CHAPTER VIII

"NUIT DE MAI"

Some half-hour later Adrian turned into the garden of the Tower House by the wicket gate opening off the carriage-drive. And so doing, the tranquil beauty of the night made itself felt. During his walk from Heatherleigh his preoccupation had been too great to admit of the bestowal of intelligent attention upon outward things, however poetic their aspect. He possessed the comfortable assurance, it is true, of having worsted the animal Challoner in the only way possible, swords and pistols being forbidden. He also possessed the comfortable assurance of having scrupulously and successfully regulated the _affaire_ Smyrthwaite, in as far as business was concerned, and taken his discharge in respect of it. But the events of the afternoon had proved to him, beyond all shadow of doubt and denial, the existence of a second _affaire_ Smyrthwaite, compared with which regulation of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of property was, from his personal standpoint, but the veriest bagatelle! Now the question of how to deal with this second _affaire_, alike scrupulously and successfully, racked his brain, usually so direct in decision, so prompt in honorable instinct and thought. And it was to the young man's credit that, while fully measuring the abominable nature of the hole in which the unhappy Joanna had put him, he remained just and temperate in his judgment of Joanna herself. The more to his credit, because, as a native of a country where certain subjects are treated in a spirit of merry common-sense--which, if it makes in some degree for license, also makes for absence of hypocrisy and much wholesome delight in life--Joanna's attitude offered an obscure problem. Were she a vicious woman his position would be a comparatively simple one. But Joanna and vice were, he felt, far as the poles asunder. Even that ugly matter of "trying to buy him"--as in his first overwhelming disgust he had defined it--proved, on calmer inspection, innocent of any intention of offense. She didn't know, poor, dear woman, she didn't know. In her virtuous ignorance of certain fundamental tendencies of human nature, of the correlative action of body and spirit, she had not a conception of the atrocities she was in process of committing! For she was essentially high-minded, deep-hearted, sincere; a positive slave to the demands of her own overdeveloped moral sense. But, heavens and earth, if only those responsible for her education had taught her a little more about the nature of the _genus homo_--male and female--and the physiology of her own emotions, and a little less about quite supererogatory theoretic ethics! The burning, though veiled, passion from which he recoiled was, he believed, in great measure the result of the narrow intellectualism on which she had been nurtured working upon a naturally ardent temperament. What she must have suffered! What she would suffer in the coming days!

For it was that last which hit Adrian hardest, in all this distracting imbroglio, giving him that "uncommon nasty blow below the belt" the effects of which Joseph Challoner had noted. The more he analyzed, and, analyzing, excused, Joanna's attitude the more odiously distasteful did his own position become. In how far was he to blame? What had he done, by word, act, or look, to provoke or to foster Joanna's most lamentable infatuation? He explored his memory, and, to his rather bitter amusement, found it an absolute blank. He had not flirted with her, even within the most restrained of the limits sanctioned by ordinary social intercourse. For this he did not commend himself. On the contrary, he felt almost penitent; since--there hadn't been any temptation to flirt. Positively not any--though Adrian knew himself to be by no means insensible to feminine influence. He loved Madame St. Leger. She constituted, so to speak, the religion of his heart. But he found dozens of other women charming, and did not scruple to--as good as--tell them so.--Why not? Are not such tellings the delightful and perfectly legitimate small change of a gallant man's affections? And out of the farthings and half-farthings, the very fractions of half-farthings, indeed--of such small change, Joanna had constructed a great and serious romance terminating in matrimony! The young man could have beat his breast, torn his hair, poured ashes upon his thus forcibly denuded scalp, and rent his up-to-date and

## particularly well-tailored garments. He, Adrian Savage, the husband of

Joanna!--From this his lively Gallic imagination galloped away, blushing in humorous horror, utterly refusing to contemplate the picture. At the same time his pity for her was immense. And how, oh! how, without gross and really sickening cruelty, to dispel her disastrous delusion?

With the above question upon his lips, Adrian turned by the wicket gate into the garden, where the tranquil beauty surrounding him compelled his observation.

