The Great Amulet
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Maud Diver >> The Great Amulet
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With a scarcely perceptible start, she acknowledged his grave bow of
recognition, and drew back to let him pass. But he remained close
enough to catch what followed.
"I'd rather dance than sit out, after all," she announced, with a brisk
change of manner.
"But, dear lady, . . . why?"
She laughed. "What a question! I thought you pretended to know
something about women? I claim the divine right of whim. _Voila,
tout_! One can't spend the evening in explanation. The spirit moves
me to romp. It's infinitely more wholesome than mooning under the
stars. All we want now is a cheery _vis-a-vis_. Ah . . . there's
Michel. The very man!"
She signalled across the room with her fan, and Michael came skidding
and slithering towards her, a delighted girl clinging to his arm:--a
girl in the glamour of her first season, a-thrill to her white kid
finger-tips because these rested on the sleeve of a living artist, who
had already paid her one or two chivalry-coated compliments.
"Now why the deuce did she weather-cock round like that?" Lenox
wondered, floundering in the quicksands of masculine ignorance.
But no answer suggested itself; because this woman, who was his, and
yet not his,--this woman, with her many-hued personality, rich in
subtle contradictions--was a sealed book to him, and seemed like to
remain so. And what, after all, are the hearts that beat closest to
our own but sealed books, which we open from time to time, at random;
too often at the wrong page? But a ballroom is no fit place for
abstract meditation. The lust of eye and ear, the pride of life,
challenge the sense at every turn, till mere thought seems a mighty
bloodless affair.
Lenox moved back to the doorway, leaned against the woodwork, and
folding his arms, surveyed the scene before him with the apathetic
interest of the large and mystified. The long room was crowded with
jumbled atoms of colour, like a damaged kaleidoscope; with talk and
laughter; with the whisper of sweeping skirts, and the clink of spurs.
Then the first provocative bars set every foot in motion; and the
kaleidoscope effect was complete.
Lenox,--towering isolated, amid a world of light-hearted couples,--was
aware that beneath his surface indifference there lurked a certain
shamefaced envy of these bewildering mortals who could shuffle off the
years, and revert, unabashed, to the entrancing follies of childhood;
and who could yet, in lucid intervals, grapple undismayed with
intricacies of Indian legislation, lead a forlorn hope, love and suffer
and die, if need be, with a stiff lip, and an obstinate faith in 'the
ultimate decency of things.' For of a truth, the earth holds no more
fantastic farrago of folly and heroism than your average human being;
and musing on these things, Lenox decided that there must have been
some radical flaw in his own education.
Not twenty feet away, the General himself--the host-in-chief of the
evening--condemned, despite increasing years and girth, to the Eton
jacket of boyhood, pranced and glided with elaborate precision, and
took every opportunity of twirling plump little Mrs Mayhew almost off
her feet. Both laughed inordinately at each repetition of the mild
joke: and if the C.B. blazing on the General's mess-jacket, and the
little lady's full-grown daughter contrasted oddly with their passing
display of childishness, both were serenely blind to the fact.
But among a hundred dancers, not one plunged more whole-heartedly into
the folly of the moment than Quita. She had stationed herself opposite
the door where Lenox stood, and the very spirit of devilry seemed to
have entered into her, driving her to italicise every trait in herself
that must needs grate on his fastidiousness where a woman's conduct was
concerned. Her effervescent gaiety dominated the 'set,' which speedily
degenerated into a romp till, in the third figure, an incident occurred
which partially brought her to her senses.
The room reeled and hummed with spinning circles, like living
Katherine-wheels, when Quita,--losing her precarious hold upon her
partner's coat-sleeve, and flying outward, by a natural impetus that
must have sent her crashing against the woodwork of the door,--found
herself caught, and steadied by her husband's hands at her waist. For
a lightning instant he held her thus--breathless and throbbing, like a
bird prisoned in his grasp: then he straightened himself, and let fall
his empty hands.
"I am sorry," he muttered, barely looking at her. "But I was afraid
you might hurt yourself."
"Thank you. It was very stupid of me."
She left him hurriedly, red-hot vexation tingling in her cheeks: and
when next the Katherine-wheels spun about, she remained stationary,
smiling and waving her hand in answer to repeated invitations to "come
on."
