"Ah! I knew you would say that." He added in a moment, "You are the only person that has quoted my lines to me that has not embarra.s.sed me painfully. For the moment I felt that you had written them, not I!"
"I often used to feel that I had; all, that is----" The magnet of danger to the curiosity in her feminine soul was irresistible. "All but your ode to the mate whom you never could find."
And then she turned cold, for she remembered the story of the woman who had been his ruin. But he did not pale nor shrink; he merely smiled and his eyes seemed to withdraw still farther away. "Ah! that woman of whom all poets dream. Perhaps we really find her as we invoke her for a bit with the pen." Then he broke off abruptly and looked hard at her, his eyes no longer absent. "You--you----" he began. "Ten years ago----" And then his face flushed so darkly that Anne laughed gaily to cover the cold and horror that gripped her once more.
"Ten years ago? I was only twelve! And now--I am made to feel every day that two-and-twenty is quite old. In three more years I shall be an orthodox old maid. All the women in Bath House intimate that I am already beyond the marriageable age."
"The men do not, I fancy!" The poet spoke with the energy of a man himself. "Besides, I looked--happened to look--through the window of the saloon one night and saw you talking to no less than four gallants."
Here she turned away in insufferable confusion, and he, too, seemed to realise that he had betrayed a deeper interest than he had intended.
With a muttered au revoir he left her, and when she finally turned her head he was gone. Miss Bargarny was exclaiming:
"Well, dear Lady Hunsdon, he was quite delightful, genteel, altogether the gentleman. Thank heaven I never heard all those naughty stories, so I can admire without stint. Did you notice, Mary, how pleased he was when I recited that couplet?"
"I saw that he was very much embarra.s.sed," replied Lady Mary, who for an elegiac figure had a surprising reserve of human nature. "It was too soon to be personal with a poor man who has been out of the world so long. But I think he enjoyed himself after the first embarra.s.sment wore off. I feel surer still," with an exalted expression turned suddenly upon Lord Hunsdon, "that we shall rescue him. We must have him here often, not lose a day of this precious time. Then we can leave Nevis without anxiety, or perhaps induce him to go with us." She reflected that were she mistress of Hunsdon Towers she should be quite willing to give the famous poet a turret and pa.s.s as his mundane redeemer.
Hunsdon moved toward her as if her enthusiasm were a magnet. "It has all exceeded my fondest hopes," he exclaimed. "He was quite like his old self before he left----"
"Thanks to Miss Percy," broke in a stridulous voice. "He was devoured with ennui, to say nothing of shyness, until he summoned up courage to talk to her, and then he seemed to me quite like any ordinary young spark. I don"t know that he quite forgot to be a poet," she concluded with some gallantry, for she had taken a great fancy to Anne and was determined to marry her brilliantly, "but he certainly ceased for a few moments to look like a G.o.d-forsaken one. What were you talking about, my dear?"
"_Dear_ Lady Constance--Oh, Nevis, and his poetry, for the most part."
"I should think he would be sick of both subjects. Come now, be frank.
Did not you get on the subject of your pretty self? I"ll be bound he has an eye for a fine girl as well as the best of them. You make Mary and Lillian look like paper dolls."
"I do protest!" cried Miss Bargarny indignantly. "If he does it is practically because he is a--lives in the country himself. If he lived in London among people of the first fashion----"
"He"d admire her all the more. Look at the other beaux. Wait until Miss Percy is in the high tide of a London season. You forget that if girls are always on the catch, men are always ready for a change."
Miss Bargarny"s black eyes were in flames, but she dared not provoke that dreaded tongue further. She forced herself to smile as she turned to Anne, standing abashed during this discussion of herself, and longing to be alone with her chaotic thoughts. "Confess, dear Miss Percy, that you did not talk about yourself, but about that most fascinating of all subjects to man, _himself_. I believe you have the true instinct of the coquette, in spite of your great lack of experience, and that is a coquette"s chiefest sugar-plum."
"I believe I did talk about himself--naturally, as I have always been a great admirer of his work, and the very inexperience you mention makes me seize upon such subjects as I know anything about."
Lady Mary went forward and put her arm about her new friend"s waist.
"Let us take a turn in the orchard before it is time to retire," she said. "I long to talk to you about our new acquaintance. Try to devise a plan to bring him here daily," she said over her shoulder to the complacent hostess; and to Lord Hunsdon, "Will you come for us in a quarter of an hour?"
