"I think there is such a thing as happiness in the world, and that when you see someone who might be happy, missing the chance of it, it's a pity. That's all."
Then I said:
"You want other people to want things."
"Other people? Yes," she said. "Quite dreadfully I want it."
At that moment Mrs. Lennox came up to us and said:
"I have won five hundred francs, and I had the courage to leave the Casino. I can't think what has happened to Jean. I have been looking for her the whole evening." I left them and went into the hotel.
It was the morning after the conversation I had with Mrs. Summer that I received a message from Miss Brandon. She wanted to speak to me. Could I be, about five o'clock, at the end of the alley? I was punctual at the rendezvous.
"I wanted to have a talk," she said, "to-day, if possible, because to-morrow Aunt Netty has organized an expedition to the lakes, and the day after we are all going to the races, so I didn't know when I should see you again."
"But you are not going away yet, are you?" I asked.
No, they were not going away, they would very likely stay on till the end of July. Then there was an idea of Switzerland; or perhaps the Mozart festival at Munich, followed by a week at Bayreuth. Mr. Rudd was going to Bayreuth, and had convinced Mrs. Lennox that she was a Wagnerite.
"I thought you couldn't be going away yet—but one never knows, here people disappear so suddenly, and I wanted to see you so particularly and at once. You are going to finish your cure?"
I said my time limit was another fortnight. After that I was going back to my villa at Cadenabbia.
"Shall you come here next year?"
I said it depended on my doctor. I asked her her plans.
"I don't think I shall come back next year."
There was a slight note of suppressed exultation in her voice. I asked whether Mrs. Lennox was tired of Haréville.
"Aunt Netty loves it, better than ever. Mr. Rudd has promised her to come too."
There was a long pause.
"I can't bear it any longer," she said at last.
"Haréville?"
"Haréville and all of it—everything."
There was another long pause. She broke it.
"You talked to Mabel Summer yesterday?"
I said we had had a long talk.
"I'm sure you liked her?"
I said I had found her delightful.
"She's my oldest friend, although she's older than I am. Poor Mabel, she's had a very unhappy life."
I said one felt in her the sympathy that came from experience.
"Oh yes, she's so brave; she's wonderful."
I said I supposed she'd had great disappointments.
"More than that. Tragedies. One thing after another."
I asked whether she had any children.
"Her two little girls both died when they were babies. But it wasn't that. She'll tell you all about it, perhaps, some day."
I said I doubted whether we would ever meet again.
"Mabel always keeps up with everybody she makes friends with. She doesn't often make new friends. She told me she had made two new friends here. You and Kranitski."
"She likes him?" I said.
"She likes him very much. She's very fastidious, very hard to please, very critical."
I said everyone seemed to like Kranitski.
"Aunt Netty says he's commonplace, but that's because Mr. Rudd said he was commonplace."
I said Rudd always had theories about people.
"You like Mr. Rudd?" she asked.
I said I did, and reminded her that she had told me she did.
"If you want to know the truth," she said, "I don't. I think he's awful." She laughed. "Isn't it funny? A week ago I would have rather died than admit this to you, but now I don't care. Of course I know he's a good writer and clever and subtle, and all that—but I've come to the conclusion——"
"To what conclusion?"
"Well, that I don't—that I like the other sort of people better."
"The stupid people?"
"No."
"The clever people?"
"No."
"What people?"
"I don't know. Nice people."
"People like——"
"People like Mabel Summer and Princess Kouragine," she interrupted.
"They are both very clever, I think," I said.
"Yes, but it's not that that matters."
I said I thought intelligence mattered a great deal.
"When it's natural," she said.
"Do you think people can become religious if they're not?" she asked suddenly.
I said that I didn't feel that I could, but it certainly did happen to some people.
"I'm afraid it will never happen to me," she said. "I used to hope it might never happen, but now I hope the opposite. Last night, after you went in, Aunt Netty took us to the café, and we all sat there: Mr. Rudd, Mabel, a Frenchman whose name I don't know, and M. Kranitski. The Frenchman was talking about China, and said he had stayed with a French priest there. The priest had asked him why he didn't go to Mass. The Frenchman said he had no faith. The priest had said it was quite simple, he had only to pray to the Sainte Vierge for faith,Mon enfant, c'est bien simple: il faut demander la foi à la Sainte Vierge.He said this, imitating the priest, in a falsetto voice. They all laughed except M. Kranitski, who said, seriously, 'Of course, you should ask the Sainte Vierge.' When the Frenchman and M. Kranitski went away, Mr. Rudd said that in matters of religion Russians were childish, and that M. Kranitski has asimplistemind."
I said that Kranitski was obviously religious.
"Yes," she said, "but to be like that, one must be born like that."
I said that curious explosions often happened to people. I had heard people talk of divine dynamite.
"Yes, but not to the people who want them to happen."
I said perhaps the method of the French priest in China was the best.
"Yes, if only one could do it—I can't."
I said that I felt as she did about these things.
"I know so many people who are just in the same state," she said. "Perhaps it's like wishing to be musical when one isn't. But after all onedoeschange, doesn't one?"
I said some people did, certainly. When one was in one frame of mind one couldn't imagine what it would be like to be in another.
"Yes," she said, "but I suppose there's a difference between being in one frame of mind and not wishing ever to be in another, and in being in the same frame of mind but longing to be in another."
I asked if she knew how long Kranitski was going to stay at Haréville.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, "it all depends."
"On his health?"
"I don't think so. He's quite well."
"Religion must be all or nothing," I said, going back to the topic.
"Yes, of course."
"If I was religious I should——"
She interrupted me in the middle of my sentence.
"Mr. Rudd is writing a book," she said. "Aunt Netty asked him what it was about, and he said it was going to be a private book, a book that he would only write in his holidays for his own amusement. She asked him whether he had begun it. He said he was only planning it, but he had got an idea. He doesn't like Mabel Summer. He thinks she is laughing at him. She isn't really, but she sees through him. I don't mean he pretends to be anything he isn't, but she sees all there is to see, and no more. He likes one to see more. Aunt Netty sees a great deal more. I see less probably. I'm unfair to him, I know. I know I'm very intolerant. You are so tolerant."
I said I wasn't really, but kept my intolerances to myself out of policy. It was a prudent policy for one in my position.
"Mr. Rudd adores you," she said. "He says you are so acute, so sensitive and so sensible."
I said I was a good listener.
"Has he told you about his book?"
I said that he had told me what he had told them.
"M. Kranitski has such a funny idea about it," she said.
I asked what the idea was.
"He thinks he is writing a book about all of us."
"Who is the heroine?" I asked.
"Mabel—I think," she said. "She's so pretty. Mr. Rudd admires her. He said she was like a Tanagra, and I can see she puzzles him. He's afraid of her."
"And who is the hero?" I asked.
"I can't imagine," she said. "I expect he has invented one."
