The Brightener Part 23

This reply, and the embarra.s.sed look on Joyce's face, set me going upon a new track. Was Opal Fawcett in the "story" which my imagination had begun to write around Miss Arnold and Robert Lorillard? If so, what could be her part in it?

I found no satisfactory answer. Years ago, when she was on the stage and acting with Lorillard, Opal had perhaps been in love with him, like hundreds of other women. But since then he'd married, and fought in the war, and later had led the life of a hermit, while she pursued her successful "career" in town. It was unlikely that they had seen much of each other, even if their old, slight acquaintance had been kept up at all. Still, Opal might have been curious about Lorillard and the "simple life." She might have welcomed Joyce for the sake of what she could tell of him, and Joyce might have rebelled when she saw what Opal wanted from her.

I thanked my own wits for giving me this "tip." Without it, I mightn't have resisted the strong temptation to proceed with a little dextrous "pumping" on my own--just a word wedged into some c.h.i.n.k in the armour now and then, to find out if poor Joyce had fallen a victim to Lorillard's undying charm.

As it was, I determined to shut up like a clam, and do as I would be done by were I in the girl's place. If she'd slipped into loving her employer, and he had thought best to banish her, for her own good, the wound in poor Joyce's self-respect must be as deep as that in her heart.

Every sensitive nerve must throb with anguish, and only a _wretch_ would deliberately probe the hurt with questions, in mere selfish curiosity.

"It's not your business," I said to myself. And I vowed to do all I could to make Joyce Arnold forget--whatever it was that she might want to forget.

She did come to me that afternoon. I had one spare room in my flat, and I made it as pretty and homelike as I could with flowers and books and little things I stole from my own quarters. The girl was pathetically grateful! She opened out to me like a flower--that is, in affection. I felt in her a warm, eager anxiety to serve and help me, not for the wages I gave, but for love. It was like a perfume in the place. And Joyce Arnold was intelligent as well as sweet. She had been highly educated, and there seemed to be few things she hadn't thought about.

Most of the old aunt's money had been spent in making the girl what she was, so there was little left; but Joyce would always be able to earn her living.

If she tired of secretarial work, she could quite well teach music, both piano and voice production. She had taken singing lessons from a famous and successful man. Had her voice been strong enough, she might have got concert engagements, it was so honey-sweet, so exquisitely trained. But she called it a "twilight voice"; which it really was, and often I gave up going out for the joy of having her sing to me alone in the dusk.

It was only at those times that I knew--actually _knew_!--how sad she was, to the point of heartbreak. By day, when we worked or talked together, her manner was charmingly bright. She was interested in my affairs, and her quiet, delicious sense of humour was one of her greatest attractions for me. But at the piano, before the lights were on, the girl was at the mercy of her secret, whatever it might be. It came like a ghost, and stared her in the eyes. It said to her: "You can't shut me out. It is to _me_ you sing. I _make_ you sing!"

To hear that "twilight voice" of hers, half crooning, half chanting, those pa.s.sion-flower songs of Laurence Hope's, or "Omar," would have waked a soul in a stone image!

Good heavens! how could Robert Lorillard have sent her away? How, on the contrary, could he have helped wanting this n.o.ble, brave, sweet creature to warm his life for ever?

That's what I asked myself over and over again. And on top of that question another. What if--he _hadn't_ helped it?

It was one evening, while she improvised a queer little "song of sleep"

for me that this thought came. It burst like a bombsh.e.l.l in my brain; and the reason it hadn't burst before was because my mind always pictured June and Robert together.

I was lying deep among cus.h.i.+ons on a sofa, and involuntarily I started up.

Joyce broke off her song in the midst.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said; "only--it just popped into my head that I'd forgotten to telephone for--for a car to-morrow."

"For a car?" Joyce echoed. "How stupid of me, if you mentioned it! I can't remember----"

"No, I didn't mention it," I said. (No wonder, when I hadn't even _thought_ of it until this minute!) "But I--I _meant_ to. I'd made up my mind to go to 'Pergolas,' the d.u.c.h.ess of Stane's place on the river; you must have seen it when you were working for Robert Lorillard."

It was the first time I'd uttered his name since that impulsive break at the luncheon table, over a fortnight ago now!

Whether or not her face blushed I couldn't see in the twilight, but her _voice_ blushed as she said:

"Oh, yes! I've seen--the gates. Surely the d.u.c.h.ess isn't there at this time of the year?"

"She generally takes a 'rest cure' of a week or two at Pergolas this month. It's perfect peace, and you know how dreamlike the river is in autumn."

"I--know," Joyce murmured. "The woods all golden, and mists like creamy veils across the blue distance. I know!"

There was a pa.s.sion of suppressed longing and regret in her tone.

"Wouldn't you like to go with me?" I coaxed. "It's such lovely country for a spin. And--I've never been there; but I suppose we must pa.s.s close to Robert Lorillard's cottage? We go through Stanerton village. We could stop and see if he's still at home, or if he's gone----"

"No--no, thank you, Princess," Joyce said, hastily, "I don't--care very much for motoring. If you're to be away to-morrow I'll get through some mending, and some letters of my own."

