Chapter XIX

Murdock met them at Baltimore and drove them out to Four Oaks. Melissa and the Marchesa he took in his own car, leaving the others to follow, in a roomier vehicle. It was four o’clock of a heavenly afternoon when they left the station and in less than an hour they were standing before the fire in a quaintly delightful old living-room with dark hand-hewn beams across the ceiling, wide windows, looking onto a stone paved terrace and thence into a garden ... bowls of lilac and plum-blossom everywhere ... on the mantelshelf, a model of a four-masted bark in full sail.

“I hadn’t realized that it was spring--already,” said Melissa to Luke Kenealy standing at her shoulder.

He replied in an equally lowered voice: “I’m afraid those lilacs grew aforetime ... for gold and not for love.”

Murdock caught the last smiling word or so. He cut in proudly--“Oh, lilacs won’t be blooming round here for another six weeks yet.”

“So I was saying,” Luke assured him.

The Marchesa, squired by Murdock into a great arm-chair and relieved of bonnet, coat and bag, beamed upon the company gently.

Her silvery banded hair, her wrinkled ringless little hands, the decorous glint of her black silk gown, the brooch in the lace at her throat, fitted that setting as a canvas fits a frame.

“No one is to bother about me in the least,” she assured them placidly. “I shall be here by the fire in case of broken heads--or cut fingers--that’s all!”

“Isn’t she the sweetest old thing!” murmured Em’ly quite audibly and Nelly Rivers knelt to remove the Marchesa’s goloshes with deferential fingers. Even Austin Beall, leaning an elbow on the mantelshelf, looked on with less than the usual skeptic gleam in his eyes ... and Murdock ... might have been at the very least, the Marchesa’s favorite son.

Only Luke and Melissa, drifting toward a window looking out into the bare, shadowy garden, held themselves callously apart, talked in muted, distrustful murmurs.

“What’s she done to herself?” said Luke. “The Aged Playmate, I mean. Seems to me she had curls, when I saw her at your place ... and a variety of rings on the fingers. Also a goodish bit of frescoing. Where are the lilies and roses of yester year? ... if it’s a fair question?”

Melissa shrugged. “See for yourself.”

“I see that she looks like Whistler’s Mother.”

“That’s her intention. Murdock likes mothers.”

Luke whistled softly. “The little old minx! One more game, eh? And the only make-up in which she could play it.”

“It’s making me utterly wretched,” said Melissa suddenly.

“Why? I should think it would amuse you enormously.”

“Oh, Luke ... to see her, sitting there--so exquisitely saintly--Murdock and the rest standing about adoring her!”

“I dare say she’s had a good deal of adoration in her life--by and large. Why grudge her one more lick at the spoon?”

“She isn’t real!” said Melissa.

“Are _you_?” asked Luke quietly.

Melissa had no answer for him. Because she knew she wasn’t. She knew that the clothes she wore and the place she slept in, the food she ate, the beauty and ease she hugged about her like a garment, were all magic of the Marchesa’s invocation. Impermanent as sunlight on a wall--or moonlight on a wave. Frail as cobwebs on the grass of a summer morning.

“No--I’m not real,” said Melissa. “But I wish to God I were!”

“We’re none of us real,” said Luke--“so why worry? All you’ve got is the world you’re in--and it isn’t my world, nor Beall’s nor the Marchesa’s. Even the chicken that crosses the road in the grip of a primal urge, has a world of her own ... and it isn’t the world of the dog that chases her. You’re inside a bubble of your own blowing, my dear--so are we all, all honorable men! Just sit tight and pray it doesn’t burst with you.”

“How unbearably lonely that sounds,” said Melissa slowly.

“Unbearably lonely it is!” Luke told her, taking out his cigarette-case. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I suppose,” said Melissa, “there isn’t anything--”

“Matter of fact--there isn’t,” said Luke. “Or it would have been done before this--by some bright lad or other. It’s only fools like lovers ...” he laid his fingers over hers for a moment to take the sting out of that.... “It’s only fools like lovers that try to come too near each other ... and find it all ends in a wet soapy smear on the floor of the universe.”