"Why is the book private?"
"Because it's about real people."
"Then we may all of us be in it?"
"Yes."
"What made Kranitski think that?" I asked.
"The way he discusses all our characters. Each person who isn't there with all the others who are there. For instance, he discusses Princess Kouragine with Aunt Netty, and Mabel with Princess Kouragine, and you with all of us; and M. Kranitski says he talks about people like a stage manager settling what actors must be cast for a particular play. He checks what one person tells him with what the others say. I have noticed it myself. He talked to me for hours about Mabel one day, and after he had discussed Princess Kouragine with us, he asked Mabel what she thought of her. That is to say, he told her what he thought, and then asked her if she agreed. I don't think he listened to what she said. He hardly ever listens. He talks in monologues. But there must be someone there to listen."
"You have left out one of the characters," I said.
"Have I?"
"The most important one."
"The hero?"
"And the heroine."
"He's sure to invent those."
"I'm not so sure, I think you have left out the most important character."
"I don't think so."
"I mean yourself."
"Oh no, that's nonsense; he never pays any attention to me at all. He doesn't talk about me to Aunt Netty or to the others."
"Perhaps he has made up his mind."
"Yes," she said slowly, "that's just it. He has made up his mind. He thinks I'm a—well, just a lay figure."
I said I was certain she would not be left out if he was writing that kind of book.
She laughed happily—so happily that I imagined her looking radiant and felt that the lamp was lit. I asked her why she was laughing.
"I'm laughing," she said, "because in one sense my novel is over—with the ordinary happy, conventional ending—the reason I wanted to talk to you to-day was to tell you——"
At that moment Mrs. Lennox joined us. Miss Brandon's voice passed quite naturally into another key, as she said:
"Here is Aunt Netty."
"I have been looking for you everywhere," said Mrs. Lennox, "I've got a headache, and we've so many letters to write. When we've done them you can watch me doing my patience."
She said these last words as if she was conferring an undeserved reward on a truant child.
Later on in the evening, about six o'clock, as I was drinking a glass of water in the Pavilion, someone nearly ran into me and was saved from doing so by the intervention of a stranger who saw at once I was blind, although the other person had not noticed it. He shepherded me away from the danger and apologized. He said he supposed I was an Englishman, and that he was one too. He told me his name was Canning. We talked a little. He asked me if I was staying at theSplendide. I said I was. He said he had hoped to meet some friends of his, who he had understood were staying there too, but he could not find their names on the list of visitors. A Mrs. Lennox, he said, and her niece, Miss Brandon. Did I know them? I told him they were staying at the hotel; not at the hotel proper, but at the annexe, which was a separate building. I described to him where it was. The man's voice struck me. It was so gentle, so courteous, with a tinge of melancholy in it. I asked him if he was taking the waters? He said he hadn't settled. He liked watering places. Then our brief conversation came to an end.
After dinner, Rudd fetched me and I joined the group. I was introduced to the stranger I met in the morning: Captain Canning they called him. Mrs. Summer and Princess Kouragine were sitting with them. They all talked a great deal, except Miss Brandon, who said little, and Captain Canning who said nothing.
The next morning Kranitski met me at the Pavilion, and we talked a great deal. He was in high spirits and looking forward to an expedition to the lakes which Mrs. Lennox had organized. He was going with her, Miss Brandon and others. While we were sitting on a seat in theGaleriesthe postman went by with the letters. There was a letter for Kranitski, and he asked me if I minded his reading it. He read it. There was a silence and then suddenly he laughed: a short rather mirthless chuckle. We neither of us said anything for a moment, and I felt, I knew, something had happened. There was a curious strain in his voice which seemed to come from another place, as he said: "It is time for my douche. I shall be late. I will see you this evening." He then left me. I saw nobody for the rest of the day.
The next day I saw some of the group in the morning just beforedéjeuner. Rudd read out a short story to us from a magazine. After luncheon Rudd came up to my room. He wished to have a talk. He had been so busy lately.
"With your book?" I asked.
"No. I have had no time to touch it," he said. "It's all simmering in my mind. I daresay I shall never write it at all."
I asked him who Captain Canning was. He knew all about him. He was the young man who had once been engaged to Miss Brandon, so Mrs. Lennox had told him. But it was quite obvious that he no longer cared for her.
"Then why did he come here?" I asked.
"He caught fever in India and wanted to consult Doctor Sabran, the great malaria expert here. He was not staying on. He was going away in a few days' time. That was one reason. There was another. Donna Maria Alberti, the beautiful Italian, had been here for a night on her way to Italy. Canning had met her in Africa and was said to be devoted to her."
I asked him why he thought Canning no longer cared for Miss Brandon.
"Because," he said, "if he did he would propose to her at once."
"But money," I said.
That was all right now. His uncle had died. He was quite well off. He could marry if he wanted to. He had not paid the slightest attention to Miss Brandon.
"And she?" I asked.
"He is a different person now to what he was, but she is the same. She accepts the fact."
"But does she love anyone else?"
"Oh! that——"
"Is 'another story'?" I said.
"Quite a different story," he said gravely.
Rudd then left me. He was going out with Mrs. Lennox. Not long after he had gone, Canning himself came and talked to me. He said he was not staying long. He had not much leave and there was a great deal he must do in England. He had come here to see a special doctor who was supposed to know all about malaria. But he had found this doctor was no longer here. He had meant to have a holiday, as he liked watering-places—they amused him—but he found he had had so much to do in England. He kept on getting so many business letters that he would have to go away much sooner than he intended. He was going back to South Africa at the end of the month.
"I have still got another year out there," he said. "After that I shall take up the career of a farmer in England, unless I settle in Africa altogether. It is a wonderful place. I have been so much away that I hardly feel at home in England now. At least, I think I shall hardly feel at home there. I only passed through London on my way out here."
I told him that if he ever came to Italy he must stay with me at Cadenabbia. He said he would like to come to Italy. He had several Italian friends. One of them, Donna Maria Alberti, had been here yesterday, but she had gone. He sat for some time with me, but he did not talk much.
After dinner I found the usual group, all but Miss Brandon who had got a headache, and Kranitski who was playing in the Casino. Canning joined us for a moment, but he did not stay long.
The next day I saw nothing of any of the group. There were races going on not far off, and I had gathered that Mrs. Lennox was going to these.
It was two or three days after this that Kranitski came up to my room at ten o'clock in the morning, and asked whether he could see me. He said he wanted to say "Good-bye," as he was going away.
"My plans have been changed," he said. "I am going to London, and then probably to South Africa at the end of the month. I have been making the acquaintance of that nice Englishman, Canning. I am going with him."
"Just for the sea voyage?" I asked.
"No; I shall stay there for a long time. I amEuropamüde, if you know what that means—tired of Europe."
"And of Russia?" I asked.
"Most of all of Russia," he said.
