He She and It.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIV, Issue 22, 3 June 1905, Page 6

He She and It.

YOC are nan.l on “gentle dulness,” said she. He glanced down from his six-foot-one in the doorway, and started. They had been blocked there for the space of twenty minutes bearing the congestion of Society with the equanimity t lint Mammon supplies to her devotees. “Hard?” he asked. For he had not spoken since a limited London drawing room had said “Thus far” halt an hour ago. She nodded. “Your eyes say what others say in words. If gentle dulness loves its joke. wh\ do you stay in the heights and scoff? You should come down for a little while: it is so much easier.’’ He looked at the calm curves of her mouth, and saw for the second time in his life that she had an adorable protile, and that while her eyes were friendly they were also shy. “If it were worth a laugh!” he shrugged, and glanced at tin* reciter —a pleasant lord with a pleasant voice, who had been making himself funny for the lienefit of the crowded audience Lady Dessborough was renowned for gathering. “Yet all the rest of us are patient.” He smiled. “You are not ‘all the rest of us.’ ” She shook her head. “A bit for the rest. I won t be exceptional. The groovy jog on and are happy.” Then his keen eye turned on her in dissection —a task ho rarely indulged with one of her years. ■ You speak as if you were provincial." "Of the distilled provincialism that comes from a cathedral town.” "Your trumpet gives out an uncertain sound,” he declared with languid laughter. "Does it ? My words, but not my frock. Aunt Julia—Lady Dessborough—thinks it dreadful. Perhaps it is. judged byLondon chiffons. \re you a judge of chiffons?" He was surprised to find himself amused. His life for years had been lived Graphic Yarn z in file clouds, aloof. The common herd was impotent to charm him earthwards. Now he came slowly down, and with an enigmatical smile. In coming, he looked at the frock. “I could tell better if we had room for a background.” he said, with leniencyin his gaze. She glowed girlishly. “I like to get

man’s views—outside Cathedral towns. And you are so very outside, and Ah!” A fainting guest had broken the phalanx, and two seized the loophole of escape, and. in a corridor, dim with Venetian lamps, sat down and laughed. “What air! What space! What splendid sense of liberty!” said she. “How much we suffer in the cause of Society!” said he. She patted the folds of her diaphanous gown, and then rose lightly, spreading its train fan-wise with a dexterous touch of her foot. •‘Your opportunity!” He measured her inches slowly, weighing her conspicuous grace with her inconspicuous frock. The grace triumphed. blotting out country-cut and homeliness. “1 can't see how it fails.” he averred, thinking only of the soft breathing whiteness of a neck, and the poise of a bent head. “You are a man!” she declared, and sat down again with a sigh. “It is only the view of the one ‘outside.’ remember. Tell me what else he is besides outside provincialism?” The shyness predominated for a mo mcnt over the mirth. “We have only met three times.” “And ‘once’ often justifies confidences.” “Aunt Julia ” she began. “Aunt Julia wants nothing better than the happiness of her guests.” She shook her head. “I am her niece. She is an archdeacon’s daughter. And after ten years of London she is still archidiaconal.” “Which means?” “That I must mind the P’s and Q’s of her alphabet. At home in my cathedral town, girls are seen and not heard. And T think now that 1 oughtn’t to have said you were ‘outside’ cathedral towns. It is a bad habit of mine to jump to character-conclusions, the result, perhaps, of a pent-up tongue.” “You didn’t jump far.” he said. “It was safe to guess I wasn't provincial.” “Far? I went farther. I put you down (but you must remember you gave me some definite points last Friday at the ( olquhouns)as a cosmopolitan, jaded, without ambition, the sort of man who props the walls of a London drawingroom, and quotes Omar Khayyam to himself all the time.” He smiled, looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, and considering this

specimen of girlish provincialism half sardonically. “I knew,” she said, and paused, colouring; then broke out eagerly, “If you think that because I say you have no ambition, I imply you have no gifts, you are quite, quite wrong. You seem to me to have so many—lying fallow. And I couldn’t help watching your face as v>e stood penned side by- side just now. and fancying 1 could hear y-ou saying: ’We are no other than a moving row Of magic shadow shapes that come and go,’ with the tiredness of Omar.” “ ‘Helpless pieces,’ ” he quoted absently. “ ‘Of the game he plays upon this chequer-board of nights and days.’ Yet this particular night occurs to me.” He drew himself up. Her own thoughts were far away, busyon a propitiatory incursion into his mind. At the moment no other overture occurred to her but smile, a grave and wistful one, peculiarly adapted to the errand she sent it on. And Paul Giffarde melted to it. like dessert snow. “What, then,” he asked, “if not to lack of gifts, do you put down the aimlessness?” “Ah!” she said. “I have no knowledge of your world. Now. Aunt Grace! Aunt Grace is very wise, and makes allowance. You should go to Aunt Grace for the answer. And, in cathedral towns we never sit so long as ” “In which case, let us away to “upper.”