He blew a smoke ring with great care and some success. It dissolved against the pane.

“Do I see a fountain in the garden?” he inquired interestedly.

“Go look for yourself,” said Melissa. “You’ve made me exceedingly low in my mind.”

She went back to the group at the fireplace. Murdock was saying cheerfully: “--so I thought we’d just have a little bridge to-night ... maybe to-morrow I can turn up enough people for a dance. Cars in the garage if anybody wants to explore the country ... and horses, if you’d rather ride ... the Marchesa....”

“Do call me Granny!” suggested the Marchesa, prettily appealing.

“I’d love to,” accepted Nelly Rivers.

“I saw her first!” said Murdock jealously. There was a shout of easy laughter.

Beall put in, playing with the sails of the four-masted bark.... “Granny--what bright eyes you’ve got!”

And Melissa looked up at him quickly. But if the words held anything but jest, his manner failed to show it.

“The better to see you, my dear,” returned the Marchesa sedately--and every one laughed again.

They separated presently to go to their rooms, and Murdock waylaid Melissa on the staircase.

“I haven’t had a minute alone with you,” he grumbled. “Don’t bother about changing yet ... get your coat and slip down again ... let’s go for a ride before dinner!”

“What about the rest?” demurred Melissa.

She smiled into his upturned face and saw his blue eyes darken. “They can take care of themselves. I only asked ’em to get you here.”

“Including Granny?”

“Isn’t she a peach!” said Murdock warmly. “She’s going to make us one of those plum-cake things to-morrow.”

“Did she say she would?”

“If we’d let her have the kitchen all to herself for a couple of hours.”

“She should have Anna to help her,” said Melissa, despising herself for playing into the Marchesa’s hand. “She oughtn’t to do too much....”

“Oh, Anna always chops the citron,” Murdock explained at once. “Granny can’t bear the smell of citron. Run along and get your coat--won’t you! We’ll be too late for that drive if you don’t.”

Melissa fetched her coat.

They drove madly--at first, later dawdling like a country boy and girl in a buggy--along the pleasantly meandering road between Baltimore and Annapolis. An early twilight webbed the countryside with shadow, through which faint earthy scents drifted sweet.

“Trees beginning to come out,” said Murdock. “Kind of a spring smell, isn’t it?” He displayed a surprising knowledge of the bucolic existence. His grandfather, he said, had owned Four Oaks--and his father. “Might settle down on it myself, some day. Breed cattle. I like a farm.”

It was all a thousand miles away from the sort of thing Melissa had hitherto seen in him. She sensed a big, good-humored, ingenuous boy back of that young-man-about-town exterior. Clean as his own fields. The feel of his tweed-coated shoulder against hers repelled her not at all. Vaguely she liked it. She tried to fancy a headier reaction ... if he turned ... if the touch were closer ... she couldn’t feel that it would hurt or frighten her. At the same time, she couldn’t altogether make herself feel that she wanted it....

“Do you--like the country?” asked Murdock in the midst of her intent self-questioning. “I mean really like it ... not just over a week-end, the way most women do.”

“I think,” said Melissa hesitantly, “that with some one you cared for ... it might be ... rather wonderful.”

“Wouldn’t it!” said Murdock happily. He laughed, sending the car ahead with an accession of speed that obviously furnished him a momentary outlet. “Granny _said_ that was the way you’d feel about it!”

“Oh, did she!” said Melissa.

Granny’s amazing perspicacity rather spoiled the homeward ride for her in spite of earthy fragrance in the nostrils--rush of frosty air against the upturned face.

To be so anticipated in one’s every move ... humiliating!

Even a lace cap and spectacles couldn’t quite disguise the Marchesan malice of that.