Chapter III (1)

“I’ll just wait here,” he said to the pretty maid. “I’m not dressed for a party. You might tell Mrs. Lindsay that--that when she’s not too busy, I’d like awfully to speak to her for a minute.”

“Very well, Mr. O’Hara.” Her voice had all the impersonal blankness of the well-trained servant, but once on the dark stairs she shook her glossy head dismally. She had come to know him well in the past weeks.

“The Saints preserve the poor man, it’s fit for a long rest in a pine box he’s looking, and that’s no lie at all! And it’s my fine lady upstairs that is after painting shadows black as the pit under his poor eyes, or my name’s not Bridget O’Neill. It’s a wicked world entirely, and that’s what it is!”

O’Hara stood watching the door through which she had vanished. In a minute--in five minutes--in ten minutes--someone else might stand framed in that door; he could not tear his eyes from it, but stood staring, hands thrust deep into his pockets, very quiet, with fever playing behind the tense stillness of his face. The painted clock on the mantel chimed the hour out twelve times, each stroke a mocking peal of laughter. His shoulders sagged abruptly and he turned from the door. What was the use?--she wasn’t coming. She would never come again.

He crossed to the mantel slowly, noting all the studied grace with desperate tenderness. To whom could it belong but Lilah, the little room that he loved, demure and gay--intimate as a boudoir, formal as a study? Those slim hands of hers must have placed the bright flowers in the low bowls of powdered Venetian glass, and lined the bookcases with deep-coloured books, set the small bright fire burning with pine cones, and lighted the waxen candles that were casting their gracious light all about him. The satin-wood desk looked austere enough, with its orderly stacks of paper, its trays of sharpened pencils and shining pens--but the lace pillow in the deep chair by the fire was a little crumpled, there was a half-burnt cigarette in the enamelled tray, and trailing its rosy grace shamelessly across a sombre cushion was a bit of chiffon and ribbon, the needle still sticking in it. It could not have been so long ago that she had been here; all the dainty disorder spoke eloquently of her still.

Oh, thrice-accursed fool that he had been to risk even for a second the happiness that for weeks had been fluttering closer to him--the happiness that only a day before had almost closed its shining wings about him! They had been looking at some of her old snapshots of a motor trip through Ireland, laughing together in the enchanted intimacy which they had acquired over the begoggled, be-veiled, and beswaddled small creature that she assured him was her exquisite self--and then she had come upon a snapshot that was only too obviously not Ireland. It was of a vine-hung terrace, with the sea stretching far out in the distance, and the sunlight dappling through onto the upturned face of a man--quite a young man, in white flannels, swinging a careless tennis racquet and laughing in the sun. For a minute her sure fingers had faltered; there, very deliberately, she had picked it up, tearing it into small pieces, dropping them deftly into the dancing fire.

“Here’s one of us having tea by the road,” she had continued evenly, but O’Hara had not even heard her. His mind was far away, sick with apprehension and suspicion, all the old dim terrors suddenly rampant.

“Lilah--it’s unspeakable of me to worry you with this--but I can’t get it out of my mind somehow. Will you tell me--will you tell me if they ever found out who sent that anonymous letter to your husband?”

She had stared back at him with strange eyes set in a face from which every trace of emotion had suddenly been frozen.

“The letter? No.” The small remote voice was utterly forbidding. “You are quite right; it is cruel to remind of those times. What difference can it possibly make to you?”

He had fought desperately to find some words that would show her what need his sick soul had of assurance, but he had found none. He could only stare at her dumbly, his wretched eyes assuring that it made, somehow, a huge difference.

“But why?”

And he had cried hopelessly, “Oh, I may be mad--I think I am--but I can’t get it out of my head. I keep wondering whether you--if you sent----”

“I?” She had cried out as sharply as though he had struck her, and then sat very still, fighting her way back to composure, inch by inch. When she spoke again her voice was very low, incredibly controlled.

“You are implying something that is too monstrous for sanity. May I ask what motive--what possible motive, however abominable--you think that I could have had for wrecking my husband’s career?”

He had whispered, “Oh, God forgive me, what motive had Antony’s Egypt? What motive have any of you for flaunting your power over us? You crack the whip, and we go crashing through the hoop of our dreams, smashing it--smashing it for ever.”

She had risen then, sweeping him from brow to heel with her unrelenting eyes.

“How you know us!” His heart had sickened under that terrible small laugh, cold as frozen water. And she had turned to the door, her head high. “If you can think such things of me--if you can even dream them--your presence here is simply an insult to us both. I must ask you to leave. And unless you realize the grotesque madness of your accusation, I must ask you not to come here again. That releases you from dinner to-morrow night, naturally. I don’t think that there is anything more to be said.”

No, there had been nothing more to be said--nothing. He could not remember how he had got himself out of the house--he could not remember anything save a dull nightmare of vacillation and despair, that had finally driven him back to the little room, whipped and beaten, ready to capitulate on any terms--ready for any life that would buy him a moment’s happiness. And now--now she would not come, even to accept his surrender. He turned from the mantel violently, and felt his heart contract in swift panic. A man was watching him intently from the other end of the room--a man with a hateful, twisted face--he caught his breath in a shaken laugh. Those damned nerves of his would wreck him yet! It was only his reflection in the cloudy Venetian mirror; the firelight and candlelight played strange tricks with it, shadowing it grotesquely--still, even looked at closely, it was nothing to boast of. He stood contemplating it grimly with its tortured mouth and haunted eyes--and then suddenly the air was full of violets. He turned slowly, a strange peace holding his tired heart. She had come to him; nothing else would ever matter again.