Her ladyship saw and wondered. For half London—her select London —knew his tale. • That Mary, who frankly loved books and dull hedgerows far above dinner parties and finery, should attract! Ah, well! it was man’s whim. Now. if it had been Cynthia! Cynthia was Mary’s elder sister—pretty prudery dressed to perfection. Aunt Grace, too. saw from afar, and pondered. She was never absent from these functions in her public capacity of jester. Privately, her sister-in-law neither bade nor loved her. For Grace’s income, as the wife of a mere commander. represented Lady Dessborough’s frock allowance. And Grace was an American and poor, a combination that jarred Aunt Julia’s fine susceptibilities. America being only tolerable on her horizon in proportion to the dollars it introduced. In the supper-room they met, the crush bringing Aunt Grace and her cavalier to a stand behind Paul Giffarde’s ehair. He turned and saw them. “Grace Allington!” he said, and rose to shake hands. Mary smiled a very peony. She had not guessed that he eould have met and dined with her divinity in the far-away 7 Boston home. They exchanged a few words and passed on. Neither the peony tints nor the glow in Giffarde’s eye escaped Grace Allington. “I must find out to-morrow.” she decided. “For him, perhaps, a momentary lapse from the shadowy haze that befogs. But for her! Mary must be warned.” And on the morrow. Mary anticipated her by coming to the little room at Woolwieh. “I came.” said the young woman, “to ask you why you didn’t say good-bye to me at Aunt Julia’s last night?” “I welcome you.” said the elder, “to know why you blushed and shied at me on the same occasion.” “Shied! Oh, no! Perhaps I blushed.” “A danger signal to warn me off delectable ground.” Mary took off her gloves, considering her hands. “Was it delectable? I wonder? I am so young in many ways that I am not sure.” “Quite old enough to know when you are happy.”

“Quite. He interests me more than any man I have spoken to yet.” “You have spoken to few.” “But contemplated many. Last night I didn’t contemplate, I talked. And 1 think he liked it. An hour flew. We both liked it. But”—she sat upright—“it seemed to me there was a barrier. And you must tell me what it is.” “‘lt?’” smiled Aunt Grace. “Yes. It!—this aimlessness of his. Why hasn’t he ambition? Is he nice enough to talk to—much? For he is coming to Lucerne with us next week.” “Did you ask him about the ambition?” said the elder, busy with a small caddy and the tea-cups. “Well, I mentioned it.” “Bravo!” “And he wanted me to explain its absence. But ” “Y’ou wouldn’t?” nodded Grace. “I wouldn’t. And I told him you would be likelier to find a key to the problem. Not that I knew you knew him; but I knew you keep your kind eyes open. Afterwards he supplied the cause himself in his odd polysyllabic way, and told me that his indifference arose from the ‘microbe of an indissoluble tie!’” Grace Allington lay back in her chair and laughed. “A microbe! Good. He acknowledged that it is a microbe. And then?” “He wanted me to paraphrase his answer, and because I guessed it was a question of a woman, I couldn’t.” “Or wouldn’t.” “He holds himself in check,” mused Mary. “We might have been so happy.” “But for this ‘it,’ the other woman,” said Aunt Grace. Mary drew in her breath, her face on a sudden like a red rose.

