The Wooden Horse Part 31

That night was never forgotten by any one at "The Flutes." Down in the servants' hall they prolonged their departure for bed to a very late hour, and then crept, timorously, to their rooms; they were extravagant with the electric light, and dared Benham's anger in order to secure a little respite from terrible darkness. Stories were recalled of Sir Jeremy's kindness and good nature, and much speculation was indulged in as to his successor--the cook recalled her early youth and an engagement with a soldier that aroused such sympathy in her hearers that she fraternised, unexpectedly, with Clare's maid--a girl who had formerly been considered "haughty," but was now found to be agreeable and pleasant.

Above stairs there was the same restlessness and sense of uneasy expectancy. Clare went to bed, but not to sleep. Her mind was not with her father--she had been waiting for his death during many long weeks, and now that the time had arrived she could scarcely think of it otherwise than calmly. If one had lived like a Trojan one would die like one--quietly, becomingly, in accordance with the best traditions.

She was sure that there would be something ready for Trojans in the next world a little different from other folks' destiny--something select and refined--so why worry at going to meet it?

No, it was not Sir Jeremy, but Robin. Throughout the night she heard the clocks striking the quarters; the first light of dawn crept timidly through the shuttered blinds, the full blaze of the sun streamed on to her bed--and she could not sleep. The conversation of the day before recalled itself syllable for syllable; she read into it things that had never been there and tortured herself with suspicion and doubt. Robin was different--utterly different. He was different even from a week ago when he had first told them of the affair. She could hear his voice as he had bent over her asking her to forgive him; that had seemed to her then the hour of her triumph--but now she saw that it was the premonition of defeat. How she had worked for him, loved him, spoilt him; and now, in these weeks, her lifework was utterly undone.

And then, in the terrible loneliness of her room, with the darkness on the world and round her bed and at her heart, she wept--terrible, tearless sobbing that left her in the morning weak, unstrung, utterly unequal to the day.

This conversation with Robin had also worried Garrett. The consolation that he had frequently found in the rea.s.suring comforts of his study seemed utterly wanting to-night. The stillness irritated him; it seemed stuffy, close, and he had an overmastering desire for a companion. This desire he conquered, because he felt that it would be scarcely dignified to search the byways of the house for a friend; but he listened for steps, and fancied over and over again that he heard the eagerly antic.i.p.ated knock. But no one came, and he sat far into the night, fancying strange sounds and trembling at the dark; and at last fell asleep in his chair, and was discovered in an undignified position on the floor in the early morning by the politely astonished Benham.

But it was for Harry that the night most truly marked a crisis. He spent it in vigil by the side of his father, and watched the heavy pa.s.sing of the hours, like grey solemn figures through the darkened room. The faint glimmer of the electric light, heavily shaded, a.s.sumed fantastic and portentous shapes and fleecy enormous shadows on the white surface of the staring walls. Strange blue shadows glimmered through the black caverns of the windows, and faint lights came from beneath the door, and hovered on the ceiling like mysteriously moving figures.

Sir Jeremy was perfectly still. Death had come to him very gently and had laid its hand quietly upon him, with no violence or harshness. It was only old age that had greeted him as a friend, and then with a smile had persuaded him to go. He was unconscious now, but at any moment his senses might return, and then he would ask for Harry. The crisis might come at any time, and Harry must be there.

He felt no weariness; his brain was extraordinarily active and he pa.s.sed every incident since his return in review. It all seemed so clear to him now; the inevitability of it all; and his own blindness in escaping the meaning of it. It seemed now that he had known nothing of the world at all three weeks ago. Then he had judged it from his own knowledge--now he saw it in many lights; the point of view of Robin, of Dahlia Feverel, of Clare, of Sir Jeremy, of Bethel, of Mary--he had arrived at the great knowledge that Life could be absolutely right for many different sorts of people--that the same life, like a globe of flas.h.i.+ng colours, could s.h.i.+ne into every corner of obscurity, gleaming differently in every different place and yet be unchangeable.