I didn't argue. I should have been surprised if she'd accepted. It would have made the thing commonplace. And it would have upset my plan. I can't call it a "deep-laid plan," because I'd laid it on no firmer foundation than the spur of the moment; but I was wildly excited about it. Fully armoured like Minerva it had leapt into my brain while I said to myself, "What _if_----?"

Joyce 'phoned to the garage where I hired cars occasionally, and ordered something to come at ten o'clock next morning. For me to take this joy ride meant throwing over a whole day's engagements like so many ninepins. But I didn't care a rap!

I could see when I was ready to start that Joyce was even more excited than I. No doubt she was thinking that, when I came back, I might bring news of _him_. We spoke, however, only of the d.u.c.h.ess.

To me, a harmless, necessary fib isn't much more vicious than a cat of the same description; that is, if the fib is for the benefit of a friend. But I'd rather tell the truth if it can be managed, so I really intended to call on the d.u.c.h.ess. The village of Stanerton--on the outskirts of which Lorillard lived--happened to be on my way to Pergolas. I couldn't help _that_, could I? So I told my chauffeur to ask for River Orchard Cottage--the address on Robert's note introducing Miss Arnold.

Everyone seemed to know the place. It was half a mile out of the village, and you went to it up a side road: a very old cottage altered and modernized. The name was old, too: it really was an orchard, and it was really on the river. That was what half a dozen people informed us in a breath, and they would have added much information about Lorillard himself if I'd cared to hear. But all I wanted to learn about him from them was whether he had gone away. He hadn't. He had been seen out walking the day before.

"I _told_ you so!" I said to myself.

As the car slowed down and stopped before a white gate I seemed to lose my ident.i.ty for a moment. It became merged with that of Joyce Arnold. I felt as if she--the _real_ Joyce--had raced here in some winged vehicle of thousand-spirit power, travelling far faster than any road-bound earthly car, and, having waited for me, now slipped into my skin.

The sight of that gate made my heart beat as it must have made hers beat every day when she came in the morning to work. Yes! As I laid my hand on the latch I wasn't my somewhat blasee and sophisticated self: I was the girl to whom this place was Paradise.

The white gate was flanked by two tall clipped yews. Inside, a wide path of irregular paving-stones, with gra.s.s and flowers sprouting between, led to a low thatched cottage--oh, but a glorified cottage: a cottage that looked as if it had died and gone to heaven! The flagged path had tubs on either side. In them grew funny little Dutch treelets shaped like birds and animals of different sorts; and the lawn kept all the n.o.ble, gnarled giants that once had made it an orchard. The cottage was yellow, like cottages in Devons.h.i.+re, and the old thatch had the gray satin sheen of chinchilla. A huge magnolia was trained over the front, and climbing roses and wisteria, all in the sere and yellow leaf or bare now; but I could picture the place in spring, when the diamond-paned bow windows sparkled through a canopy of flowers, when the great apple trees were like a pink-and-white sunrise of blossom, and underneath spread a carpet of forget-me-nots and tulips.

How sweet must have been the air then, how blue the river background, and how melodious the low song of a distant weir!

To-day, the air was faintly acrid with the scent of bonfire smoke--the odour of autumn; and the sounds of wind and water over the weir were sad as a song of homesickness.

I tapped an old-fas.h.i.+oned knocker upon a low green door. An elderly maid appeared. I saw by the bleak glint of a pale eye that she meant to say, "Not at home," and hastened to forestall her.

"See if Captain Lorillard is in, and if so tell him that Princess di Miramare has come from town on purpose for a talk with him," I flung in the stolid face.

There was no answer to that except obedience! The woman left me waiting in a delightful little square hall furnished with a very few, very beautiful, old things. And in a minute Robert Lorillard almost bounded out of a room into which the maid had vanished.

It was the first time we had seen each other since the day he married June Dana.

I had sat down on a cus.h.i.+oned chest in the hall. At sight of him I jumped up, and meaning to hold out a hand, found myself holding out two!

He took both, pressed them, and without speaking we looked long at each other. For both of us the past had come alive.

He was the same, yet not the same. Certainly not less handsome, but changed, as all men who have been through the war are changed--anyhow, imaginative men. Though he had been back from the Front for over a year (he was invalided out after his last wound, just before the Armistice) the tan wasn't off his face yet, perhaps never would be. There were a few lines round his eyes and a few silver threads in his black hair. He smiled at me; but it was the smile of a man who has suffered, and known a h.e.l.l of loneliness.

It was Robert who spoke first, saying entirely commonplace things in the beautiful voice that used to thrill London. He was so glad to see me!

How nice it was of me to come! Then, suddenly, he remembered something.

I could _see_ him remembering. He remembered that he was supposed to be away.

"I ought to be in France," he said. "All my arrangements are made to go.

Yet I haven't got off. I'm glad now that I haven't."

"So am I, very glad," I echoed. "I should have been too disappointed!

But--I _felt_ you wouldn't be gone."