Lenox remained stationary also, though the whole scene had suddenly
become hateful to him: for that moment of contact, and the rush of
colour to his wife's face, had roused him to the need for immediate
action. Thus, when a final mad galop scattered the coherent atoms of
the kaleidoscope, he intercepted Quita and her partner, as they hurried
out to secure a favourite nook.
But the polite formula of the ballroom did not spring readily to his
lips.
"Have you a spare dance to give me?" he asked bluntly. "Since you
evidently don't object to sitting out."
His tone had in it more of demand than of request, an effect heightened
by his deliberate omission of her name; and against his will annoyance
lurked in the last words. But some men have a positive talent for
standing in their own light.
For a second or two her eyes challenged his in mute amazement. Each
seemed trying to read the other's thought. But pride darkens insight:
and at the critical moment a slight movement of the arm she held
reminded her of Garth's glimpse behind the scenes. She pulled herself
together, and made an obvious feint of consulting her programme.
"If you really wanted one, you should have spoken earlier," she rebuked
him lightly. "I'm afraid I haven't so much as half an extra to offer
you now."
He accepted his dismissal with a curt bow of acknowledgment.
"Thought I wanted to make love to her, no doubt," he reflected
savagely, as he moved away. And she passed on into the verandah,
wondering . . . wondering why he had wanted that dance, and whether she
would have thrown some one over for him, but for Garth's opportune
reminder at her elbow.
On the opening of the next dance, Lenox sought and found Honor Desmond,
silently offered his arm, and led her through the verandah out into the
starshine,--which is a reality in India, on moonless nights.
"What a thundering relief it is to get away from it all!" he said at
length. "Would it bother you to stroll a little way up the hill? We
shall be crowded out here, in no time; and I must have another pipe."
"Let's stroll then, by all means. I should enjoy it; and you know how
I love tobacco. I saw you looking on at that dance; and I rather
envied you. I often wish I could set aside a few dances just for
looking on, without having to make talk for any one. People interest
me so passionately; always have done, since I can remember."
"Even Button Quails, and black-hearted woman-haters?"
"Yes. Especially the woman-haters; because they need converting!"
"And are unconvertible," Lenox declared with a laugh. "But don't you
ever get sickened with the deadly sameness of the whole tribe of
us,--grinding ourselves to dust in the eternal treadmill of hatred and
love, hope and despair? Every conceivable human complication has been
repeated _ad nauseam_ since Adam made a fool of himself in the garden
of Eden."
"And through all that endless sameness, no two men and women have ever
behaved twice alike! That's where the interest comes in, don't you
see? To-night, for instance, Miss Maurice and that pretty child Elsie
Mayhew are both wasting their sweetness on men quite unworthy of them;
but each is doing the same thing in a fashion so entirely her own, that
it is not like looking on at the same play at all. I am specially
concerned over the Mayhew muddle, for I believe that handsome Engineer
boy is capable of breaking his heart in earnest because Elsie has lost
hers _pro tem._,--engaging little goose that she is. Really I
sometimes think that the man and woman puzzle is just an endless game
of cross questions and crooked answers!"
Lenox laughed again, harshly.
"That's a straight shot!" he said. "It's a mad world; and the maddest
creature in it is the man who stakes his happiness on the state of a
woman's heart."
Honor slipped her hand from his arm.
"Really, Captain Lenox," she protested, half-laughing, half in earnest,
"that remark almost amounts to an insult! What do you suppose Theo
would say if he heard you?"
"Wouldn't stop to pick his language," Lenox answered with a twisted
smile. "But his testimony counts for nothing. He has found the one
woman among a thousand, that even Solomon failed to find; and the Lord
knows he didn't judge them from hearsay!"
The sincerity underlying his bluntness brought the blood to Honor's
cheeks. "Theo has simply found--a woman who loves him," she answered
softly. "A discovery most men can make if they choose; even rank
heretics like you! Will you forgive me, I wonder, if I say that I
believe the thing you really need, though you may not guess it,
is . . . a woman in your life?"
Lenox did not answer: and they walked on for a time in silence.
"Have I vexed you?" Honor asked at length.
"No. You touched an exposed nerve. That was all. And I should like
you to know the truth now; or at least part of it.--Five years ago I
did take . . . a woman into my life, as you put it; and I have never
known real peace or comfort since."
Honor started, and turned upon him a face of incredulity.
"Captain Lenox! Do you mean--have you actually--been married?"