"I want to tell you one thing," he went on. "After our meeting the other day I have been thinking you might think wrong. You are what we call in Russia verychutki, with a very keen scent in impressions. I want you not to misjudge. You may be thinking the obstacle has come back. It hasn't. I am free as air, as empty air. That is what I have been wanting to tell you. If you are understanding, well and good. If you are not understanding, I can tell you no more. I have enjoyed our acquaintance. We have not been knowing each other much, yet I know you very well now. I want to thank you and go."
I asked him if he would like letters. I said I wrote letters on a typewriter.
He said he would. I told him he could write to me if he didn't mind letters being read out. My sister generally read my letters to me. She stayed with me whenever she could at Cadenabbia. But now she was busy.
He said he would write. He didn't mind who read his letters. I told him I lived all the year in Italy, and very seldom saw anyone, so that I should have little news to send him. "Tell me what you are thinking," he said. "That is all the news I want."
I asked if there was anything else I could do for him. He said, "Yes, send me any books that Mr. Rudd writes. They would interest me."
I promised him I would do this. Then he said "Good-bye." He went away by the seven o'clock train.
That evening I saw no one. The next morning I learnt that Canning had gone too.
Rudd came up to my rooms to see me, but I told Henry I was not well and he did not let him come in.
The next morning I talked to Princess Kouragine at the door of the hotel. She was just leaving. I asked after Miss Brandon.
"They have gone," said the Princess. "They went last night to Paris. They are going to Munich and then to Bayreuth. Jean asked me to say 'Good-bye' to you. She said she hopes you will come here next year."
"Has Rudd gone with them?" I asked.
"He will meet them at Bayreuth later. He does not love Mozart. And there is a Mozart festival at Munich."
I asked after Miss Brandon.
"The same as before," said the Princess. "The lamp was lit for a moment, but they put it out. It is a pity. The man behaved well."
At that moment we were interrupted. I wanted to ask her a great deal more. But the motor-bus drove up to the door. She said "Good-bye" to me. She was going to Paris. She would spend the winter at Rome.
In the afternoon I saw Mrs. Summer, but only for a moment. She told me Miss Brandon had sent me a lot of messages, and I wanted to ask her what had happened and how things stood, but she had an engagement. We arranged to meet and have a long talk the next morning.
But when the next morning came, I got a message from her, saying she had been obliged to go to London at once to meet her husband.
A little later in the day, I received a letter by post from my unmarried sister, saying she would meet me in Paris and we could both go back to Italy together. So I decided to do this. I saw Rudd once before I left. He dined with me on my last night. He said that his holiday was shortly coming to an end. He would spend three days at Bayreuth and then he would go back to work.
"On the Sleeping Beauty?" I asked.
"No, not on that." He doubted whether he would ever touch that again. The idea of it had been only a holiday amusement at first. "But now," he said, "the idea has grown. If I do it, it will have to be a real book, even if only a short one, anouvelle.The idea is a fascinating one. The Sleeping Beauty awake and changed in an alien world. Perhaps I may do it some day. If I do, I will send it to you. In any case I was right about Miss Brandon. She would be a better heroine for a fairy tale than for a modern story. She is too emotionless, too calm for a modern novel."
"I have got another idea," he went on, "I am thinking of writing a story about a woman who looked as delicate as a flower, and who crushed those who came into contact with her and destroyed those who loved her. The idea is only a shadow as yet. But it may come to something. In any case I must do some regular work at once. I have had a long enough holiday. I have been wasting my time. I have enjoyed it, it has done me good, and conversations are never wasted, as they are the breeding ground of ideas. Sometimes the ideas do not flower for years. But the seed is sown in talk. I am grateful to you too, and I hope I shall meet you here again next year. I can't invent anything unless I am in sympathetic surroundings."
The next day I left Haréville and met my sister in Paris. We travelled to Cadenabbia together.
Two years after I had written these few chapters, I was sent once more to Haréville. Again I went early in the season. There was nobody left of the old group I had known during my first visit. Mrs. Lennox and her niece were not there, and they were not expected. They had spent some months at Haréville the preceding year.
I had spent the intervening time in Italy. I had heard once or twice from Mrs. Summer, and sometimes from Kranitski. He had gone to South Africa with Canning and had stayed there He liked the country. Miss Brandon was not yet married. Princess Kouragine I had not seen again. Rudd I had neither heard from nor of. Apparently he had published one book since he had been to Haréville and several short stories in magazines. The book was calledThe Silver Sandal, and had nothing to do with any of his experiences here or with any of the fancies which they had called up. It was, on the contrary, a semi-historical romance of a fantastic nature.
During the first days of my stay here I made no acquaintances, and I was already counting on a dreary three weeks of unrelieved dullness when my doctor here introduced me to Sabran, the malaria specialist, who had been away during my first cure.
Dr. Sabran, besides being a specialist with a reverberating reputation and a widely travelled man of great experience and European culture, had a different side to his nature which was not even suspected by many of his patients.
Under the pseudonym of Gaspard Lautrec he had written some charming stories and some interesting studies in art and literature. Historical questions interested him; and still more, the quainter facts of human nature, psychological puzzles, mysterious episodes, unvisited by-ways, and baffling and unsolved problems in history, romance and everyday life. He was a voracious reader, and there was little that had escaped his notice in the contemporary literature of Europe.
I found him an extraordinarily interesting companion, and he was kind enough, busy as I knew him to be, either to come and see me daily, or to invite me to his house. I often dined with him, and we would remain talking in his sitting-room till late in the night, while he would tell me of some of the remarkable things that had come under his notice or sometimes weave startling and paradoxical theories about nature and man.
I asked him one day if he knew Rudd's work. He said he admired it, but it had always struck him as strange that a writer could be as intelligent as Rudd and yet, at the same time, so obviouslyà côtéwith regard to some of the more important springs and factors of human nature.
I asked him what made him think that.
"All his books," he said, "any of them. I have just been reading his last book in the Tauchnitz edition, a book of stories, not short stories:nouvelles. It is calledUnfinished Dramas. I will lend it you if you like."
We talked of other things, and I took the book away with me when I went away. The next day I received a letter from Rudd, sending me a privately printed story (one of 500 signed copies) calledOverlooked, which, he said, completed the series of his "Unfinished Dramas," but which he had not published for reasons which I would understand.
Henry read out Rudd's new book to me. There were three stories in the book. They did not interest me greatly, and I made Henry hurry through them; but the privately printed storyOverlookedwas none other than the story he had thought of writing when we were at Haréville together.
He had written the story more or less as he had said he had intended to. All the characters of our old group were in it. Miss Brandon was the centre, and Kranitski appeared, not as a Swede but as a Russian. I myself flitted across the scene for a moment.
The facts which he related were as far as I knew actually those which had occurred to that group of people during their stay at Haréville two years ago, but the deductions he drew from them, the causes he gave as explaining them, seemed to me at least wide of the mark.