She was standing in the doorway, a little cloud of palest gray. It was the first time that he had seen her in light colours, and she had done something to her hair--caught it up with a great sparkling comb--it shone like pale fire. Her arms were quite full of violets--the largest ones that he had ever seen, like purple pansies. He stood drinking her in with his tired eyes, not even looking for words. It was she who spoke.

“Bridget told me that you were here. I thought that you were not coming to-night.”

He shook his head, with a torn and lamentable smile. “You said--until I realized my madness. Believe me--believe me, I have realized it, Lilah.”

She came slowly into the room, but the nearer she came to him the farther she seemed away, secure in her ethereal loveliness, her velvet eyes turned to ice.

“You have realized it, I am afraid, too late. There are still two tables of bridge upstairs; I have only a few minutes to give you. Was there anything that you wished to say?”

He shook his head dumbly, and she sank into the great chair, stifling a small yawn perfunctorily.

“Oh, I’m deathly tired. It’s been a hideous evening, from beginning to end. Come, amuse me, good tragedian, make me laugh just once, and I may forgive you. I may forgive you, even though you do not desire it.” Again that fleeting smile, exquisite and terrible.

But O’Hara was on his knees beside her.

“Delilah, don’t laugh, don’t laugh--I’m telling you the laughter is dead in me. I’d rather see you weeping for the poor, blind fool who lost the key to Paradise.”

“Who threw it away,” she amended, touching the violets with light fingers. “But never forget, it’s better not to have set your foot within its gates than to be exiled from it. Never forget that, my tragedian.”

He raised his head, haggard and alert. “Lilah, what do you mean?”

“Why, nothing--only Lucia Dane was here for dinner and she thought it--strange--that you and I should be the gossip of Washington these days. When she had finished with what you had said to her, I thought it strange, too. And I assured her that there would be no more cause for gossip.”

“I was mad when I talked to that little fool,” he told her fiercely. “Clean out of my head trying to fight off your magic. That was the first night--the first night that I owned to myself that I loved you.”

“Your madness seems to be recurrent,” she murmured. “You should take measures against it.”

“I have taken measures. It shall never touch you again. I know now that it has simply been an obsession--a hallucination--anything in Heaven or Hell that you want to call it. You have all my trust, all my faith.”

“It is a terrible thing not to trust a woman,” she said. “More terrible than you know. Sometimes it makes her unworthy of trust.”

“Not you,” he whispered. “Never.”

“We’re delicate machinery, tragedian. Touch a hidden spring in us with your clumsy fingers and the little thing that was ticking away as faithfully and peacefully as an alarm-clock stops for a minute--and then goes on ticking. Only it has turned to an infernal machine--and it will destroy you.”

She was silent for a moment, her fingers resting lightly on that bowed head. When she spoke again her voice was gentle. “Last night, after you had gone, I remembered what you had said about Antony and his Egypt, and I found the play. Parts of it still go singing through my head. They loved each other so, those two magnificent fools. He finds her treacherous a hundred times, and each time forgives her, and loves her again--and she repays him beyond belief--far, far beyond power and treachery and death. Do you remember his cry in that first hour of his disaster?

“‘O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?’

“And when she weeps for pardon, how he tells her

“‘Fall not a tear, I say: one of them rates
All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss,
Even this repays me.’

“Though she has ruined him utterly--though he sees it and cries aloud

“‘O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,--
Whose eye becked forth my wars, and called them home,
Like a right gipsy hath at false and loose
Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.’

“Still, still his last thought is to reach her arms.

‘I am dying, Egypt, dying, only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.’”

“Why, he was well repaid,” said that strange, humble voice.

“I am glad that you feel that,” Delilah told him, and she rose swiftly. “Would you like to kiss me? You see, I have ruined you.”

O’Hara stumbled to his feet.

“What are you saying?” he whispered, a dreadful incredulity driving the words through his stiffened lips.

“That I have ruined you. I have sent your notes on the Irish situation to the other party.”

“You are mad.”

“No, no.” She shook her head reassuringly. “Quite sane. I didn’t address them in my own handwriting, naturally. The envelope is typewritten, but the notes are in long-hand; yours. The English Government will be forced to believe that for once it has misplaced its trust--but Ireland should pay you well--if she lives through civil war.”

“By God----” His voice failed him for a moment. “This is some filthy dream.”

“No dream, believe me.” She came closer to him, radiant and serene. “Did you think that I was a yellow-headed doll, that you could insult me beyond belief, mock me to my friends, slander me to the Committee of which I was a member? Monsieur De Nemours was good enough to warn me against you, also. I am no doll, you see; I happen to be a woman. We have not yet mastered that curiously devised code that you are pleased to term Honour--a code which permits you to betray a woman but not a secret--to cheat a man out of millions in business but not out of a cent at cards. It’s a little artificial, and we’re ridiculously primitive. We use lynch-law still; swift justice with the nearest weapon at hand.”

O’Hara was shaking like a man in a chill, his voice hardly above a whisper. “What have you done? What have you done, Delilah?”

“Don’t you understand?” She spoke with pretty patience, as though to some backward child. “I have ruined you--you and your Ireland, too. I sent----”

And suddenly, shaken and breathless, she was in his arms.