"I actually am married, in the eyes of the law, at least. What's more,
my wife is here, in Dalhousie, in that cursed ballroom,--with neither
my name nor my ring to protect her--playing the fool for the amusement
or perdition of another chap. You spoke of her a minute ago. I need
hardly say more, need I?"
"No, no. I understand it all now," she murmured, deeply moved. "Then
that was why you wanted to go away last month?"
"Yes."
"And I stupidly made things harder, in my blind zeal to help you?"
"No, indeed. You simply convinced me, without suspecting it, that it
would be cowardly to bolt at sight. Besides, it would have amounted to
an open confession that--one cared."
"And don't you--care?"
Lenox clenched his teeth upon an inarticulate sound; and his amber
mouthpiece snapped like a stick of sealing-wax. He took the pipe from
his mouth; eyed it ruefully, and slipped it into his breast-pocket.
"A good friend gone," he muttered. "And all on account of a woman who
doesn't care a snap of the fingers whether one is alive or dead."
"In my opinion that remains to be proved."
"Does it? Isn't her conduct with that confounded ladykiller proof
enough to convince you?"
"No."
"Well, then, look here. Ten minutes ago I went so far as to ask her
for a dance. She gave me the snub direct: and she'll not get a chance
to refuse another request of mine--that's certain."
Honor's lips lifted at the corners.
"I wonder what tone of voice you asked her in?" was all she said.
"Quite the wrong one, no doubt. I was in no humour for going on my
knees. But she knew right enough that I wouldn't have risked refusal,
unless I was very keen on the dance."
"All the same, you _will_ give her another chance. You must. No act
of folly on her part can make it right for you to leave her in such a
false position."
"The position was her own choice,--not mine."
"One could guess as much. Yet the fact remains that she is--yours, to
make or mar: and it seems to me no less than your duty to pocket your
pride, and save her from her own foolishness in spite of herself."
Lenox drew an audible breath, like a man in pain.
"You do know how to hit between the eyes," he said very low. "But--I
have suffered enough at her hands."
"And has she suffered nothing--at yours?"
Honor's voice was scarcely louder than his own, and her pulses throbbed
at her own daring. Lenox stood stock-still, and looked at her.
"Upon . . my . . soul," he said slowly, "you are a stunning woman!
I . . ."
"Please don't think I meant you to answer such a question," she broke
in hurriedly, with flaming cheeks.
"Of course not. You meant it as a reminder that there are two sides to
every question."
"Yes. How nice of you to understand! I have no shadow of right to
take you to task. But when the fate of two lives seems hanging on a
thread, one dare not keep silence.--Now, I think we ought to turn back.
And I wonder if you would mind telling me a little about your wife,"
she added, with diplomatic intent to prolong his softened mood. "She
is so charming; so individual. But I haven't been able to get at her
at all. She seems almost to dislike me; and I am just beginning to
guess why."
"Nonsense . . . nonsense," he protested brusquely. "You are entirely
mistaken."
"That also remains to be proved!"
They retraced their steps down the rough path that descends from the
Mall to the Assembly Rooms, walking very slowly, as people do when
absorbed. Honor, with all a woman's skill, imparted a flavour of
reminiscence to their talk; and no man with a spark of love in his
heart can hold out, for long, against the magic suggestiveness of
memory. For all his guarded indifference of manner, she felt the ice
melting under her touch: and the passionate human interest, of which
she had already spoken, held her, to exclusion of such minor
trivialities as possibly distracted partners. For this woman, the
human note,--be it never so untuneful--surpassed the sublimest music
plucked from the heart of wood or wire.
Arrived on the gravel ledge outside the building, they paused in a
shaft of light, still intent on their subject; till the inspiriting
rhythm of a polka shattered the stillness, and Honor, turning hastily,
caught sight of an erect figure in the doorway behind her.
"There's Theo. He seems to be looking for me," she said. "Why, we
must have talked through two dances. Come."
But at the foot of the verandah steps Lenox held out his hand.
"The evening is ended for me. I am going straight home, to think over
all you have said. I'll be round by ten to-morrow. Good-night--and
thank you."
He italicised the last words by a vigorous hand-clasp; and a moment
later she stood in the doorway, confronting her husband. A glance at
his face put her laughing apology to flight.
"I tell you what it is, Honor," he broke out hotly, "you're going too
far altogether. Here has Maurice been letting half Dalhousie know that
he couldn't find you anywhere; and the last dance--was mine. Heaven
knows where you buried yourselves. I didn't attempt to look. Lenox
has no business to monopolise you in this way. Woman-hater, indeed!"
