"Well, anyway," said Lord Yalding, "thank you all very much. I think it"s clearing up. I"ll send the wagonette home with you after lunch. And if you don"t mind, I"ll have the ring."
Half an hour of soap and water produced no effect whatever, except to make the finger of Gerald very red and very sore. Then Lord Yalding said something very impatient indeed, and then Gerald suddenly became angry and said: "Well, I"m sure I wish it would come off," and of course instantly, "slick as b.u.t.ter" , as he later pointed out, off it came.
"Thank you," said Lord Yalding.
"And I believe now he thinks I kept it on on purpose," said Gerald afterwards when, at ease on the leads at home, they talked the whole thing out over a tin of preserved pineapple and a bottle of ginger-beer apiece. "There"s no pleasing some people. He wasn"t in such a fiery hurry to order that wagonette after he found that Mademoiselle meant to go when we did. But I liked him better when he was a humble bailiff. Take him for all in all, he does not look as if we should like him again.
"He doesn"t know what"s the matter with him," said Kathleen, leaning back against the tiled roof) "it"s really the magic it"s like sickening with measles."
Don"t you remember how cross Mabel was at first about the invisibleness?"
"Rather!" said Jimmy.
"It"s partly that," said Gerald, trying to be fair, "and partly it"s the being in love. It always makes people like idiots a chap at school told me. His sister was like that . quite rotten, you know. And she used to be quite a decent sort before she was engaged."
At tea and at supper Mademoiselle was radiant as attractive as a lady on a Christmas card, as merry as a marmoset, and as kind as you would always be yourself if you could take the trouble. At breakfast, an equal radiance, kindness, attraction, merriment. Then Lord Yalding came to see her. The meeting took place in the drawing-room; the children with deep discreetness remained shut in the school-room till Gerald, going up to his room for a pencil, surprised Eliza with her ear glued to the drawing-room key-hole.
After that Gerald sat on the top stair with a book.
He could not hear any of the conversation in the drawing-room, but he could command a view of the door, and in this way be certain that no one else heard any of it. Thus it was that when the drawing-room door opened Gerald was in a position to see Lord Yalding come out. "Our young hero, as he said later, "coughed with infinite tact to show that he was there," but Lord Yalding did not seem to notice. He walked in a blind sort of way to the hat-stand, fumbled clumsily with the umbrellas and macintoshes, found his straw hat and looked at it gloomily, crammed it on his head and went out, banging the door behind him in the most reckless way.
He left the drawing-room door open, and Gerald, though he had purposely put himself in a position where one could hear nothing from the drawing-room when the door was shut, could hear something quite plainly now that the door was open. That something, he noticed with deep distress and disgust, was the sound of sobs and sniffs. Mademoiselle was quite certainly crying.
"Jimminy!" he remarked to himself, "they haven"t lost much time.
Fancy their beginning to quarrel already! I hope I"ll never have to be anybody"s lover."
But this was no time to brood on the terrors of his own future.
Eliza might at any time occur. She would not for a moment hesitate to go through that open door, and push herself into the very secret sacred heart of Mademoiselle"s grief. It seemed to Gerald better that he should be the one to do this. So he went softly down the worn green Dutch carpet of the stairs and into the drawing-room, shutting the door softly and securely behind him.
"It is all over," Mademoiselle was saying, her face buried in the beady arum-lilies on a red ground worked for a cushion cover by a former pupil: "he will not marry me!"
Do not ask me how Gerald had gained the lady"s confidence. He had, as I think I said almost at the beginning, very pretty ways with grown-ups, when he chose. Anyway, he was holding her hand, almost as affectionately as if she had been his mother with a headache, and saying "Don"t!" and "Don"t cry!" and "It"ll be all right, you see if it isn"t" in the most comforting way you can imagine, varying the treatment with gentle thumps on the back and entreaties to her to tell him all about it.
This wasn"t mere curiosity, as you might think. The entreaties were prompted by Gerald"s growing certainty that whatever was the matter was somehow the fault of that ring. And in this Gerald was ("once more, as he told himself) right.
The tale, as told by Mademoiselle, was certainly an unusual one.
Lord Yalding, last night after dinner, had walked in the park "to think of "
"Yes, I know," said Gerald; "and he had the ring on. And he saw "
"He saw the monuments become alive," sobbed Mademoiselle; "his brain was troubled by the ridiculous accounts of fairies that you tell him. He sees Apollon and Aphrodite alive on their marble.
He remembers him of your story. He wish himself a statue. Then he becomes mad imagines to himself that your story of the island is true, plunges in the lake, swims among the beasts of the Ark of Noe, feeds with G.o.ds on an island. At dawn the madness become less. He think the Pantheon vanish. But him, no he thinks himself statue, hiding from gardeners in his garden till nine less a quarter.
Then he thinks to wish himself no more a statue and perceives that he is flesh and blood. A bad dream, but he has lost the head with the tales you tell. He say it is no dream but he is fool mad how you say? And a mad man must not marry. There is no hope. I am at despair! And the life is vain!"
"There is," said Gerald earnestly. "I a.s.sure you there is hope, I mean. And life"s as right as rain really. And there"s nothing to despair about. He"s not mad, and it"s not a dream. It"s magic. It really and truly is."
"The magic exists not," Mademoiselle moaned; "it is that he is mad. It is the joy to re-see me after so many days. Oh, la-la-la-la-la!"