“Oh, Ireland--Ireland and I!” But even at that strange cry she never stirred. “It’s you--you who are ruined, my Magic--and it’s I who have done it, driving you to this ugly madness.” He held her as though he would never let her go, sheltering the bowed golden head with his hand. “Though I forgive you a thousand thousand times, how will you forgive yourself, my little Love? You who would not hurt a flower, where will you turn when you see what you have done?”

He could feel her tears on his hand; she was weeping piteously, like a terrified child.

“Oh, you do love me, you do love me! I was so frightened--I thought that you would never love me.”

He held her closer, infinitely careful of that shining fragility.

“I love nothing else.”

“Not Ireland?”

He closed his hunted eyes, shutting out Memory.

“I hated Ireland,” wept the small voice fiercely, “because you loved her so.”

“Hush, hush, my Heart.”

“But you do--you do love me best?”

“God forgive me, will you make me say so?”

There was a moment’s silence, then something brushed his hand, light as a flower, and Delilah raised her head.

“No, no, wait.” She was laughing, tremulous and exquisite. “Did you think--did you think that I had really sent your notes?”

O’Hara felt madness touching him; he stared down at her, voiceless.

“But of course, of course, I never sent them. They are upstairs; wait, I’ll get them for you--wait!”

She slipped from his arms and was half way to the door before his voice arrested her.

“Lilah!”

“Yes?”

“You say--that you have not sent the notes?”

“Darling idiot, how could you have thought that I would send them? This is Life, not melodrama!”

“You never--you never thought of sending them?”

“Never, never.” Her laughter rippled about him. “I wanted to see----”

But he was groping for the mantel, sick and dizzy now that there was no need of courage. Delilah was at his side in a flash, her arms about him.

“Oh, my dear!” He had found the chair but she still clung to him. “What is it? You’re ill--you’re ill!”

Someone was coming down the stairs; she straightened to rigidity, and was at the door in a flash.

“Captain Lawrence!”

The young Englishman halted abruptly--wheeled.

“Captain Lawrence, Mr. O’Hara is here; he had to see me about some papers, and he has been taken ill. He’s been overworking hideously lately. Will you get me some brandy for him?”

“Oh, I say, what rotten luck!” He lingered, concern touching his pleasant boyish face. “Where do I get the brandy, Mrs. Lindsay?”

“Ask Lucia Dane, she knows how to get hold of the maids. And hurry, will you?”

She was back at his side before the words had left; he could feel her fingers brushing his face like frightened butterflies, but he did not open his eyes. He was too mortally tired to lift his lids.

“Here you are, Mrs. Lindsay. Try this, old son. Steady does it.”

He swallowed, choked, felt the warm fire sweep through him, tried to smile, tried to rise.

“No, no, don’t move--don’t let him move, Captain Lawrence.”

“You stay where you are for a bit, young feller, my lad. Awfully sorry that I have to run, Mrs. Lindsay, but they telephoned for me from the Embassy. Some excitement about Turkey, the devil swallow them all. Good-night--take it easy, O’Hara!”

“Oh, Captain Lawrence!” He turned again. “Have you the letter that I asked you to mail?”

“Surely, right here. I’ll post it on my way over.”

“Thanks a lot, but I’ve decided not to send it, after all.” She stretched out her hand, smiling. “It’s an article on women in public life, and it’s going to need quite a few changes under the circumstances.”

“The circumstances?”

“Yes. You might tell them at the Embassy--if they’re interested. I’m handing in my resignation on the International Committee to-morrow.”

O’Hara gripped the arm of his chair until he felt it crack beneath his fingers. Captain Lawrence was staring at her in undisguised amazement.

“But I say! How in the world will they get along without you?”

“Oh, they’ll get along admirably.” She dismissed it as easily as though it were a luncheon engagement. “That young Lyons is the very man they need; he’s really brilliant and a perfect encyclopædia of information. I’ll see you at the Embassy on Friday, won’t I? Good-night.”

Her arms were about O’Hara before the hall door slammed.

“You’re better now? All right? Oh, you frightened me so! It wasn’t that foolish trick of mine that hurt you? Say no, say no--I couldn’t ever hurt you!”

“Never. I should be whipped for frightening you.” His arms were fast about her, but his eyes were straying. What had she done with that letter? He had caught a glimpse of it, quite a bulky letter, in a large envelope, with a typewritten address--typewritten.

“Have you noticed my hair?” The magic voice was touched with gayety again, and O’Hara brushed the silken mist with his lips, his eyes still seeking. “I remembered what you said, you see; it grows most awfully fast--one of these days it will be as long as Rappunzel’s or Melisande’s. Will you like it then?”

Ah, there it was, face down on the lacquer table. He drew a deep breath.

“Lilah, that letter--what did you say was in that letter?”

There was a sudden stillness in the room; he could hear the painted clock ticking clearly. Then she spoke quietly:

“It’s an article that I have written on women in public life. Didn’t you hear me telling Captain Lawrence?”

“Will you let me see it?”

Again that stillness; then, very gently, Delilah pushed away his arms and rose.

“No,” she said.

“You will not?”

“No.” The low voice was inflexible. “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that those are the Irish notes; that I had fully intended to send them this evening; that it was only an impulse of mine that saved you, as it would have been an impulse that wrecked you. You are thinking that next time it may fall differently. And you are willing to believe me guilty until I am proved innocent. You have always been that--always.”

He bowed his head.

“I could hand you that envelope and prove that I am entirely innocent, but I’ll not purchase your confidence. It should be a gift--oh, it should be more. It is a debt that you owe me. Are you going to pay it?”

O’Hara raised haggard eyes to hers.

“How should I pay it?”