"It was not _his_ fault," she flashed out, in an impulse more generous
than wise: but her blood was as quick to take fire as his own.
"Then it was yours, which is fifty times worse."
Honor lifted her head with a superb dignity of gesture.
"As you please," she said quietly. "It is useless to attempt
explanation here, or anywhere, till you are more . . like yourself."
Returning couples were by now besieging the doorway; and she passed on
into the ballroom, her head still high, her lips compressed, lest
others should note their tendency to quiver. A woman who loves the man
of her choice with every fibre of her being does not readily forget,
though she may forgive, his first rough words to her.
Honor was claimed at once by Kenneth Malcolm, a favourite partner, boy
though he was. But the keen edge of her interest was blunted. She
wanted one thing only to be alone with Theo; to set his mind at rest:
and those 'separated selves,' who drew her like nothing else on earth,
became of a sudden mere voluble obstructions between herself and her
desire.
Half an hour later she came up to him, where he stood, laughing and
talking in a group of men.
"I am tired, Theo," she said in a low tone. "Mr Maurice is getting my
dandy for me. But don't come away if you'd rather stop on."
Their eyes locked for an instant.
"Is that likely?" he asked, a gleam in his own.
"I don't know."
"You do know. Look sharp and get your things on."
Michael Maurice did not hurry himself over the congenial task of
settling his _deesse veritable_ among the cushions of her dandy,--a
hybrid conveyance, half canoe, half cane lounge, slung from the
shoulders of four men, by an ingenious arrangement of straps and cross
poles. Closer acquaintance had deepened his admiration: but a nameless
something in her manner warned him that it must not be expressed in his
usual promiscuous fashion. She had refused, very sweetly but
decisively, the honour of appearing in his great picture. But Desmond
had succumbed to the temptation of procuring a portrait of her and
'little Paul.' "At the worst, I can sell a pony to pay for it," he had
said, in answer to her remonstrance. "And I shall think it cheap at
the price!"
And now, as the dandy-bearers turned to mount the ascent, he came to
his wife's side. She had drawn off her gloves, and one hand rested on
the woodwork of her canoe. He covered it with his own, walking by her
thus, for a few steps, in silence: and it was enough.
"Mount now," she commanded him softly. "And let's hurry home, I've
ever so much to tell you."
He obeyed: and they journeyed upward to familiar music of hoof-beats,
and the murmur of _jhampannies_, wrapt about by the magic of a night so
still that all the winds seemed to have gone round with the sun to the
other side of the world.
A tray set with glass and silver awaited them in the drawing-room.
Honor, entering first, slipped the long cloak from her shoulders with a
satisfied sigh, a sense of passing from the unreal to the real, which
she often experienced on returning from a dance: and underlying all, a
profound pity for the lone and ill-mated women, in a world of oddments
and misfits, who have never felt the thrill of such home-comings as
this of hers to-night. Then she swept round, and fronted her
husband:--a gleaming figure, like a statue cut in ivory; no colour
anywhere, save the living tints of her face and eyes and hair.
"Well?" she laughed, on a low clear note of happiness. "I hope you are
properly ashamed of yourself!"
But before the words were out, he had her in his arms; and for a
supreme moment the great illusion was theirs that they were not two,
but one, as the Book decrees.
Then she pushed him gently into a chair, and kneeling beside him drew
his arm around her, resting her head against his in a fashion
inexpressibly tender. The natural dignity that was hers set a high
value on such sweet familiarities: and if Desmond submitted to them in
silence, it was because the man in him was too deeply moved for speech.
Then she told him, at some length, all that she had gleaned of the past
and present relations between Lenox and his wife.
"Now, do you see how I came to lose sight of everything for the time
being?" she concluded, smiling up at him. "So far as I can gather,
things seem to be at a deadlock, unless one can persuade him to take
the first step forward."
"And you want to play Providence, as usual? Is that it?"
"Don't laugh at me, Theo! I am in earnest. I would gladly move heaven
and earth to put things straight between them."
"But this seems a case of moving a Scot. A far tougher job, I can tell
you!"
"Well, I think I moved him a little to-night; and he is coming round
to-morrow for a ride." Desmond frowned; and she made haste to add;
"Now that is just where I must have your co-operation, Theo, or I can
do nothing. I want you to trust me, and give me a free hand for these
next few weeks. Will you, . . please?"