His conception of such of his characters as I knew at all well, and his interpretation of their motives were, in the cases in which I had the power of checking them by my own experience, I considered quite fantastically wrong.
When I had finished reading the book, I sent it to Sabran, and with it the MS. I had written two years ago, and I begged the doctor to read what I had written and to let me know when he had done so, so that we might discuss both the documents and their relation one to the other and to the reality.
(Note.—Here, in the bound copy of Anthony Kay's Papers, follows the story calledOverlooked,by James Rudd.)
It was the after-luncheon hour at Saint-Yves-les-Bains. The Pavilion, with its large tepid glass dome and polished brass fountains, where the salutary, and somewhat steely, waters flowed unceasingly, the Pompeian pillared "Galeries" were deserted; so were the trim park with its kiosk, where a scanty orchestra played rag-time in the morning and in the evenings; the florid Casino, which denoted the third of the three styles of architecture that distinguished the appendages of the Hôtel de La Source, where a dignified, shabby, white Louis-Philippe nucleus was still to be detected half-concealed and altogether overwhelmed by the elegant improvements and dainty enlargements of the Second Empire and the over-ripeArt Nouveauexcrescences of a later period.
Kathleen Farrel had the park to herself. She was reading theMorning Post, which her aunt, Mrs. Knolles, took in for the literary articles, and which you would find on her table side by side with newspapers and journals of a widely different and sometimes, indeed, of a startling and flamboyant character; for Mrs. Knolles was catholic in her ideas and daring in her tastes.
Kathleen Farrel was reading listlessly without interest. She had lived so much abroad that English news had little attraction for her, and she was no longer young enough to regret missing any of the receptions, race-meetings, garden-parties, and other social events which she was idly skimming the record of. For it was now the height of the London season, but Mrs. Knolles had let the London house in Hill Street. She always let it every summer, and in the winter as well, whenever she could find a tenant.
A paragraph had caught Kathleen's eye and had arrested her attention. It began thus: "The death has occurred at Monks-well Hall of Sir James Stukely."
Sir James Stukely was Lancelot Stukely's uncle. Lancelot would inherit the baronetcy and a comfortable income. He had left the army some years ago. He was at present abroad, performing some kind of secretarial duties to the Governor of Malta. He would give up that job, which was neither lucrative nor interesting, he would come home, and then——
At any rate, he had not altogether forgotten her. His monthly letters proved that. They had been unfailingly regular. Only—well, for the last year they had been undefinably different. Ever since that visit to Cairo. She had heard stories of an attachment, a handsome Italian lady, who looked like a Renaissance picture and who was said to be unscrupulous. But she really knew nothing, and Lancelot had always been so reserved, so reticent; his letters had always been so bald, almost formal, ever since their brief engagement six years before had been broken off. Ever since that memorable night in Ireland when she confessed to her father, who was more than usually violent and had drunk an extra glass of old Madeira, that she had refused to marry Lancelot. At first she had asked him not to write, and he had dutifully accepted the restriction. But later, when her father died, he had written to her and she had answered his letter. Since then he had written once a month without fail from India, where his regiment had been quartered, and then from Malta. But never had there been a single allusion to the past or to the future. The tone of them would be: "Dear Miss Farrel, We are having very good sport." Or "Dear Miss Farrel, We went to the opera last night. It was too classical for me." And they had always ended: "Yours sincerely, Lancelot Stukely."
And yet she could not believe he was really different. Was she different? "Am I perhaps different?" she thought. She dismissed the idea. What had happened to make her different? Nothing. For the last five years, ever since her father had died, she had lived the same life. The winter at her aunt's villa at Bordighera, sometimes a week or two at Florence, the summer at Saint-Yves-les-Bains, where they lived in the hotel, on special terms, as Mrs. Knolles was such a constant client. Never a new note, always the same gang of people round them; the fashionable cosmopolitan world of continental watering-places, the English and foreign colonies of the Riviera and North Italy. She had never met anyone who had roused her interest, and the only persons whose attention she had seemed to attract were, in her Aunt Elsie's words, "frankly impossible."
She would be thirty next year. She already felt infinitely older. "But perhaps," she thought, "he will come back the same as he was before. He will propose and I will accept him this time." Why had she refused him? Their financial situation—her poverty and his own very small income had had nothing to do with it, because Lancelot had said he was willing to wait for years, and everyone knew he had expectations. She could not have left her father, but then her father died a year after she refused Lancelot.
No, the reason had been that she thought she did not love him. She had liked Lancelot, but she hoped for something more and something different. A fairy prince who would wake her to a different life. As soon as he had gone away, and still more when his series of formal letters began, she realized that she had made a mistake, and she had never ceased to repent her action. The fact was, she said to herself, I was too young to make such a decision. I did not know my own mind. If only he had come back when father died. If only he had been a little more insistent. He had accepted everything without a murmur. And yet now she felt certain he had been faithful and was faithful still, whatever anyone might say to the contrary.
"Perhaps I am altered," she thought. "Perhaps he won't even recognize me." And yet she knew she did not believe this. For although her Aunt Elsie used to be seriously anxious about her niece's looks—fearing anaemia, so much so that they sometimes visited dreary places on the sea-coasts of England and France—she knew her looks had not altered sensibly. People still stared at her when she entered a room, for although there was nothing classical nor brilliant about her features and her appearance, hers was a face you could not fail to observe and which it was difficult to forget. It was a face that appealed to artists. They would have liked to try and paint that clear white, delicate skin, and those extraordinarily haunting round eyes which looked violet in some lights and a deep sea-blue in others, and to try and render the romantic childish glamour of her person, that wistful, fairy-tale-like expression. It was extraordinary that with such an appearance she should have been the inspirer of no romance, but so it was. Painters had admired her; one or two adventurers had proposed to her; but with the exception of Lancelot Stukely no one had fallen in love with her. Perhaps she had frightened people. She could not make conversation. She did not care for books. She knew nothing of art, and the people her aunt saw—most of whom were foreigners—talked glibly and sometimes wittily of all these things.
Kathleen had been born for a country life, and she was condemned to live in cities and in watering-places. She was insular; though she had lived a great deal in Ireland, she was not Irish, and she had been cast for a continental part. She was matter-of-fact, and her appearance promised the opposite. She was in a sense the victim of her looks, which were so misleading.
But perhaps the solution, the real solution of the absence of romance, or even of suitors, was to be found in her unconquerable listlessness and apathy. She was, as it were, only half-alive.
