The Orchard of Tears Part 18

"How much money, for goodness' sake, is the Government paying?"

"I don't know exactly, but in addition to the regular allowance and arrears there is a gratuity of something over a hundred pounds to your account."

They were crossing Regent Street, and Flamby narrowly escaped being run over;--but the pavement gained in safety, "--A hundred pounds!" she exclaimed--"_I_ have a hundred pounds!"

"Roughly," said Don, smiling and taking her arm. "Then there are the weekly instalments, of course. Oh, you have nothing to worry about, Flamby. Furthermore it will not be very long before you find a market for your work and then you will be independent of State aid."

In truth, now that he was hopelessly enmeshed in his own net, Don experienced dire misgivings, wondering what Flamby would say, wondering what Flamby would do, when she learned of the conspiracy as she could not fail to learn of it sooner or later. But at the moment he was solely concerned with making her forget her sorrows, and in this he had succeeded. Flamby was radiantly happy and at last could think of the sweet countryside she had left behind without discovering a lump in her throat.

Luncheon in a popular Piccadilly grill-room provided an intensely thrilling experience. Flamby's acute sensibilities and inherent appreciation of the fitness of things rendered her ill at ease, but the gay music of the orchestra did much to restore her to harmony with herself, and Don's unaffected delight in her company did the rest. So in time she forgot the home-made black dress and became fascinated by her novel surroundings and lost in the study of these men and women who belonged to a new, a partly perceived world, but a world into which she had longed to enter. Her personal acquaintance with the ways of modern Babylon was limited to the crowded experiences of a day-visit with her father and mother, a visit eagerly antic.i.p.ated and never forgotten.

Michael Duveen had seemingly never regretted that place in the world which he had chosen to forfeit. He had lived and worked like a labouring man and had taken his pleasures like one. On that momentous day they had visited Westminster Abbey, the Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Nelson's Monument, had lunched at one of Messrs. Lockhart's establishments, had taken a ride in the Tube and performed a hasty tour of the Zoo, where they had consumed, variously, cups of tea, ginger beer, stale buns and ices. Hyde Park they had viewed from the top of a motor bus and descending from this chariot at London Bridge had caught the train home. In the train Flamby had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted with such a saturnalia, and her parents had eaten sandwiches and partaken of beer from a large bottle which Mrs. Duveen had brought in a sort of carpet-bag. Flamby remembered that she had been aroused from her slumbers by her father, who conceiving a sudden and violent antipathy against both bag and bottle (the latter being empty) had opened the carriage window and hurled them both out on to the line.

It was an odd memory but it brought a cloud of sadness, and Don, quick to detect the shadow, hurried Flamby off to the Coliseum and astounded her by booking a stage box. The Aunt was consulted over the telephone, the Aunt agreed to join the party in the evening, and during the remainder of that eventful afternoon there were all sorts of wonderful sights to be seen; delightful shops unlike any that Flamby had imagined, and an exhibition of water-colours in Bond Street which fired her ambition like a torch set to dry bracken, as Don had designed that it should do. They had tea at a fas.h.i.+onable tea-shop, and Don noted that even within the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours the number of lovely women had perceptibly diminished. This historic day concluded, then, with dinner at the Carlton and Ellen Terry at the Coliseum. How otherwise an excellent programme was const.i.tuted mattered not, but when the red-robed Portia came finally before the curtain and bestowed one of her sweet smiles exclusively upon the enraptured girl, Flamby found that two big tears were trickling down her hot cheeks.

V

And now another figure in the pageant which Iamblichos called "the indissoluble bonds of Necessity" was about to reappear in his appointed place in response to the call of the unseen Prompter. Hideous are the settings of that pageant to-day; for where in the glowing pages of Dumas we see D'Artagnan, the gallant Forty-five and many another good friend riding in through the romantic gates of Old Paris, the modern historian finds himself concerned with railway stations which have supplanted those gates of Paris and of London alike. Thus Don entered by the gate of St. Pancras, Flamby by the smoky portal of London Bridge; and, on the following morning, Yvonne Mario stood upon a platform at Victoria awaiting the arrival of the Folkestone boat-train. She attracted considerable attention and excited adverse criticism amongst the other ladies present not only because of her personal charm but by reason of her dress. She wore a coat of black coney seal trimmed with white fox, and a little cap of the same, and her high-legged boots had white calf tops. Her complexion alone doomed her to the undying enmity of her s.e.x, for the humid morning air had enhanced that clear freshness which quite naturally and properly annoyed every other woman who beheld it.

