"I ought to have foreseen that insult, somehow."
"My dear," she answered, "it is said that the women who come here cannot be insulted."
"Then I had better take you home," was his retort.
She laughed, and her laughter was against herself. He did not guess what was happening inside her, that she was railing at herself, that she had straightway fallen in love with him. She—the woman of the world, the wit, the laughing, glowing cynic, the manipulator of men, the brilliant wife of a sottish husband.
"Then—you shall," she said.
She pressed his arm. She was full of strange emotion, but she kept her head.
"Now, at once. You may take off your mask."
He took it off, and she watched him. They were together, close to a curtained doorway, and with a little provocative laugh she enveloped herself in the curtain. She was conscious of mystery and of him, of his frank, full-jawed face, his freckles, his grey eyes, his big and quietly smiling mouth. Yet, young as he was, there was something inscrutable about him, an inward store of reserve which made for dignity.
"You," she thought, "who and what are you? Yes, somehow—you will always be what most men are not—a gentleman, even in the thick of an intrigue. I ought to send you home. I ought to, but I won't."
He looked down at her smiling, wrapped up in the red curtain as she was, her head like a provoking green bud.
"And you?" he asked.
"Not yet."
"But you know me, and I don't know you."
"Presently, perhaps!" she said, and then, stretching out a hand to him—"No, I am not an old woman. I am not afraid of my mask. Mr. Jordan, you can take me home."
With a quick sweep of the hand she threw the curtain from her and stood close to him.
"I have a chair waiting—but, better still, go and get me a chair. You may walk beside it. Come."
He left her in the vestibule while he went and chartered a chair for her, and then, taking her out upon his arm through the midnight crowd, he placed her in that little secret shell.
"Where to?"
"That will be telling."
"Of course."
She touched him with her fan.
"Good night, sir. I will give the men their orders. But if—I should see you again...."
He bowed to her and drew away into the half-darkness, but when he saw the chairmen rise to their poles, he followed the precious casket which held the perilous heart of his first adventure. He walked lightly, with a clear head, and a sense of excitement under his ribs. The stars were shining in the sky of a summer night, eyes in the mask of mystery and romance.
The chairmen passed up the slope and, turning into Piccadilly, went westwards, with Jordan about thirty yards behind them. He remembered Thomas Nando's words: "See her by daylight," but the voice seemed very unreal and distant. The night was the reality, the stars, and the woman in that little mysterious shell. He judged that he had walked nearly half a mile before the men swung into a street on the north of the road. It was a dark street with a number of new, tall houses, with gardens or spaces between each group of houses. Here and there Jordan caught a gleam of light between closed shutters or drawn curtains.
The chairmen stopped. They were in doubt as to their destination, and Jordan heard my lady's voice directing them. They went a little farther up the street and set the chair down. Jordan stepped back into a doorway.
He waited there until the chairmen trudged back past him. They were laughing; they had been well paid, and, whatever the jest was, they were all in favour of pretty ladies.
"Good luck to the petticoats, says I!"
"Where should we be without 'em?"
Jordan walked on. He passed three doorways, and then came to one where a soft shadowiness was waiting. He heard a little thrilling laugh.
"Mr. Jordan, can you see me?"
She had put back her hood and taken off her mask.
"No," said he, bending over her, "only——"
She made a quick movement. She slipped a key into the lock and opened the door, and Jordan saw a narrow passageway or hall with a candle burning in a silver stick. Not a sound came from the house. She drew him in after her, keeping her face averted.
"The door, gently."
He pushed it to, and when he turned she was holding the candle and looking up at him.
"Well?"
He was astonished, and his astonishment delighted her.
"Now—you remember?"
"Yes—I remember."
She smiled. She gave him her hand, and not knowing what else to do, he kissed it. And then, she thrust him gently but meaningly towards the door.
"That—is enough—for to-night."
Out in the street, with the door closed upon him, he stood for a moment looking at the house with a sense of incredulity. Surely she had been playing with him, fooling him, and yet it was she who had made the first move. The white window-frames stared back at him, and he was still standing there when he saw a light moving in the upper part of the house. It grew steady. The candlestick had been set down on a table, and someone came to the window and threw up the lower sash.
It was she. She leaned out for an instant, vaguely silhouetted against the candlelight. She saw him below and waved her hand. He fancied that she had thrown him a kiss and he raised his black domino and shook it. Next moment she disappeared behind the quickly-drawn curtains.
Jordan walked slowly away, but this slow walk soon became a long, swinging stride.
"It is not a dream," he thought; "she said 'the day after to-morrow'!"
The youth in him was intoxicated, and perhaps not a little flattered. The brilliancy of her, the glamour of her reputation, the sensuous mystery of her fine gentlewoman's beauty had gone to his head.
VIII
Tom and Mary Nando were at breakfast when Jordan came down from his room. Nando looked up as he entered the parlour, but Mrs. Mary kept her eyes on the table, and when Jordan bent down to kiss her as he had kissed her for the last fifteen years she took his kiss with mute coldness and made no response. Jordan sat down. He was cutting himself a slice of bread from the loaf when Mrs. Mary pushed her chair back and went out of the room, leaving her breakfast unfinished.