It was only of late that Lady Mary had determined to lay away in lavender the luxury of sorrow. When a woman is thirty ambition looms as an excellent subst.i.tute for romance, and there had been unexpected opportunities to charm a wealthy peer during the past five weeks. She hated poetry and thought this poet a horror, but he was an excellent weapon in the siege of Hunsdon Towers. She was not jealous of Anne, for she divined that Hunsdon"s suit, if suit it were, was hopeless, and believed that her new friend"s good nature would help her to win the prize of a dozen seasons. So she refreshed her complexion with b.u.t.termilk and spirits of wine, and made love to Anne; who saw through her manoeuvres but was quite willing to further them if it would save herself the ordeal of refusing Lord Hunsdon.
CHAPTER VII
On the following evening there was so much more dancing than usual--a number of officers had come over from St. Kitts--that the saloon was deserted by the young people, and at the height of the impromptu ball Anne found herself alone near one of the open windows. The older people were intent upon cards. Anne, who had grown bolder since her first appearance in the world, now close upon three weeks ago, obeyed an impulse to step through the window, descended the terrace and walked along the beach. She could have gone to her room and found the solitude she craved, but she wanted movement, and the night was so beautiful that it called to her irresistibly. The moon was at the full, she could see the blue of the sea under its crystal flood. The blades of the palm trees glittered like sinister weapons unsheathed.
She could outline every leaf of palm, cocoanut, and banana that fringed the sh.o.r.e. The nightingales ceased their warbling and she heard that other and still more enchanting music of a tropic night, the tiny ringing of a million silver bells. What fairy-like creature of the insect world gave out this lovely music she was at no pains to discover. It was enough that it was, and she had leaned out of her window many a night and wondered why Byam Warner had never sung its music in his verse.
Byam Warner! How--how was she to think of him? Her overthrown ideals no longer even interested her, belonging as they did to some far off time when she had not come herself to dream upon these ravishing sh.o.r.es. And now the surrender of the past three weeks had been far more rudely disturbed. Would even Nevis dominate again? Must not such a man, even in his ruin, cast his shadow over any scene of which he was a part? And of Nevis he was a part! She had been able to disa.s.sociate them only until he stood before her, quick. And now she should see him, talk to him every day, possibly receive his devotions, for there was no doubt that he admired her as the ant.i.thesis of all to which he had been accustomed from birth; unquestionably she must take her part in his redemption. The thought thrilled her, and she paused a moment looking out over the water. Faded, even repellent, as that husk was, not only was his genius so far unimpaired, but she believed that she had caught a glimpse of a great soul dwelling apart in that polluted tenement. From the latter she shrank with all the aversion of uncontaminated girlhood, but she felt that she owed it to her intellect to recognise the separateness of those highest faculties possessed by the few, from the flesh they were forced to carry in common with the aborigines. And it seemed almost incredible that his life had not swamped, mired, smothered all that was lofty and beautiful in that inner citadel; her feminine curiosity impelled her to discover if this really were so, or if he had merely retained a trick of expression.
She was skirting the town, keeping close to the sh.o.r.e, but she paused again, involuntarily, to look in the direction of that baker"s dwelling, through the window of which, some months since, Byam Warner, mad with drink, had precipitated himself one night, shrieking for the handsome wife of the indignant spouse. For this escapade he had lain in jail until a coloured planter had bailed him out--for the white Creoles thought it a good opportunity to emphasize their opinion of him--and although he had been dismissed with a fine, the judge had delivered himself of a weighty reprimand which was duly published in the local paper. He had lain in prison only forty-eight hours, but _he had lain in prison_, and the disgrace was indelible. No wonder he had been ashamed to hold up his head, had hesitated so long to accept Lady Hunsdon"s invitation. The wonder was it had been extended. Anne shrewdly inferred it never would have been in London, no matter what the entreaties of Lord Hunsdon, but on this island many laws were relaxed and many a sin left behind.
Then her thoughts swung to his indubious a.s.sertion that he had emerged from his lair merely that he might meet her. She recalled the admiration in his eyes, the desperate effort with which he had overcome his shyness and approached her. What irony, if after having been ignorant, unsuspecting, of her existence during all those years of her worship, when she had been his more truly than in many a corporeal marriage, he should love her now that she could only think of him with pity and contempt. It gave her a fierce shock of repulsion that he might wish to marry her, dwell even in thought upon possessing her untouched youth after the lewdness of his own life. She must crush any such hope in its bulb if she would not hate him and do him ill when she sincerely wished him well. She reviewed the beaux of Bath House for one upon whom she might pretend to fix her affections, and at once, before Warner"s inclination ripened into pa.s.sion; but the very thought of entering into a serious flirtation with any of those tight-waisted, tight-trousered exquisites induced a sensation of ennui, and with Hunsdon she did not care to trifle. He might be wearisome, but he was good and sincere, and Lady Mary should have him were it in her power to bring about that eminently proper match.