Several pressmen and photographers mingled with the groups along the platform, for the party with which Paul had been touring the French and British fronts included at least two other notable personages; and Ba.s.sett, Paul's press agent, said to Yvonne: "You will smile across a million breakfast tables to-morrow morning, Mrs. Mario, and from a thousand cinema screens later in the week."

Yvonne smiled there and then, a charming little one-sided smile, for she was really a very pretty woman in spite of her reputation as a beauty.

"Modern journalism leaves nothing to the imagination," she replied.

"And very wisely. So few people have any."

They paced slowly along the platform. Excepting the porters who leaned against uptilted trucks and stared stolidly up the line, a spirit of furtive unrest had claimed everyone. People who meet trains always look so guilty, avoiding each other's glances and generally behaving as though their presence were a pure accident; periodically consulting the station clock as who should say, "If this train is not signalled very shortly I must be off. My time is of value." There is another type of course, much more rare, who appears at the last moment from some subterranean stairway. He is always running and his glance is wild. As the pa.s.sengers begin to descend from the train he races along the platform, now and again pausing in his career and standing on tiptoe in order to look over the heads of the people in front of him. To every official he meets he says: "This train _is_ the Folkestone train?" He rarely waits for a reply.

Indeed, at a modern railway station, as of old at the city gates, the fatuity of human aspirations may be studied advantageously. Soldiers were there, at Victoria, hundreds of them, lined up on a distant platform, and they symbolised the spirit of an age which exalts Mechanism to the pinnacle of a deity and which offers itself as a sacrifice upon his iron altars.

The train arrived in due course; cameras and note-books appeared; and people inquired "Is it Sir Douglas Haig they are expecting?" But presently the initiated spread the news that it was Paul Mario who returned from the Western front, and because his reputation was greater than that of Gabrielle D'Annunzio or Charlie Chaplin, everyone sought to obtain a glimpse of him.

He wore a heavy fur-lined coat and his eyes were dark with excitement.

Surrounded by the other members of the party, like an emperor by his suite, Paul's was the outstanding personality among them all. There was a distinguished French general to bow, courtly, over Yvonne's hand, and a Labour Member to quote Cicero. But it was to Paul that the reporters sought to penetrate and upon Paul that the cameras were focussed.

Ba.s.sett, who did not believe in thwarting the demands of popularity, induced him to say a few words.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have no impressions to impart. My mind is numbed. I had never hitherto appreciated the genius of Philip Gibbs...."

In the car Paul talked exclusively to Jules Thessaly, who had accompanied him upon his tour. Yvonne was silent. When first he had seen her awaiting him upon the platform his eyes had lighted up in that ardent way which she loved, and he had pressed her hands very hard in greeting. But thereafter he had become absorbed again in his giant dreams, and now as they sped through the London streets homeward, he bent forward, one hand resting upon Thessaly's knee, wrapped up in the companions.h.i.+p of his memories.

"That chateau, Thessaly, holds a secret which if it could be divulged to the world would revolutionise theology."

"Of what chateau do you speak?" asked Ba.s.sett.

"On my way to the French front I was entertained for a night at a wonderful old chateau. The devouring war had pa.s.sed it by, and it stood like a dignified _grand seigneur_ looking sorrowfully over the countryside. In order to understand how the sight of the place affected me you must know that as a boy I was several times visited by a certain dream. I last dreamed this dream during the time that I was at Oxford but I have never forgotten it. I used to find myself in a s.p.a.cious salon, its appointments and fas.h.i.+on those of Louis Treize, with ghostly moonlight pouring in at lofty church-like windows and painting distorted shadowgraphs of heraldic devices upon the floor. My costume was that of a Cavalier and I held a long sword in my hand. I was conscious of pain and great weakness. Creeping stealthily from recess to recess, window to window, I would approach the double doors at the end of the salon. There I would pause, my heart throbbing fiercely, and press my ear to the gaily painted panels. A murmur of conversation would seem to proceed from the room beyond, but forced onward by some urgent necessity, the nature of which I could never recall upon awakening, I would suddenly throw the doors widely open and hurl myself into a small ante-room. A fire of logs blazed in the open hearth, and some six or eight musketeers lounged about the place, hats, baldrics, swords and cloaks lying discarded upon tables, chairs and where not. All sprang to their feet as I entered, and one, a huge red fellow, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his sword and stood before a low door on the right of the room which I sought to approach.