The men's eyes met across the table.
"She's not well?"
Nando examined the contents of his mug.
"Women fash themselves about things. The fact is, Dan, a mother can't give up being a mother."
Jordan stopped eating, and his eyes remained steadily fixed on Nando.
"About me?"
"You have a lot to learn about women, Dan. You are the puppy who has grown into the big dog and taken to hunting, and she's afraid of bad things happening to you. Late—every night, you know. Women have a passion for being told what colour your coat is, and when they are not told they fret and worry."
"But I can't tell her, sir," said Jordan, frankly serious, and not in the least ashamed.
Nando gave one shrewd, quick glance at him.
"So! It's like that."
"I could tell you, father."
"I don't want to know anything about it. A man's affairs belong to himself—and the lady. A man's honour is his own."
Jordan resumed the eating of his breakfast, but he kept his eyes on the table, and his forehead showed a slight frown.
"I wish I could tell her. But I have a sense of honour to someone else. Of course, my not telling her makes her think——"
"Oh, more than that, my lad," said Nando; "women are devilish quick. You see?"
Jordan did see. In fact, he had begun to see many things which but a little while ago had been below the level of his consciousness. Life was less straightforward than it seemed, full of surprises, of unexpected passions, deceits, tendernesses, doubts and deep misgivings. It was possible to hurt people—and the most unlikely people—without in the least meaning to hurt them.
Old Nando looked grave.
"Serious, is it, Dan? You can tell me that much. I war
ned you, you know."
"She's unhappy, horribly unhappy."
"Ha! That means that she is married!"
Jordan flushed. These elders had a rapid way of reading what was happening in another man's life.
"She is," he said.
Tom Nando had finished his breakfast, and he pushed back his chair, rose, and after a seemingly aimless excursion up and down the room, he came and stood for a moment by Jordan's chair and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
"Man—be careful. When a woman talks about unhappiness she is tying her strongest knots. But it is your game."
"It is more than a game, sir. It has not made me slack at my work."
"True, lad, true. You are a better swordsman than you were a month ago, and that is saying a good deal. But—man—be careful."
"I am, for her sake, sir."
Jordan had learnt how much can happen in a month, but he was as a child as to all that had happened in the heart of Lady Bacchus. If he had grown ten years older, she was ten years less old, and strangely reckless in her renewed youth. A month ago she had reached the edge of life and looked down cynically into the emptiness below. What did anything matter? Was there a man who mattered? She knew them so well, so mercilessly well, and her one thought had been to free herself from the one bloated, howling creature whom she despised and hated. She had conceived the most cruel of plots, and then made it ridiculous by falling in love with the boy whom she had thought to use.
"O, incalculable fools that we are!"
Angry, she had accused herself of being piqued by raw, unsophisticated youth, only to tell herself that the man was not raw, but that there was a fineness about him, a gaillard yet boyish dignity. He had discretion, wisdom, a big gentleness. She had enveloped him with the exquisite soft thinness of her fine-bred body. She was ravished by his fresh, strong tendernesses. He gave her just that thrill which she had never known.
And now she wanted to keep him. She had begun to be quite fierce and serious about it, setting her cleverness to work, knowing that a man is never held by the mere flesh, that kisses grow stale, that passion loses its perfume. She had known almost from the first that this big boy would respond to deeper appeals. He was not one of those to whom an affair is just an affair, and no more. The utmost of him would be involved in it. He would be held only by the passion of a more spiritual tenderness.
She brought out her tragedy, and showed herself wounded in his arms. He embraced a woman whose lips were both sweet and bitter. Even in the soft warm darkness she would cry to him, "O—I am unhappy!" She provoked him with pathos, with mysterious and gloomy outbursts. She would turn away, be dark and incalculable, and then catch his head in the hollow of her arms and kiss him upon the mouth. "I wish I were dead!"
He came at night to the house in the street off Piccadilly. They met elsewhere; she was full of expedients. She even disguised herself as a girl of the people and went jaunting with him by river to Richmond, or let him take her to Vauxhall Gardens. She knew that her passion was likely to make an enemy of the man who had been her friend, and she was on the watch to try and blind him. She was very clever in this and full of resources, but she was trying to fool a man who was as clever as herself.
To avoid a possible enemy is to make him suspect, and each day she drove out in her coach to take the air and to see the world. In Hyde Park she would make her coach draw up, and, stepping out, would walk on the grass under the trees. She met friends and acquaintances, and gossiped and laughed with them, arranged her card parties, let herself be wearied by young and old men who wanted to make love to her. They called her Madam Marigold.
The Bacchus coach was a huge black affair picked out with red, and swinging on its great springs behind a team of black horses. The men's liveries were white and gold. It was easily marked and easily followed, and she knew that Sfex was never very far away, but that he would bide his time, as he always did. He stalked life, and did not rush at it in the open, for certain men like to appear paradoxical and inexplicable, and indirect in approaching a woman.