Murderer, robber, violator, saint, priest, king, beggar--they were all parts of a wonderful, inevitable world, and, he saw it now, were all of them essential. He had been tolerant before from a wide-embracing charity; he was tolerant now from a wide-embracing knowledge: "Er liebte jeden Hund, und wunschte von jedem Hund geliebt zu sein."

They had all learnt in that last three weeks. Dahlia Feverel would pa.s.s into the world with that struggle at her heart and the strength of her victory--his father would solve the greatest question of all--Robin! Mary! Clare!--they had all been learning too, but what it was that they had learnt he could not yet tell; the conclusion of the matter was to come. But it had all been, for him at least, only a prelude; he was to stand for the world as head of the House, he had his life before him and his work to do, he had only, like Robin, just "come of age."

He did not know why, but he had no longer any doubt. He knew that he would win Robin, he knew that he would win Mary; up to that day he had been uncertain, vacillating, miserable--but now he had no longer any hesitation. The work of his life was to fit Robin for his due succession, and, please G.o.d, he would do it with all his heart and soul and strength; there was to be no false sentiment, no s.h.i.+fting of difficult questions, no hiding from danger, no sheltering blindly under unquestioned creeds, no false bids for popularity.

Robin was to be clean, straight, and sane, with all the st.u.r.dy cleanliness and strength and sanity that his father's love and knowledge could give him.

Oh! he loved his son!--but no longer blindly, as he had loved him three weeks ago ... and so he faced his future.

And of Mary, too, he was sure. He knew that she loved him; he had seen her face in the mirror as her lips had said "No," and he saw that her heart had said "Yes." With the new strength that had come to him he vowed to force her defences and carry her away.... Oh! he could be any knight and fight for any lady.

But as he sat by the bed, watching the dawn struggle through the blinds and listening to the faint, clear twittering of birds in the grey, dew-swept garden--he wished that he could tell his father of his engagement. He wondered if there would be time. That it would please the old man he knew, and it would seal the compact, and place a secret blessing on their married life together. Yes, he would like to tell him.

The clocks struck five--he heard their voices echo through the house; and, at the last, the tiny voice of the cuckoo clock sounded and the little wild flap of his wings came quite clearly through the silence; his voice was answered by a chorus from the garden, the voices of the birds seemed to grow ever louder and louder; in that strange dark room, with its shaded lights and heavy airs, it was clear and fresh like the falling of water on cold, s.h.i.+ning stone.

Harry went softly to the window and drew back a corner of the blind.

The dawn was gradually revealing the forms and colours of the garden, and in the grey, misty light things were mysterious and uncertain; like white lights in a dusky room the two white statues shone through the mist. At that strange hour they seemed in their right atmosphere; they seemed to move and turn and bend--he could have fancied that they sailed on the mist--that, for a moment, they had vanished and then that they had grown enormous, monstrous. He watched them eagerly, and as the light grew clearer he made them out more plainly--the straight, eager beauty of the man, the dim, mysterious grace of the woman.

Perhaps they talked in those early hours when they were alone in the garden; perhaps they might speak to him if he were to join them then.

Then he fancied that the mist formed into figures of men and women; to his excited fancy the garden seemed peopled with shapes that increased and dwindled and vanished. Round the statues many shapes gathered; one in especial seemed to walk to and fro with its face turned to the house. It was a woman--her grey dress floated in the air, and he saw her form outlined against the statue. Then the mist seemed to sweep down again and catch the statues in its eddies and hide them from his gaze. The dawn was breaking very slowly. From the window the sweep of the sea was, in daylight, perfectly visible: now in the dim grey of the sky it was hidden--but Harry knew where it must be and watched for its appearance. The first lights were creeping over the sky, breaking in delicate tints and ripples of silver and curving, arc-shaped, from the west to the east.

Where sky and sea divided a faint pale line of grey hovered and broke, turning into other paler lights of the most delicate blue. The dawn had come.

He turned back again to the garden and started with surprise: in the more certain light there was no doubt that it was a woman who stood there by the statues, guarding the first early beauties of the garden.

Everything was pearl-grey, save where, high above the water of the fountain that stood in the centre of the lawn, the sky had broken into a little lake of the palest blue and this was reflected in the still mirror of the fountain--but it _was_ a woman. He could see the outline of her form--the bend of her neck as she turned with her face to the house, the straight line of her arms as they tell at her sides. And, as he looked, his heart began to beat thickly. He seemed to recognise that carriage of the body from the hips, the fling-back of the head as she stared towards the windows.