"Did he talk to the G.o.ds?" Gerald asked gently.
"It is there the most mad of all his ideas. He say that Mercure give him rendezvous at some temple tomorrow when the moon raise herself."
"Right," cried Gerald, "righto! Dear nice, kind, pretty Mademoiselle Rapunzel, don"t be a silly little duffer" he lost himself for a moment among the consoling endearments he was accustomed to offer to Kathleen in moments of grief and emotion, but hastily added: "I mean, do not be a lady who weeps causelessly. Tomorrow he will go to that temple. I will go. Thou shalt go he will go. We will go you will go let "em all go! And, you see, it"s going to be absolutely all right. He"ll see he isn"t mad, and you"ll understand all about everything. Take my handkerchief, it"s quite a clean one as it happens; I haven"t even unfolded it. Oh! do stop crying, there"s a dear, darling, long-lost lover."
This flood of eloquence was not without effect. She took his handkerchief, sobbed, half smiled, dabbed at her eyes, and said: "Oh, naughty! Is it some trick you play him, like the ghost?"
"I can"t explain," said Gerald, "but I give you my word of honour you know what an Englishman"s word of honour is, don"t you?
even if you are French that everything is going to be exactly what you wish. I"ve never told you a lie. Believe me!"
"It is curious," said she, drying her eyes, "but I do." And once again, so suddenly that he could not have resisted, she kissed him.
I think, however, that in this her hour of sorrow he would have thought it mean to resist.
"It pleases her and it doesn"t hurt me much," would have been his thought.
And now it is near moonrise. The French governess, half-doubting, half-hoping, but wholly longing to be near Lord Yalding even if he be as mad as a March hare, and the four children they have collected Mabel by an urgent letter-card posted the day before are going over the dewy gra.s.s. The moon has not yet risen, but her light is in the sky mixed with the pink and purple of the sunset.
The west is heavy with ink-clouds and rich colour, but the east, where the moon rises, is clear as a rock-pool.
They go across the lawn and through the beech wood and come at last, through a tangle of underwood and bramble, to a little level tableland that rises out of the flat hill-top one tableland out of another. Here is the ring of vast rugged stones, one pierced with a curious round hole, worn smooth at its edges. In the middle of the circle is a great flat stone, alone, desolate, full of meaning a stone that is covered thick with the memory of old faiths and creeds long since forgotten. Something dark moves in the circle. The French girl breaks from the children, goes to it, clings to its arm. It is Lord Yalding, and he is telling her to go.
"Never of the life!" she cries. "If you are mad I am mad too, for I believe the tale these children tell. And I am here to be with thee and see with thee whatever the rising moon shall show us."
The children, holding hands by the flat stone, more moved by the magic in the girl"s voice than by any magic of enchanted rings, listen, trying not to listen.
"Are you not afraid?" Lord Yalding is saying.
"Afraid? With you?" she laughs. He put his arm round her. The children hear her sigh.
"Are you afraid," he says, "my darling?"
Gerald goes across the wide turf ring expressly to say: "You can"t be afraid if you are wearing the ring. And I"m sorry, but we can hear every word you say."
She laughs again. "It makes nothing," she says "you know already if we love each other."
Then he puts the ring on her finger, and they stand together. The white of his flannel coat sleeve marks no line on the white of her dress; they stand as though cut out of one block of marble.
Then a faint greyness touches the top of that round hole, creeps up the side. Then the hole is a disc of light a moonbeam strikes straight through it across the grey green of the circle that the stones mark, and as the moon rises the moonbeam slants downward. The children have drawn back till they stand close to the lovers. The moonbeam slants more and more; now it touches the far end of the stone, now it draws nearer and nearer to the middle of it, now at last it touches the very heart and centre of that central stone. And then it is as though a spring were touched, a fountain of light released. Everything changes or, rather, everything is revealed.
There are no more secrets. The plan of the world seems plain, like an easy sum that one writes in big figures on a child"s slate. One wonders how one can ever have wondered about anything. s.p.a.ce is not; every place that one has seen or dreamed of is here. Time is not; into this instant is crowded all that one has ever done or dreamed of doing. It is a moment and it is eternity. It is the centre of the universe and it is the universe itself. The eternal light rests on and illuminates the eternal heart of things.
None of the six human beings who saw that moon-rising were ever able to think about it as having anything to do with time. Only for one instant could that moon-ray have rested full on the centre of that stone.
And yet there was time for many happenings.
From that height one could see far out over the quiet park and sleeping gardens, and through the grey green of them shapes moved, approaching.
The great beasts came first: strange forms that were when the world was new gigantic lizards with wings dragons they lived as in men"s memories mammoths, strange vast birds, they crawled up the hill and ranged themselves outside the circle. Then, not from the garden but from very far away, came the stone G.o.ds of Egypt and a.s.syria bull-bodied, bird-winged, hawk-headed, cat-headed, all in stone, and all alive and alert; strange, grotesque figures from the towers of cathedrals figures of angels with folded wings, figures of beasts with wings wide spread; sphinxes; uncouth idols from Southern palm-fringed islands; and, last of all, the beautiful marble shapes of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses who had held their festival on the lake-island, and bidden Lord Yalding and the children to this meeting.
Not a word was spoken. Each stone shape came gladly and quietly into the circle of light and understanding, as children, tired with a long ramble, creep quietly through the open door into the firelit welcome of home.