In a little while she would see his white and ironical face among the other faces. He did not hurry. He talked and smiled at people who bored him, gradually approaching her with a casualness that was methodical. She would catch at last his smile thrown directly at her, yet with a suggestion of whimsical surprise.
"What, you here!"
His mouth had a curious twist when he smiled; and when he bowed, his tall figure seemed worked by a spring.
"How is our friend the calf?"
She never let herself appear serious.
"He grows very slowly. It is beginning to bore me."
Later, she became aware of a change in Sfex. He was more polite, more cynical, more openly amused at life, and she felt that he suspected. He had become an incubus, an ironical epigram pinned on the door of her secret love. He told her that she looked five years younger.
"What do you want from me, George, which I have not given you?"
"The secret of the elixir, my dear!"
"O, don't be foolish!"
He smiled, but she detected malice in the smile.
"Supposing I were to fall in love with a milkmaid aged seventeen, should I revert to two-and-twenty?"
"You would be very dull if you did," she retorted.
One day he walked back with her to her coach, and after handing her into it, stood with his head uncovered, and an enigmatic shrewdness in his eyes.
"Can I count on observing the eclipse?"
She knew what he meant, and she pretended to be direct with him.
"Our calculations were wrong. I am getting rid of my astronomer."
"What, even the sign of Taurus has not brought you good luck?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It was a very bete idea. I see now that it is only a question of patience. The Crab will drink himself out of the sky if only we wait long enough."
Sfex bent and kissed her hand.
"Then—there is hope?"
"I know one person who has never bored me."
She drove off, and he put on his hat and watched the gold and white liveries and the black coach disappear behind the trees.
"Liar!" he reflected; "you have found something more amusing than my tongue."
Jordan had discovered a secret way to the gardens where my Lady Marigold grew, and he followed it whenever he went to her. He took a path from the Oxford Road, skirted round a fruit garden, crossed a field and gained a lane that still remained a part of the country. It brought him within two hundred yards of the street of romance, and by following a path at the backs of the houses he was able to gain the garden door. He had a key which fitted the door. He always looked at one of the upper windows; if a light showed there he entered the garden; if the window was dark he knew that it meant danger, and that he was shut out for the night.
He made his way along the path one moonlight night, and had stepped back under the shelter of some bushes behind the garden wall, for the window above was darkly discouraging, and he hoped to see it change its message. The affair had now lasted two months, and he was more involved in it than ever.
"If I could only set her free!" he thought.
Suddenly, a figure loomed along the path, the figure of a very tall man, walking slowly and noiselessly, with his hat pulled over his face. The man passed the place where Jordan was standing hidden by the bushes, but he paused a little beyond him and looked up at the house. Almost at the same moment a light appeared in the particular window, and the man was so placed—the path being a little higher than the old ditch-bottom where Jordan was standing—that he saw the lower part of the stranger's profile against the lighted window. The man had a peculiar mouth and chin, the former very small and compressed, the latter jutting out rather like the lower horn of a new moon.
The man looked at the wall, as though estimating the height of it and the ease with which it could be climbed. He tried the garden door, and, finding it locked, stepped back under the cover o
f the bushes within three yards of where Jordan was standing. Half a minute passed, and then it seemed to Jordan that the stranger became suddenly suspicious. He may have heard the sound of breathing, or sensed the presence of someone near him, for he stepped quickly back upon the path with his face towards the bushes. Jordan saw him feel for the hilt of his sword.
"Hallo! there; come out and let us have a look at you."
Jordan did not move.
"What the devil am I to do with the fellow?" he wondered, "if he——"
The man took a step towards the shadowy bushes, hesitated, and appeared to think better of it. He retreated, with his hand still on his sword, and his face towards the place where he seemed to think some danger lurked. He went backwards till he reached the wall, and, moving along it sideways, put a dozen yards between him and the bushes. Then he walked off at a very rapid pace, turning now and again to look behind him.
Jordan waited for a quarter of an hour. Then he went down the path for a hundred yards—it ran between brick walls here—and met nobody. He hurried back, saw that the window was still lit, and, unlocking the garden door, passed in and locked it after him.
A woman was waiting, yawning behind a hall-closed door.
"Who's that?"
"Nunquam."
It was the password, and smiling conspiringly she let him in.
"Go up."
She closed the door.
My lady met him half-way up the stairs, and, taking his face between her two hands, kissed him on the mouth.
"O, my dear, what a world it is! I thought that I should not be able to show you the light, for—he—has had one of his rages."
She let herself lean against him, and she felt the trembling of him, for he still trembled when she touched him. She exulted in it. Perfumed and soft, she made a little sighing.
"O, my love, hold me fast; I have none but you."
Jordan bent over her, looking down into her upturned face.
"Why do you sigh? He has been cruel to you again?"
"Yes," she said, "yes. He struck me. It hurts yet. What sort of creature is it that strikes a woman?"
"The beast—the drunken beast!"
Apples of Gold Page 6