“If you insist on seeing this, I will show it to you; but I swear to you that I will never permit you to enter this house again; I swear it. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“If you will trust me, I will give you your notes, love you for the rest of my life--marry you to-morrow.” She went to the table, picked up the envelope, and stood waiting. “What shall I do?”

He rose unsteadily, catching at the mantel. No use--he was beaten.

“Will you get me the notes?”

He saw her shake then, violently, from head to foot, but her eyes never wavered. She nodded, and was gone.

He stood leaning against the mantel, his dark head buried in his arms. Beaten! He would never know what was in that envelope--never, never. She could talk to all Eternity about faith and trust; he would go wondering all his life through. If he had stood his ground--if he had claimed the envelope and she had been proven innocent, he would have lost her but he would have found his faith. He had sold his soul to purchase her body. The painted clock struck once, and he raised his head----

No, no, he was mad. She was right--entirely, absolutely right--she was just and merciful, she who might have scourged him from her sight for ever. What reason in heaven or earth had he to distrust her? Because her voice was silver and her hair was gold? Because violets scattered their fragrance when she stirred? Oh, his folly was thrice damned. If he had a thousand proofs against her, he should still trust her. What was it that that chap Browning said?

“What so false as truth is
False to thee?”

That was what love should be--not this sick and faltering thing----

“Here are the notes,” said Delilah’s voice at his shoulder, and her eyes added, wistful and submissive: “And here am I.”

O’Hara took them in silence, his fingers folding them mechanically, measuring, weighing, appraising. The envelope could have held them easily----

She turned from him with a little cry.

“Oh, you are cruel, cruel!”

He stood staring at her for a moment--at the small, desolate figure with its bowed head, one arm flung across her eyes like a stricken child--and suddenly his heart melted within him. She was weeping, and he had made her weep. He took a swift step toward her, and halted. In the mirror at the far end of the room he could see her, dimly caught between firelight and candlelight, shadowy and lovely--in the mirror at the far end of the room she was smiling, mischievous and tragic and triumphant. He stared incredulously--and then swept her to him despairingly, burying his treacherous eyes in the bright hair in which clustered the invisible violets.

HER GRACE

The first time that the Black Duke saw her she was laughing--and the last time that he saw her she was laughing, too.

He and a ruddy-faced companion had fared forth doggedly into the long summer twilight in quest of some amusement to dispel the memory of the extravagantly gloomy little dinner that they had shared at the club, followed by a painful hour over admirable port and still more admirable cigars. It was August, and London was empty as a drum of the pretty faces and pretty hats and pretty voices that made it tolerable at times--it was as dry and dusty as life itself, and John Saint Michael Beauclerc, ninth Duke of Bolingham, tramping along the dull street beside a dull comrade, thought to himself with a sudden alien passion that youth was a poor thing to look back on, and age an ugly thing to look forward to, and middle age worse than either. He scowled down magnificently from his great height at the once-gregarious Banford, whose flushed countenance bore the consternation of one who has made a bad bargain and sees no way out of it--no duke lived who was worth such an evening, said Gaddy Banford’s hunted eyes. This particular duke eyed him sardonically.

“Close on to nine,” he said. “Well, then, what time does this holy paragon do her turn?”

“About nine,” replied his unhappy host. “But, I say, you know, I don’t want to drag you around if you’d rather not. She’s frightfully good in her line, but if dancing bores you----”

“You’re dashed considerate all at once,” remarked his guest. “If I haven’t cracked by now, I fancy I’ll live through the best dancing of the century. That’s what you called it, wasn’t it? Here, you!”

He waved an imperious hand at a forlorn hansom clattering down the silent street, and it jolted to a halt under one of the gas lamps. For it was not in this century that the Duke of Bolingham met Miss Biddy O’Rourke. No, it was in a century when hansom cabs and gas lamps were commonplaces--when ladies wore bonnets like butterflies on piled-up ringlets, and waltzed for hours in satin slippers and kid gloves two sizes too small for them--when gentlemen cursed eloquently but noiselessly because maidens whisked yards of tulle and tarlatan behind them when they danced--a century of faded flowers and fresh sentiments and enormous sleeves--of conservatories and cotillions and conventions--of long, long letters and little perfumed notes--of intrigues over tea tables, and coaching parties to the races, and Parma violets, and pretty manners, and broken hearts. A thousand years ago, you might think, but after all it was only around the corner of the last century that the Duke of Bolingham stepped into the decrepit hansom closely followed by his unwilling retainer, and in no uncertain tones bade the driver proceed to the Liberty Music Hall.

He sat cloaked in silence while they drove, his heavy shoulders hunched up, his eyes half closed, brooding like a despoiled monarch and a cheated child over the sorry trick that life had played him. He had had everything--and he had found nothing worth having. He had the greatest fortune in England--and one of the greatest names. He had Beaton House, the Georgian miracle that was all London’s pride--and Gray Courts, that dream of sombre beauty, that was all England’s pride--Gray Courts that even now held his three tall, black-browed sons who could shoot and hunt and swear as well as any in the country--yes, even fourteen-year Roddy. That held, too, a collection of Spanish and Portuguese armour second to none, and a collection of Van Dykes first of any, and the finest clipped yew hedge in a thousand miles. That held the ladies Pamela, Clarissa, Maud, and Charlotte, his good sisters, too acidulous to find a husband between them, for all their great dowers and name and accomplishments. That for six long years had held the Lady Alicia Honoria Fortescue, a poor, sad, dull little creature, married in a moment of pity and illusion when they were both young enough to know better, who had gone in mortal terror of him from the night that they crossed the threshold of the Damask Room to the day that they laid her away under the kind marble in the little chapel.