Once, when she was a little girl, she had gone to pick flowers in the great dark wood near her home, where the trees had huge fantastic trunks, and gnarled boles, and where in the spring-time the blue-bells stretched beneath them like an unbroken blue sea. After she had been picking blue-bells for nearly an hour, she had felt sleepy. She lay down under the trunk of a tree. A gipsy passed her and asked to tell her fortune. She had waved her away, as she had no sympathy with gipsies. The gipsy had said that she would give her a piece of good advice unasked, and that was, not to go to sleep in the forest on the Eve of St. John, for if she did she would never wake. She paid no attention to this, and she dozed off to sleep and slept for about half-an-hour. She was an obstinate child, and not at all superstitious. When she got home, she asked the housekeeper when was the Eve of St. John. It happened to fall on that very day. She said to herself that this proved what nonsense the gipsies talked, as she had slept, woken up, come back to the house, and had high tea in the schoolroom as usual. She never gave the incident another thought; but the housekeeper, who was superstitious, told one of the maids that Miss Kathleen had beenoverlookedby the fairy-folk and would never be quite the same again. When she was asked for further explanations, she would not give any. But to all outward appearances Kathleen was the same, and nobody noticed any difference in her, nor did she feel that she had suffered any change.
As long as she had lived with her father in Ireland, she had been fairly lively. She had enjoyed out-door life. The house, a ramshackle, Georgian grey building, was near the sea, and her father who had been a sailor used sometimes to take her out sailing. She had ridden and sometimes hunted. All this she had enjoyed. It was only after she dismissed Lancelot, who had known her ever since she was sixteen, that the mist of apathy had descended on her. After her father's death, this mist had increased in thickness, and when her continental life with her aunt had began, she had altogether lost any particle ofjoie de vivreshe had ever had. Nor did she seem to notice it or to regret the past. She never complained. She accepted her aunt's plans and decisions, and never made any objection, never even a suggestion or a comment.
Her aunt was truly fond of her, and she tried to devise treats to please her, and tried to awaken her interest in things. One year she had taken Kathleen to Bayreuth, hoping to rouse her interest in music, but Kathleen had found the music tedious and noisy, although she listened to it without complaining, and when her aunt suggested going there another year, she agreed to the suggestion with alacrity. The only thing which ever roused her interest was horse-racing. Sometimes they went to the races near Saint-Yves, and then Kathleen would become a different girl. She would be, as long as the racing lasted, alive for the time being, and sink back into her dreamless apathy as soon as they were over.
At the same time, whenever she thought of Lancelot Stukely she felt a pang of regret, and after reading this paragraph in theMorning Post, she hoped, more than ever she had hoped before, that he would come back, and come back unchanged and faithful, and that she would be the same for him as she had been before, and that she would once more be able to make his slow honest eyes light up and smoulder with love, admiration and passion.
"This time I will not make the same mistake," she said to herself. "If he gives me the chance——"
Her reverie was interrupted by the approach of an hotel acquaintance. It was Anikin, the Russian, who had in the last month become an accepted and established factor in their small group of hotel acquaintances. Kathleen had met him first some years ago at Rome, but it was only at Saint-Yves that she had come to know him.
As he took off his hat in a hesitating manner, as if afraid of interrupting her thoughts, she registered the fact that she knew him, not only better than anyone else at the hotel, but better almost than anyone anywhere.
"Would you like a game?" he asked. He meant a game which was provided in the park for the distraction of the patients. It consisted in throwing a small ring, attached to a post by a string, on to hooks which were fixed on an upright sloping board. The hooks had numbers underneath them, which varied from one to 5,000.
"Not just at present," she said, "I am waiting for Aunt Elsie. I must see what she is going to do, but later on I should love a game."
He smiled and went on. He understood that she wanted to be left alone. He had that swift, unerring comprehension of the small and superficial shades of the mind, the minor feelings, social values, and human relations that so often distinguishes his countrymen.
He might, indeed, have stepped out of a Russian novel, with his untidy hair, his short-sighted, kindly eyes, his colourless skin, and nondescript clothes. Kathleen had never reflected before whether she liked him or disliked him. She had accepted him as part of the place, and she had not noticed the easiness of relations with him. It came upon her now with a slight shock that these relations were almost peculiar from their ease and naturalness. It was as if she had known him for years, whereas she had not known him for more than a month. All this flashed through her mind, which then went back to the paragraph in theMorning Post, when her aunt rustled up to her.
Mrs. Knolles had the supreme elegance of being smart without looking conventional, as if she led rather than followed the fashion. There was always something personal and individual about her Parisian hats, her jewels, and her cloaks; and there was something rich, daring and exotic about her sumptuous sombre hair, with its sudden gold-copper glints and her soft brown eyes. There was nothing apathetic about her. She was filled to the brim with life, with interest, with energy. She cast a glance at theMorning Post, and said rather impatiently:
"My dear child, what are you reading? That newspaper is ten days old. Don't you see it is dated the first?"
"So it is," said Kathleen apologetically. But that moment a thought flashed through her: "Then, surely, Lancelot must be on his way home, if he is not back already."
"I've brought you your letters," said her aunt. "Here they are."
Kathleen reached for them more eagerly than usual. She expected to see, she hoped, at least, to see, Lancelot's rather childish hand-writing, but both the letters were bills.
"Mr. Arkright and Anikin are dining with us," said her aunt, "and Count Tilsit."
Kathleen said nothing.
"You don't mind?" said her aunt.
"Of course not."
"I thought you liked Count Tilsit."
"Oh, yes, I do," said Kathleen.
Kathleen felt that she had, against her intention, expressed disappointment, or rather that she had not expressed the necessary blend of surprise and pleasure. But as Arkright and Anikin dined with them frequently, and as she had forgotten who Count Tilsit was, this was difficult for her. Arkright was an English author, who was a friend of her aunt's, and had sufficient penetration to realize that Mrs. Knolles was something more than a woman of the world; to appreciate her fundamental goodness as well as her obvious cleverness, and to divine that Kathleen's exterior might be in some ways deceptive.
"You remember him in Florence?" said Mrs. Knolles, reverting to Count Tilsit.
"Oh, yes, the Norwegian."
"A Swede, darling, not a Norwegian."
"I thought it was the same thing," said Kathleen.
"I have got a piece of news for you," said Mrs. Knolles.
Kathleen made an effort to prepare her face. She was determined that it should reveal nothing. She knew quite well what was coming.
"Lancelot Stukely is in London," her aunt went on. "He came back just in time to see his uncle before he died. His uncle has left him everything."
"Was Sir James ill a long time?" Kathleen asked.
"I believe he was," said Mrs. Knolles.
"Oh, then I suppose he won't go back to Malta," said Kathleen, with perfectly assumed indifference.
"Of course not," said Mrs. Knolles. "He inherits the place, the title, everything. He will be very well off. Would you like to drive to Bavigny this afternoon? Princess Oulchikov can take us in her motor if you would like to go. Arkright is coming."
"I will if you want me to," said Kathleen.
This was one of the remarks that Kathleen often made, which annoyed her aunt, and perhaps justly. Mrs. Knolles was always trying to devise something that would amuse or distract her niece, but whenever she suggested anything to her or arranged any expedition or special treat which she thought might amuse, all the response she met with was a phrase that implied resignation.
