousands of me, hey?” He had leaned across the counter, his face alight with mirth. “I wish to the Lord my angel mother could hear you—it’s what I’m for ever tellin’ her, though just between us, it’s stuff and nonsense. I’ve got a well-founded suspicion that I’m absolutely unique. You wait and see!”

And she had waited—and she had seen! She stirred a little, dropped the note into the flames, and turned to the next, the quiet, mocking mouth suddenly tortured and rebellious.

“No, you must be mad,” it ran, the trim writing strangely shaken. “How often have you seen me—five times? Do you know how old I am? How hard and tired and useless? No—no, a thousand times. In a little while we will wake up and find that we were dreaming.”

That had brought him to her swifter than Fate, triumphant mischief in every line of his exultant face. “Just let those damn cups slip from your palsied fingers, will you? I’m goin’ to take your honourable age for a little country air—it may keep you out of the grave for a few days longer. Never can tell! No use your scowlin’ like that. The car’s outside, and the big chief says to be off with you. Says you have no more colour than a banshee, and not half the life—can’t grasp the fact that it’s just chronic antiquity. Fasten the collar about your throat—no, higher! Darlin’, darlin’, think of havin’ a whole rippin’ day to ourselves. You’re glad, too, aren’t you, my little stubborn saint?”

Oh, that joyous and heart-breaking voice, running on and on—it made all the other voices that she had ever heard seem colourless and unreal——

“Darlin’ idiot, what do I care how old you are? Thirty, hey? Almost old enough to be an ancestor! Look at me—no, look at me. Dare you to say that you aren’t mad about me!”

Mad about him; mad, mad. She lifted her hands to her ears, but she could no more shut out the exultant voice now than she could on that windy afternoon.

“Other fellow got tired of you, did he? Good luck for us, what? You’re a fearfully tiresome person, darlin’. It’s goin’ to take me nine tenths of eternity to tell you how tiresome you are. Give a chap a chance, won’t you? The tiresomest thing about you is the way you leash up that dimple of yours. No, by George, there it is! Janie, look at me——”

She touched the place where the leashed dimple had hidden with a delicate and wondering finger—of all Jerry’s gifts to her, the most miraculous had been that small fugitive. Exiled now, for ever and for ever.

“Are you comin’ down to White Orchards next week-end? I’m off for France on the twelfth and you’ve simply got to meet my people. You’ll be insane about ’em; Rosemary’s the most beguilin’ flibbertigibbet, and I can’t wait to see you bein’ a kind of an elderly grandmother to her. What a bewitchin’ little grandmother you’re goin’ to be one of these days——”

Oh, Jerry! Oh, Jerry, Jerry! She twisted in her chair, her face suddenly a small mask of incredulous terror. No, no, it wasn’t true, it wasn’t true—never—never—never! And then, for the first time, she heard it. Far off but clear, a fine and vibrant humming, the distant music of wings! The faint, steady pulsing was drawing nearer and nearer—nearer still; it must be flying quite high. The letters scattered about her as she sprang to the open window; no, it was too high to see, and too dark, though the sky was powdered with stars, but she could hear it clearly, hovering and throbbing like some gigantic bird. It must be almost directly over her head, if she could only see it.

“It sounds—it sounds the way a humming-bird would look through a telescope,” she said half aloud, and Rosemary murmured sleepily but courteously, “What, Janet?”

“Just an airplane; no, gone now. It sounded like a bird. Didn’t you hear it?”

“No,” replied Rosemary drowsily. “We get so used to the old things that we don’t even notice them any more. Queer time to be flying.”

“It sounded rather beautiful,” said Janet, her face still turned to the stars. “Far off, but so clear and sure. I wonder—I wonder whether it will be coming back?”

Well, it came back. She went down to White Orchards with Rosemary for the following week-end, and after she had smoothed her hair and given a scornful glance at the pale face in the mirror, with its shadowy eyes and defiant mouth, she slipped out to the lower terrace for a breath of the soft country air. Half way down the flight of steps she stumbled and caught at the balustrade, and stood shaking for a moment, her face pressed against its rough surface. Once before she had stumbled on those steps, but it was not the balustrade that had saved her. She could feel his arms about her now, holding her up, holding her close and safe. The magical voice was in her ears.

“Let you go? I’ll never let you go! Poor little feet, stumblin’ in the dark, what would you do without Jerry? Time’s comin’, you cheeky little devils, when you’ll come runnin’ to him when he whistles! No use tryin’ to get away—you belong to him.”

Oh, whistle to them now, Jerry—they would run to you across the stars!

“How’d you like to marry me before I go back to-morrow? No? No accountin’ for tastes, Miss Abbott—lots of people would simply jump at it! All right, April, then. Birds and flowers and all that kind o’ thing—pretty intoxicatin’, what? No, keep still, darlin’ goose. What feller taught you to wear a dress that looks like roses and smells like roses and feels like roses? This feller? Lord help us, what a lovely liar!”

And suddenly she found herself weeping helplessly, desperately, like an exhausted child, shaken to the heart at the memory of the rose-coloured dress.

“You like me just a bit, don’t you, funny, quiet little thing? But you’d never lift a finger to hold me; that’s the wonder of you—that’s why I’ll never leave you. No, not for heaven. You can’t lose me—no use tryin’.”

But she had lost you, Jerry; you had left her, for all your promises, to terrified weeping in the hushed loveliness of the terrace, where your voice had turned her still heart to a dancing star, where your fingers had touched her quiet blood to flowers and flames and butterflies. She had believed you then. What would she ever believe again? And then she caught back the despairing sobs swiftly, for once more she heard, far off, the rushing of wings. Nearer—nearer—humming and singing and hovering in the quiet dusk. Why, it was over the garden! She flung back her head, suddenly eager to see it; it was a friendly and thrilling sound in all that stillness. Oh, it was coming lower—lower still—she could hear the throb of the propellers clearly. Where was it? Behind those trees, perhaps? She raced up the flight of steps, dashing the treacherous tears from her eyes, straining up on impatient tiptoes. Surely she could see it now! But already it was growing fainter—drifting steadily away, the distant hum growing lighter and lighter—lighter still——

“Janet!” called Mrs. Langdon’s pretty, patient voice. “Dinner-time, dear! Is there any one with you?”

“No one at all, Mrs. Langdon. I was just listening to an airplane.”

“An airplane? Oh, no, dear; they never pass this way any more. The last one was in October, I think——”

The plaintive voice trailed off in the direction of the dining room and Janet followed it, a small, secure smile touching her lips. The last one had not passed in October. It had passed a few minutes before, over the lower garden.

She quite forgot it by the next week; she was becoming an adept at forgetting. That was all that was left for her to do! Day after day and night after night she had raised the drawbridge between her heart and memory, leaving the lonely thoughts to shiver desolately on the other side of the moat. She was weary to the bone of suffering, and they were enemies, for all their dear and friendly guise; they would tear her to pieces if she ever let them in. No, no, she was done with them. She would forget, as Jerry had forgotten. She would destroy every link between herself and the past, and pack the neat little steamer trunk neatly and bid these kind and gentle people good-bye, and take herself and her bitterness and her dulness back to the classroom in the Western university town—back to the Romance languages. The Romance languages!

She would finish it all that night, and leave as soon as possible. There were some trinkets to destroy, and his letters from France to burn; she would give Rosemary the rose-coloured dress—foolish, lovely little Rosemary, whom he had loved, and who was lying now fast asleep in the next room, curled up like a kitten in the middle of the great bed, her honey-coloured hair falling about her in a shining mist. She swept back her own cloud of hair resolutely, frowning at the candle-lit reflection in the mirror. Two desolate pools in the small, pale oval of her face stared back at her—two pools with something drowned in their lonely depths. Well, she would drown it deeper!

The letters first; lucky that they still used candlelight! It would make the task much simpler—the funeral pyre already lighted. She moved one of the tall candelabra to the desk, sitting for a long time quite still, her chin cupped in her hands, staring down at the bits of paper. She could smell the wall-flowers under the window as though they were in the room; drenched in dew and moonlight, they were reckless of their fragrance. All this peace and cleanliness and ordered beauty—what a ghastly trick for God to have played—to have taught her to adore them, and then to snatch them away! All about her, warm with candlelight, lay the gracious loveliness of the little room with its dark waxed furniture, its bright glazed chintz, its narrow bed with the cool linen sheets smelling of lavender, and its straight, patterned curtains—oh, that hateful, mustard-coloured den at home with its golden-oak day-bed!

She wrung her hands suddenly in a little hunted gesture. How could he have left her to that, he who had sworn that he would never leave her? In every one of those letters beneath her linked fingers he had sworn it—in every one perjured—false half a hundred times. Pick up any one of them at random——

“Janie, you darling stick, is ‘dear Jerry’ the best that you can do? You ought to learn French! I took a perfectly ripping French kid out to dinner last night—name’s Liane, from the Varietiés—and she was calling me ‘mon grand chéri’ before the salad, and ‘mon p’tit amour’ before the green mint. Maybe that’ll buck you up! And I’d have you know that she’s so pretty that it’s ridiculous, with black velvet hair that she wears like a little Oriental turban, and eyes like golden pansies, and a mouth between a kiss and a prayer, and a nice affable nature into the bargain. But I’m a ghastly jackass—I didn’t get any fun out of it at all—because I really didn’t even see her. Under the pink shaded candles to my blind eyes it seemed that there was seated the coolest, quietest, whitest little thing, with eyes that were as indifferent as my velvety Liane’s were kind, and mockery in her smile. Oh, little masquerader! If I could get my arms about you even for a minute—if I could kiss so much as the tips of your lashes—would you be cool and quiet and mocking then? Janie, Janie, rosy-red as flowers on the terrace and sweeter—sweeter—they’re about you now—they’ll be about you always!”

Burn it fast, candle—faster, faster. Here’s another for you!

“So the other fellow cured you of using pretty names, did he—you don’t care much for dear and darling any more? Bit hard on me, but fortunately for you, Janie Janet, I’m rather a dab at languages, ’specially when it comes to ‘cozy names.’ Querida mi alma, douchka, Herzliebchen, carissima, and bien, bien-aimée, I’ll not run out of salutations for you this side of heaven—no, nor t’other. I adore the serene grace with which you ignore the ravishing Liane. Haven’t you any curiosity at all, my Sphinx? No? Well, then, just to punish you, I’ll tell you all about it. She’s married to the best fellow in the world, a liaison officer working with our squadron—and she worships the ground that he walks on and the air that he occasionally flies in. So whenever I run up to the City of Light, en permission, I look her up, and take her the latest news—and for an hour, over the candles, we pretend that I am Maurice, and that she is Janie. Only she says that I don’t pretend very well—and it’s just possible that she’s right.