He sat huddled in the corner of the hansom, remembering with the same shock of sick amazement his despair at the discovery of her fear of him; it still haunted every tapestried corridor of Gray Courts--every panelled hall in Beaton House--he set his teeth and turned his head, and swore that he would take the next boat to France and drink himself to death in Cannes. And the hansom cab stopped.

Gaddy Banford had two seats in the first row of stalls; had ’em for every night that the lady danced, he informed the duke with chastened pride. The duke, trampling over the outraged spectators with more than royal indifference, eyed him grimly.

“Spend the rest of your valuable time hanging round the stage door, what?” he inquired audibly.

Five of the outraged spectators said “Sh-s-h,” and the duke, squaring about in his seat, favoured them with so black a glance that the admonitions died on their lips and apologies gathered in their eyes. Banford smiled nervously and ingratiatingly.

“Oh, rather not--no, no, nothing of that kind whatever. She doesn’t go in for stage-door meetings, you know. I’ve had the honour of meeting the lady twice and she’s most frightfully jolly and all that, but----”

“Sh-h-h,” enjoined one rebellious spirit, studiously avoiding the duke’s eye. That gentleman remarked “Ha!” with derisive inflection and turned a contemptuous eye on the stage. A very large and apparently intoxicated mouse was chasing a small and agitated cat with rhythmic zest, the two having concluded the more technical portion of their programme, in which they had ably defended against all comers their engaging title of the “Jolly Joralomons, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America’s Most Unique and Mirth Compelling Acrobats, Tumblers, and Jugglers.” The Jolly Joralomons scampered light-heartedly off, rolling their equipment of bright balls before them with dexterous paws, and capered back even more light-heartedly to blow grateful kisses off the tips of their whiskers to an enraptured audience, with which the Duke of Bolingham was all too obviously not in accord.

“Gad!” he remarked with appalled conviction. “Death’s too good for them! Here, let’s get out of this while I’ve got strength----”

Banford lifted a pleading hand. There was a warning roll of drums, a preliminary lilt of violins, and the orchestra swung triumphantly into the “Biddy Waltz”--the waltz that all London had revolved to for three good months. The house sighed like a delighted child, and far up in the gallery an ecstatic voice called “Ah, there, lassie!” And another echoed “Come ahn, Biddy--Alf and me’s ’ere!”

And onto a stage that was black as night, with one great bound as though she had leapt through infinite space from a falling star into the small safe circle of the spotlight, came Biddy O’Rourke, straight on the tips of her silver toes, with laughter for a dark world in both her outstretched hands--and the piece of the world that faced her rose to its feet and shouted a welcome. All but one.

The Black Duke of Bolingham sat square in the centre in the first row of seats in the Liberty Music Hall as still as though he had been struck down by lightning, with the “Biddy Waltz” rising and falling about him unheeded, his eyes fixed incredulously on the Vision in the spotlight. The Vision had already fixed the eyes and turned the heads and broken the hearts of half the masculine population of London (the other half not having seen her!) but nothing that the duke had heard had prepared him for this.

Who could have told him that a music hall dancer called Biddy O’Rourke, late of Dublin, no taller than a child and seventeen years old to the day, could look like a fairy and an angel and an imp and a witch and a dream? Not Gaddy Banford, of a certainty--not Gaddy, who, in a burst of lyric enthusiasm, had confided to his duke that she was little and blonde and light on her feet. “Little”--you who were more fantastically minute than any elf, Biddy! Blonde--oh, sacrilege, to dismiss thus that foam and froth of curls cresting and bubbling about your gay head like champagne, with the same pure glitter of pale gold--that skin of pearl beneath which danced little flames of rose fire--those eyes, bluer than anything on earth--blue as the skies and seas and flowers that haunt our dreams. Light on your feet--oh, Biddy, you, who soared and floated and drifted like a feather in the wind, like a butterfly gone mad--like a flying leaf and a dancing star! Had he said that you had a nose tilted as a flower petal, and a mouth that tilted, too? Had he said that when you blew across the dark stage that you would be arrayed in silver brighter than foam and white more airy than clouds? Had he said that you would dance not only with those miraculous toes but with your curls and with your lashes and with your lips and with your heart? Had he said that you would come laughing, little Biddy?

High on the tips of those incredible toes she came--nearer and nearer, so swift and light and sure that it seemed to Bolingham’s dazzled eyes that it would take less than a breath to blow her over that barrier of light straight into his arms--straight into his heart--into his tired and lonely heart. He leaned forward, and the vision of gold and silver stared back at him, faltered, tilted forward on her toes, and flung down to him the airy music of her mirth.

“Oh, I couldn’t any more dance with you looking like that than I could grow feathers!” cried the Vision. “No, not if Saint Patrick himself were to bid me. Whatever in the whole world’s the matter?”

The audience stopped howling its delirious approval at their Biddy’s appearance in order to revel in their Biddy’s chaff. No one could chaff like Biddy--no one nearer than Cork, at any rate. It was better than seeing her dance to listen to her laugh, gentle as a lamb, and pert as a monkey, and gay as a Bank Holiday. Free as air, too; if any of those Johnnies in the stalls tried any of their nonsense, it was a fair treat to hear her give ’em what for! The audience stood on tiptoes and shoved and elbowed in riotous good humour in their efforts to locate her latest victim--that great black fellow with shoulders like a prize-fighter, likely. The great black fellow promptly gratified their fondest expectations by falling into the silver net of Biddy’s laughter and answering her back.

