And suddenly some one else looked at her through those haunted eyes--a little boy, terrified and forsaken. "Oh, I have no right to soil you with it. But I came back to tell some one about it--I had to, I had to.
I had to wait until father and Audrey went away. I knew they"d hate to see me--she was my stepmother, you know, and she always loathed me, and he never cared. In East Africa I used to stay awake at night thinking that I might die, and that no one in England would ever care--no one would know how I had loved her. It was worse than dying to think that."
"But why couldn"t you come back to Green Gardens--why couldn"t you make them see, Stephen?"
"Why, what was there to see? When they sent me down from Oxford for that dirty little affair, I was only nineteen--and they told me I had disgraced my name and Green Gardens and my country--and I went mad with pride and shame, and swore I"d drag their precious name through the dirt of every country in the world. And I did--and I did."
His head was buried in his arms, but Daphne heard. It seemed strange indeed to her that she felt no shrinking and no terror; only great pity for what he had lost, great grief for what he might have had. For a minute she forgot that she was Daphne, the heedless and gay-hearted, and that he was a broken and an evil man. For a minute he was a little lad, and she was his lost mother.
"Don"t mind, Stephen," she whispered to him, "don"t mind. Now you have come home--now it is all done with, that ugliness. Please, please don"t mind."
"No, no," said the stricken voice, "you don"t know, you don"t know, thank G.o.d. But I swear I"ve paid--I swear, I swear I have. When the others used to take their dirty drugs to make them forget, they would dream of strange paradises, unknown heavens--but through the haze and mist that they brought, I would remember--I would remember. The filth and the squalor and vileness would fade and dissolve--and I would see the sun-dial, with the yellow roses on it, warm in the sun, and smell the clove pinks in the kitchen border, and touch the cresses by the brook, cool and green and wet. All the sullen drums and whining flutes would sink to silence, and I would hear the little yellow-headed cousin of the vicar"s singing in the twilight, singing, "There is a lady, sweet and kind" and "Weep you no more, sad fountains" and "Hark, hark, the lark." And the small painted yellow faces and the little wicked hands and perfumed fans would vanish and I would see again the gay beauty of the lady who hung above the mantel in the long drawing-room, the lady who laughed across the centuries in her white muslin frock, with eyes that matched the blue ribbon in her wind-blown curls--the lady who was as young and lovely as England, for all the years! Oh, I would remember, I would remember! It was twilight, and I was hurrying home through the dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell ringing quietly somewhere and a moth flying by brushed against my face with velvet--and I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering white, and see the first star swinging low above the trees, and lower still, and brighter still, the lights of home.--And then before my very eyes, they would fade, they would fade, dimmer and dimmer--they would flicker and go out, and I would be back again, with tawdriness and shame and vileness fast about me--and I would pay."
"But now you have paid enough," Daphne told him. "Oh, surely, surely--you have paid enough. Now you have come home--now you can forget."
"No," said Stephen Fane. "Now I must go."
"Go?" At the small startled echo he raised his head.
"What else?" he asked. "Did you think that I would stay?"
"But I do not want you to go." Her lips were white, but she spoke very clearly.
Stephen Fane never moved but his eyes, dark and wondering, rested on her like a caress.
"Oh, my little Loveliness, what dream is this?"
"You must not go away again, you must not."
"I am baser than I thought," he said, very low. "I have made you pity me, I who have forfeited your lovely pity this long time. It cannot even touch me now. I have sat here like a dark Oth.e.l.lo telling tales to a small white Desdemona, and you, G.o.d help me, have thought me tragic and abused. You shall not think that. In a few minutes I will be gone--I will not have you waste a dream on me. Listen--there is nothing vile that I have not done--nothing, do you hear? Not clean sin, like murder--I have cheated at cards, and played with loaded dice, and stolen the rings off the fingers of an Argentine Jewess who--" His voice twisted and broke before the lovely mercy in the frightened eyes that still met his so bravely.
"But why, Stephen?"
"So that I could buy my dreams. So that I could purchase peace with little dabs of brown in a pipe-bowl, little puffs of white in the palm of my hand, little drops of liquid on a ball of cotton. So that I could drug myself with dirt--and forget the dirt and remember England."
He rose to his feet with that swift grace of his, and Daphne rose too, slowly.
"I am going now; will you walk to the gate with me?"
He matched his long step to hers, watching the troubled wonder on her small white face intently.
"How old are you, my Dryad?"
"I am seventeen."
"Seventeen! Oh, G.o.d be good to us, I had forgotten that one could be seventeen. What"s that?"
He paused, suddenly alert, listening to a distant whistle, sweet on the summer air.
"Oh, that--that is Robin."
"Ah--" His smile flashed, tender and ironic. "And who is Robin?"
"He is--just Robin. He is down from Cambridge for a week, and I told him that he might walk home with me."
"Then I must be off quickly. Is he coming to this gate?"
"No, to the south one."
"Listen to me, my Dryad--are you listening?" For her face was turned away.
"Yes," said Daphne.
"You are going to forget me--to forget this afternoon--to forget everything but Robin whistling through the summer twilight."
"No," said Daphne.
"Yes; because you have a very poor memory about unhappy things! You told me so. But just for a minute after I have gone, you will remember that now all is very well with me, because I have found the deep meadows--and honey still for tea--and you. You are to remember that for just one minute--will you? And now good-by--"
She tried to say the words, but she could not. For a moment he stood staring down at the white pathos of the small face, and then he turned away. But when he came to the gate, he paused and put his arms about the wall, as though he would never let it go, laying his cheek against the sun-warmed bricks, his eyes fast closed. The whistling came nearer, and he stirred, put his hand on the little painted gate, vaulted across it lightly, and was gone. She turned at Robin"s quick step on the walk.
"Ready, dear? What are you staring at?"
"Nothing! Robin--Robin, did you ever hear of Stephen Fane?"
He nodded grimly.
"Do you know--do you know what he is doing now?"
"Doing now?" He stared at her blankly. "What on earth do you mean? Why, he"s been dead for months--killed in the campaign in East Africa--only decent thing he ever did in his life. Why?"
Daphne never stirred. She stood quite still, staring at the painted gate. Then she said, very carefully: "Some one thought--some one thought that they had seen him--quite lately."
Robin laughed comfortingly. "No use looking so scared about it, my blessed child. Perhaps they did. The War Office made all kinds of ghastly blunders--it was a quick step from "missing in action" to "killed." And he"d probably would have been jolly glad of a chance to drop out quietly and have every one think he was done for."
Daphne never took her eyes from the gate. "Yes," she said quietly, "I suppose he would. Will you get my basket, Robin? I left it by the beehive. There are some cushions that belong in the East Indian room, too. The south door is open."
When he had gone, she stood shaking for a moment, listening to his footsteps die away, and then she flew to the gate, searching the twilight desperately with straining eyes. There was no one there--no one at all--but then the turn in the lane would have hidden him by now. And suddenly terror fell from her like a cloak.
She turned swiftly to the brick wall, straining up, up on tiptoes, to lay her cheek against its roughened surface, to touch it very gently with her lips. She could hear Robin whistling down the path but she did not turn. She was bidding farewell to Green Gardens--and the last adventurer.
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY[14]
By FANNIE HURST
(From _The Cosmopolitan_)