The Magpies Nest (9 page)

For one thing, few of us are willing to admit in cold blood that we are just exactly like other people.

His moment lasted the evening, at least. Hope, looking up suddenly, smiled straight into his eyes, and held out her hand, quite unnecessarily.

"But I know you," she said, and thought at the moment she was telling the truth. So she rose and let the music carry her away with him, without even looking back at Mary and Lisbeth Patten.

Falling in love is not a faithfully descriptive phrase. One soars up to love as to a sunlighted pinnacle above a world of grey fog. Wings of enchantment are lent for the occasion. The kingdoms of the world are spread out before the transported victim, who promptly spurns them. The falling occurs subsequently.

Then the bruised and bleeding creature who so lately was a god sits painfully for a while estimating injuries, and presently begins to pick up the pieces. Generally it is found they can be got together in workable shape, with considerable effort, but nothing will ever be quite the same again. But if the real gods have had pity, they have surreptitiously put a grain of common sense into the new mixing, so that the next time love is achieved step by step, as an Alpine climber mounts, and one takes pains to make love a little footing at the very top, where it may rest secure.

But the reason why anyone falls in love cannot be told, for it is different in every case.

Tony Yorke had charm—a gift that no man has a right to. That is because he can go to the woman he desires and plead his own cause with no more shame than his conscience puts on him. A woman needs charm to bring her choice to her. When some wicked godmother gives it to a man she means mischief. It is an alien element and breeds trouble. By virtue of that misplaced quality, Tony Yorke could not look at a woman without his glance telling her that she was of all the world the one person he would rather spend the next hour with. He also looked at her as if they were sharing some rather amusing secret, only they two, against all the world.

When he gave Hope that reassuring, confidential message with his eyes, hers answered with the same joyful intelligence. She believed every word he did not say. She dragged from the recesses of her soul all the garments of romance that had been hidden there for almost all the years of her life, and in the space of one evening neatly cut and fitted them to his outward measure and hung them about him willy-nilly. And with a sweet shameless pride she did not care if the whole ball-room knew it.

As a matter of fact, no one knew it. She did not know it herself. It is the obvious thing escapes the world longest. Even Ned Angell felt rather glad that Hope had brightened up. She quite did him credit, though he did feel a slight, indefinable unease. Perhaps because he had at last found the expected, unexpected different phase in her.

He looked at her closely when he took her to supper, or as closely as he could. Ned was the least bit muddled. Hope knew he drank sometimes; but she had never before had direct evidence of it. He had the conventional decency for that. But now she was absent-minded, and he saw it, and wanted to attract her attention; he talked louder than was his wont. Eating her cold chicken placidly, and aware through her lowered lashes of every turn of Tony Yorke's head at the far end of the long trestled table, where he sat with Cora Shane, Hope woke to a sudden horrified consciousness of what Ned was saying. More, she felt what he was about to say; what he had said was nothing.

"Ned," she said, in a low voice that was like a splash of cold water, "be quiet. Or I shall leave the table."

It stopped him on a word; he bit Mrs. Shane's name in two like a cherry, and was silent. Hope looked about swiftly. No one else had noticed. She looked at Ned. He was sulking, wearing an air of injured innocence. His smoothly-shaven cheek and shining hair, his immaculate shirt-front and cuffs, everything about him so clean and orderly and daintily nice, contributed to that expression; and all these things he had in common with everyone who sat there, eating, drinking, laughing; and all these things, somehow, seemed to make what he had been saying absurd These people, outwardly so carefully composed, in painting phrase—they did not look as if there was any evil in them any more than Ned did. But he had made her, for one rather horrible moment, fancy a skeleton at the feast, a skeleton for every feaster. It was as if each who supped had a skeleton
beneath
the table, held firmly underfoot, and Ned had wantonly tried to drag one aboveboard. Hope saw the world in a glimpse. Then she looked, openly, at Tony Yorke. There was something so frank about his smiling eyes, his fresh, tanned face. He looked
good.
She breathed freely again. He met her gaze, and telegraphed her a quick message. The next? She nodded.

