The Maids of Paradise
Page 17The lions had now begun to give me a great deal of trouble. Timour
Melek, the old villain, sat on his chair, snarling and striking at me,
but still going through his paces; Empress Khatoun was a perfect devil
of viciousness, and refused to jump her hoops; even poor little Aïcha,
my pet, fed by me soon after her foster-mother, a big Newfoundland,
had weaned her, turned sullen in the pyramid scene. I roped her and
trimmed her claws; it was high time.
Oh, they knew, and I knew, that matters had gone wrong with me; that I
had, for a time, at least, lost the intangible something which I once
possessed--that occult right to dominate.
It worried me; it angered me. Anger in authority, which is a weakness,
is quickly discovered by beasts.
Speed's absurd superstition continued to recur to me at inopportune
moments; in my brain his voice was ceaselessly sounding--"A man in
love, a man in love, a man in love"--until a flash of temper sent my
lions scurrying and snarling into a pack, where they huddled and
growled, staring at me with yellow, mutinous eyes.
Yet, strangely, the greater the risk, and the plainer to me that my
lions were slipping out of my control, the more my apathy increased,
until even Byram began to warn me.
Still I never felt the slightest physical fear; on the contrary, as
my irritation increased my disdain grew. It seemed a monstrous bit of
insolence on the part of these overgrown cats to meditate an attack on
me. Even though I began to feel that it was only a question of time
when the moment must arrive, even though I gradually became certain
that the first false move on my part would precipitate an attack, the
knowledge left me almost indifferent.
That morning, as I left the training-cage--where, among others, Kelly
Eyre stood looking on--I suddenly remembered Sylvia Elven and her
message to Eyre, which I had never delivered.
We strolled towards the stables together; he was a pleasant,
clean-cut, fresh-faced young fellow, a man I had never known very
well, but one whom I was inclined to respect and trust.
"My son," said I, politely, "do you think you have arrived at an age
sufficiently mature to warrant my delivering to you a message from a
pretty girl?"
"There's no harm in attempting it, my venerable friend," he replied,
laughing.
"This is the message," I said: "On Sunday the book-stores are
closed in Paris."
"Who gave you that message, Scarlett?" he stammered.
I looked at him curiously, brutally; a red, hot blush had covered his
face from neck to hair.
"In case you asked, I was to inform you," said I, "that a Bretonne
at Point Paradise sent the message."
"A Bretonne!" he repeated, as though scared.
"A Bretonne!"
"But I don't know any!"
I shrugged my shoulders discreetly.
"Are you certain she was a Bretonne?" he asked. His nervousness
surprised me.
"Does she not say so?" I replied.
"I know--I know--but that message--there is only one woman who could
have sent it--" He hesitated, red as a pippin.
He was so young, so manly, so unspoiled, and so red, that on an
impulse I said: "Kelly, it was Mademoiselle Elven who sent you the
message."
His face expressed troubled astonishment.
"Is that her name?" he asked.
"Well--it's one of them, anyway," I replied, beginning to feel
troubled in my turn. "See here, Kelly, it's not my business, but you
won't mind if I speak plainly, will you? The times are queer--you
understand. Everybody is suspicious; everybody is under suspicion in
these days. And I want to say that the young lady who sent that
curious message to you is as clever as twenty men like you and me."
He was silent.
"If it is a love affair, I'll stop now--not a question, you
understand. If it is not--well, as an older and more battered and
world-worn man, I'm going to make a suggestion to you--with your
permission."
"Make it," he said, quietly.
"Then I will. Don't talk to Mademoiselle Elven. You, Speed, and I
know something about a certain conspiracy; we are going to know more
before we inform the captain of that cruiser out there beyond Point
Paradise. I know Mademoiselle Elven--slightly. I am afraid of her--and
I have not yet decided why. Don't talk to her."
"But--I don't know her," he said; "or, at least I don't know her by
that name."
