Chapter X

“Is Hope not plumed, as ’twere a fiery dart?
And oh! thou dying day,
Even as thou goest, must she too depart
And Sorrow fold such pinions on the heart as will not fly away?”

D. G. ROSSETTI.

There are times when one cannot accept the reassurance of the external world. When bright sunlight is a mockery, and a peaceful evening a gibe at our own restlessness.

Daphne, waiting for what she knew was inevitable, underwent this rebellion to nature. The exquisite fresh beauty of the May night, with its deepening tints across the sky, the rising moon, and the last broken songs of sleepy birds, stung her with a sense of how alone she was, and in what alien surroundings. She was waiting for what she, above all things, hoped, and feared, desired, and trembled at. She wanted to escape, and she wanted to be recaptured. In fact she wanted (as in the depths of our hearts we all want) both to eat our cake and have it unbroken, to accomplish, and yet not to reach the goal. It was only when the actual, sharp, decisive tread of the surgeon approached her, that she realized she had only one emotion left, a fear that kept her from moving away.

“Oh!” he said, “it is you, Daphne! it is you!” For a moment he stood gazing down at her. The hardness of his eyes becoming tender, until he ceased to look as the world knew him, and looked as she only could make him look. “It has been a long three years,” he said at last, “and you are much, much more beautiful!”

Then she took courage and began to speak. “Arthur, you should never have come—why did you come? I had learnt how to be good, how to do without you! These three years have been long indeed, long enough to show me that what I promised was wrong, and that I can never, never keep it! Oh! Arthur, it was cruel of you to come back! Let me go, promise you will let me go?” He pointed to a seat sheltered by the house.

“Sit down,” he said, “and don’t be afraid!” She obeyed him with a little gesture of despair.

“You have made me afraid of all the world—and you!” she said. He passed up and down once or twice in front of her. Then he turned and faced her.

“You begged me to leave you,” he said, “because you were so young, and it was all such a shock; but, you don’t suppose I meant to keep away, do you? You, yourself said, ‘Come back in three years.’ I have worked alone, and it has been hard, but I thought it only fair to give you time, and you were worth waiting for, Daphne! What mistakes I have made, have been paid for out of hand. I don’t mean to make you suffer for them. I have a plan which is perfectly easy and simple to put before you. It will not remove the essential difficulty that will have to remain your secret and mine, but it will remove all the obvious disadvantages, and give you a perfectly recognized position before the world, but I won’t go into details unless you trust me. You _must_ trust me or we can go no further. I suppose I was a fool to let you go? The next I hear is that the girl who was to train herself into the courage of her emotions, means to marry with no emotions whatever a raw boy out of a college because he happens to have money and position. Do you break no moral law there, Daphne?”

“I didn’t say I would marry him,” moaned the girl, “I only told Vera she might have him here—if she liked.”

“To help you make up your mind about me?” he suggested.

“Arthur,” she said, “won’t you let me go? Won’t you please let me go?” The surgeon knitted his brows in perplexity as he looked down at her. If she had ceased to care for him, she would never have asked him this question, there would have been no need, she had only to say “I do not love you.” If she had not ceased to care for him, how could he let her go for another man? And as for any alternative—there was no alternative for a girl like Daphne, and no other alternative for a man like himself. He knew that there is no safety for passion, but in the definite, and the irrevocable. Compromise is but a flimsy barrier, in the war of emotions, ready to fall at the lifting of an eye-lash, or the touch of a hand. He realized that he was the more responsible, because he knew this so much better than she did, but it was hard to keep back the words that sprang to his lips, and the thoughts that thrilled his heart, as he looked at her. He tried not to look at her, but he could not cease to see her.

“Ah!” he said at last, “how I have hoped for this! Do you want me to let you go? Tell me, Daphne?” He bent over her as he spoke, and put his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him, and tried to speak, it was so much too difficult to send him away, and yet, in her heart of hearts, she knew that she could never do anything else, and still she could not speak. “Well! you don’t cry!” he said with grudging admiration for the face beneath his.

“No! I don’t cry,” repeated Daphne sadly, “but I am much more unhappy than if I did!” He gave an exclamation of impatience, and let her go only just in time, for the young American had turned the corner, which sheltered them, and the light of his cigarette, made a warning signal in the dark.

“Ah, now! Mr. Field!” he said, “were you hypnotizing Miss Daphne? You were so very still; tell me, Miss Daphne, what sin do you want to be saved from? Maybe if I think hard like Mr. Field, it’ll work doubly quick, and you’ll wake up hating it?”

The girl gave a gasp of relief. “Take me indoors, Bert,” she said, “this night is—cold. It is too early to play at summer!”

“Why, yes! it’s pretty fresh!” agreed the young American, “and how you are shivering, Miss Daphne.” He took her into the empty billiard-room, where a bright wood fire was burning. “Why! your little hands,” he said very gently, “your little hands are just as cold!” He rubbed them between his own, and she let him without a word, sinking back into the chair he had brought her, and closing her eyes.

“Oh! I’m so glad I can trust you, Bert,” she said at last.

“Why, certainly!” he said, “you can trust me, why not?”

Daphne did not answer. She felt as if he had carried her in, out of a storm. She was quite exhausted, and the worst of it was, the storm was still outside. A few minutes later, Lady Cheston and David Grey burst into the room.