We crossed blades ... and with their metallic clash sounding in my ears I invariably awoke. I have spoken of this to you, Yvonne?"

Paul glanced rapidly at Yvonne but proceeded immediately without waiting for a reply. "As Thessaly and I were conducted to our rooms on the night of which I am speaking, I found myself traversing the salon of my dreams!"

"Most extraordinary," muttered Ba.s.sett. "Nothing about the aspect of the other rooms of the chateau had struck you as familiar?"

"Nothing; except that I was glad to be there. I cannot make clear to you the almost sorrowful veneration with which I entered the gate. It was like that of a wayward son who returns, broken, to the home upon which he has brought sorrow, to find himself welcomed by his first confessor, old, feeble, lonely, but filled with sweet compa.s.sion. I ascribed this emotion to the atmosphere of a stately home abandoned by its owners. But the salon revealed the truth to me. Heavy plush curtains were drawn across the windows, but the flames of three candles in a silver candelabra carried by the servant created just such a half-light as I remembered. I paused, questioning the accuracy of my recollections, but it was all real, unmistakable. We pa.s.sed through the doorway at the end of the salon--and there was my guardroom! A modern stove had taken the place of the old open hearth, and the furniture was totally different, but I knew the room. The servant crossed before me to a door which I could not recall having noticed in my dream. As he opened it I looked to the right; and where the other door had been before which I had many times crossed swords with the red musketeer I saw a blank wall."

"It was no more than a very remarkable coincidence after all?" said Ba.s.sett.

"On the contrary. I called to the man, a bent old fellow, his face furrowed with age and heavy with care. 'Have you been long in the service of the family?' I asked him. His eyes glistened tearfully.

'Forty-five years, monsieur,' he answered. 'Then perhaps you can tell me if there was ever a door opening on the right, yonder, beside that armchair?'

"He stared at me, Ba.s.sett, like a man dismayed, and his hand trembled so that spots of grease were shaken from the candles on to the floor. 'How can you know of the Duc's door?' he whispered, watching me all the time as if fascinated. 'How can _you_ know of the Duc's door, monsieur?' His fear, his consternation, were so evident, that I recognised the necessity of rea.s.suring him in order to learn more. Therefore, 'I have heard of it, or seen it depicted, somewhere in England,' I replied; 'but the story a.s.sociated with it escapes my memory.'

"He began to look less frightened as I spoke, and finally, having several times moistened his dry lips, he replied. 'It has been walled up for more than two hundred years. It opened upon a staircase leading to the State apartments.' 'And why was it closed, my friend?' I asked. The old man shrugged his angular shoulders and moved on out of the room.

'That I cannot say, monsieur,' he answered: 'but in the reign of Louis XIII, Henri, second Duc de Montmorency, by whose father this chateau was built, escaped one night from the apartment in which he had been imprisoned under sentence of death, and attempted to force his way into the presence of the King, then lying in the chateau. At the foot of those stairs the Duc was mortally wounded by Guitry, Captain of the Bodyguard....'"

During lunch the conversation rarely became general. Ba.s.sett talked to Yvonne, bestowing upon her an elderly admiration which was not lacking in a poetry of its own, and Paul exchanged memories with Thessaly. His mental excitement was tremendous, and contagious, but of the three who listened to him Thessaly alone seemed to respond sympathetically.

Ba.s.sett had never pretended to understand his distinguished client. He was always covertly watching Paul, his fat face wrinkled with perplexity, as though one day he hoped for a revelation by light of which he might grasp the clue to a personality that eluded him entirely.

"That boasted civilisation," said Paul--"the German Kultur--has thrown us back to the earliest savagery of which we hold record. All that education has done for us is to hold the savage in check for a time. He is still there. Spiritually humanity's record is one of retrogression."

Luncheon over, Paul accompanied Thessaly and Ba.s.sett to the latticed gate in the high monastic wall which concealed his house from the road.

They walked away together and he stood for a time gazing after them, then returned and went to his study. Yvonne, who had watched him from the dining-room window, heard the study door close. She sat quite still looking across the table at a chair which Paul had occupied, her fair hair a crown about her brow as the wintry sunlight shone in upon it.