The light of the dawn was breaking over the garden, the chorus of the birds was loud in the trees, and he knew that it was no dream.

He glanced for a moment at his father, and then crept softly from the room. He found one of the nurses making tea over a spirit-lamp in the dressing-room and asked her to take his place.

The house was perfectly silent as he opened the French window of the drawing-room and stepped on to the lawn. The gra.s.s was heavy with dew and the fresh air beat about his face; he had never known anything quite so fresh--the air, the gra.s.s, the trees, the birds' song like the sound of hidden waters tumbling on to some unseen rock.

Her face was turned away from him and his feet made no sound on the gra.s.s. He came perfectly silently towards her, and then when he saw that it had indeed been no imagination but that it was reality, and when he knew all that her coming there meant and what it implied, for moment his limbs shook so that he could scarcely stand. Then he laughed a little and said "Mary!"

She turned with a little cry, and when she saw who it was the crimson flooded her face, changing it as the rising sun was soon to change the grey of the sea and the garden.

"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't know--I didn't mean. I----"

"It is going to be a lovely day," he said quietly, "the sun will be up in a moment. I have been watching you from my father's window."

"Oh! You mustn't!" she cried eagerly. "I thought that I was safe--absolutely; I was here quite by chance--really I was--I couldn't sleep, and I thought that I would watch the sunrise over the sea--and I went down to the beach--and then--well, there was the little wood by your garden, and it was so wonderfully still and silent, and I saw those statues gleaming through the trees, and they looked so beautiful that I came nearer. I meant to come only for a moment and then go away again--but--I--stayed----"

But he could scarcely hear what she said; he only saw her standing there with her dress trembling a little in the breeze.

"Mary," he said, "you did not mean what you told me the other day?"

She looked at him for a moment and then suddenly flung out her hands and touched his coat. "No," she answered.

For a moment they were utterly silent. Then he took her into his arms.

"I love you! How I love you!"

Her hair was about his face, for a moment her face was buried in his coat, then she lifted it and their lips met.

He shook from head to foot, he crushed her to him, then he released her.

She glanced up at him with her hand still touching his coat and looked into his eyes.

"I will love you and serve you and honour you always," she said. She took his arm and they pa.s.sed down the lawn and watched the light breaking over the sea. The sky was broken into thousands of fleecy clouds of mother-of-pearl--the sea was trembling as though the sun had whispered that it was near at hand, and, on the horizon, the first bars of pale gold heralded its coming.

"I have loved you," he said, "since the first moment that I saw you--I gave you tea and m.u.f.fins; I deserted the Miss Ponsonbys in order to serve you."

"And I too!" she answered, laughing. "I could not eat the m.u.f.fin for love of you, and I was jealous of the Miss Ponsonbys!"

"Why did you turn me out the other day?"

"They had been talking--mother and the others; and I was hurt terribly, and I thought that you would hear what they had said and would think, perhaps, that it was true and would despise me. And then after you had gone, I knew that nothing in the world could make any difference--that they could say what they pleased, but that I could not live without you--you see I am very young!"

"Oh, and I am so old, dear! You mustn't forget that! Do you think that you could ever put up with any one as old as I am?"

She laughed. "You are just the same age as myself," she cried. "You will always be the same age, and I am not sure but I think that you are younger----"

And suddenly the sun had risen--a great ball of fire changing all the blue of the sky to red and gold, and they watched as the G.o.ds had watched the flaming ruin of Valhalla.

But the daylight drove them to other thoughts.

"I must go back," she said. "I will go down to the sh.o.r.e and perhaps will meet father. Oh! you don't know what I have suffered during these last few days. I thought that perhaps I had driven you away and that you would never come back--and then I had a silly idea that I would watch your windows--and so I came----"

"Why! I have watched yours!" he cried--"often! Oh! we will have some times!"

"But you must remember that there will be three of us," she answered.

"There is Robin!"

"Robin! Why, it will be splendid! You and Robin and I!"