“Thanks,” he replied distinctly. “Nothing in the whole world’s the matter--now.”

“Whatever were you thinkin’ to make you scowl the big black ogre himself then?”

And the Black Duke replied as clearly as though he were addressing the lady in the hush of the rose garden at Gray Courts instead of in the presence of the largest and most hilarious audience in London.

“I was wondering how in God’s name I was going to get to you quickly enough to tell you what I was thinking before I burst with it.”

The transfixed Gaddy tottered where he stood, and the audience howled unqualified approval, even while they waited for her to pin him to the wall with her reply. But Biddy only came a step nearer, staring down at him with the strangest look of wonder and delight and enchanted mischief.

“Oh, whatever must you think of me, not knowing you at all?” she cried to him over the muted lilt of her waltz. “’Twas the lights in my eyes, maybe--or maybe the lights in yours. It’s the foolish creature I am anyway you put it. Would you be waiting for ten minutes?”

“No,” said His Grace firmly.

“Seven?”

“It’ll kill me,” said His Grace. “Where will you be?”

“There’s a wee door over beyond the red curtain,” said Biddy. “You go through that, and you’re in an alley as black as a pit, and you take three steps--no, with the legs you have you can do it in two with no trouble at all--and there’ll be another door with a fine big light over it, and I’ll be under the light. Don’t die.”

“No,” said His Grace. “I won’t.”

“Play it faster than that,” Biddy cried to her stupefied musicians, once more poised high on her silver toes. “Ah, it’s the poor, slow, thumb-fingered creatures you are, the lot of you! Play it fast as my Aunt Dasheen’s spotted kitten chasin’ its tail or I’ll dance holes in your drums for you--weren’t you after hearin’ that I have five minutes to do three great dances? It’s black-hearted fiends you are, with your dawdlin’ and your ditherin’. Ah, darlin’s, come on now--spin it faster than that for the poor dyin’ gentleman and the girl that’s goin’ to save him!”

And with a flash and a dip and a swirl she was off, and the Black Duke was off, too. Gaddy Banford put up a feeble clamour as his guest swept by him toward the aisle.

“Oh, but my dear fellow--no, but I say, wait a bit--she’s simply chaffing you, you know; she’ll never in the world be there for a minute----”

“Hand over my stick, will you?” inquired the duke affably. “You’ve no earthly use for two. And don’t come trotting along after me, either. She’s not expecting _you_, you know--rather not.” He swung buoyantly off toward the red curtain, bestowing a benign nod on the now deliriously diverted audience.

“Take a chair along, matey!” “Want a mornin’ paper? Come in ’andy to pass away the time!” “Fetch ’im ’is tea at nine, Bertie--’e’ll need it bad.” “Don’t you wait for her no more than twenty-four hours, ole dear--promise us that, now----”

“Bolingham, I say----” panted the unfortunate Gaddy. “I say, someone must have tipped her off, you know!”

“Tipped her off?”

“Told her who you were, you know?”

The duke laughed aloud and Gaddy Banford, who had never heard him do this, jumped badly.

“D’you know what I’ve been wondering, Gaddy? I’ve been wondering how the deuce I was going to own up to her--a duke’s such a damn potty thing, when you come down to it. Why the devil didn’t someone make me Emperor of Russia?”

He brushed aside the red curtain, grinned once more into Banford’s stunned countenance, and passed with one great stride through the door into the black alley. The door swung to behind him, and he stood leaning against it for a minute, savouring the wonder and the magic that he had fallen heir to. There was a drift of music in the alley--the sky was powdered thick with stars--the air was sweet as flowers against his face. He drew a deep breath, and turned his head; and there she stood beneath the light, with a black scarf over her golden head and a black cloak over her silver dress--and it took him two strides to reach her, as she had said. She had one hand to her heart and was breathing quickly in little light gasps, as though she had come running.

“Were you waitin’ long?” she asked. “I never stopped at all to change a stitch and dear knows ’twas a sin how I cheated on that last one--no more than a flout and a spin, and not that maybe; only I was afraid for my soul you’d be gone. Was it long you waited?”

“Forty-two years,” said His Grace. “Forty-two years and three days.”

He watched the rose flood up to her lashes at that, but the joyous eyes never swerved from his.

“Ah, well,” she murmured, “I waited seventeen my own self, and I not half the size of you--no higher than your pocket, if you come to look. I can’t think at all what you’ve been doing with yourself all that time.”

“Don’t think--ever,” he said. “I’ve done nothing worth a moment’s thought but miss you.”

“Have you missed me then, truly?” she whispered. “Oh, it’s from farther than Cork I’d come to hear you say that; I’d come from Heaven itself, may the Saints there forgive me. Say it again, quick!”

“I’ve missed you since the day I drew breath,” he told her, and his voice shook. “Every day that I’ve lived has been black and bare and cold without you--blackest because I never knew I’d find you. Biddy, is it true? Things don’t happen like this, do they? No one out of a dream ever had such hair--no one out of a fairy tale such eyes! Biddy, would you laugh like that if it were a dream?”

“I would that,” she remarked with decision. “It’s a fine dream and a grand fairy tale and the truest truth you ever heard in your life. I knew ’twas you even when you were scowlin’, but those lights were in my eyes, so I couldn’t be sure till you smiled.”

“Biddy, how did you know?”