They did not dance together. Instead, moved by a common impulse toward solitude
à
deux,
they found an extraordinary little dusty stairway leading into the darkness of the roof, at the upper end of the hall, and sat there on Tony's handkerchief, peering through the half-open door at the dancers, like an audience of two looking on at the pageant of life, asking no more than each other. It was draftily cool there, but they did not feel it. Hope drew the tail of her lacy gown over her shoulders; an unnecessary precaution. His mere presence warmed her; his sleeve touching her bare arm; more, the light in his eyes when, speaking, they bent their faces close in such a movement as preludes a kiss. They bantered each other a little; she loved to see him laugh, because he wrinkled his nose a trifle and looked as if everything were much funnier than one dared to acknowledge openly. She was so immensely light-hearted on a sudden; and it seemed, absurdly, to have something to do with the way his hair grew off his temples—she loved his hair. No doubt Delilah wept when she put the shears to Samson, for every woman has a weakness for that thick, springy hair which seems to denote youth and vitality in a man. And she loved the laughter in his eyes.

Ah, she loved the gay and gallant spirit she read into him, of which these were the visible signs. But he loved only the softness of her mouth, the virginal delicacy of her low bosom where it sloped gently under the shadowy lace, and her delicious, remote nearness. His fine senses gauged her; he knew at once that hers slept, or only stirred in sleep, while yet her spirit reached invisible, fearless tendrils toward him. He was not sensual; he was sensuous, fatally open to either appeal. There was a brief conflict in his mind, while past conclusions battled with present conviction; for she was not at all what he had thought her, but she might yet be many things. How would the die fall? That he meant to see.

The dance was a romp. Mrs. Shane played, for it was an extra. They could see her, face averted carelessly from the keyboard, strong, supple hands commanding the keys with splendid precision. She too was watching the dancers.

"Look," said Tony softly. "That's her husband!"

He passed his wife with Mrs. Dupont in his arms. Her regal height dwarfed the little man; his stout bow legs bore him gallantly, moving with a deft precison that gave the final touch of burlesque. In his wife's eyes was a complete, impersonal appreciation of every detail of his appearance, a terrible and humorous appraisal, and a sort of mild and perpetual and—yes, wicked astonishment. He was her husband! Her fingers were little devils, casting nets for the enchanted feet of her auditors; like the children of Hamelin, they leaped to her playing, without volition. Cora Shane was a genius in her way, and her way was the playing of popular music. So she played, and her husband danced, a figure of fun to the world. Tony laughed quietly. It amused him a great deal. Such things did. Even while he was most aware of Hope beside him. She was watching, also.

"They're funny, aren't they?" she said.

Yet she did not see what he saw; to her they were funny in an entirely different way, merely as human beings, and in the sight of Heaven. But he was comparing what he saw with what he knew. She forgot them; the figures on the floor became only a pretty tapestry, of dark heads and fair, powdered shoulders, trailing satins, masses of clear black and white. She and Tony were alone, ringed about in a fairy circle. To have stayed like that for ever, just so closely, barely touching. Even a handclasp would have been too much. It was strange, but he knew all her mind. He made her tell him about herself a little. He even spoke of Edgerton, and of Ned, and watched for her colour to change, and it did not.

The figures on the floor wove and shifted. A couple, nearing their hiding place, swung out of the measured rhythm; the man stooped, handed a recovered handkerchief to the girl, and paused a moment, his face full to them. Hope leaned forward, suddenly tense, and her upper lip lifted.

"Who is that?" she asked very softly.

"Which? Oh—Jim Sanderson. Know him?" Tony turned to her, noting that her cheeks had now the distress signal he had tried to provoke earlier.

"No," she said, still softly, with a definite note that was like the closing of a door. "Do you?"

"Long time," answered Tony. "He's a pretty good scout."

She did not answer, and he spoke of something else and forgot momentarily.

"I've cut a dance," said Hope presently. "Ned will be furious. And there's a man looking for me. I forget his name, but duty must be done!"

"You will give me one more, later," he said, not questioningly.

They rose, more than half reluctant. She turned her face up to him.

"I like you," he said, with the naïveté whereby he won women.

"I like you, too," said Hope, in a breathless whisper, and stooped through the little door.

A distracted-looking youth came up and bore her off.