After a moment I said: "Is the person in question the companion of
the Countess de Vassart?"
"If she is I do not know it," he replied.
"Was she once an actress?"
"Then who do you believe sent you that message, Kelly?"
His cheeks began to burn again, and he gave me an uncomfortable look.
A silence, and he sat down in my dressing-room, his boyish head buried
in his hands. After a glance at him I began changing my training-suit
for riding-clothes, whistling the while softly to myself. As I
buttoned a fresh collar he looked up.
"Mr. Scarlett, you are well-born and--you are here in the circus with
the rest of us. You know what we are--you know that two or three of us
have seen better days,... that something has gone wrong with us to
bring us here,... but we never speak of it,... and never ask
questions.... But I should like to tell you about myself;... you are a
gentleman, you know,... and I was not born to anything in
particular.... I was a clerk in the consul's office in Paris when
Monsieur Tissandier took a fancy to me, and I entered his balloon
ateliers to learn to assist him."
He hesitated. I tied my necktie very carefully before a bit of broken
mirror.
"Then the government began to make much of us,... you remember? We
started experiments for the army.... I was intensely interested, and
... there was not much talk about secrecy then,... and my salary was
large, and I was received at the Tuileries. My head was turned;...
life was easy, brilliant. I made an invention--a little electric screw
which steered a balloon ... sometimes..." He laughed, a mirthless
laugh, and looked at me. All the color had gone from his face.
"There was a woman--" I turned partly towards him.
"We met first at the British Embassy,... then elsewhere,...
everywhere.... We skated together at the club in the Bois at that
celebrated fête,... you know?--the Emperor was there--"
"I know," I said.
He looked at me dreamily, passed his hand over his face, and went on:
"Somehow we always talked about military balloons. And that evening
... she was so interested in my work ... I brought some little
sketches I had made--"
"I understand," I said.
He looked at me miserably. "She was to return the sketches to me at
Calman's--the fashionable book-store,... next day.... I never thought
that the next day was to be Sunday.... The book-stores of Paris are
not open on Sunday--but the War Office is."
I began to put on my coat.
"And the sketches were asked for?" I suggested--"and you naturally
told what had become of them?"
"I refused to name her."
"Of course; men of our sort can't do that."
"I am not of your sort--you know it."
"Oh yes, you are, my friend--and the same kind of fool, too. There's
only one kind of man in this world."
He looked at me listlessly.
"So they sent you to a fortress?" I asked.
"To New Caledonia,... four years.... I was only twenty, Scarlett,...
and ruined.... I joined Byram in Antwerp and risked the tour through
France."
After a moment's thought I said: "In your opinion, what nation
profited by your sketches? Italy? Spain? Prussia? Bavaria? England?...
Perhaps Russia?"
"Do you mean that this woman was a foreign spy?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps she was only careless, or capricious,... or
inconstant.... You never saw her again?"
"I was under arrest on Sunday. I do not know.... I like to believe
that she went to the book-store on Monday,... that she made an
innocent mistake,... but I never knew, Scarlett,... I never knew."
"Suppose you ask her?" I said.
He reddened furiously.
"I cannot.... If she did me a wrong, I cannot reproach her; if she
was innocent--look at me, Scarlett!--a ragged, ruined mountebank in a
travelling circus,... and she is--"
"An honest woman that a man might care for?"
"That is ... my belief."
"If she is," I said, "go and ask her about those drawings."
"But if she is not,... I cannot tell you!" he flashed out.
"Let us shake hands, Kelly," I said,... "and be very good friends.
Will you?"
He gave me his hand rather shyly.
"We will never speak of her again," I said,... "unless you desire
it. You have had a terrible lesson in caution; I need say no more.
Only remember that I have trusted you with a secret concerning
Buckhurst's conspiracy."
His firm hand tightened on mine, then he walked away, steadily, head
high. And I went out to saddle my horse for a canter across the moor
to Point Paradise.