Presently she spoke. “We have only met three times. I am glad it isn’t more.” “So, Moll, am I. He is nice, and might be great. But there is the clog on the wheels of his chariot—this distorted sense of honour dragging him down to inpeitude—the tie that is magnified to a bond. And for ten years he hasn’t got away from it.” “Ten., years!” said the voice of 20 daunted by the immensity of decades. “Ten years. I eould tell you the story if you like now.” “I think we will talk about frocks. I shouldn’t like, if we ever met at Lucerne ” “I see,” said the other comprehensively. “Well, remember the barrier, and expect nothing from him because of it. The waiting policy is a wearing policy, and has worn Mr. Giffarde’s commonsense threadbare.” Mary raised her head, opened her lips in protest, and finally drank her tea at a gulp. “My niece has a head on her shoulders,” remarked the Bostonian when she was alone. “The question now becomes the proportion of head to heart.” The next week Lady Dessborougr left for Italy, taking the only relative available as slave to her commands. They quitted London in the beginning of the season, because she disapproved of thinning herself in the cause of Mammon. She still was a pretty woman of a kind that does not stir the blood, and took great care of the prettiness. On their second evening at the Nationale, she lifted her calm brows at table d’hote, and said to Mary in the same tone she had been remarking on the weather, “Mr. Giffarde is two tables away; like me. I suppose, he is glad to escape the treadmill.” "They say,” said Mary, “that he is glad to escape anything involving trouble.” “Yes,” said her ladyship. “An unsatisfactory sort of man—blighted by a fancy! I expect Cynthia is well out of it. Yet it seems a pity he is so rich for —nothing. Now Cynthia!” “He is coming across the room to us,” interposed Mary. Lady Dessborough held out three languid fingers to the tall figure halting at her side. “Lucerne is a common meeting-ground,” she said, without enthusiasm. He replied with the like lassitude. “It is. Bearable in passage only, in so far as a chromolithograph is bearable in rooms we inhabit for a day.” “Mary’s eyes spoke their protest. He looked at them, glowing allies of their Swiss halting-place, and smiled. “So we meet at the Cross Roads!” he said. “We are off to the Italian Lakes,” said the elder woman. “Lucerne leads anywhere. I suppose?” “According to one’s whim.” “According to one’s whim. To me it

is just a hostelry. To my niece, her first peep of Europe.” "The points of view are far apart, ’ he said. ‘‘Let me secure to you that it shall be a hostelry, by saving you the fatigue of acting guide.” “On behalf?” “Of Miss Mary, whose appetite for sight-seeing will tire you.” The manner in which he framed his proposal won a complacent acquiescence. “We will begin this evening. The night is fine. We will be back at nine.” And though arehidiaconal codes were somewhat startled by this prompt step, conscience was quieted by the fact that Gitfarde was old in indifference and as unmoved by woman as the men of Mars. So they went. Lights gleamed along the margin of the lake; the April twilight was warm and balmy. Their shadows under the trees seemed part and parcel of the enchantment of the hour, moving dream like with them, now before, now after, as they passed from light to light, through the purple evening. “It is too late for the Muhlenbrucke. Let us sit down here,” he said. And while the crowd went by with cheerful hum of talk, two sat among it all, and were conscious only of each other. “You are well wrapped up?” “Quite. How the stars laugh in the quiet water! And our shadows lie still at our feet. See, they are guarding us. content for just a minute to be at rest so long as they don’t leave us.” “Magic shadow shapes—” She put up her hand. “London is far away. Forget it. And be-—yourself.” “I am myself.” “A sleeping self. You mustn't sleep tonight.” A boat went by with soft music, for a man was singing a serenade to his lover as the boatman plied his oar. They were silent listening. Then boat and singer passed out of sight. GilTarde leant forward suddenly, looking at the profile that satisfied. “And the key —what did you think of Aunt Grace’s key?” Her gaze came to him slowly from the dim height of Mount Pilatus. "The key?” “The key”—he paused with mirthless laughter —“to this man’s aimless?” “1 thought, one day, I should like to hear his tale." said she. “One day? To-day? My story wouldn’t weary you?” “Oh. no. no!” He leaned forward in his chair, outlining the shadow patterns spread by the chestnuts absently. Then he began without preamble. “I was a young man onee with enthusiasms. And something came into my life to absorb them all. She was my father’s ward —half Pole and half Australian —and she ruled us all. I was her slave at twenty, and am so still. When she came into a room the light was blinding; when she left it, it was dark. There are a few women in the ■world whom one sees because one must —they magnetise.” “Ah—yes!” said Mary. “And when I knew myself her affianced lover, I felt I had all the gods could give.” “She was beautiful ?” “Very, with the voice of a bird. So we loved and were happy. And 1 ate my dinners, working for the bar as my father had worked before me, and trod air. Do I bore you?” “Oh, no,” said she, drawing a slow breath in the dark. “I was twenty-five when she decided to train herself for the operatic stage. “I don’t mean to hide my gifts under a bushel,” she said, ’and if you want me to marry you, you must shape your path by mine. So don’t absorb yourself in defending criminals or aiming at the woolsack till 1 am launched.’ She was a success. Her training slipped by in a heaven of blissful uncertainty to me. and at its close, engagements set us both in a whirl. Is the tale very pro lix?” Mary’s .eyes said "No,” and he reflected. “Its end is abrupt. She accepted an engagement to tour in the cities of Australia for six months, and when we parted, in a chaos of emotion, she bound me down to wait for her. ‘Decide nothing as regards your profession till 1 return,’ she enjoined again. ‘I sha’n’t fail you, for I am yours for ever. I shall come back; without fail I shall come back. But in the meantime I will have no rival in the way of dry-as-dust work.