“Mon petit cœur et grand trésor, I wish that I could take you flying with me this evening. You’d be daft about it! Lots of it’s a rotten bore, of course, but there’s something in me that doesn’t live at all when I’m on this too, too solid earth. Something that lies there, crouched and dormant, waiting until I’ve climbed up into the seat, and buckled the strap about me and laid my hands on the ‘stick.’ It’s waiting—waiting for a word—and so am I. And I lean far forward, watching the figure toiling out beyond till the call comes back to me, clear and confident: ‘Contact, sir?’ And I shout back, as restless and exultant as the first time that I answered it: ‘Contact!’

“And I’m off—and I’m alive—and I’m free! Ho, Janie! That’s simpler than Abracadabra or Open Sesame, isn’t it? But it opens doors more magical than ever they swung wide, and something in me bounds through, more swift and eager than any Aladdin. Free! I’m a crazy sort of a beggar, my little love—that same thing in me hungers and thirsts and aches for freedom. I go half mad when people or events try to hold me; you, wise beyond wisdom, never will. Somehow, between us, we’ve struck the spark that turns a mere piece of machinery into a wonder with wings; somehow, you are for ever setting me free. It is your voice, your voice of silver and peace, that’s eternally whispering ‘Contact!’ to me—and I am released, heart, soul, and body! And because you speed me on my way, Janie, I’ll never fly so far, I’ll never fly so long, I’ll never fly so high that I’ll not return to you. You hold me fast, for ever and for ever.”

You had flown high and far indeed, Jerry—and you had not returned. For ever and for ever! Burn faster, flame!

“My blessed child, who’s been frightening you? Airplanes are by all odds safer than taxis, and no end safer than the infernal duffer who’s been chaffing you would be if I could once get my hands on him. Damn fool! Don’t care if you do hate swearing; damn fools are damn fools, and there’s an end to it. All those statistics are sheer melodramatic rot; the chap who fired ’em at you probably has all his money invested in submarines, and is fairly delirious with jealousy. Peg (did I ever formally introduce you to Pegasus, the best pursuit-plane in the R. F. C.—or out of it?) Peg’s about as likely to let me down as you are! We’d do a good deal for each other, she and I; nobody else can really fly her, the darling! But she’d go to the stars for me—and farther still. Never you fear—we have charmed lives, Peg and I—we belong to Janie.

“I think that people make an idiotic row about dying, anyway. It’s probably jolly good fun, and I can’t see what difference a few years here would make if you’re going to have all eternity to play with. Of course you’re a ghastly little heathen, and I can see you wagging a mournful head over this already—but every time that I remember what a shocking sell the After Life (exquisite phrase!) is going to be for you, darling, I do a bit of head-wagging myself, and it’s not precisely mournful! I can’t wait to see your blank consternation, and you needn’t expect any sympathy from me. My very first words will be, ‘I told you so!’ Maybe I’ll rap them out to you with a table-leg!

“What do you think of all this Ouija Planchette rumpus, anyway? I can’t for the life of me see why any one with a whole new world to explore should hang around chattering with this one. I know that I’d be half mad with excitement to get at the new job, and that I’d find reassuring the loved ones (exquisite phrase number two) a hideous bore. Still, I can see that it would be nice from their selfish point of view! Well, I’m no ghost yet, thank God, nor yet are you—but if ever I am one, I’ll show you what devotion really is. I’ll come all the way back from heaven to play with foolish Janie, who doesn’t believe that there is one to come from. To foolish, foolish Janie, who will still be dearer than the prettiest angel of them all, no matter how alluringly her halo may be tilted or her wings ruffled. To Janie who, Heaven forgive him, will be all that one poor ghost has ever loved!”

Had there come to him, the radiant and the confident, a moment of terrible and shattering surprise—a moment when he realized that there were no pretty angels with shining wings waiting to greet him—a moment when he saw before him only the overwhelming darkness, blacker and deeper than the night would be, when she blew out the little hungry flame that was eating up the sheet that held his laughter? Oh, gladly would she have died a thousand deaths to have spared him that moment!

“My little Greatheart, did you think that I did not know how brave you are? You are the truest soldier of us all, and I, who am not much given to worship, am on my knees before that shy gallantry of yours, which makes what courage we poor duffers have seem a vain and boastful thing. When I see you as I saw you last, small and white and clear and brave, I can’t think of anything but the first crocuses at White Orchards, shining out, demure and valiant, fearless of wind and storm and cold—fearless of Fear itself. You see, you’re so very, very brave that you make me ashamed to be afraid of poetry and sentiment and pretty words—things of which I have a good, thumping Anglo-Saxon terror, I can tell you! It’s because I know what a heavenly brick you are that I could have killed that statistical jackass for bothering you; but I’ll forgive him, since you say that it’s all right. And so ghosts are the only thing in the world that frighten you—even though you know that there aren’t any. You and Madame de Staël, hey? ‘I do not believe in ghosts, but I fear them!’ It’s pretty painful to learn that the mere sight of one would turn you into a gibbering lunatic. Nice sell for an enthusiastic spirit who’d romped clear back from heaven to give you a pleasant surprise—I don’t think! Well, no fear, young Janie; I’ll find some way if I’m put to it—some nice, safe, pretty way that wouldn’t scare a neurasthenic baby, let alone the dauntless Miss Abbott. I’ll find——”

Oh, no more of that; no more! She crushed the sheet in her hands fiercely, crumpling it into a little ball; the candle-flame was too slow. No, she couldn’t stand it—she couldn’t, she couldn’t, and there was an end to it. She would go raving mad—she would kill herself—she would—— She lifted her head, wrenched suddenly back from that chaos of despair, alert and intent. There it was again, coming swiftly nearer and nearer from some immeasurable distance—down—down—nearer still—the very room was humming and throbbing with it, she could almost hear the singing in the wires. She swung far out over the window edge, searching the moon-drenched garden with eager eyes; surely, surely it would never fly so low unless it were about to land! Engine trouble, perhaps, though she could detect no break in the huge, rhythmic pulsing that was shaking the night. Still——

“Rosemary!” she called urgently. “Rosemary, listen—is there a place where it can land?”

“Where what can land?” asked a drowsy voice.

“An airplane. It’s flying so low that it must be in some kind of trouble; do come and see!”

Rosemary came pattering obediently toward her, a small docile figure, dark eyes misted with dreams, wide with amazement.

“I must be nine tenths asleep,” she murmured gently. “Because I don’t hear a single thing, Janet. Perhaps——”

“Hush—listen!” begged Janet, raising an imperative hand—and then her own eyes widened. “Why—it’s gone!” There was a note of flat incredulity in her voice. “Heavens, how those things must eat up space! Not a minute ago it was fairly shaking this room, and now——”

Rosemary stifled a yawn and smiled ingratiatingly.

“Perhaps you were asleep, too,” she suggested humbly. “I don’t believe that airplanes ever fly this way any more. Or it might have been that fat Hodges boy on his motorcycle; he does make the most dreadful racket. Oh, Janet, what a perfectly ripping night—do see!”

They leaned together on the window-sill, silenced by the white and shining beauty that had turned the pleasant garden into a place of magic. The corners of Janet’s mouth lifted suddenly. How absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic, even little, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent—and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it need ever land; anything so fleet and strong and sure should fly for ever! But if they must rest, those beating wings—the old R. F. C. toast went singing through her head and she flung it out into the moonlight, smiling—“Happy landings! Happy landings, you!”

The next day was the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as “the Big Storm.” It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown incredible, even to Janet’s American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn for ever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness—it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Everyone had struggled through the day assuring one another that when evening came it would be all right, dangling the alluring thought of the cool darkness before each other’s hot and weary eyes; but the night proved even more outrageous than the day. To the little group seated on the terrace, dispiritedly playing with their coffee, it seemed almost a personal affront. The darkness closed in on them, smothering, heavy, intolerable; they could feel its weight, as though it were some hateful and tangible thing.

“Like—like black cotton wool,” explained Rosemary, stirred to unwonted resentment. She had spent the day curled up in the largest Indian chair on the terrace, round-eyed with fatigue and incredulity.

“I honestly think that we must be dreaming,” she murmured to her feverish audience; “I do, honestly. Why, it’s only May, and we never, never—there was that day in August about five years ago that was almost as bad, though. D’you remember, Mummy?”

“It’s hardly the kind of thing that one is likely to forget, dear. Do you think that it is necessary for us to talk? I feel somehow that I could bear it much more easily if we kept quite quiet.”

Janet stirred a little, uneasily. She hated silence, that terrible empty space waiting to be filled up with your thoughts—why, the idlest chatter spared you that. She hated the terrace, too—she closed her eyes to shut out the ugly darkness that was pressing against her; behind the shelter of her lids it was cooler and stiller, but open eyed or closed, she could not shut out memory. The very touch of the bricks beneath her feet brought back that late October day. She had been sitting curled up on the steps in the warm sunlight, with the keen, sweet air stirring her hair and sending the beech-leaves dancing down the flagged path; there had been a heavenly smell of burning from the far meadow, and she was sniffing it luxuriously, feeling warm and joyous and protected in Jerry’s great tweed coat, watching the tall figure swinging across from the lodge gate with idle, happy eyes—not even curious. It was not until he had almost reached the steps that she had noticed that he was wearing a foreign uniform—and even then she had promptly placed him as one of Rosemary’s innumerable conquests, bestowing on him a friendly and inquiring smile.

“Were you looking for Miss Langdon?” Even now she could see the courteous, grave young face soften as he turned quickly toward her, baring his dark head with that swift foreign grace that turns our perfunctory habits into something like a ritual.

“But no,” he had said gently, “I was looking for you, Miss Abbott.”

“Now will you please tell me how in the world you knew that I was Miss Abbott?”

And he had smiled with his lips, not his eyes.

“I should be dull indeed if that I did not know. I am Maurice Laurent, Miss Abbott.”

And “Oh,” she had cried joyously, “Liane’s Maurice!”

“But yes—Liane’s Maurice. They are not here, the others? Madame Langdon, the little Miss Rosemary?”

“No, they’ve gone to some parish fair, and I’ve been wicked and stayed home. Won’t you sit down and talk to me? Please!”