She pushed the scarf back from those golden bubbles with a gay gesture of impatience.

“Well, why wouldn’t I know? That’s a queer way to talk to a bright girl! Didn’t my own Aunt Dasheen, she that was all the family I had till I ran off and took London for one, tell me that I’d be the grandest dancer that ever leapt, and marry the finest gentleman that ever walked, as big as a giant and black as a devil and handsome as a king? And she ought to know, surely, what with reading in tea and clear water as quick as you and me in the Good Book. It was the wicked, cunning old thing she was, God rest her soul.”

“Is she dead?”

“She is that,” replied Aunt Dasheen’s niece cheerfully. “Or I’d never be here to tell it. She kept tight hold of me as if I were a bit of gold, for all that she sorrowed and sang how I was more trouble to her than any monkey from Egypt. If Tim Murphy and his brothers hadn’t been coming to show the Londoners how to juggle glass balls and brought me along to hold the things, I’d be in the wee room tending the fire and the kitten this minute, instead of standing under a light in a silver dress with my heart in my hands.”

“I wish I could thank her,” said the duke.

“It’s little enough you have to thank her for,” replied his Biddy blithely. “She was crosser than most and cooler than any, God help her. ’Twas that spotted kitten she loved; if she hadn’t seen the bit about me in the tea, she’d have dropped me straight out of the window. But there was my grand gentleman and the rest of it to give her patience. ‘Wed at seventeen, dead at----’” She caught back the words as deftly as Tim Murphy’s glass balls, with a triumphant shake of her curls. “‘Death to your dancing,’ she’d keep saying. You could thank her for that, maybe--or perhaps ’twas because I danced you stopped scowling, and you’ll not want me to leave off?”

“Biddy, it’s true then--you’re only seventeen?” His voice was touched with a strange pain and wonder.

“Hear him, now--only, indeed! I’m seventeen the day.”

“And I past forty-two!”

“Are you no more than that?” she asked softly. “However in all the world could you get so great and grand and fine in that little while?”

“Oh,” he cried. “Does laughter take the sting from all that’s ugly? Laugh again then; there’s worse still. Lord help us, darling--I’m a duke!”

“Is that all?” she inquired regretfully. “I’d have thought a king at the least. Well, come, there’s no helping it--’tis not all of us get our deserts in this wicked world.”

“Biddy,” he begged. “Laugh at this, too, will you? Try, try, dear, before it hurts us. I have three sons, Biddy. I’ve been married before.”

She put her other hand to her heart at that, but she kept her lips curved.

“It’s small wonder,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you have been? I’m the shameless one to say it, but if I’d been ten girls instead of one, it’s ten times you’d have been married.”

He put his arms about her then, and something broke in his heart--something cold and hard and bitter. He wanted to tell her that, but he could find no words, because he was only a duke, and not a very articulate one at that. But the small shining creature in his arms had words enough for two.

“Were you thinking of wedding again, maybe?”

“Oh, Biddy,” he cried, “let’s hurry!”

“If you’re asking _me_,” she said, “I’d say we were hurrying fast and free. I can hear the air whistlin’ in my ears, I can that. Was she a fine lady, darling?”

“Who?” he asked--and remembered--and forgot her for all time. “Oh, she was a very fine lady, and good, and gentle, too. She died long ago.”

“Did she, poor thing?” whispered the future Duchess of Bolingham softly, the cloud in the blue, blue eyes gone for ever. “And me no good at all. I wonder at you! Are they little young things, your sons?”

“The smallest’s big enough to put you in his pocket,” he said. “Biddy, let’s hurry. I know an Archbishop that we could have fix it to-night--I know two, if it comes to that. One of ’em was my godfather.”

“Well, you could know six, and ’twould be all the good it would do you,” commented his Biddy serenely. “I know one old priest, and his name’s Father Leary, and ’twill be a bitter grief to him, but he may do it, since he’s one of the Saints themselves and terrible fond of a bad girl. Archbishop, indeed!”

“Let’s find him, then, and tell him. I’ll----”

“We’ll not, then. He’s a poor old man that needs his sleep, and we’re two mad things that should know better. See the stars, darlin’; they’re the cool little things. We must do nothing in haste, except leave this door, maybe. The whole lot of them will be out on us like a lot of ravening wolves any minute. Wherever can we go?”

“We can go and get married,” said the Duke of Bolingham, who was a simple and determined individual. “I’ll get----”

“You might get a hansom----” Biddy danced in rapture on the tips of her toes. “You might get that one there, and we could ride a hundred miles or so, and watch how cool the stars are. I never was long enough in one in my life to get over feeling sad that soon it would stop, an’ I’d have to be off and out. Would you get one--would you?”

The duke raised his hand to the hansom, and it crawled toward them dubiously. The small dancing creature on the pavement looked frankly incredible, both to the horse and the driver, but the large black one looked as though it knew its mind. The two of them got in quickly, and the small one tilted back her shining head against the great one’s shoulder, sighing rapturously, while the black cloak fell open, and her skirts frothed about her in a manner scandalous to behold.

“Where to?” inquired the cabby with severity.

“Oh, what matter at all where to?” cried the incredible small one. “A hundred miles or so any way at all, just so we can see those stars go out; they’re that cool and calm it’s an aggravation.”

“Drive straight ahead--a hundred miles,” said the great one in so terrifying a tone that the cabby gave one sharp pant and started on his pilgrimage. Roaring drunk or plain barmy, the large occupant of the cab was all too plainly one to be humoured.