"I don't want you to come if you would rather not," she said with beautifully concealed impatience.
"Well, to-day Iwouldrather not," said Kathleen, greatly to her aunt's surprise. It was the first time she had ever made such an answer.
"Aren't you feeling well, darling?" she asked gently.
"Quite well, Aunt Elsie, I promise," Kathleen said smiling, "but I said I would sit and talk to Mr. Asham this afternoon."
Mr. Asham was a blind man who had been ordered to take the waters at Saint-Yves. Kathleen had made friends with him.
"Very well," said Mrs. Knolles, with a sigh. "I must go. The motor will be there. Don't forget we've got people dining with us to-night, and don't wear your grey. It's too shabby." One of Miss Farrel's practices, which irritated her aunt, was to wear her shabbiest clothes on an occasion that called for dress, and to take pains, as it were, not to do herself justice.
Her aunt left her.
Kathleen had made no arrangement with Asham. She had invented the excuse on the spur of the moment, but she knew he would be in the park in the afternoon. She wanted to think. She wanted to be alone. If Lancelot had been in England when Sir James died, then he must have started home at least a fortnight ago, as the news that she had read was ten days old. She had not heard from him for over a month. This meant that his uncle had been ill, he had returned to London, and had experienced a change of fortune without writing her one word.
"All the same," she thought, "it proves nothing."
At that moment a friendly voice called to her.
"What are you doing all by yourself, Kathleen?"
It was her friend, Mrs. Roseleigh. Kathleen had known Eva Roseleigh all her life, although her friend was ten years older than herself and was married. She was staying at Saint-Yves by herself. Her husband was engrossed in other occupations and complications besides those of his business in the city, and of a different nature. Mrs. Roseleigh was one of those women whom her friends talked of with pity, saying "Poor Eva!" But "Poor Eva" had a large income, a comfortable house in Upper Brook Street. She was slight, and elegant; as graceful as a Tanagra figure, fair, delicate-looking, appealing and plaintive to look at, with sympathetic grey eyes. Her husband was a successful man of business, and some people said that the neglect he showed his wife and the publicity of his infidelities was not to be wondered at, considering the contempt with which she treated him. It was more a case of "Poor Charlie," they said, than "Poor Eva."
Kathleen would not have agreed with these opinions. She was never tired of saying that Eva was "wonderful." She was certainly a good friend to Kathleen.
"Sir James Stukely is plead," said Kathleen.
"I saw that in the newspaper some time ago. I thought you knew," said Mrs. Roseleigh.
"It was stupid of me not to know. I read the newspapers so seldom and so badly."
"That means Lancelot will come home."
"He has come home."
"Oh, you know then?"
"Know what?"
"That he is coming here?"
Kathleen blushed crimson. "Coming here! How do you know?"
"I saw his name," said Mrs. Roseleigh, "on the board in the hall of the hotel, and I asked if he had arrived. They told me they were expecting him to-night."
At that moment a tall dark lady, elegant as a figure carved by Jean Goujon, and splendid as a Titian, no longer young, but still more than beautiful, walked past them, talking rather vehemently in Italian to a young man, also an Italian.
"Who is that?" asked Kathleen.
"That," said Mrs. Roseleigh, "is Donna Laura Bartolini. She is still very beautiful, isn't she? The man with her is a diplomat."
"I think," said Kathleen, "she is very striking-looking. But what extraordinary clothes."
"They are specially designed for her."
"Do you know her?"
"A little. She is not at all what she seems to be. She is, at heart, matter-of-fact, and domestic, but she dresses like a Bacchante. She has still many devoted adorers."
"Here?"
"Everywhere. But she worships her husband."
"Is he here?"
"No, but I think he is coming."
"I remember hearing about her a long time ago. I think she was at Cairo once."
"Very likely, Her husband is an archaeologist, asavant."
Was that the woman, thought Kathleen, to whom Lancelot was supposed to have been devoted? If so, it wasn't true. She was sure it wasn't true. Lancelot would never have been attracted by that type of woman, and yet——
"Aunt Elsie has asked a Swede to dinner. Count Tilsit. Do you know him?"
"I was introduced to him yesterday. He admired you."
"Do you like him?"
"I hardly know him. I think he is nice-looking and has good manners and looks like an Englishman."
But Kathleen was no longer listening. She was thinking of Lancelot, of his sudden arrival. What could it mean? Did he know they were here? The last time he had written was a month ago from London. Had she said they were coming here? She thought she had. Perhaps she had not. In any case that would hardly make any difference, as he knew they went abroad every year, knew they went to Saint-Yves most years, and if he didn't know, would surely hear it in London. Yes, he must know. Then it meant either that—or perhaps it meant something quite different. Perhaps the doctor had sent him to Saint-Yves. He had suffered from attacks of Malta fever several times. Saint-Yves was good for malaria. There was a well-known malaria specialist on the medical staff. He might be coming to consult him. What did she want to be the truth? What did she feel? She scarcely knew herself. She felt exhilarated, as if life had suddenly become different, more interesting and strangely irridescent. What would Lancelot be like? Would he be the same? Or would he be someone quite different? She couldn't talk about it, not even to Eva, although Eva had known all about it, and Mrs. Roseleigh with her acute intuition guessed that, and guessed what Kathleen was thinking about, and said nothing that fringed the topic; but what disconcerted Kathleen and gave her a slight quiver of alarm was that she thought she discerned in Eva's voice and manner the faintest note of pity; she experienced an almost imperceptible chill in the temperature; an inkling, the ghost of a warning, as if Eva were thinking. "You mustn't be disappointed if——" Well, she wouldn't be disappointedif. At least nobody should divine her disappointment: not even Eva.
Mrs. Roseleigh guessed that her friend wanted to be alone and left her on some quickly invented pretext. As soon as she was alone Kathleen rose from her seat and went for a walk by herself beyond the park and through the village. Then she came back and played a game with Anikin at the ring board, and at five o'clock she had a talk with Asham to quiet her conscience. She stayed out late, until, in fact, the motor-bus, which met the evening express, arrived from the station at seven o'clock. She watched its arrival from a distance, from the galleries, while she simulated interest in the shop windows. But as the motor-bus was emptied of its passengers, she caught no sight of Lancelot. When the omnibus had gone, and the new arrivals left the scene, she walked into the hall of the hotel, and asked the porter whether many new visitors had arrived.
"Two English gentlemen," he said, "Lord Frumpiest and Sir Lancelot Stukely." She ran upstairs to dress for dinner, and even her Aunt Elsie was satisfied with her appearance that night. She had put on her sea-green tea-gown: a present from Eva, made in Paris.