“Miss Abbott, it is not to you that I must talk. What I have to say is indeed most difficult, and it is to Jeremy’s Janie that I would say it. May I, then?”

It had seemed to Jeremy’s Janie that the voice in which she answered him came from a great distance, but she never took her eyes from the grave and vivid face.

“Yes. And quickly, please.”

So he had told her, quickly, in his exquisitely careful English, and she had listened as attentively and politely, huddled up on the brick steps in the sunlight, as though he were running over the details of the last drive instead of tearing her life to pieces with every word. She remembered now that it hadn’t seemed real at all; if it had been to Jerry that these horrors had happened could she have sat there so quietly, feeling the colour bright in her cheeks, and the wind stirring in her hair, and the sunlight warm on her hands? Why, for less than this people screamed, and fainted, and went raving mad!

“You say—that his back is broken?”

“But yes, my dear,” Liane’s Maurice told her, and she had seen the tears shining in his gray eyes.

“And he is badly burned?”

“My brave Janie, these questions are not good to ask; not good, not good to answer. This I will tell you. He lives, our Jerry—and so dearly does he love you that he will drag back that poor body from hell itself, because it is yours, not his. This he has sent me to tell you, most lucky lady ever loved.”

“You mean—that he isn’t going to die?”

“I tell you that into those small hands of yours he has given his life. Hold it fast.”

“Will he—will he get well?”

“He will not walk again; but have you not swift feet to run for him?”

And there had come to her, sitting on the terrace in the sunshine, an overwhelming flood of joy, reckless and cruel and triumphant. Now he was hers for ever, the restless wanderer, delivered to her bound and helpless, never to stray again. Hers to worship and serve and slave for, his troth to Freedom broken—hers at last!

“I’m coming,” she had told the tall young Frenchman breathlessly. “Take me to him—please let’s hurry.”

“Ma pauvre petite, this is war. One does not come and go at will. God knows by what miracle enough red tape unwound to let me through to you, to bring my message and to take one back.”

“What message, Maurice?”

“That is for you to say, little Janie. He told me, ‘Say to her that she has my heart; if she needs my body, I will live. Say to her that it is an ugly, broken, and useless thing; still, hers. She must use it as she sees fit. Say to her—no, say nothing more. She is my Janie, and has no need of words. Tell her to send me only one, and I will be content.’ For that one word, Janie, I have come many miles. What shall it be?”

And she had cried out exultantly, “Why, tell him that I say——” But the word had died in her throat. Her treacherous lips had mutinied, and she had sat there, feeling the blood drain back out of her face, out of her heart—feeling her eyes turn black with terror while she fought with those stiffened rebels. Such a little word “Live!”—surely they could say that. Was it not what he was waiting for, lying far away and still, schooled at last to patience, the reckless and the restless? Oh, Jerry, Jerry, live! Even now she could feel her mind like some frantic little wild thing, racing, racing to escape Memory. What had he said to her? “You, wise beyond wisdom, will never hold me—you will never hold me—you will never——”

And suddenly she had dropped her twisted hands in her lap and lifted her eyes to Jerry’s ambassador.

“Will you please tell him—will you please tell him that I say—‘Contact’?”

“Contact?” He had stood smiling down at her, ironical and tender. “Ah, what a race! That is the prettiest word that you can find for Jerry? But then it means to come very close, to touch, that poor harsh word—there he must find what comfort he can. We, too, in aviation use that word; it is the signal that says—‘Now you can fly!’ You do not know our vocabulary, perhaps?”

“I know very little.”

“That is all then? No other message? He will understand, our Jerry?”

And Janie had smiled—rather a terrible, small smile.

“Oh, yes,” she told him. “He will understand. It is the word that he is waiting for, you see.”

“I see.” But there had been a grave wonder in his voice.

“Would it”—she had framed the words as carefully as though it were a strange tongue that she was speaking—“would it be possible to buy his machine? He wouldn’t want any one else to fly it.”

“Little Janie, never fear. The man does not live who shall fly poor Peg again. Smashed to kindling-wood and burned to ashes, she has taken her last flight to the heaven for good and brave birds of war. Not enough was left of her to hold in your two hands.”

“I’m glad. Then that’s all, isn’t it? And thank you for coming.”

“It is I who thank you. What was hard as death you have made easy. I had thought the lady to whom Jeremy Langdon gave his heart the luckiest creature ever born—now I think him that luckiest one.” The grave grace with which he had bent to kiss her hand made of the formal salutation an accolade. “My homage to you, Jerry’s Janie!” A quick salute, and he had turned on his heel, swinging off down the flagged path with that swift, easy stride past the sun-dial, past the lily-pond, past the beech trees—gone! For hours and hours after he had passed out of sight she had sat staring after him, her hands lying quite still in her lap—staring, staring—they had found her there when they came back, sitting where Rosemary was seated now. Why, there, on those same steps, a bare six months ago—— Something snapped in her head, and she stumbled to her feet, clinging to the arm of her chair.

“I can’t stand it!” she gasped. “No, no, it’s no use—I can’t, I tell you. I——”

Rosemary’s arm was about her, Mrs. Langdon’s soft voice in her ears, a deeper note from Rosemary’s engineer.

“Oh, I say, poor girl! What is it, dear child—what’s the matter? Is it the heat, Janie?”

“The heat!” She could hear herself laughing; frantic, hateful, jangling laughter that wouldn’t stop. “Oh, Jerry! Oh-h, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!”

“It’s this ghastly day. Let me get her some water, Mrs. Langdon. Don’t cry so, Janie—please, please don’t, darling.”

“I c-can’t help it—I c-can’t——” She paused, listening intently, her hand closing sharply over Rosemary’s wrist. “Oh, listen, listen, there it comes again—I told you so!”

“Thank Heaven,” murmured Mrs. Langdon devoutly, “I thought that it never was going to rise this evening. It’s from the south, too, so I suppose that it means rain.”

“Rain?” repeated Janet vaguely. “Why in the world should it mean rain?” Her small, pale face looked suddenly brilliant and enchanted, tilted up to meet the thunderous music that was swinging nearer and nearer. “Oh, do listen, you people! This time it’s surely going to land!”

Rosemary stared at her blankly. “Land? What are you talking about, Janie?”

“My airplane—the one that you said was the fat Hodges boy on a motorcycle! Is there any place near here that it can make a landing?”

“Darling child”—Mrs. Langdon’s gentle voice was gentler than ever—“darling child, it’s this wretched heat. There isn’t any airplane, dear; it’s just the wind rising in the beeches.”

“The wind?” Janet laughed aloud; they really were too absurd. “Why, Mrs. Langdon, you can hear the engines, if you’ll only listen! You can hear them, can’t you, Mr. Bain?”

The young engineer shook his head. “No plane would risk flying with this storm coming, Miss Abbott. There’s been thunder for the last hour or so, and it’s getting nearer, too. It’s only the wind, I think.”

“Oh, you’re laughing at me; of course, of course you hear it. Why, it’s as clear as—as clear as——”

Her voice trailed off into silence. Quite suddenly, without any transition or warning, she knew. She could feel her heart stand perfectly still for a minute, and then plunge forward in mad flight—oh, it knew, too, that eager heart! She took her hand from the arm of the chair, releasing Rosemary’s wrist very gently.

“Yes, of course, it’s the heat,” she said quietly. She must be careful not to frighten them, these kind ones. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Langdon, I think that I’ll go down to the gate to watch the storm burst. No, please, don’t any of you come; I’ll promise to change everything if I get caught—yes, everything! I won’t be long; don’t wait for me.”

She walked sedately enough until she came to the turn in the path, but after that she ran, only pausing for a minute to listen breathlessly. Oh, yes—following, following, that gigantic music! How he must be laughing at her now, blind, deaf, incredulous little fool that she had been, to doubt that Jerry would find a way! But where could he land? Not in the garden—not at the gates—oh, now she had it—the far meadow. She turned sharply; it was dark, but the path must be here. Yes, this was the wicket gate; her groping fingers were quite steady; they found the latch, released it—the gate swung to behind her flying footsteps. “Oh, Jerry, Jerry!” sang her heart. Why hadn’t she worn the rose-coloured frock? It was she who would be a ghost in that trailing white thing. To the right here; yes, there was the hawthorn hedge—only a few steps more—oh, now!

She stood as still as a small statue, not moving, not breathing, her hands at her heart, her face turned to the black and torn sky. Nearer, nearer, circling and darting and swooping; the gigantic humming grew louder—louder still—it swept about her thunderously, so close that she clapped her hands over her ears, but she stood her ground, exultant and undaunted. Oh, louder still—and then suddenly the storm broke. All the winds and the rains of the world were unleashed, and fell howling and shrieking upon her; she staggered under their onslaught, drenched to the bone, her dress whipping frantically about her, blinded and deafened by that tumultuous clamour. She had only one weapon against it—laughter—and she laughed now, straight into its teeth. And as though hell itself must yield to mirth, the fury wavered—failed—sank to muttering. But Janie, beaten to her knees and laughing, never even heard it die.

“Jerry?” she whispered into the darkness, “Jerry?”

Oh, more wonderful than wonder, he was there! She could feel him stir, even if she could not hear him; so close was he that if she even reached out her hand, she could touch him. She stretched it out eagerly, but there was nothing there—only a small, remote sound of withdrawal, as though someone had moved a little.

“You’re afraid that I’ll be frightened, aren’t you?” she asked wistfully. “I wouldn’t be—I wouldn’t—please come back!”

He was laughing at her, she knew, tender and mocking and caressing; she smiled back, tremulously.

“You’re thinking, ‘I told you so!’ Have you come far to say it to me?”

Only that little stir; the wind was rising again.

“Jerry, come close—come closer still. What are you waiting for, dear and dearest?”

This time there was not even a stir to answer her; she felt suddenly cold to the heart. What had he always waited for?

“You aren’t waiting—you aren’t waiting to go?” She fought to keep the terror out of her voice, but it had her by the throat. “Oh, no, no, you can’t—not again! Jerry, Jerry, don’t go away and leave me; truly and truly I can’t stand it—truly!”

She wrung her hands together desperately; she was on her knees to him—did he wish her to go lower still? Oh, she had never learned to beg!

Not a sound, not a stir, but well she knew that he was standing there, waiting. She rose slowly to her feet.

“Very well—you’ve won,” she said hardly. “Go back to your saints and seraphs and angels; I’m beaten. I was mad to think that you ever cared—go back!”

She turned, stumbling, the sobs tearing at her throat; she had gone several steps before she realized that he was following her—and all the hardness and bitterness and despair fell from her like a cloak.