“Would a hundred miles bring us to dawn?” inquired the smaller lunatic. “Oh, I’d rather a dawn than a parade any day there is, though sleeping’s a grand thing, too.”

“_When will you marry me?_” demanded the duke.

“We must be that wise and cool we’ll put the stars to shame,” she said dreamily. “How many days would there be in a year? I’ve no head for figures at all.”

“A year?” protested the stricken duke fiercely. “Three hundred and sixty-five days? You couldn’t--you couldn’t----”

Biddy raised her hand to the silver laces above her heart with the strangest little look of wonder.

“Three hundred and sixty-five?” she whispered. “No more than that? No more than that--for sure?”

“No more?” he cried. “Why, it’s a lifetime--it’s eternity----”

“Ah, and so it is,” said his Biddy. “Well, then, let’s be wise as the stars--and wait till morning. Father Leary, he’s an old man, and he wakes at dawn; ’tis himself that says so. He’ll marry us then if I have to do penance for the rest of my days. Three hundred and sixty-five, you say? You’re right--oh, you’re right. ’Tis a lifetime!”

And so at dawn Biddy O’Rourke became the Duchess of Bolingham, and the greatest scandal of the century broke over a waking city. Things like that don’t happen, you say--no, things like that don’t happen, except in real life or in fairy tales. But if you had asked the duke or his duchess, they could have told you that this was real life--and a fairy tale.

They drove down to Gray Courts behind a pair of bright bays called Castor and Pollux that same day, in a high trap of black and scarlet, with fawn-coloured cushions. The duke drove, and the duchess sat perched beside him in a great red postillion’s coat from Redfern with a ruby ring as big as the Pope’s on her finger and a hat no larger than a poppy tilted over one eye. It had a little red feather in it that wagged violently every time the bays lifted a foot, and Her Grace’s tongue wagged more violently than the feather.

“Is it a castle you live in, darlin’?”

“It’ll be a castle once you’re in it. Who ever heard of a Princess that didn’t live in a castle?”

“Is it terrible big and black and grand, like you?”

“Terrible--you couldn’t tell us apart.”

“Do your great sons live there all by themselves?”

“Oh, rather not. They live there with two tutors and a trainer and an old nurse and four aunts, besides all the hounds and horses and grooms and jockeys and farriers that they can wedge into the stables.”

“The Saints keep us!” invoked Biddy with heartfelt piety. “Was it four aunts you said?”

“Oh, God forgive me, I clean forgot ’em!” The duke’s cry was quite as heartfelt, but it lacked piety. “No, I swear that’s the truth. I sent a messenger down this morning with a letter for Noll, but not one of the lot of them entered my head--Biddy, Biddy, if I’d remembered, I’d have taken you somewhere else.”

“Ah, well, it can’t be helped, darlin’. It’s glad news and golden that I’ve driven the thought of four grand ladies clear out of your head, and it’s small fault of yours that so much as a whisper of the word aunt makes the soles of my feet grow cold and the hairs of my head rise up on end. If you’d known my father’s sister Dasheen you’d never wonder! Maybe the four of these are nice old bodies?”

“And maybe they’re not!” remarked the duke. “Gad, but I’d give a thousand pound to have them hear you calling them nice old bodies. Clarissa, now----”

He gave such a shout of laughter that the off bay swerved and Biddy had to clutch at his sleeve to keep from falling.

“Are they just young aunts then?” she inquired hopefully.

The duke let the bays fend for themselves while he kissed the ridiculous hand and the dancing feather and both of the small corners of her smile.

“Beautiful, wait till you see them! They’re not aunts at all, Heaven help us--they’re sisters! One of their noses would make four of yours, and every last one of them is more like Queen Elizabeth in her prime than any one going around England these days. They have fine bones and high heads and eyes like ripe hearts of icicles and tongues like serpents’ tails dipped in vinegar.”

“Have they now!” remarked Her Grace pensively. “Well, ’twill not be dull at Gray Courts, I can tell that from here. Was Elizabeth the cross heathen that snipped the head off the pretty light one home from France?”

“I wish I’d had your history teacher,” said the duke with emphasis. “I spent years on end learning less about the ladies that you’ve put in a dozen words. I shouldn’t wonder if cross heathens described the lot as well as anything else. I was a cross heathen myself till half-past nine last night.”

“Never say it!” cried his Biddy. “You’ve a heart of gold and a tongue of silver, and I’m the girl that knows. ’Tis likely they’ll love me no better than the cross one loved the pretty one, then?”

“’Tis likely they’ll love you less,” prophesied the duke accurately, “since they can’t snip off your head!”

Biddy’s laughter was a flight of silver birds.

“Then since it’s sorrow we’re goin’ to,” she begged, “let’s go easy. Make the horses step soft and slow, darlin’; ’tis the prettiest evening in all the world, and I’m that high up I can see clear over the great green hedges into the wee green gardens. I doubt if it’ll smell any better in Heaven!”

“I doubt if it’ll smell half as sweet,” he said. “If we go slow we’ll miss our dinner.”

“Ah, let’s miss our dinner!” she begged. “Did we not eat all those little fat quail and those great fat peaches for our lunch? I’d rather sup on the lights that’ll be coming out behind the window-panes while we pass, and the stars that’ll slip through the sky while we’re not looking, and the smell of gilly-flowers and lavender warm against the walls. Maybe if we go slow, we might have a slip of new moon for dessert--maybe if we go slower than that, the horses will know what it’s all about, and let you hold one of my hands.”