December Love Part 92

She looked at him again. Always he was playing softly, improvising.

"Have you really never done any work?"

"Never. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have always had enough money to be idle."

"He's not poor!" she thought.

And then she felt glad, suddenly remembering how rich she was now, since the death of her father.

He said nothing more, but played a short prelude and began to sing in his small, but warm, tenor voice. And, sitting there by the fire, she watched him while he sang, and wondered again, as she had wondered in the studio, at the musical sense that was in him and that could show itself so easily and completely, without apparently any strong effort.

The fascination she felt in him filled all his music, and appealed not only to her senses but to her musical understanding. She had a genuine pa.s.sion for the right in all the arts, for the inevitable word in literature, the inevitable touch of colour that lights up a painting, fusing the whole into harmony, the inevitable emotional colouring of a musical phrase, the slackening or quickening of time, which make a song exactly what it should be. And to that pa.s.sion he was able to appeal with his gift. He sang two Italian songs, and she felt Italy in them.

Then he sang in French, and finally in Spanish--guitar songs. And presently she gave herself entirely to him as a singer. He had temperament, and she loved that. It meant, perhaps, too much to her.

That, no doubt, was what drew her to him more surely than his remarkable physical beauty--temperament which has the keys of so many doors, and can open them at will, showing glimpses of wonderful rooms, and of gardens bathed in suns.h.i.+ne or steeped in mysterious twilight, and of savage wastes, the wilderness, the windy tracts by the sea, landscapes in snow, autumn breathing in mist; temperament which can even simulate knowledge, and can rouse all the under-longings which so often lie sleeping and unknown in women.

"With that man I could never be dull!"

That thought slipped through her while she listened. Where did he come from? In how many lands had he lived? How had his life been pa.s.sed? She ought to know. Perhaps some day he would tell her. He must surely tell her. One cannot do great things which affect one's life in the dark.

Dark--that's his word! When had she thought that? She remembered. It had been in that room. And since then she had seen Garstin's terrible portrait.

But he was like a palm tree singing. Even Garstin had been forced to say that of him.

When at last he stopped all the artistic part of her was under his spell. He had, perhaps deliberately, perhaps at haphazard--she could not tell--aroused in her a great longing for multifarious experiences such as she had never yet suffered under or enjoyed. He had let her recklessness loose from its tethering chain. Was she just then the same woman who a short time ago had feared Minnie Birchington's curious eyes?

She could scarcely believe it.

He got up from the piano. She too got up. He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders gently, pressed them, contracting his strong brown fingers, and said, looking down into her eyes:

"How beautiful you are! Mon Dieu! how beautiful you are!"

And her vanity was gratified as it had never been gratified before by all the compliments she had received, by all the longings she had aroused in men.

Still holding her shoulders he said:

"Do something for me to-night."

"What is it? What do you want?"

"Oh, only a very simple thing."

She felt disappointed, but she said nothing.

"Let us dine together to-night! Afterwards I will take you to your hotel and leave you to think."

He smiled down at her.

"I am no longer afraid to let you think. Will you come?"

"Yes," she said.

"Where was it you were walking to that night when I was so rude as to follow after you?"

"To a restaurant in Soho."

"Yes?"

"To the _Bella Napoli_."

"_Napoli_!"

He half shut his eyes.

"I love Naples. Is it Italian?"

"Yes."

"Really Italian?"

"Yes."

"Let us go there. And before we go I will sing you a street song of Naples."

"You--you are not a Neapolitan?" she asked.

"No. I come from South America. But I know Naples very, very well.

Listen!"

And almost laughing, and looking suddenly buffo, he spoke a few sentences in the Neapolitan patois.

"Ah, they are rascals there! But one forgives them because they are happy in their naughtiness, or at any rate they seem happy. And there is nothing like happiness for getting forgiveness. We will be happy to-night, and we shall get forgiven. We will go to the _Bella Napoli_."

She did not say "yes" or "no." She was thinking at that moment of Craven and Adela Sellingworth. It was just possible that they might be there.

But if they were? What did it matter? Minnie Birchington had seen her with Arabian. Lady Archie Brooke had seen her. Craven had seen her.

And why should she be ashamed. Ought and ought not! Had she ever been governed in her life and her doing by fear of opinion?

"Do you say yes?" he asked. "Or must you go back to dear Mademoiselle Cronin?"

She shook her head.

"Then what do you say?"

"Yes, I'll go there with you," she answered.

But there was a sound of defiance in her voice, and at that moment she had a feeling that she was going to do something more decisively unconventional, even more dangerous, than she had ever yet done.

If _they_ were there! She remembered Craven's look at Arabian. She remembered, too, the change in Arabian's face as Craven had pa.s.sed them.

But Craven had gone back to Adela Sellingworth. Arabian, perhaps, had been the cause of that return.