“Oh, Jerry,” she whispered, “Jerry, darling, I’m so sorry. And you’ve come so far—just to find this! What is it that you want; can’t you tell me?”

She waited tense and still, straining eyes and ears for her answer—but it was not to eyes or ears that it came.

“Oh, of course!” she cried clearly. “Of course, my wanderer! Ready?”

She stood poised for a second, head thrown back, arms flung wide, a small figure of Victory, caught in the flying wind.

And, “Contact, Jerry!” she called joyously into the darkness. “Contact!”

There was a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell, and then grow fainter—fainter still—dying, dying—dying——

But Janie, her face turned to the storm-swept sky, was smiling at the stars which shone behind it. For she had sped her wanderer on his way—she had not failed him!

THERE WAS A LADY

There is one point on which Larry Benedick’s best friend and worst enemy and a lot of other less emphatic individuals are thoroughly and cordially agreed. Ask his closest female relative or his remotest business acquaintance or the man who plays an occasional hand of auction with him at the club why Benedick has never married, and they will one and all yield to sardonic mirth, and assure you that the woman who could interest that imperturbable individual has not yet been born—that he is without exception the coldest-hearted, hardest-headed bachelor who has ever driven fluttering débutantes and radiant ladies from the chorus into a state of utter and abject despair—that romance is anathema to him and sentiment an abomination.

“Benedick!” they will chorus with convincing unanimity. “My dear fellow, he’s been immune since birth. He’s never given any girl that lived or breathed a second thought—it’s extremely doubtful if he ever gave one a first. You can say what you please about him, but this you can take as a fact; you know one man who is going down to the grave as single as the day he was born.”

Well, you can take it as a fact if you care to, and it’s more than likely that you and the rest of the world will be right. Certainly, no one would ever have called him susceptible, even at the age when any decent, normal young cub is ready to count the world well lost for an eyelash. But not our Benedick—no, long before the gray steel had touched the blue of his eyes and the black of his hair he had apparently found a use for it in an absolutely invulnerable strong box for what he was pleased to call his heart. Then as now, he had faced his world with curled lips and cool eyes—graceful and graceless, spoiled, arrogant, and indifferent, with more money and more brains and more charm and a better conceit of himself than any two men should have—and a wary and sceptical eye for the charming creatures who circled closer and closer about him. The things that he used to think and occasionally say about those circling enchantresses were certainly unromantic and unchivalrous to a degree. Rather an intolerable young puppy, for all his brilliant charm—and the years have not mellowed him to any perceptible extent. Hardly likely to fall victim to the wiles of any lady, according to his worst enemy and his best friend and the world in general. No, hardly. But there was a lady....

It wasn’t yesterday that he first saw her—and it wasn’t a hundred years ago, either. It was at Raoul’s; if you are one of the large group of apparently intelligent people whose mania consists in believing that there is only one place in the world that any one could possibly reside in, and that that place is about a quarter of a mile square and a mile and a half long and runs up from a street called Forty-second on an island called Manhattan, you undoubtedly know Raoul’s. Not a tea room—Heaven save the mark! Not a restaurant—God forbid! Something between the two; a small room, clean and shabby, fragrant with odours more delectable than flowers. No one is permitted to smoke at Raoul’s, not even ladies, because the light blue haze might disturb the heavenly aroma, at once spiced and bland, that broods over the place like a benediction. Nothing quite like it anywhere else in America, those who have been there will tell you; nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. It costs fine gold to sit at one of the little round tables in the corner, but mere gold cannot pay for what you receive. For to Raoul the preparation of food is an art and a ceremony and a ritual and a science—not a commercial enterprise. The only thing that he purchases with your gold is leisure in which to serve you better. So who are you to grudge it to him?

Larry Benedick lunched there every day of his life, when he was in New York, heedless of a steady shower of invitations. He lived then in one of those coveted apartments not a stone’s throw from Raoul’s brown door—a luxurious box of a place that one of the charming creatures (who happened to be his sister-in-law) had metamorphosed into a bachelor’s paradise, so successfully that any bachelor should have frothed at the mouth with envy at the mere sight of it.

It had a fair-sized living room, with very masculine crash curtains, darned in brilliant colours, and rough gray walls and an old Florentine chest skillfully stuffed with the most expensive phonograph on the market, and rows and rows of beautifully bound books. There was a deep gray velvet sofa with three Chinese-red cushions in front of the small black fireplace (of course it wasn’t possible to light a fire in it without retiring from the apartment with a wet towel tied around the head, crawling rather rapidly on the hands and knees because all the first-aid books state that any fresh air will be near the floor—but what of that? After all, you can’t have everything!)—and there were wrought-iron lamps that threw the light at exactly the right angle for reading, and very good English etchings and very gay Viennese prints in red lacquer frames, and a really charming old Venetian mirror over the mantel. It was a perfect room for a fastidious young man, and Benedick loathed it with an awful loathing.

“All the elusive charm of a window in a furniture shop,” he remarked pensively to his best friend—but at least he refrained from destroying the pretty sister-in-law’s transports of altruistic enthusiasm, and left it grimly alone, keeping his eyes averted from its charms as frequently as possible, and leaving for South Carolina or northern Canada on the slightest provocation—or else swinging off to Raoul’s at twelve o’clock with a feeling of profound relief, when what he fantastically referred to as “business” kept him chained to New York and the highly successful living room.

“Business” for Benedick consisted largely of a series of more or less amicable colloquies with a gray-faced, incisive gentleman in a large, dark, shining office, and the even more occasional gift of his presence at those convivial functions known as board meetings. His father, long dead, had been imprudent enough to sow the wind of financial speculation, and his unworthy son was now languidly engaged in reaping a whirlwind of coupons and dividends. It is painful to dwell on so rudimentary a lack of fair play on the part of Fate, though Benedick occasionally did dwell on it, with a sardonic grin at the recollection of the modest incomes received by the more prudent and thrifty members of the family. He made what atonement he could for his father’s unjustifiable success by a series of astoundingly lavish gifts, however, and wasted the rest of it more or less successfully.

“Business” had kept him in town on that March day when he first saw her. He had arrived at Raoul’s doorstep at exactly five minutes past twelve; he lunched early, because he was a disciple of the Continental schedule, and it also avoided interruptions from over-fervent friends who frequented the place. The pretty cashier with her red cheeks and her elaborate Gallic coiffure bestowed her usual radiant smile on him, and Benedick smiled back, with a swift response that many a débutante would have given a large piece of her small soul to obtain. Jules, the sallow and gentle-eyed, pulled out the little round chair with its padded cushions, pushed in the little round table with its threadbare and spotless cloth, and bent forward with pencil poised, the embodiment of discreet and eager interest.

“Bonjour, monsieur! Monsieur désire?——”

This, after all, was nearer a home than anything that Larry Benedick had known for many a weary year—this warm and peaceful corner, with old Jules and young Geneviève spreading friendliness all about him, with Raoul out in the tiled and copper-hung kitchen, alert to turn his skill to service. Monsieur desired? Well, kidneys flamboyant, perhaps—and then some artichokes with Raoul’s Hollandaise—and the little curled pancakes with orange and burnt sugar in the chafing-dish. Demi-tasse, of course, and Bénédictine. Not yesterday, you see, that March afternoon!—Jules slipped away, as elated as though he were bearing with him great good tidings, and the brown-and-gray kitten came out from under the table, tapping at the cuff of his trousers with an imperious paw, and he had a smile for it, too. Here in this tranquil space Monsieur had all that he desired, had he not? Surely, all. He bent forward to stroke the pink nose of his enterprising visitor, the smile deepening until the dark face was suddenly young—and the brown door opened and she came in.

Benedick knew quite well that it was a raw and abominable day outside—but he could have sworn that he looked up because the room was suddenly full of the smell of pear blossoms, and lilacs, and the damp moss that grows beside running brooks—and that he felt the sunlight on his hands. There she stood, straight and slim, in her rough green tweed, with her sapphire-blue scarf and the sapphire-blue feather in the little tweed hat that she had pulled down over the bright wings of her hair, her face as fresh and gay as though she had just washed it in that running brook, her lovely mouse-coloured eyes soft and mischievous, as though she were keeping some amusing secret. There was mud on her high brown boots, and she was swinging a shining new brief case in one bare hand. Benedick stared at that hand incredulously. It wasn’t possible that anything real could be so beautiful; velvet white, steel strong, fine and slim and flexible—such a hand Ghirlan-daijo’s great ladies of the Renaissance lifted to their hearts—such a hand a flying nymph on a Grecian frieze flung out in quest of mercy. And yet there it was, so close to him that if he stretched out his fingers he could touch it!

The owner of this white wonder stood poised for a moment, apparently speculating as to whether this was the most perfect place in the world in which to lunch; she cast a swift glance of appraisal about the shadowed room with its hangings and cushions of faded peacock-blue, with its coal fire glowing and purring in the corner and its pots of pansies sitting briskly and competently along the deep window-sills; she gave a swift nod of recognition, as though she had found something that she had long been seeking, and slipped lightly into the chair at the table next to Benedick’s. Her flying eyes had brushed by the startled wonder of his face as though it had not been there, and it was obvious that he was still not there, in so far as the lady was concerned. She pounced exultantly on the carte du jour and gave it her rapt and undivided attention; when Jules arrived carrying Benedick’s luncheon as carefully as though it were a delicate and cherished baby she was ready and waiting for him—and Jules succumbed instantly to the hopeful friendliness of her voice.

But certainly, Mademoiselle could have sole bonne femme and potatoes allumettes, and a small salad—oui, oui, entendu—bien fatiguée, that salad, with a soupçon of garlic in a crust of bread, and the most golden of oils—yes, and a soufflé of chocolate with a demi-tasse in which should be just one dash of cognac—oh, rest assured of the quality of the cognac. Ah, it was to be seen that Mademoiselle was fine gourmet—which was, alas, not too common a quality in ces dames! Fifteen minutes would not be too long to wait, no? The potatoes—bon, bon—Mademoiselle should see. Jules trotted rapidly off in the direction of the kitchen, and Benedick’s luncheon grew cold before him while he watched to see what the miracle at the table beside him would do next.