Your path must shape itself to mine.' And 1 was so far her slave that 1 promised readily. Twelve years have gone, and 1 am still her slave.” "But she?” asked Mary. “There was a fins in the city where they were playing. The wings got blocked. The panic was fearful. Every member of the company perished. But through the turmoil of my despair, her words rang always in my brain. ‘I shall come back. Without fail, 1 shall come back.’ Perhaps the shock unhinged me. Anyhow, I wasn’t the man I had been. I lived in a kind of dream, benumbed, waiting. And”—he turned to the face at his side—“l am waiting still. Upbraid me as a wastrel and a fool. There is the tale.” Her eyes dropped towards the hand tracing the shadow-patterns restlessly. The light from a lamp above fell on their shapeliness, and on the glint of insignificant silver encircling a finger. There was a moment’s silence. “And she gave you your little silver ring?” said the voice of Marv.

“Yes,” he answered, “1 have worn it —a pledge of a dazzling influence, ever since 1 was eighteen.” “A long, long time ago,” said Mary . “A long, long time ago! Can you not say one word of sympathy for the Incapable fettered bjf thist homely link ?”’ Their glance met over the silver ring. “Life isn’t over yet,” she said. “You have time to retrieve lost years, tou have power to shake off fanciful ties in fact.” “But the voio? sings still. Mary,” he said. “I shall come back. Without fail I shall come back.’ And till it stops He turned away, and by a rapid curve of his wrist swept out the hieroglyphics at their feet.

"The story is told. Our little hour is past. Come, we must go back.” Luder the shadows, through rustling leaves, and a hum of talk, they returned to their hotel. Ou the last day they were at Lucerne* he asked her to walk by the lake again, and under a full moon tlsey went out together. Lady Dessborough watched them idly; to her prejudices, it was so evident the man was bored, paying a part chivalrously. not for Mary’s sake, but that Mary’s Aunt might be spared discomfort. In her eyes, Mary was merely the rawdebutante who could no more secure a parti before Cynthia was settled than a sparrow could take precedence of a peacock. Paul Giffarde’s friendliness, therefore, held subtle flattery. She wanned herself lazily in the ease it entailed. At the lake side the two sat down. Paul bent towards a flower-faee suddenly. “If I could ever get away from a voice,” he said, “would you forgive the

past and bless the future for me, Mary ?” And before she could reply, he stood up and fronted her abruptly. "I am unfair,” he said, “for you are young, and 1 am old. Forget me—this sorry failure. Tell me to go home and leave you. that you may enjoy Italy alone. Tell me to go!” There was a brief pause. Then she stood up beside him. “No. I won’t tell you that. Italy with Aunt Julia would mean little. Italy with you ” “With me?” he asked, unsteadily. “It would mean happiness,” she said. “It has always been so!” mused Lady Dessborough, placidly. “Men invariably sacrifice themselves on my be half. And this one really does it cred

itably, seeing that a blue stocking is his aversion.” flhus a little homage and a few attentions keeping her ladyship well pleased, Lombardy, with its budding vines and snowy peaks, burst upon Mary’s eyes as veriest fairyland. Generally their excursions were arranged with a view to Lady Dessbor ough’s comfort and complexion. But to Isola Bella —set like a jewel on Maggiore's blue breast—Paul and Mary came one day together. Lady Dessborough was giving a dance at her hotel that night, and must needs reserve her forces for the evening. It was noon when they landed under a green pergola, and drunk lacrima Christi to the tinkle of distant mandolines. A very parrot-house of talk was in the air around them, but Giffarde and Mary were for the most part silent. Presently they emerged from the babble, and trod the ruined tiers of an ancient palace alone. The guide. Giffarde dismissed with effectual gold.