It was a gray day, with a hint of winter in the air, and a wind that
set the gorse rustling like tissue-paper. Up aloft the sun glimmered,
water; the sea tumbled over the bar, boiling like a flood of liquid
lead from which the spindrift curled and blew into a haze that buried
the island of Groix and turned the anchored iron-clad to a phantom.
A day for a gallop, if ever there was such a day!--a day to wash out
care from a troubled mind and cleanse it in the whipping, reeking, wet
east wind--a day for a fox! And I rose in my saddle and shouted aloud
as a red fox shot out of the gorse and galloped away across the
endless moorland, with the feathers of a mallard still sticking to his
whiskers.
Oh, what a gallop, with risk enough, too; for I did not know the coast
moors; and the deep clefts from the cliffs cut far inland, so that eye
and ear and bridle-hand were tense and ready to catch danger ere it
ingulfed us in some sea-churned crevice hidden by the bracken. And how
the gray gulls squealed, high whirling over us, and the wild ducks in
the sedge rose with clapping wings, craning their necks, only to swing
overhead in circles, whimpering, and drop, with pendent legs and wings
aslant, back into the bog from which we startled them.
A ride into an endless gray land, sweet with sea-scents, rank with the
perfume of salty green things; a ride into a land of gushing winds,
wet as spray, strong and caressing, too, and full of mischief; winds
that set miles of sedge rippling; sudden winds, that turned still
pools to geysers and set the yellow gorse flowers flying; winds that
rushed up with a sea-roar like the sound in shells, then, sudden, died
away, to leave the furrowed clover motionless and the tall reeds still
as death.
So, by strange ways and eccentric circles, like the aërial paths of
homing sea-birds, I came at last to the spot I had set out for,
consciously; yet it surprised me to find I had come there.
Before I crossed the little bridge I scented the big orange-tinted
tea-roses and the pinks. Leaves on apricots were falling; the fig-tree
was bare of verdure, and the wind chased the big, bronzed leaves
across the beds of herbs, piling them into heaps at the base of the
granite wall.
A boy took my horse; a servant in full Breton costume admitted me;
the velvet humming of Sylvia Elven's spinning-wheel filled the
silence, like the whirring of a great, soft moth imprisoned in a
room:
"Woe to the Maids of Paradise,
Yvonne!
Twice have the Saxons landed--twice!
Yvonne!
Yet shall Paradise see them thrice!
Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!
"Fair is their hair and blue their eyes,
Yvonne!
Body o' me! their words are lies,
Yvonne!
Maids of Paradise, oh, be wise!
Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!"
The door swung open noiselessly; the whir of the wheel and the sound
of the song filled the room for an instant, then was shut out as the
Countess de Vassart closed the door and came forward to greet me.
In her pretty, soft gown, with a tint of blue ribbon at the neck and
shoulders, she seemed scarcely older than a school-girl, so radiant,
so sweet and fresh she stood there, giving me her little hand to touch
in friendship.
"It was so good of you to come," she said; "I know you made it a
duty and gave up a glorious gallop to be amiable to me. Did you?"
I tried to say something, but her loveliness confused me.
Somebody brought tea--I don't know who; all I could see clearly was
her gray eyes meeting mine--the light from the leaded window touching
her glorious, ruddy hair.
As for the tea, I took whatever she offered; doubtless I drank it, but
I don't remember. Nor do I remember what she said at first, for
somehow I began thinking about my lions, and the thought obsessed me
even while striving to listen to her, even in the tingling maze of
other thoughts which kept me dumb under the exquisite spell of this
intimacy with her.
The delicate odor of ripened herbs stole into the room from the
garden; far away, through the whispering whir of the spinning-wheel, I
heard the sea.
"Do you like Sylvia's song?" she asked, turning her head to listen.
"It is a very old song--a very, very old one--centuries old. It's all
about the English, how they came to harry our coasts in those
days--and it has almost a hundred verses!" Something of the Bretonne
came into her eyes for a moment, that shadow of sadness, that patient
fatalism in which, too, there is something of distrust. The next
instant her eyes cleared and she smiled.