How long, how long you had waited for her, Benedick the cynic—so long that you had forgotten how lovely she would be. After all, it had not been you who had waited; it had been a little black-headed, blue-eyed dreamer, fast asleep these many years—you had forgotten him, too, had you not? He was awake now with a vengeance, staring through your incredulous eyes at the lovely lady of his dreams, sitting, blithe and serene, within hand’s touch—the lovely lady who was not too proud to have mud on her boots and who actually knew what to order for lunch. All the girls that Benedick had ever known from the fuzzy-headed little ladies in the chorus to the sleek-locked wives of his best friend and his worst enemy, ordered chicken à la King and fruit salad and indescribable horrors known as maple walnut sundaes and chocolate marshmallow ice cream. But not this lady—oh, not this one! He leaned forward, breathless; what further enchantments had she in store? Well, next she took off her hat, tossing it recklessly across the table, and the golden wings of her hair sprang out alive and joyous, like something suddenly uncaged—and then she was uncaging something else, a shabby brownish red book, prying it out of the depths of the new brief case as though she could hardly wait; he could see from the way that the white hands touched it that they loved it dearly—that they had loved it dearly for a long, long time. It flew open, as though it remembered the place itself, and she dipped her bright head to it, and was off! Benedick pushed his untouched plate far from him, leaning forward across the table, caution and courtesy and decent reserve clean forgotten. What was she reading that could make her face dance like that—all her face, the gold-tipped lashes and the brave lips, and the elusive fugitive in the curve of the cheek turned toward him, too fleeting to be a dimple—too enchanting not to be one—what in the name of heaven was she reading? If only she would move her hand a little—ah!

Something came pattering eagerly toward him out of the printed page—a small, brisk, portly individual with long ears and a smart waistcoat—his heart greeted it with a shout of incredulous delight. By all that was wonderful, the White Rabbit! The dim room with its round tables faded, faded—Benedick the cynic, Benedick the sceptic, faded with it—he was back in another room, warm with firelight and bright with lamplight, in which a small black-headed boy sat upright in a crib, and listened to a lady reading from a red-brown book—a curly-headed lady, soft-voiced, soft-handed, and soft-eyed, who for ten enchanted years had read the lucky little boy to sleep; he had never believed in fairy tales again, after that soft voice had trailed off into silence. But now—now it was speaking once more—and once more he believed!

“Oh, the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh, my dear paws! Oh, my fur and whiskers! She’ll have me arrested as sure as ferrets are ferrets! Where can I have dropped them?”

The little boy was leaning forward, flushed and enchanted.

“Well, but motherie darling, where could he have dropped them? Where could he have dropped those gloves?”

“Monsieur désire?”

Benedick stared blankly at the solicitous countenance, wrenching himself back across the years. Monsieur desired—ah, Monsieur desired—Monsieur desired——

He sat very still after that, until she had sipped the last drop of black coffee out of the little blue cup, until she had pulled the hat down over the golden wings and wrapped the sapphire scarf about her white throat and wedged “Alice” back into the brief case, and smiled at Jules, and smiled at Geneviève, and smiled at the gray kitten, and vanished through the brown door.

He sat even stiller for quite a while after she had gone; and then suddenly bounded to his feet and flung out of the room before the startled Jules could ask him whether there was not something that he preferred to the untouched Bénédictine.

It was drizzling in the gray street and he turned his face to it as though it were sunshine; he glanced in the direction of the large dark office, and dismissed it with a light-hearted shrug. Business—business, by the Lord! Not while there was still a spot to dream in undisturbed. He raced up the apartment-house stairs three at a time, scorning the elevator, and was in the living room before the petrified Harishidi could do more than leap goggle-eyed from his post by the Florentine chest. Harishidi had obviously been indulging his passion for Occidental music, though you would not have gathered it from the look of horrified rebuke that he directed at the Renaissance treasure’s spirited rendition of the “Buzz Town Darkies’ Ball.” The look conveyed the unmistakable impression that Harishidi had done everything in his power to prevent the misguided instrument from breaking out in this unfortunate manner during his master’s absence, but that his most earnest efforts had proved of no avail. Benedick, however, was unimpressed.

“For the love of God, shut off that infernal noise!”

Harishidi flung himself virtuously on the offending treasure, and Benedick stood deliberating for a moment.

“Bring me the records out of the drawer—no, over to the couch—I’m half dead for sleep after that damned party. Get my pipe; the briar, idiot. Matches. This the lot Mrs. Benedick sent?”

Harishidi acknowledged it freely, and Benedick shuffled rapidly through the black disks. Cello rendition of “Eli Eli”; the Smith Sisters in a saxophone medley; highly dramatic interpretation of the little idyll from Samson et Delilah; “Kiss Your Baby and Away We Go” specially rendered by Dolpho, the xylophone king—yes, here it was.

“An Elizabethan Song, sung by Mr. Roger Grahame of the Santa Clara Opera Company.”

“Here you are, Hari; put this on your infernal machine. Take the telephone off the hook and give me another of those cushions. Where’s an ash tray? All right—let her rip!”

“I play her now?” demanded the incredulous Harishidi.

“You play her now, and you keep right on playing her until I tell you to stop. What’s more, if I hear another word out of you, you’re fired. All right—what are you waiting for? Go ahead!”

The quiet room was suddenly flooded with grace and gallantry and a gay melancholy; a light tenor voice singing easily and happily of something that was not joy—and was not sorrow—

“There was a lady, fair and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
I did but see her, passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.
Till—I—die——”

Fair and kind—a lady with gold wings for hair and gray velvet for eyes—a lady who knew what to have for lunch and who read “Alice in Wonderland”—a lady who was tall and slim, and had a mouth like a little girl, and mud on her high boots—white-handed and white-throated—pear blossoms in the sunlight—fair and kind—

“Her gesture, motion, and her smile,
Her wit, her voice, my heart beguile,
Beguile my heart, I know not why,
And yet I love her till I die.
Till—I—die.”

Her grace, her voice—a lady who walked as though she were about to dance—a lady who spoke as though she were about to sing—fair and kind—gold and ivory—he had seen her before—she lived in a castle and her hair hung down to her heels—he had ridden by on a black horse and she had thrown him a rose—a castle by the sea—a castle behind a hedge of thorns—a castle in a dreaming wood—but he had found her and waked her with a kiss—no, no, it was he who had been asleep—a long time—a long time asleep—he wanted to hear the end of the story, but he was so warm and happy, it was hard to keep awake—the firelight made strange shadows....

“And so they both lived happily ever after!”
“Then he did find her, Motherie?”
“Of course, of course, he found her, Sleepy Head.”
“Ever, ever after, Motherie?”
“Ever, ever after, little boy.”...

Fair and kind, Golden Hair, smiling in the firelight—smile again—ever after, she said—ever, ever after....

* * * * *

The next day he was at Raoul’s at a quarter to twelve, and when Jules asked what Monsieur desired, he told him to bring anything, it made no difference to him! The stupefied Jules departed to the kitchen, where he was obliged to remain seated for several moments, owing to a slight touch of vertigo, and Monsieur sat unmolested in his chair in the corner, his eyes fastened on the brown door as though they would never leave it. He was still sitting there, feverish and preoccupied, half an hour later, having dutifully consumed everything that Jules put before him without once removing his eyes from the door. It wasn’t possible—it wasn’t possible that she wouldn’t come again. Fate could not play him so scurvy a trick; but let him lay eyes on her just once more, and he would take no further chances with Fate! He would walk up to her the second that she crossed the threshold, and demand her name and address and telephone number and occupation—— And the door opened, and she came in, and he sat riveted to his chair while she bestowed a bunch of violets the size of a silver dollar on the enchanted Geneviève, a smile of joyous complicity on the infatuated Jules, and a rapturous pat on the gray kitten. After a while he transferred his gaze from the door to the table next to him, but otherwise he did not stir. He was thinking a great many things very rapidly—unflattering and derisive comments on the mentality of one Larry Benedick. Idiot—ass! As though any lady who held her bright head so high would not disdain him out of measure if she could get so much as a glimpse into the depths of his fatuous and ignoble mind. Ask her for her address indeed! His blood froze at the thought.

The lady, in the meantime, had ordered lunch and discarded her hat and pried another treasure from the brief case; this time it was brown and larger, and she held it so that Benedick could see the title without irreparably ruining his eyes. “Tommy and Grizel”—the unspeakable Tommy! She was reading it with breathless intensity, too, and a look on her face that struck terror to his heart, a look at once scornful and delighted and disturbed, as though Tommy himself were sitting opposite her. So this—this was the kind of fellow that she liked to lunch with—a sentimental, posturing young hypocrite, all arrogance and blarney—it was incredible that she couldn’t see through him! What magic had this worthless idiot for ladies?

Benedick glared at the humble-looking brown volume as though he would cheerfully rip the heart out of it. He continued to glare until the white hands put it back into the brief case with a lingering and regretful touch, and carried it away through the door; no sooner had it closed than he jammed on his hat and brushed rudely by the smiling Geneviève and out into the wind-swept street. There he paused, staring desperately about him, but the sapphire feather was nowhere to be seen, and after a moment he started off at a tremendous pace for his apartment, where he proceeded to keep his finger on the elevator bell for a good minute and a half, and scowled forbiddingly at the oblivious elevator boy for seven stories, and slammed the door of the living room so vigorously that the red-lacquered frames leapt on the wall.

He crossed the room in three lengthy strides, and slammed his bedroom door behind him even more vigorously. The bedroom was exactly half the size of the tiled bathroom, so that the artistic sister-in-law had only been able to wedge in a Renaissance day-bed and a painted tin scrap basket—but Benedick found it perfectly satisfactory, as she had permitted him to use books instead of wall-paper. All the ones that she considered too shabby for the living room rose in serried ranks to the high ceiling—Benedick had substituted a nice arrangement of green steps instead of a chair, and had discovered that he could put either these or the scrap basket in the bathroom, if it was necessary to move around. He mounted the steps now, and snatched a brown volume from its peaceful niche on the top shelf next to “Sentimental Tommy,” climbed down and sat on the Renaissance day-bed, wrenched the book open so violently that he nearly broke its back, and read about what happened to Tommy on the last few pages—served him damned well right, too, except that hanging was too good for him. Sentiment! Sentiment was a loathsome thing, not to be borne for a moment.