"Does that mean I am to let you be about with Lenox as much as you
choose?"
"Probably not more than I have been so far. I only want to be sure
that whatever I do you won't speak to me again as you did to-night."
She felt the muscles of his arm tighten.
"I think you may feel sure of that much," he said. "But you are asking
a very hard thing of me, Honor. Lenox is a thorough good chap; and I
don't want to be driven into disliking him. It isn't as if I were a
saint, like Paul. I'm just a man, and a grasping one at that! What's
more, I am very jealous for you; and I have the right to be. Society
doesn't recognise philanthropic motives. It takes you and your acts at
their face value . . ."
"I know, I know,"--she straightened herself impulsively; her hands
clasped, her bare arms laid across his knees. "And I'll be ever so
circumspect, dearest, I promise you. But oh, Theo, . . . don't you
understand? It is just because we are so blessedly happy, you and I,
that the thought of what those two foolish people are missing troubles
me so sorely."
Such an appeal was irresistible. They had lived deeply enough, these
two, to know the real importance of happiness.
"Bless your big heart," he answered warmly. "I understand right
enough. By all means help 'em if you can. I'll not baulk you. But
it's a delicate task; and I don't quite see how you are going to set
about it."
"Nor do I,--yet. One can only trust to intuition, and the inspiration
of the moment. From the little he said, it seems that the first move
ought to come from her: and possibly my intimacy with him may help to
bring her to her senses. Everything depends, of course, on how much
she cares. That's still an unknown quantity. But she dislikes me
already; which is a promising sign!--Now I am going to fill your pipe,
and pour you out a peg; and we'll enjoy ourselves till it's time for
second supper!"
It is just such quiet hours of heart-to-heart intimacy that constitute
true marriage. For in these uneventful moments links are forged and
soldered strong enough to resist the buffeting of storms, or the
deadlier, corrosive influence of those minor miseries which poison the
very core of life.
A handful of stars--visible through the open glass door into the
verandah--had began to pale, when Desmond lifted his wife to her feet,
and blew out the lamp. In the profound stillness their footsteps and
low laughter sounded up the wooden stairs. Then a door shut somewhere
in the house, and the night absorbed them into herself.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Ce n'est pas le mort qui separe le plus les individus."
--De Coulevain.
And what of Lenox, after Honor Desmond's sympathetic exertions on his
behalf?
He went straight from her side to the cloak-room; and thence slowly
back to his unhomelike rooms at the hotel; a dark solitary figure, with
bent head, and a heart full of tumultuous hopes and fears. The events
of the evening had stirred him as he had not been stirred since those
early days of torment, of undignified oscillation between yearning and
despair: and now, at last, love unsteadied for the first time the
foundations of his pride; brought home to him the cardinal truth that
all the beauty and terror of life spring from the inexorable law of
duality that links man and woman, act and consequence, with the same
passionless unconcern.
All the way up the hill, this man--who loved night and her
manifestations as most men love the morning--had no thought to spare
for the splendour of the heavens or the shrouded majesty of earth, so
absorbed was he in framing and rejecting possible letters to his wife,
who, for all he knew, had already half-lost her heart to another man.
The small sitting-room where Brutus, the faithful, awaited his coming,
was more or less a replica of his larger one at Dera Ishmael: the
chronically disordered table, books, pipes, sketches, his inseparable
friends, the bull terrier, and the brown tobacco-jar. All these, the
familiars of his lonely hours, gave him silent greeting as he crossed
the threshold. But for once his spirit failed to respond. The
witchery of his wife's lips and eyes; the distracting music of her
laughter; that one poignant moment of contact with her living,
palpitating self, and Honor Desmond's belief in an undreamed-of
possibility, had kindled the man's repressed passion as a lighted match
kindles dry powder; had revived in him the common human need, which
neither ambition nor work, however absorbing, has yet been known to
satisfy.
"My God," he thought. "If I believed I had a ghost of a chance to get
hold of her again, I'd go back to that infernal ballroom this minute!"
He turned, as if to carry out his resolve: but at the last, shut down
the flood-gates of emotion, fell back on years of self-discipline, and
told his heart he was a fool. He had yet to learn that there is a
folly worth more than all the wisdom of philosophers, the folly of a
man who loves a woman better than his own soul.
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