The dance was nearing an end when Tony claimed her again. Just as the music drew; them together, she heard Tony speak, and turned her head to look full into Jim Sanderson's eyes. This time her face did not change at all; but her own eyes gave the effect of looking through a mask. Her head turned again slowly away from him. Tony was aware of some subtle by-play, saw Sanderson check a forward step, nod, and vanish into the crowd. But the echo in his ears of that closing door was plain. And, suddenly, he felt her small gloved hand grip his arm tightly.

She touched him much as a child clings to its mother's skirt as a talisman against unformulated dangers, assuring herself of the solid presence of her newly-elected knight. That he could not know, but there was something confiding in her clasp; it moved him not unpleasantly. His arm encircled her again; in silence they slipped into the maze.

"I shall see you again," he said, as he left her finally.

"Shall you?" she asked.

She did not try to bind him to a meeting. She was happy in an extraordinary way that asked nothing more. She had found him; she knew he was. That was enough. Besides, it was not in her hands. He had come; he would come again if Fate pleased. If not, he would not come. In either case, she believed: for her creed of romance had been made visible.

She did not hear one word Ned said to her, going home.

Nor did she hear what Mrs. Shane said to Mrs. Dupont as they lingered for a cigarette in the half-deserted dressing-room while the band played a final, extra extra.

"Who is she, anyway?" Cora's voice was languid.

"Ask Tony," suggested Mrs. Dupont, in the same clipped, throaty tones. "They must have told each other the story of their lives while they sat out those three dances. I haven't seen him rush a girl like that since—you came back!"

"Tony's a fool," remarked Cora, in the manner of one who depreciates for form's sake a treasured belonging, as the Chinese do. Her friend's implication did not displease her. "If we've got to meet her, we ought to know something..."

"Well, I'll ask him," said Mrs. Dupont agreeably. "I'm going motoring with him to-morrow Oh, didn't you know?"

"I said he was a fool," reiterated Cora. And her resolve hardened.

They kissed and parted. But only Mrs. Dupont laughed as she went out. She had scored—twice.

CHAPTER IX

A FOOL'S paradise is quite as good as a philosopher's heaven
—
while it lasts. And while there is a vast difference in essence between mere credulity and the trust engendered of good faith, the result is too often quite the same. Julie
de Lespinasse
has not been reckoned wanting in wit, but she never, even on her death-bed, perceived the asses' ears of her utterly selfish and unmanly lover. Hope was not another Julie, but neither was she a fool. Indeed, she followed a very ancient wisdom, knowing that, "The lovers that disbelieve

Evil speaking shall grieve,

And false witness shall part."

But it is too true that there is no wisdom that will serve as a cloak for all weathers. And Hope was not weather-wise.

She and Mary Dark were living together. They took the half of a house from an old friend of Mary's Mrs. Hamilton by name. They had three rooms, transformed into a separate apartment, furnished with grass chairs and cushions and bookcases mainly, with a rag rug on the floor, chintz curtains, and a desk and drawing-board. The desk Mary kept in her bedroom, so she might sit there and read and write and smoke cigarettes if Hope had guests. They had a geranium in a pot and fussed over it with ineffectual pleasure. Hope settled herself in the new rooms like a cat on a hearthrug. Watching her darning stockings, or sketching, or running ribbons through her
lingerie,
Mary felt the same tender amusement one derives from the antics of a kitten or a puppy. But sometimes, when Hope had one of her rare restless fits, and prowled about softly, touching things here and there or standing with her face pressed to the window-pane looking down the dusty street, Mary's heart misgave her. She connected it readily with Tony Yorke's visits. He had called more than once. Ned Angell came much oftener, taught Hope the guitar, and sang to her, but Hope received him exactly as she did the three boisterous Hamilton children.

Mrs. Hamilton was a remarkable woman, said Mary briefly, and left Hope to discover the meaning of the phrase. It was not too difficult. Mrs. Hamilton, without a grain of intellect, possessed a steady intelligence, a deep simplicity, and that genuine sweetness of soul which St. Paul defines as charity. She knew very few people and cared not at all; she went out but little, did her own housework, kept her own counsel and that of her friends, and was sincerely fond of the two girls without in the least desiring to regulate their conduct or inquire into their affairs. Her children were kept in order, and brought more pleasure than annoyance.