The third time that he read it he felt a little better, and he got up and kicked the scrap basket hard, and telephoned to the incisive gentleman in the office that he wouldn’t be around because he had neuralgia and phlebitis and a jumping toothache, and telephoned his ravished sister-in-law that he’d changed his mind and would be around for dinner at eight if she’d swear to seat him next to a brunette. Subsequently he was so attentive to the brunette that she went home in a fever of excitement—and Benedick ground his teeth, and prayed that somehow his golden lady might know about it and feel a pang of the soft and bitter madness known as jealousy, which is the exclusive prerogative of women. He lay with his head in the pillow on the Renaissance bed most of the night, cursing his idiocy with profound fervour, wondering what insanity had made him think for a moment that he was interested in that yellow-haired girl, and resolving not to go near Raoul’s for at least a week. She was probably someone’s stenographer—or a lady authoress. Every now and then he slipped off into horrid little dreams; he was building a gallows out of pear trees for a gentleman called Tommy, and just when he had the noose ready, it slipped about his own throat—and he could feel it tightening, tightening, while someone laughed just behind him, very soft and clear—he woke with a shiver, and the dawn was in the room. He wouldn’t go to Raoul’s for a month....

At five minutes to twelve he crossed the threshold, and she was there already with her hat off and a little fat green-and-gold book propped up against her goblet. Thank God that she had left that brown bounder at home! Benedick stared earnestly, and felt a deeper gratitude to Robert Herrick and his songs than he had ever known before. It was easy to see that she was safe in green meadows, brave with cowslips and violets and hawthorn and silver streams, playing with those charming maids, Corinna and Julia. Benedick breathed a sigh of relief, and when her lunch arrived he was stricken again with admiration at the perfection of her choice. Herrick himself could have done no better; the whole-wheat bread, the primrose pats of butter, the bowl in which the salad lurked discreetly—but he could see the emerald green of cress, and something small and silver and something round and ruddy—radishes and onions shining like jewels! There was a jar of amber honey, a little blue pitcher of thick cream, and a great blue bowl of crimson berries—strawberries in March, with a drift of fresh green mint leaves about them. Here was a lady who was either incredibly wealthy or incredibly spendthrift! She closed her book when Jules put this other pastoral before her, and ate as though it might be a long, long time before she would eat anything again, though she managed to look as though she were singing all the time. There was a bit of cream left for the kitten, and she fed it carefully, patted its white whiskers, and was gone.

Benedick strolled out thoughtfully, remembering to smile at Geneviève, and feeling more like a good little boy than a ripened cynic. It was incredible how virtuous it made one feel to be happy! He wanted to adopt a yellow dog and give money to a beggar and buy out a florist shop. The florist shop was the only object accessible, and he walked in promptly; the clerk had spoken to him before he realized that he couldn’t send her flowers, because he didn’t happen to know who she was. He might tell him to send them to the Loveliest Lady in New York, but it was a little risky. However, he bought an armful of daffodils, and a great many rose-red tulips, and enough blue and white hyacinths to fill a garden, and went straight back to his apartment without even waiting for change from the gold piece that he gave to the clerk. He handed them over to the startled Harishidi with the curt order to put them in water; never mind if he didn’t have enough vases. Put them in high-ball glasses—finger-bowls—anywhere—he wanted them all over the place. The buyer of flowers then retired and put on a gorgeous and festively striped necktie, washed his face and hands with a bland and pleasing soap, brushed his black hair until it shone, smiled gravely at the dark face in the mirror, and returned to the sitting room. There he selected a white hyacinth blossom with meticulous care, placed it in his buttonhole, and earnestly requested Harishidi to retire and remain in retirement until summoned.

He spent quite a long time after that, drawing the curtains to shut out the grayness, struggling despairingly over the diminutive fire, piling the cushions so that they made a brilliant nest at one end of the velvet sofa, placing a gold-tooled volume of Aucassin and Nicolette where she could reach it easily—oh, if he could not send his flowers to her, he would bring her to his flowers! He adjusted the reading lamp with its painted parchment shade and dragged a stool up to the sofa. It was his sister-in-law’s best find—a broad and solid stool, sedate and comely—he sat there clasping his knees, his cheek against the velvet of the sofa—waiting. After a long time, he drew a deep breath, and smiled into the shadows. He did not turn his head; what need to turn it?

She was there—he could see her sinking far back into the scarlet cushions, greeting his flowers with joyous eyes. She had on a cream-coloured dress of some soft stuff, and a long chain of amber beads; the lamplight fell on her hair and on her clasped hands—and still he sat there, waiting. What need had they of speech? There was a perfume in her hair—a perfume of springtime, fleeting and exquisite; if he reached out his hand he could touch her. He sat very still; after a little while he felt her hand on his dark head, but still he did not stir—he only smiled more deeply into the shadows, and closed his eyes—— His eyes were still closed when Harishidi came in to ask him if he had forgotten dinner, and his lips were parted, like a little boy lost in a happy dream—in a happy, happy dream....

After that, the days passed by in an orderly and enchanted procession; he watched them bringing gifts to the corner table at Raoul’s, feeling warm and grateful and safe; too content to risk his joy by so much as stirring a finger. By and by he would speak to her, of course; in some easy, simple way he would step across the threshold of her life, and their hands would touch, never to fall apart again. She would drop her brief case, perhaps, and he would give it back to her, and she would smile; she would come into some drawing room where he was standing waiting patiently and the hostess would say, “You know Mr. Benedick, don’t you? He’s going to take you in to dinner.” He would go to more dinners—surely she must dine somewhere, and dances—surely she danced! Or the gray kitten might capture that wisp of a handkerchief, and bring it to him as booty—he would rescue it and carry it back to her—and she would smile her thanks—she would smile—— It would all be as simple as that—simpler, perhaps; for the time, he asked no more than to let the days slip by while he sat watching her across the table; that was enough.

Ah, those days! There was the one when she brought out a great volume of Schopenhauer, and laughed all the time she read it; twice she laughed aloud, and so gay and clear was her derision that Jules joined in, too. It was probably the essay on Woman, Benedick decided—the part where he said that ladies were little animals with long hair and limited intelligence. There was the day when she read out of a slim book of vellum about that small, enchanting mischief, Marjorie Fleming, and when Jules put the iced melon down before her she did not see it for almost a minute—her eyes were too full of tears. There was the day when she read “War and Peace” with her hands over her ears and such a look of terror on her face that Benedick had all that he could do to keep from crossing over and putting his arms about her, to close out all the dangers that she feared—even the ones she read about in books.

And suddenly March was over, and it was April, and there was the day when she took a new volume out of the brief case—so new that it still had its paper cover with large black letters announcing that it contained desirable information about Small Country Houses for Limited Incomes, Colonial Style. She read it with tremendous intensity and a look wavering between rapture and despair; once she sighed forlornly, and once she made a small, defiant face at some invisible adversary—and once she patted a picture lingeringly.

After she had gone, Benedick took his sister-in-law’s automobile, and drove out to Connecticut, and bought a house—a little old white house with many-paned windows, that sat on a hill with lilac bushes around it, and looked at the silver waters of the Sound. It was perfectly preposterous that she shouldn’t have a house if she wanted it, and he was glad that she wanted a small country house, Colonial style, even though it didn’t necessarily imply a moderate income. For the first time in his life he was glad that his income was not moderate. When he got back to town he bought a gray roadster—not too heavy, so that she could drive it. She might want to be in and out of town a lot; you never could tell.

He told his sister-in-law that he was going to raise Airedales, because it was impossible to buy a decent puppy these days, and he discoursed lucidly and affably about a highly respectable Scotch couple that he was going to get to look after the white house and supervise the Airedales. After that he devoted most of his leisure hours to antique shops and auctions, where he purchased any amount of Sheraton furniture and Lowestoft china and Bristol glass and hooked rugs and old English chintzes for the benefit of the Airedale puppies and the Scotch couple. He hadn’t as much time as formerly, because he had been growing steadily more uncomfortable at the thought of explaining to those gray eyes and gay lips the undeniable fact that he had twenty-four hours of leisure to dispose of every day of his life; so he had wandered over to the dark office one morning and remarked casually to the gray gentleman at the desk that he might blow in every now and then and see if there was anything around for him to do. It appeared that there was plenty around—so much that he took to blowing in at about nine and blowing out at about five—and he did it not so badly, though a good clerk might have done it better. He continued to spend a generous hour over lunch, however, proving a total loss to the firm for a considerable time after he returned, sometimes in such an abandoned mood that there was a flower in his buttonhole.

And then it was May, and the sapphire feather was gone, and she would come in through the brown door with flowers on her drooping hat and pale frocks tinted like flowers, cool and crisp as dresses in a dream. She still had the brief case, but it was absurd to think that a stenographer would wear such hats; anything so ravishing would cost a year’s salary. When he wasn’t too busy watching the way her hair rippled back, showing just the tips of her ears, he would wonder whether she were a great heiress with an aversion to jewellery or a successful novelist who had to choose between pearls and Raoul’s. He had never seen even the smallest glint of jewels about her; never a gleam of beads at her throat or a brooch at her waist or a ring on her fingers—sometimes he thought that it would be pleasant to slip a long string of pearls about her neck and a band of frosted diamonds about her wrist, to see her eyes widen at their whiteness. Still, this way she was dearer, with flowers for her jewels—better leave the pearls alone—pearls were for tears.

It was incredible how radiant she looked those days; when she came through the door with her flying step and her flying smile the very kitten would purr at the sight of her; her eyes said that the secret that they knew was more delightful and amusing than ever, and her hands were always full of flowers.

And then there was the day that she came in looking so exultant that she frightened him; it wasn’t fair that she should look so happy when she didn’t know about the house on the hill, or the gray roadster, or the lucky person who was going to give them to her—it wasn’t fair and it was rather terrifying. Perhaps it would be better not to wait any longer to tell her about them; she couldn’t be disdainful and unkind through all that happiness. Of course he would lead up to it skilfully. He wasn’t a blundering schoolboy; he was a man of the world, rather more than sophisticated, with all his wits about him and a light touch. He would catch her eye and smile, deferential and whimsical, and try some casual opening—“Our friend the kitten” or “good old Jules slower than usual—spring turns the best of us to idlers!” and the rest would follow as the night the day—or better still, as the day the night. It mightn’t be a bad idea to upset something—his wine glass, for instance; he raised a reckless hand, with a swift glance at the next table—and then he dropped it. She was reading a letter, an incredibly long letter, page after page of someone’s office paper covered with thick black words that marched triumphantly across the sheets, and her face was flooded with such eloquent light that he jerked back his head swiftly, as though he had been reading over her shoulder. He could not speak to her with that light on her face; he sat watching her read it through twice, feeling cold and sick and lonely. He was afraid—he was afraid—he would speak to her to-morrow——

To-morrow came, and with it his lady in a green muslin frock, and a shadowy hat wreathed with lilacs; he noted with a slow breath of relief that she had no brief case, no book, no letters. His coast was clear then at least; this day she had no better comrade to share her table—he would go to her, and ask her to understand. He had risen to his feet before he saw that she had not taken off her hat; she was sitting with her head a little bent, as though she was looking at something on the table, her face shadowed by the drooping hat, her hands clasped before her—and then Benedick saw what she was looking at. There was a ring on her finger, a small, trivial, inconsequential diamond, sparkling in its little golden claw like a frivolous dewdrop; and suddenly she bent her head, and kissed it. He sat down, slowly and stiffly—he felt old. He did not even see her go; it was Jules’ voice that made him lift his head.