Chelsea sometimes may seem as quiet as a lonely riverside village, and at the moment which followed the sound of the closing door it seemed to have become so to Yvonne. Only that muted droning which arises from the vast hive of London told of four millions of workers moving intimately about her. The house was perfectly still. Odin, Paul's wolf-hound, tugged at his chain in the garden and whined quaveringly. He had heard Paul arrive and was disappointed because his master had forgotten to pay him a visit. He was angry, too, because he also had heard the deep voice of Jules Thessaly; and Odin did not like Jules Thessaly.

A quant.i.ty of personal correspondence had acc.u.mulated, and Paul proceeded to inspect it. A letter addressed in Don's familiar sprawling hand demanded precedence, and Paul noted with excitement that it bore a Derbys.h.i.+re postmark. It was dated from the house of one of Don's innumerable cousins, a house of a type for which the Peak district is notable, a manor of ghostly repute. This cheerful homestead was apparently constructed in or adjoining an ancient burial ground, was in fact a converted monastery, and Don dealt in characteristically whimsical fas.h.i.+on with its unpleasant peculiarities.

"One can scarcely expect a house constructed in a graveyard," he wrote, "to be otherwise than a haunted house. It is a house especially built for a ghost; it is not a house to which a ghost has come; it is a ghost around whom a house has been built. Erratic manifestations are to be looked for from a hitherto free and unfettered spectre who discovers himself to be confined in a residence possibly uncongenial to his taste and to have thrust upon him the society of a family with whose habits and ideals he has nothing in common...."

Finally, Don inquired how the affairs of Flamby were proceeding, and something very like a pang of remorse troubled Paul. The open letter lying before him, he fell into a reverie, arraigning himself before the tribunal of his own conscience. Had his att.i.tude toward Flamby changed?

It had done so. What was the nature of the change? His keen personal interest had given place to one impersonal, although sincere in its way.

What was the explanation of this? He had enshrined her, set her upon a fairy pedestal, only to learn that she was humanly frail. Had this discovery hurt him? Intensely. How and why? It had shattered his belief in his omniscience. Yes, that was the unpalatable truth, brought to light at last. Frailty in woman he looked for, and because he knew it to be an offshoot of that Eternal Feminine which is a root-principle of the universe, he condoned. But in Flamby he had seemed to recognise a rare spirit, one loftily above the common traits of her s.e.x, a fit companion for Yvonne; and had been in error. For long after the finding of those shameful photographs he had failed to recover confidence in himself, and had doubted his fitness to speak as a master who could be blinded by the guile of a girl.

It was, then, offended _amour propre_ which had prompted him to hand over to Nevin, his solicitor, this sacred charge entrusted to him by Don? It was. Now he scourged himself remorselessly. If only because her fault was chargeable on one of his own kin he should have striven with might and main to help Flamby. The fact that she was daughter of the man who had saved Don's life at peril of his own redoubled the sanct.i.ty of the charge. And how had he acquitted himself of his stewards.h.i.+p?

Pitifully. A hot flush rose to his brow, and he hesitated to open a letter from Nevin which also awaited his attention. But he forced himself to the task and read that which completed his humility. Mrs.

Duveen had died of heart-failure two months before, whilst Paul had been abroad, and Flamby was an orphan.

"Captain Courtier, who is at present home on leave, has favoured us with direct instructions in the matter," Nevin continued, "and has placed a generous credit at our disposal for the purpose of securing suitable apartments for Miss Duveen, and for meeting the cost of her immediate maintenance and fees, together with other incidental disburs.e.m.e.nts. We have also secured authority to watch her interests in regard to any pension or gratuity to which she may be ent.i.tled as a minor and orphan of a non-commissioned officer killed in action...."

In the drawing-room, Yvonne very softly was playing a setting of Edgar Allan Poe's exquisite verses, _To One in Paradise_, and such is the magic of music wedded to poetry that it opened a door in Paul's heart and afforded him a glimpse of his inner self. He had neglected poor little Flamby, and his sensitive mind refused to contemplate her loneliness now that her last friend had been taken from her.

"Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine-- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine...."

Paul rose and quietly entered the drawing-room. Yvonne looked up as he opened the door, and he saw that her eyes were dim. He knelt on a corner of the music-chair and clasped his arms tightly about her shoulders, pressing her cheek against his. As she ceased playing and turned her head he kissed her ardently, holding her fast and watching her with those yearning eyes whose gaze can make a woman's heart beat faster. She leaned back against him, sighing.

"Do you know that that is the first time you have kissed me since you returned?" she asked.