Lady Cheston gave a shriek of laughter when she saw them. “Oh! you have left a savage creature out there, Daphne!” she said. “I mean the rude, quiet man, Wood—Hill—Field—some country name, isn’t it? I asked him just for fun, you know, how he came to do hypnotism, and he blazed out at me, ‘If you want to see performing dogs go to a circus!’”

“And served you jolly well right, you know!” said David Grey. “Beastly kind of thing to say to a man when——” he stopped suddenly, and glanced at Daphne.

“You might finish your sentence,” said Lady Cheston crossly.

David Grey gave a short laugh, and picked up a rose of Daphne’s, which had fallen to the floor. He put it in his button-hole. “There isn’t any need to finish the sentence,” he said. “Where are the twins?”

“They’re singin’ duets to the curate,” said Lady Cheston with another little shriek. “And Vera’s talkin’ to him about teachin’ Sunday School teachers the harp, she thinks they’ll be able to enter more into the lives of Old Testament characters! And—give me a cigarette, David! The girl with the mouth is reforming, Reggie.” She suddenly remembered Daphne. “Oh, my dear, I forgot you,” she said, “I’m always sayin’ awful things before girls!” David frowned.

“Do you want to smoke?” he said; “you haven’t lit your cigarette yet, you know?”

“I believe you think it’ll stop me talkin’,” said Lady Cheston archly, as she accepted a match.

“Good Lord, no!” said David with some bluntness. He turned insolently to Daphne. “And you,” he said, “do you want a match too?”

Bert Russell stepped quickly in between them. “Thank you, awfully,” he said, “I shouldn’t mind.” Then he also turned to Daphne, “Do you mind my smoking in here?” he said. Lady Cheston got very red.

“No!” said Daphne, “oh, no! I don’t mind your smoking!” She got up as she spoke, and walked slowly towards the door. The group looked after her, silenced for a moment. Then David flung down his cigarette, and left the room. The American told a very, very funny story to Lady Cheston.

“Daphne,” said David overtaking her at the foot of the staircase, “will you marry me?”

“Oh! I suppose so,” said Daphne wearily, “but don’t talk about it, and for Heaven’s sake don’t come near me!” For a moment, they looked at each other. The man’s eyes were hungry with passion, the girl’s indifferent with pain.

“I don’t seem to get much out of this, do I?” he said. “In London you were more generous with me.”

“Oh! but I never let you kiss me!” cried Daphne with sudden emotion.

“And now—you are never going to let anybody else—kiss you,” said David.

She felt her breath coming quick and fast under his eyes. Then she looked beyond him, and saw Arthur Field. She made a tremendous effort to pull herself together, the lights on the floor danced before her eyes. She could hear the twins singing in the drawing-room. The hall door opened, and a rush of cool night air entered, and with it—Katherine. She glanced towards the staircase, and without a word passed Arthur, and then David.

“Get me some brandy!” she said to the surgeon contemptuously. “Can’t you see the girl’s going to faint?” she threw her strong arms round Daphne, who clung to her silently, as a child in a dark room clings to its nurse.

“Let me carry her upstairs,” said David hoarsely.

“Don’t let him touch me,” Daphne whispered.

“Go on ahead, and open the window over the sofa on the first landing,” ordered Katherine briefly, “she can get as far as that.”

In a few minutes it was all over, and Daphne safe in her room. David went into the smoking-room with Arthur Field. “You are a doctor,” he said, “what do you make of a girl fainting like that?”

“It was a warm evening, she was over-tired—and her dress fitted her very well,” said Arthur Field with a laugh.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” said David, “she isn’t that kind of girl.”

“Pooh!” said the doctor irritably, “they’re all that kind of girl!” David poured himself out a stiff glass of whisky and soda. The surgeon watched his hand as he poured it out. “And we’re most of us that kind of man,” he added unconcernedly. David grew very red.

Two hours later (it was nearly twelve), Lady Cheston opened the smoking-room door. The surgeon had gone to bed. “Where’s my Reggie?” she cried, shaking her finger at David.

“I don’t know—where—the devil—your Reggie is!” said the man at the table.

Lady Cheston gave a scream of laughter. “David!” she said, “you’re drunk!”

“Damn you!” he shouted, “what if I am?”

“Oh! you’d better go to bed,” said Lady Cheston, “if you can get there,” she added, still laughing.

Reggie came behind her. “What are you doing, mother?” he asked very rudely.

“My sweet pet, I was looking for you,” said his mother.

“Well! now you see me,” said her sweet pet rather crossly, “you had better go upstairs.”

His mother followed his advice and ran laughing into Lady Middleton’s room. “My dearest Vera,” she said, “who’s going to marry Daphne?”

“Oh! don’t you know? she’s going to marry David Grey, that’s been going on for a long while,” said her hostess calmly.

Lady Cheston smiled. “My dear—the boy drinks!” she said.

“Well! there’s the butler,” said Lady Middleton vaguely, “and he can be hypnotized, you know. There’s always something wrong with some of them.”

“Well! his _pockets_ are all right,” said Lady Cheston with emphasis.

“O, yes, dear! perhaps they are,” said Lady Middleton, ringing for her maid, “but I never believe in anybody marrying for money, you know. Have you everything you want, darling? I _hope_ so, good-night!”

Lady Cheston went to her room, but she did not go to sleep for a long time. Downstairs Reggie and the American were helping David Grey to bed. Katherine sat at Daphne’s bed-side by the open window, looking out into the night. The sky was full of stars.