“Ah, le printemps, le printemps! V’là la jolie demoiselle qui s’est fiancée.”

“Yes,” said Benedick. “Spring—in spring it is agreeable to have a fiancé.”

“Monsieur, perhaps, knows who she is?”

“No,” replied Monsieur amiably. “But she is, as you say, a pretty girl.”

“She is more than that, if Monsieur pardons. The man whose bride she will be has a little treasure straight from the good God. What a nature—what a nature! Generous as a queen with her silver, but she turns it to gold with her smile. Monsieur has perhaps noted her smile?”

“No,” replied Monsieur, still amiably. “Bring me a bottle of the Widow Clicquot, however, and I will drink to her smile. Bring a large bottle so that I can drink often. It might be better to bring two.”

He drank both of them under the eyes of the horrified Jules; it took him all of the afternoon and part of the evening to accomplish it, but he won out. All during the hours that he sat sipping the yellow stuff he was driving his mind in circles, round and round over the same unyielding ground, round and round again. It was a hideous mistake, of course; there was nothing irretrievable in an engagement. He could make her see how impossible it was in just a few minutes; it might be a little hard on this other fellow at first, but that couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t been looking for her, starving for her, longing for her all the days of his life, this other fellow, had he? Probably he had told half-a-dozen girls he loved them—well, let him find another to tell. But Benedick—whom else had Benedick loved? No one, no one, all the days of his life.

Surely she would see that; surely when he told her about the white house and the gray roadster she would understand that he couldn’t let her go. He had been lonely too long—he had been hard and bitter and reckless too long—he would tell her how black and empty a thing was loneliness; when she saw how desperately he needed her, she would stay. When he told her about the two corner cupboards in the low-ceilinged dining room, full of lilac lustre and sprigged Lowestoft, and the painted red chairs in the kitchen, and the little stool for her feet with the fat white poodle embroidered in cross-stitch, she would see all the other things that he had never told her! There was the tarnished mirror with the painted clipper spreading all its sails—he had hung it so that it would catch her smile when she first crossed the threshold; there was the little room at the head of the stairs that the sun always shone into—he had built shelves there himself, and put in all his Jules Verne and R. L. S. and Oliver Optic and Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers and some unspeakably bad ones of Henty; he had been waiting for her to tell him what kind of books little girls read, and then he was going to put them in, too. Of course she couldn’t understand those things unless he told her—to-morrow when she came he would tell her everything and she would understand, and be sorry that she had hurt him; she would never go away again.

At eleven o’clock Jules once more despairingly suggested that Monsieur must be indeed fatigued, and that it would perhaps be better if Monsieur retired. Monsieur, however, explained with great determination and considerable difficulty that he had an extremely important engagement to keep, and that all things considered, he would wait there until he kept it. True, it was not until to-morrow, but he was not going to take any chances; he would wait where he was. Raoul was called in, and expostulated fervently, “Mais enfin, Monsieur! Ce n’est pas convenable, Monsieur!”

Monsieur smiled at him, vague and obstinate, and Raoul finally departed with a Gallic shrug, leaving poor Jules in charge, who sat nodding reproachfully in a far corner, with an occasional harrowed glance at the other occupant of the room. The other occupant sat very stiff and straight far into the night; it was toward morning that he made a curious sound, between defeat and despair, and dropped his dark head on his arms, and slept. Once he stirred, and cried desperately: “Don’t go—don’t go, don’t go!”

Jules was at his side in a moment, forgiving and solicitous.

“Monsieur désire?”

And Monsieur started up and stared at him strangely—only to shake his head, and once more bury it deep in his arms. It was not Jules who could get what Monsieur desired....

It was late the next morning when he waked and he consumed a huge amount of black coffee, and sat back in his corner, haggard and unshaven, with a withered flower in his buttonhole, waiting for her to come through the door—but she did not come. Not that day, nor the next, nor the next; he sat in his corner from twelve to two, waiting, with a carefully mocking smile on his lips and a curious expression in his eyes, wary and incredulous. He had worked himself into an extremely reasonable state of mind; a state of mind in which he was acidly amused at himself and tepidly interested in watching the curtain fall on the comedy—he blamed a good deal on the spring and a taste for ridiculously unbalanced literature; the whole performance was at once diverting and distasteful. This kind of mania came from turning his back on pleasant flirtations and normal affaires de cœur; it was a neatly ironical punishment that the God of Comedy was meting out to pay him for his overweening sense of superiority. Well, it was merited—and it was over! But he still sat in the corner, watching, and the fourth day the door opened, and she came in.

She had on a gray dress, with a trail of yellow roses across her hat and a knot of them at her waist, and a breeze came in with her. She stood hesitating for a moment in the sunlight, and then she went quickly to where Geneviève sat at her high desk, and stretched out her hands, with a pretty gesture, shy and proud. The sunlight fell across them, catching at a circle above the diamond ring—a little golden circle, very new and bright. Benedick rose to his feet, pushing back his chair—he brushed by her so close that he could smell the roses; he closed the brown door behind him gently and leaned against it, staring down the shining street, where the green leaves danced, joyous and sedate, upon the stunted trees. Well, the curtain had fallen on the comedy; that was over. After a minute, he shrugged his shoulders, and strolled leisurely down to the real-estate agent and sold him the little white house, lock, stock, and barrel, including some rather good china and a lot of old junk that he had picked up here and there. It was fortunate that the young couple from Gramercy Square wanted it; he was willing to let it go for a song. Yes, there was a view of the Sound, and he’d done quite a lot of planting; oh, yes, there was a room that could be used as a nursery—lots of sun. There was his signature, and there was the end of it—the papers could be sent to his lawyers. He then sauntered over to his sister-in-law’s and presented her with the gray roadster; he was about fed up with motoring, and he’d changed his mind about Airedales. Dogs were a nuisance. After a little pleasant banter he dropped in at the club and played three extremely brilliant rubbers of auction, and signed up for a stag theatre party to see a rather nasty little French farce. He didn’t touch any of the numerous cocktails—he wasn’t going to pay her the compliment of getting drunk again—but he laughed harder than any one at the farce, and made a good many comments that were more amusing than the play, and his best friend and his worst enemy agreed that they had never seen him in such high spirits.

He went back to the apartment humming to himself, and yawned ostentatiously for Harishidi’s benefit, and left word not to wake him in the morning—and yawned again, and went to bed. He lay there in the blackness for what seemed hours, listening to his heart beat; there was a tune that kept going round in his head, some idiotic thing by an Elizabethan—“Fair and kind”—he must go lighter on the coffee. “Was never face so pleased my mind——” Coffee played the deuce with your nerves. “Passing by——” Oh, to hell with it! He stumbled painfully out of bed, groping his way to the living room, jerking on the light with a violence that nearly broke the cord. One o’clock; the damned clock must have stopped. No, it was still ticking away, relentless and competent. He stood staring about him irresolutely for a moment, and then moved slowly to the Florentine chest, fumbling at the drawer. Yes, there it was—“An Elizabethan Song, Sung by Mr. Roger Grahame”—“There was a lady, fair and kind”—There was a lady—— He flung up the window with a gesture of passionate haste, and leaning far out, hurled the little black disk into deeper blackness. Far off he heard a tinkling splinter from the area; he closed the window, and pulled the cord on the wrought-iron lamp, and stumbled back to the Renaissance bed.

He was shaking uncontrollably, like someone in a chill, and he had a sickening desire to weep—to lay his hot cheek against some kind hand, and weep away the hardness and the bitterness and despair. Loathsome, brain-sick fool! He clenched his hands and glared defiance to the darkness, he who had not wept since a voice had ceased to read him fairy tales a long time ago. After eternities of staring the hands relaxed, and he turned his head, and slept. He woke with a start—there was something salt and bitter on his lips; he brushed it away fiercely, and the clock in the living room struck four. After that he did not sleep again; he set his teeth and stared wide-eyed into the shadows—he would not twice be trapped to shame. He was still lying there when the sun drifted through the window; he turned his face to the wall, so that he would not see it, but he did not unclench his teeth....

It was June, and he took a passage for Norway, and tore it up the day that the boat sailed. There was a chance in a thousand that she might need him, and it would be like that grim cat Fate to drop him off in Norway when he might serve her. For two or three days she had been looking pale; the triumphant happiness that for so long she had flaunted in his face, joyous and unheeding, was wavering like the rose-red in her lips. It was probably nothing but the heat; why couldn’t that fool she had married see that she couldn’t stand heat? She should be sitting somewhere against green pines, with the sea in her eyes and a breeze lifting the bright hair from her forehead.

She never read any more. She sat idle with her hands linked before her; it must be something worse than heat that was painting those shadows under her eyes, that look of heart-breaking patience about her lips. And Benedick, who had flinched from her happiness, suddenly desired it more passionately than he had ever desired anything else in his life. Let the cur who had touched that gay courage to this piteous submission give it back—let him give it back—he would ask nothing more. How could a man live black enough to make her suffer? She hardly touched the food that was placed before her; Jules hovered about her in distress, and she tried to smile at him—and Benedick turned his eyes from that smile. She would sit very quiet, staring at her linked hands with their two circles, as though she were afraid to breathe—she, to whom the air had seemed flowers and wine and music. Once he saw her lips shake, terribly, though a moment later she lifted her head with the old, valiant gesture, and went out smiling.

Then for a day she did not come—for another day—for another—and when once more she stood in the door, Benedick felt his heart give a great leap, and stand still. She was in black, black from head to foot, with a strange little veil that hid her eyes. She crossed the room to her table, and sat down quietly, and ordered food, and ate, and drank a little wine. After Jules had taken the things away she still sat there, pressing her hands together, her lips quite steady—only when she unlinked them, he saw the faint red crescents where the nails had cut.