"I wish you always dressed like that," said Mrs. Knolles, as they walked into the Casino dining-room. "You can't think what a difference it makes. It's so foolish not to make the best of oneself when it needs so very little trouble." But Mrs. Knolles had the untaught and unlearnable gift of looking her best at any season, at any hour. It was, indeed, no trouble to her; but all the trouble in the world could not help others to achieve the effects which seemed to come to her by accident.
As they walked into the large hotel dining-room, Kathleen was conscious that everyone was looking at her, except Lancelot, if he was there, and she felt hewasthere. Arkright and Count Tilsit were waiting for them at their table and stood up as they walked in. They were followed almost immediately by Princess Oulchikov, whose French origin and education were made manifest by her mauve chiffon shawl, her buckled shoes, and the tortoise-shell comb in her glossy black hair. Nothing could have been more unpretentious than her clothes, and nothing more common to hundreds of her kind, than her single row of pearls and her little platinum wrist-watch, but the manner in which she wore these things was French, as clearly and unmistakably French and not Russian, Italian, or English, as an article signed Jules Lemaître or the ribbons of a chocolate Easter Egg from thePassage des Panoramas. She looked like a Winterhalter portrait of a lady who had been a great beauty in the days of the Second Empire.
Her married life with Prince Oulchikov, once a brilliant and reckless cavalry officer, and not long ago deceased, after many vicissitudes of fortune, ending by prosperity, since he had died too soon after inheriting a third fortune to squander it, as he had managed to squander two former inheritances, and her at one time prolonged sojourns in the country of her adoption had left no trace on her appearance. As to their effect on her soul and mind, that was another and an altogether different question.
Mrs. Knolles, whose harmonious draperies of black and yellow seemed to call for the brush of a daring painter, sat at the further end of the table next to the window, on her left at the end of the table Arkright, whom you would never have taken for an author, since his motto was what a Frenchman once said to a young painter who affected long hair and eccentric clothes: "Ne savez-vous pas qu'il faut s'habiller comme tout le monde et peindre comme personne?" On his other side sat Princess Oulchikov; next to her at the end of the table, Kathleen, and then Count Tilsit (fair, blue-eyed, and shy) on Mrs. Knolles's right.
Kathleen, being at the end of the table, could not see any of the tables behind her, but in front of her was a gilded mirror, and no sooner had they sat down to dinner than she was aware, in this glass, of the reflection of Lancelot Stukely's back, who was sitting at a table with a party of people just opposite to them on the other side of the room. There was nothing more remarkable about Lancelot Stukely's front view than about his back view, and that, in spite of a certain military squareness of shoulder, had a slight stoop. He was small and seemed made to grace the front windows of a club in St. James's Street; everything about him was correct, and his face had the honest refinement of a well-bred dog that has been admirably trained and only barks at the right kind of stranger.
But the sudden sight of Lancelot transformed Kathleen. It was as if someone had lit a lamp behind her alabaster mask, and in the effort to conceal any embarrassment, or preoccupation, she flushed and became unusually lively and talked to Anikin with a gaiety and an uninterrupted ease, that seemed not to belong to her usual self.
And yet, while she talked, she found time every now and then to study the reflections of the mirror in front of them, and these told her that Lancelot was sitting next to Donna Laura Bartolini. The young man she had seen talking to Donna Laura was there also. There were others whom she did not know.
Mrs. Knolles was busily engaged in thawing the stiff coating of ice of Count Tilsit's shyness, and very soon she succeeded in putting him completely at his ease; and Arkright was trying to interest Princess Oulchikov in Japanese art. But the Princess had lived too long in Russia not to catch the Slav microbe of indifference, and she was a woman who only lived by half-hours. This half-hour was one of her moment of eclipse, and she paid little attention to what Arkright said. He, however, was habituated to her ways and went on talking.
Mrs. Knolles was surprised and pleased at her niece's behaviour. Never had she seen her so lively, so gay.
"Miss Farrel is looking extraordinarily well to-night," Arkright said, in an undertone, to the Princess.
"Yes," said Princess Oulchikov, "she is at last taking waters from the rightsource." She often made cryptic remarks of this kind, and Arkright was puzzled, for Kathleen never took the waters, but he knew the Princess well enough not to ask her to explain. Princess Oulchikov made no further comment. Her mind had already relapsed into the land of listless limbo which it loved to haunt.
Presently the conversation became general. They discussed the races, the troupe at the Casino Theatre, the latest arrivals.
"Lancelot Stukely is here," said Mrs. Knolles.
"Yes," said Kathleen, with great calm, "dining with Donna Laura Bartolini."
"Oh, Laura's arrived," said Mrs. Knolles. "I am glad. That is good news. What fun we shall all have together. Yes. There she is, looking lovely. Don't you think she's lovely?" she said to Arkright and the Princess.
Arkright admired Donna Laura unreservedly. Princess Oulchikov said she would no doubt think the same if she hadn't known her thirty years ago, and then "those clothes," she said, "don't suit her, they make her look like anart nouveauposter." Anikin said he did not admire her at all, and as for the clothes, she was the last person who should dare those kind of clothes; her beauty was conventional, she was made for less fantastic fashions. He looked at Kathleen. He was thinking that her type of beauty could have supported any costume, however extravagant; in fact he longed to see her draped in shimmering silver and faded gold, with strange stones in her hair. Count Tilsit, who was younger than anyone present, said he found her young.
"She is older than you think," said Princess Oulchikov. "I remember her coming out in Rome in 1879."
"Do you think she is over fifty?" said Kathleen.
"I do not think it, I am sure," said the Princess.
"Her figure is wonderful," said Mrs Knolles.
"Was she very beautiful then?" asked Anikin.
"The most beautiful woman I have ever seen," said the Princess. "People stood on chairs to look at her one night at the French Embassy. It is cruel to see her dressed as she is now."
Count Tilsit opened his clear, round, blue eyes, and stared first at the Princess and then at Donna Laura. It was inconceivable to his young Scandinavian mind that this radiant and dazzling creature, dressed up like the Queen in a Russian ballet, could be over fifty.
"To me, she has always looked exactly the same," said Arkright. "In fact, I admire her more now than I did when I first knew her fifteen years ago."
"That is because you look at her with the eyes of the past," said the Princess, "but not of a long enough past, as I do. When you first saw her you were young, but when I first saw hershewas young. That makes all the difference."
"I think she is very beautiful now," said Mrs. Knolles.
"And so do I," said Kathleen. "I could understand anyone being in love with her."
"That there will always be people in love with her," said the Princess, "and young people. She has charm as well as beauty, and how rare that is!"
"Yes," said Anikin, pensively, "how rare that is."
Kathleen looked at the mirror as if she was appraising Donna Laura's beauty, but in reality it was to see whether Lancelot was talking to her. As far as she could see he seemed to be rather silent. General conversation, with a lot of Italian intermixed with it, was going up from the table like fireworks. Kathleen turned to Count Tilsit and made conversation to him, while Anikin and the Princess began to talk in a passionately argumentative manner of all the beauties they had known. The Princess had come to life once more. Mrs. Knolles, having done her duty, relapsed into a comfortable conversation with Arkright. They understood each other without effort.