It was at this point in her reflections that she found herself opposite the house of the poet.
CHAPTER VIII
She had walked more rapidly than she had been aware of and was shocked at her apparent unmaidenliness in approaching the house of a man, and at night, in whom she was irresistibly interested; although, to be sure, if she walked round the island, to pa.s.s his house sooner or later was inevitable. She was about to turn and hurry home, when she saw what had appeared to be a shadow detach itself from the tree in the court and approach her. She recognised Warner and stood rooted to the ground with terror. All the wild and detestable stories she had heard of him sprang to her mind in bold relief, and although she had met many a hard character when tramping her moors and felt sure of coming off best in a struggle, her strength ebbed out of her before this approaching embodiment of all mysterious vice. To fly down the beach in a hoop was impossible; besides she would look ridiculous. But what would he do! She forgot his eyes and remembered only his adventures.
But he looked anything but formidable as he came closer, and, being without a hat, bowed courteously. Under the softening rays of the moon his features looked less worn, his skin less pallid, and, perhaps because she was alone and attracted him strongly, his hang-dog air was less apparent. He even made an effort to straighten his listless shoulders as he came close enough to get a full view of the beautiful young woman, standing with uncovered head and neck in the bright light of the moon and staring at him with unaccountable apprehension.
"It is I, Miss Percy," he said. "Have you walked ahead of your party?
I have not seen anyone pa.s.s."
"I--it is a dreadful thing to do, I know--I stepped out of the window--just to take a stroll by myself. I never seem to get a moment alone. I am so tired of hearing people chatter. I was thinking--before I knew it I was here. I must go back. My aunt will be very angry."
"Let me get you a cloak. Your shoulders are bare and the fog will come down presently."
He went rapidly into the house and she had her chance to flee, but she waited obediently until he returned with a long black Inverness, which he laid about her shoulders. "I shall walk home with you," he said. "I don"t think you are quite prudent to go about alone at night. There are rough characters in the town."
"Ah!--never again. You are very kind. I do not know why I should trouble you."
He did not make the conventional response, and for a few moments they walked on in silence. Then, gathering confidence, as he barely looked at her and was undeniably sober, she asked abruptly: "Why have you never written of the fairy orchestra one hears every night? It is about the only phase of Nevis you have neglected."
"The little bells? Thank you for calling my attention to it. I remember--I once thought of it. But so many other things claimed my attention, and I forgot it. I fancy I seldom hear it. But you are right; it is very lovely and quite peculiar to the West Indies. If it would please you I will write some verses about it--well--one of these days."
"I wish you would write them while I am here."
"I am not in the mood for writing at present."
He spoke hurriedly, and she understood. Hunsdon had told her that he never wrote save under stimulants. Could it be possible that he had made up his mind not to drink as long as she was on Nevis? She turned to him a radiant face of which she was quite unconscious, as she replied eagerly. "Yes! We have all resolved that you shall not write a line this winter. A few months out of your life are nothing to sacrifice to people that admire and long to know you as we do. Never was a man so sought. I cannot tell you how many schemes we have already devised to get hold of you----"
"But why--in heaven"s name? I cannot help feeling the absurdity."
"Not at all. You are the most celebrated poet of the day, and all the world loves a lion."
"For some five years, the world of Bath House has existed without the capers of the local lion," he responded dryly.
"Ah, but you were so determined a recluse. It takes a Lady Hunsdon to coax a lion from his cave. And, no doubt, she is the only person to come to Bath House during all these years who knew you well enough to take such a liberty. You are such an old and intimate friend of her son."
He stole a quick glance at her, as if to ascertain were she as ignorant of his life as she pretended, but she was now successfully in the role of the vivacious young woman, who, in common with the rest of the world, admired his work and was flattered to know the author.
"Don"t think that we mean to make fools of ourselves and bore you,"
she added, with another radiant and somewhat anxious smile. "But now that the opportunity has come we are all so happy, and we feel deeply the compliment you have already paid us. Lady Hunsdon hopes that you will read from your works some evening----"