So that was why she had had shadows painted beneath her eyes; he had been ill, the man who had given her the rings; he had died. It would be cruel to break the hushed silence that hung about her with his clumsy pity, but soon he would go to her and say, “Do not be sad. Sadness is an ugly thing, believe me. I cannot give you what he gave you, perhaps, but here is the heart from my body. It is cold and hard and empty; take it in your hands, and warm it. My need of you is greater than your need of him—you can not leave me.” He would say that to her, after a little while.

The gray kitten touched her black skirt with its paw, and she caught it up swiftly, and laid her cheek against its fur. It was no longer the round puff that she had first smiled on, but it was still soft—it still purred. She put it down very gently, and rose, looking about her as on that first day; at the place where the fire had burned in the corner, at the pansies, jaded and drooping in their green pots; once again her eyes swept by Benedick as though he were not there. They lingered on Geneviève for a moment, and when they met Jules’ anxious, faithful gaze she parted her lips as though to speak, and gave it up with a little shake of her head, and smiled instead—a piteous and a lovely smile—and she was gone....

He never saw her again. That was not a hundred years ago—no, and it was not yesterday; the steel has come into his hair and his eyes since then, but sometimes he still goes to Raoul’s to lunch, and sits at the corner table, where he can see the brown door. Who can tell when it might open and let in the spring—who can tell what day might find her standing there once more, with her gay eyes and her tilted lips and the sunlight dancing in her hair?

Benedick’s best friend and his worst enemy and the world and his pretty sister-in-law are very wise, no doubt, but once—once there was a lady—— He never touched the tip of her fingers, but she was the only lady that Benedick ever loved.

LONG DISTANCE

Devon snapped the stub of his cigarette into the fire with a movement of amused impatience, his fingers more eloquent than his thin, impassive countenance.

“Nothing, was it?”

“No, nothing—that unspeakable wind.” Anne Carver gave a last reluctant glance over her shoulder into the shadowed hall, and pulled the door to behind her, turning her face to the warm, bright room with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry, Hal; it’s outrageous of me—right in the middle of that thrilling story, too.”

In spite of her slim height and the sophisticated skill with which she had wound her velvety black hair about her small head—in spite of the length of filmy train that swept behind her, she looked like some charming and contrite child as she came slowly across the room to the deep chintz chair and the dancing warmth of the fire.

“But it’s nonsense, my dear girl; sheer, unmitigated nonsense! Here you are spoiling what might have been a delightful evening by working yourself up into a magnificent state of nerves, and over what, I ask you? Over nothing, over less than nothing! Poor old Derry telephones that he won’t be able to get out to-night because he’s been dragged in on some fool party, and you apparently interpret it into meaning that you’re never going to lay eyes on him again in this world. You’ve been restless as a witch all evening—every time a door’s slammed or a latch has rattled you’ve fairly leapt out of your skin; and permit me to inform you that you’re getting me so that I’m about to start leaping, too. Nice, cheerful atmosphere for the stranger within your gates, my child.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Hal. I’ll be good, truly. It’s only that——”

“Only what, for the love of Heaven? You aren’t expecting him back to-night, are you?”

“Well, of course, I know that he said he couldn’t possibly manage it, but he might—he can manage anything. And he wanted so dreadfully to see you; it’s been years, hasn’t it?”

“Three,” replied Devon concisely.

“Well, you see! And of course he’d want to see me dreadfully, because it’s been years since he’s seen me, too; we have breakfast at half-past seven. Isn’t that hideous? It takes him an hour to get into town; I do hate that. A whole hour away—think of it——”

“Anne, I blush for you; I do indeed. It’s embarrassing for any well-behaved bachelor to hear you talk. It’s sinful to lavish that amount of devotion on any man that lives.”

“Not on Derry.” The clear face was a little flushed, but the shining eyes met his unwaveringly. “You lavish it, too, Hal! I used to be bored to distraction by the tales that you’d pour out for hours on end about the fabulous student who was on his way back from Paris to spread havoc amongst the maidens of America. I used to laugh at you—remember?”

“Of course I remember.” The dark, ironic face was suddenly touched with a very charming smile. “That first evening that I brought him over after supper, and he talked until a quarter to one until he had everyone as excited as he was about things that we actually wouldn’t give a snap of our fingers for; I can see him standing by the mantel now, with every golden hair on his head ruffled up, and those crazy sherry-coloured eyes of his half mad with excitement, ranting like a Frenchman and laughing like a lunatic—I can see you with your face tilted up to him, forgetting that any of the rest of us were alive—— You had on a gray dress and someone had sent you white flowers, and you were wearing a long string of green beads that hung to your knees——”

“Hal, you’re making that up! Four years——”

“Is four years too long to remember green beads and white flowers? Perhaps you’re right! But it isn’t too long to remember Derry’s voice when he told us about the night that he and the drunken cab driver spent in the Louvre, is it? Shades of Gargantua, how that kid could laugh! After all, there’s never been any one else just like him, has there?”

“Not ever—oh, not ever. It’s the cruellest shame that he couldn’t be here now; he’d love it so, and you could have such a beautiful time reminiscing—oh, I can’t bear having him away on a night like this. When I went to the door just then those trees by the gate were straining like dogs on a leash, and the wind had wrenched a great branch off the lilac bush. I do hate November! And the rain like gray floods—and so cold, Hal. He oughtn’t to be out in that, truly. He ought to be here where he could play with us, where it’s warm and kind and—safe. Do you suppose they were motoring?”

“I don’t suppose anything at all. My dear girl, you aren’t going to start that all over again?”

“Ah, it’s frightfully silly, I know. Old married people—three-year-old married people—they oughtn’t to mind things like that. But it’s the first time that he’s been away all night, and I’m—oh, I’m ridiculous. Scold me, scold me hard!”

“You’re a very difficult person to scold, all things considered. It’s those unprincipled eyelashes, probably. First time in three years, honestly, Anne? Good Lord, it’s unbelievable!”

“Hal!”

“Well, but my good child! Long Island and the twentieth century and the tottering state of holy matrimony—it’s simply defying the laws of gravity! Do you sit here hanging the crane every night of your lives?”

“Oh, Hal, you lovely idiot! Of course we don’t; we go out any amount and have people here a lot, and go in town, too. Only we happen to like each other—rather—and to like to play together—rather—so we just go ahead and do it. It’s simply happened that up to now nothing turned up that we couldn’t do together; of course it was bound to happen sooner or later. Of course I know that, Hal.” She leaned forward, the firelight painting flying shadows on the vivid, high-bred little face. “But I’m an utter goose about Derry. I feel empty when he isn’t around, and I don’t care who knows it.”

“A bit hard on the rest of us, isn’t it? Still, if it’s the same Derry that I practically bestowed on you at the altar I’m rather inclined to get your point of view. Not changed for the worse?”

“Changed for the better, thank you!” laughed Derry’s wife. “Better and better and better every minute, once removed from your sinister influence.” She smiled her gay affection at him, and then suddenly the smile wavered, faded—she sprang to her feet, trailing her blue-green draperies over to the long window.

“Don’t you hate that noise, Hal? No, listen. The rain’s out to drown the world, and that wind——” She shivered, staring out into the menacing blackness, raging like a wild beast on the other side of the lighted window. “Poor Hal, it’s going to be simply awful for you! It’s a good ten minutes’ walk to the club, and these back roads turn into mud soup if it even showers! I do think it’s a wicked shame.”

“Perhaps I’d better be getting on my way——”

“No, no!” There was a note of sheer panic in her voice, though she laughed it down valiantly. “Why, it can’t be eleven, and he isn’t going to call up till twelve. You simply have to entertain me; I won’t be abandoned yet. No, I mean it. Let’s start again—about Brazil. You were telling me about Brazil——”

“You aren’t even remotely interested in Brazil,” he accused. “But I’ll talk to you about any place from Peoria to Patagonia, if you’ll stop wandering about like a lost soul, and come back to the fire, like a good child.”

“Yes,” replied the good child obediently, dropping the curtain. “Does—does it seem cold to you in here, Hal?”

“Cold? It’s heavenly warm; if I were a cat I’d purr for you.”

“It feels—cold, to me,” said Anne Carver, spreading her hands before the leaping flames. “As though the wind had got in through the window somehow, and into my blood—and into my bones——”

“Nonsense,” said Devon sharply. “You got chilled standing over there; you’re an unconscionable goose, and I’m beginning to be strongly out of patience with you. Sit down and put your feet on the fender—want something over your shoulders?”

She shook her head, holding her hands closer to the fire.

“No, please—I’d rather not sit down just yet. It was the window, of course. Don’t be cross; I do want to hear the rest of that about Brazil. Some day I’m going there; some day I’m going to find a country where there’s no such time as autumn—no such month as November, full of dead leaves, and wind and cold—and emptiness. Tell me what’s prettiest there; there must be so many pretty things? Birds with shining feathers—butterflies like flowers—flowers like butterflies—gold like sunshine and sunshine like gold—oh, I’m warmer just for thinking of it! Tell me what was prettiest?”

“I saw nothing half so pretty as a lady with the lamplight falling about her, bending over pansies black as her hair in a bowl green as her eyes.”

“Oh!” She straightened swiftly, giving the flowers a last friendly touch, and facing him, lightly flushed, lightly reproachful. “Green, Hal? That’s not pretty at all—and it stands for something shameful.”

Devon raised quizzical eyebrows.

“Never felt the honest pangs of jealousy, Anne?”

“But how could I, even if I were capable of such cheapness and ugliness? I’ve never in my life cared for any one but Derry.”

“And Derry, lovely lady, would never give you cause?”

“Derry?” The startled incredulity of that cry rang into clear mirth. “Why, Hal, it may be difficult for you to believe, but Derry loves me.”

Devon tapped the ashes off his cigarette, and sat staring for a moment at the reddened tip.

“It doesn’t precisely strain my credulity to the breaking point,” he replied drily. “No, I can imagine that Derry might love you. It hardly requires any colossal stretch of imagination on my part, either. I’ve loved you myself for thirteen years.”

“Hal!”

“Loved you with every drop of blood in my body. There’s no use looking stricken and melodramatic, Anne. I’ve never worried you much about it, have I?”

“No,” she whispered voicelessly.

“No. Well, then, don’t worry me about it now, there’s a good girl. I’m off for Ceylon to-morrow, and I haven’t the most remote intention of making a nuisance of myself to-night. You don’t have to remind me of the fact that Derry’s my best friend, that I was his best man, that you are his wife. I have an excellent memory for such trifling details myself. It’s only fair to add, however, that I wouldn’t give a tuppenny damn for the whole collection if it weren’t for one other.”