The Italian party finished their dinner first, and went out on to the terrace, and as they walked out of the room the extraordinary dignity of Donna Laura's carriage struck the whole room. Whatever anyone might think of her looks now, there was no doubt that her presence still carried with it the authority that only great beauty, however much it may be lessened by time, confers.
"Elle est encore très belle," said Princess Oulchikov, voicing the thoughts of the whole party.
Mrs. Knolles suggested going out. Shawls were fetched and coffee was served just outside the hotel on a stone terrace.
Soon after they had sat down, Lancelot Stukely walked up to them. He was not much changed, Kathleen thought. A little grey about the temples, a little bit thinner, and slightly more tanned—his face had been burnt in the tropics—but the slow, honest eyes were the same. He said how-do-you-do to Mrs. Knolles and to herself, and was presented to the others.
Mrs. Knolles asked him to sit down.
"I must go back presently," he said, "but may I stay a minute?"
He sat down next to Kathleen.
They talked a little with pauses in between their remarks. She did not ask him how long he was going to stay, but he explained his arrival. He had come to consult the malaria specialist.
"We have all been discussing Donna Laura Bartolini," said Mrs. Knolles. "You were dining with her?"
"Yes," he said, "she is an old friend of mine. I met her first at Cairo."
"Is she going to stay long?" asked Mrs. Knolles.
"No," he said, "she is only passing through on her way to Italy. She leaves for Ravenna to-morrow morning."
"She is looking beautiful," said Mrs. Knolles.
"Yes," he said, "she is very beautiful, isn't she?"
Then he got up.
"I hope we shall meet again to-morrow," he said to Kathleen and to Mrs. Knolles.
"Are you staying on?" asked Mrs. Knolles.
"Oh, no," he said. "I only wanted to see the doctor. I have got to go back to England at once. I have got so much business to do."
"Of course," said Mrs. Knolles. "We will see you to-morrow. Will you come to the lakes with us?"
Lancelot hesitated and then said that he, alas, would be busy all day to-morrow. He had an appointment with the doctor—he had so little time.
He was slightly confused in his explanations. He then said good-night, and went back to his party. They were sitting at a table under the trees.
Kathleen felt relieved, unaccountably relieved, that he had gone, and she experienced a strange exhilaration. It was as if a curtain had been lifted up and she suddenly saw a different and a new world. She had the feeling of seeing clearly for the first time for many years. She saw quite plainly that as far as Lancelot was concerned, the past was completely forgotten. She meant nothing to him at all. He was the same Lancelot, but he belonged to a different world. There were gulfs and gulfs between them now. He had come here to see Donna Laura for a few hours. He had not minded doing this, although he knew that he would meet Kathleen. He had told her himself that he knew he would meet her. He had mentioned the rarity of his letters lately. He had been so busy, and then all that business ... his uncle's death.
The situation was quite simple and quite clear. But the strange thing was that, instead of feeling her life was over, as she had expected to feel, she felt it was, on the contrary, for the first time beginning.
"I have been waiting for years," she thought to herself, "for this fairy Prince, and now I see that he was not the fairy Prince, after all. But this does not mean I may not meet the fairy Prince, therealone," and her eyes glistened.
She had never felt more alive, more ready for adventure. Anikin suggested that they should all walk in the garden. It was still daylight. They got up. The Princess, Arkright, Mrs. Knolles, and Count Tilsit walked down the steps first, and passed on down an avenue.
Kathleen delayed until the others walked on some way, and then she said to Anikin, who was waiting for her:
"Let us stay and talk here. It is quieter. We can go for a walk presently."
They did not stay long on the terrace. As soon as they saw which direction the rest of the party had taken they took another. They walked through the hotel gates across the street as far as a gate over whichBellevuewas written. They had never been there before. It was an annexe of the hotel, a kind of detached park. They climbed up the hill and passed two deserted and unused lawn-tennis courts and a dusty track once used for skittles, and emerged from a screen of thick trees on to a little plateau. Behind them was a row of trees and a green corn-field, beneath them a steep slope of grass. They could see the red roofs of the village, the roofs of the hotels, the grey spire of the village church, the park, the green plain and, in the distance rising out of the green corn, a large flat-topped hill. The long summer daylight was at last fading away. The sky was lustrous and the air was quite still.
The fields and the trees had that peculiar deep green they take on in the twilight, as if they had been dyed by the tints of the evening. Anikin said it reminded him of Russia.
Kathleen had wrapped a thin white shawl round her, and in the dimness of the hour she looked as white as a ghost, but in the pallor of her face her eyes shone like black diamonds. Anikin had never seen her look like that. And then it came to him that this was the moment of moments. Perhaps the moon had risen. The cloudless sky seemed all of a sudden to be silvered with a new light. There was a dry smell of sun-baked roads and of summer in the air, and no sound at all.
They had sat down on the bench and Kathleen was looking straight in front of her out into the west, where the last remains of the sunset had faded some time ago.
This Anikin felt was the sacred minute; the moment of fate; the imperishable instant which Faust had asked for even at the price of his soul, but which mortal love had always denied him. In a whisper he asked Kathleen to be his wife. She got up from the seat and said very slowly:
"Yes, I will marry you."
The words seemed to be spoken for her by something in her that was not herself, and yet she was willing that they should be spoken. She seemed to want all this to happen, and yet she felt that it was being done for her, not of her own accord, but by someone else. Her eyes shone like stars. But as he touched her hand, she still felt that she was being moved by some alien spirit separate from herself and that it was not she herself that was giving herself to him. She was obeying some exterior and foreign control which came neither from him nor from her—some mysterious outside influence. She seemed to be looking on at herself as she was whirled over the edge of a planet, but she was not making the effort, nor was it Anikin's words, nor his look, nor his touch, that were moving her. He had taken her in his arms, and as he kissed her they heard footsteps on the path coming towards them. The spell was broken, and they gently moved apart one from the other. It was he who said quietly:
"We had better go home."
Some French people appeared through the trees round the corner. A middle-aged man in a nankin jacket, his wife, his two little girls. They were acquaintances of Anikin and of Kathleen. It was the man who kept a haberdasher's shop in theGaleries. Brief mutual salutations passed and a few civilities were bandied, and then Kathleen and Anikin walked slowly down the hill in silence. It had grown darker and a little chilly. There was no more magic in the sky. It was as if someone had somewhere turned off the light on which all the illusion of the scene had depended. They walked back into the park. The band was playing an undulating tango. Mrs. Knolles and the others were sitting on chairs under the trees. Anikin and Kathleen joined them and sat down. Neither of them spoke much during the rest of the evening. Presently Mrs. Roseleigh joined them. She looked at Kathleen closely and there was a slight shade of wonder in her expression.