Above, the sky stooped blue and intense, colour lay around them in a riot of rainbow hues. The somnolent swish of Maggiore stirred the silence like a sigh. White canopied boats went over it butterfly-like. At last, on a time-worn parapet, they leaned to rest; and on a plateau set high against the sapphirine sky. saw a group of three. One was a woman who held a hand in air. feeding white peacocks. Iler grace dominated the scene of which she was the emphatic cfentre, so that for a moment one could see nothing else. The picture stood, cut like a silhott ette, black woman’s garments against the vivid light, arm poised in air. the

white birds strutting at her feet. Mary drew in her breath. Giffarde stood still. Afterwards the thin child at a skirt hem, the large man behind, took their in the silhouette. But it was not of them Mary said breathlessly. “How beautiful!” The woman turned swiftly and with a panther grace. The sun was in her eyes. She put her hand to her head. Paul Giffarde leaned on a wall. The air seemed of a sudden tense. ‘’Paul!” said a high voice, piercingly. And Paul moved slowly forward. The woman held his hands with shaken laughter. “An old friend. Joseph!” she said, speaking to the other man. “A friend whose name comes back to me now from dreams — the dreams when you were good to me. Paul, what was your other name?" Paul Giflarde whitened. For the hands holding his. had once thrilled him; the eyes had looked into his soul; at the feet he had worsipped boyishly. “Paul— Paul Giffarde,” lie answered. She smiled hestlessly, watching his features. Then she turned to the large man. “Joseph, he must dine with us at our hotel. Soon it will all come back to me. We are at the Belle Vue, Baveno, Paul. Come to our hotel, to-night, and my husband will help me to remember. We were great friends once, Joseph. Ask him to dine with us.” Paul’s eyes went instinctively to Mary. “What time will you go?” said she. The large man said, “We dine at seven.” And she who had been Clarissa Marriott held out her hand. “I shall remember, by degrees, Paul. I shall remember,” she said. “You must remind me to-night. And so till seven, good-bye!” Then the plateau was empty; the white peacocks preened alone; and Paul and Mary walked to a bench and sat down. “It is very hot here. Let us go home,” said he. “When the ground opens at one's feet, one can’t answer for one's equilibrium.” So they went down ten sunny tiers slowly, that they might still be alone, and took a little boat to cross to the mainland. After he had helped her to her place under the white awning, he kept her hand in his. The boatman had no eye but for his fare, and hummed a lovesong mechanically, plying his oar, as he had hummed it a hundred times before. The signor was most generous, he said, with “Grazias” many and profound when they landed. At their hotel gate, Giffarde stopped. “Will you meet me here at ninp?” he said. “I am going for a walk now. Think well before you speak, Mary. For I am only a broken reed to lean on.” “I want no better,” said she. Th? moon was up at nine, shining serenely upon miles of blue. The sound of violins came down from the hotel with

the liura of cheerful folks bidden to Lady Dessborough’s dance. -Mary stole out unmissed. The plash of the water was like a symphony to her. Her Delectable Mountains enfolded her. Then a spark of red glowed in the moonlight, and the scent of smoke caiirr to her nostrils. ’•Mary!” She put her hands into Giffarik’s and they sat down on the steps that Maggiore lapped. " Tell me,” she said. So he told her the story of Clarissa, of a rescue in an Australian city, of a long illness and a lost memory, and of the friendship of the great cattle owner who wooed her back to love and life patiently. His tale was brief. At its close, silence fell. Then he spoke, absently and to himself, “ ‘Helpless pieces of the game he plays upon this cliequer-board of nighty and days! ’ ” A hand came swiftly to his. “Paul, the burden of that song is dead. You must sing me another. The voice is still. liiu must listen to a new one. The old ties are broken. You must east them away. Paul!” Her fingiers touched the silver ring. - “You have thought, Mary? You are very young.” “Old enough to know my own mind.” “Mary!” There was a stir in the silenee. A silver ring gleamed whitely in ths moonlight, and on the bosom of Maggiore, a bubble rose and disappeared.