"The Trécourts suffered much from the English raiders. I am a
Trécourt, you know. That song was made about us--about a young girl,
Yvonne de Trécourt, who was carried away by the English. She was
him, and they came and sacked the town, and carried her away, and that
was what she got for her folly."
She bent her head thoughtfully; the sound of the sea grew louder in
the room; a yellow light stole out of the west and touched the
window-panes, slowly deepening to orange; against it the fruit trees
stood, a leafless tracery of fragile branches.
"It is the winter awaking, very far away," she said, under her
breath.
Something in the hollow monotone of the sea made me think again of the
low grumble of restless lions. The sound was hateful. Why should it
steal in here--why haunt me even in this one spot in all the world
where a world-tired man had found a moment's peace in a woman's eyes.
"Are you troubled?" she asked, then colored at her own question, as
though deeming the impulse to speak unwarranted.
"No, not troubled. Happiness is often edged with a shadow. I am
content to be here."
She bent her head and looked at the heavy rose lying in solitary
splendor on the table. The polished wood reflected it in subdued tints
of saffron.
"It is a strange friendship," I said.
"Ours?... yes."
I said, musing: "To me it is like magic. I scarce dare speak, scarce
breathe, lest the spell break."
She was silent.
"--Lest the spell break--and this house, this room, fade away,
leaving me alone, staring at the world once more."
"If there is a spell, you have cast it," she said, laughing at my
sober face. "A wizard ought to be able to make his spells endure."
Then her face grew graver. "You must forget the past," she said;
"you must forget all that was cruel and false and unhappy,... will
you not?"
"Yes, madame."
"I, too," she said, "have much to forget and much to hope for; and
you taught me how to forget and how to hope."
"I, madame?"
"Yes,... at La Trappe, at Morsbronn, and here. Look at me. Have I not
changed?"
"Yes," I said, fascinated.
"I know I have," she said, as though speaking to herself. "Life
means more now. Somehow my childhood seems to have returned, with all
its hope of the world and all its confidence in the world, and its
certainty that all will be right. Years have fallen from my shoulders
like a released burden that was crushing me to my knees. I have
awakened from a dream that was not life at all,... a dream in which
I, alone, staggered through darkness, bearing the world on my
shoulders--the world doubly weighted with the sorrows of mankind,... a
dream that lasted years, but...you awoke me."
She leaned forward and lifted the rose, touching her face with it.
"It was so simple, after all--this secret of the world's malady. You
read it for me. I know now what is written on the eternal tablets--to
live one's own life as it is given, in honor, charity, without malice;
to seek happiness where it is offered; to share it when possible; to
uplift. But, most of all, to be happy and accept happiness as a
heavenly gift that is to be shared with as many as possible. And this
I have learned since ... I knew you."
The light in the room had grown dimmer; I leaned forward to see her
face.
"Am I not right?" she asked.
"I think so.... I am learning from you."
"But you taught this creed to me!" she cried.
"No, you are teaching it to me. And the first lesson was a gift,...
your friendship."
"Freely given, gladly given," she said, quickly. "And yours I have
in return,... and will keep always--always--"
She crushed the rose against her mouth, looking at me with inscrutable
gray eyes, as I had seen her look at me once at La Trappe, once in
Morsbronn.
I picked up my gloves and riding-crop; as I rose she stood up in the
dusk, looking straight at me.
I said something about Sylvia Elven and my compliments to her,
something else about the happiness I felt at coming to the château
again, something about her own goodness to me--Heaven knows what!--and
she gave me her hand and I held it a moment.
"Will you come again?" she asked.
I stammered a promise and made my way blindly to the door which a
servant threw open, flung myself astride my horse, and galloped out
into the waste of moorland, seeing nothing, hearing nothing save the
low roar of the sea, like the growl of restless lions.