High above the dark-feathered crests of the firs, the moon, two days short of the full, rode in the south-eastern sky, obliterating all stars in the vicinity of her pathway. She showed to-night not as a flat disk plastered against the solid vault, but as a mammoth, delicately tarnished silver ball, traveling in stateliest fashion the steel-blue fields of space. The roofs and façade of the house, its multiplicity of glinting window-panes, the lawns and shrubberies, and all-encircling woodland, were alike overlaid with the searching whiteness of her light. The air was dry and very mellow, rich with a blending of forest and garden scents. Faintly to northward Adrian's ear could detect the rattle and grind of a belated tram on the Barryport Road, and, southward, the continuous wistful murmur of the mile-distant sea!

Now, as often before, he was sensible of the subtle charm produced by this conjunction of a highly finished, material civilization with gently savage and unsubjugated Nature. England is, in so great measure, a sylvan country even yet; a country of close-coming, abounding, and invading trees. And when, as now, just upon midnight, its transitory human populations--which in silly pride suppose themselves proprietors of the soil and all that grows upon it--are herded safe indoors, abed and asleep, the trees resume their primitive sovereignty, making their presence proudly evident. They had no voice to-night, it is true. They stood becalmed and silent. Yet the genius of them, both in their woodland unity and endless individual diversity of form and growth, declared itself nevertheless. For this last the infiltration of moonlight was partly accountable, since it lent each stem, branch, and twig, each differing species of foliage--the large leaves of laurel and rhododendron, the semi-transparent, fringed and fluted leaves of the beech, the finely spiked tufts of fir-needles--a definiteness and separateness such as hoar-frost might. Each tree and bush stood apart from its fellows in charming completeness and relief, challenging the eye by a certain sprightly independence of mien and aspect. Had they moved from their fixed places, the big trees mingling in some stately procession or dance, while the shrubs and bushes frisked upon the greensward, Adrian would hardly have been surprised. A spirit of phantasy was abroad--here in the Baughurst Park Ward, local municipal government notwithstanding--entrancing to his poetic sense.

Therefore he lingered, walking slowly along the path leading to the garden entrance of the house, here shaded by a broken line of tall Scotch firs, their smooth stems rising like pillars, bare of branches for some twenty or thirty feet. Now and again he stopped, held captive by the tranquil yet disquieting beauty of the scene. It reminded him strangely of Gabrielle St. Leger's beauty, and the something elusive, delicately malicious and ironic, in the character of it. Her smiling, unclosed lips, the dimple in her left cheek; those mysterious oblique glances from beneath her long-shaped, half-closed eyelids, full at once of invitation and reserve; the untamed, deliciously tricksy spirit he apprehended in her; and a something majestic, too, as of those vast, calm, steel-blue fields of space,--these, all and severally, he, lover-like, found mirrored in the loveliness of this May night.

On his left the lawns, flooded by moonlight, stretched away to the tennis court and the terrace walk in front of the pavilion. On his right, backed by the line of Scotch firs aforesaid, a thick wall of deciduous shrubs--allspice, lilac, syringa, hydrangea, sweetbrier, and laburnum--shut out the carriage-drive. The quaint leathery flowers of the allspice gave off a powerful and luscious sweetness as of sun-ripened fruit. Adrian paused, inhaling it, gazing meanwhile in fond imagination into _la belle Gabrielle's_ golden-brown eyes, refreshingly forgetful of the distracting perplexities of the _affaire_ Smyrthwaite No. 2.

It was a good moment, at once chaste and voluptuous, wherein the very finest flame of ideal love burned upon his heart's altar. But it was broken up by an arresting apparition. For a white owl swept, phantom-like, out of the plantation behind the pavilion and beat over the moonlit turf in swift and absolutely noiseless flight. A soft thistle-down could hardly have passed more lightly or silently than the great wide-winged bird. Beneath it, its shadow, skimming the close-cut surface of the grass, seemed as much alive and more substantial than itself. Twice, while Adrian watched, moved and a little startled, it quartered the lawn in search of prey; then flung itself up, high in air, vanishing among the tree-tops, with a long-drawn hoo-hoo-hooing of hollow laughter. And in the space of a few seconds, from the recesses of the woodland, its mate answered with a far-off elfin echo of its sinister note. Then Adrian heard a window open. And, on to the far end of the red-balustraded balcony--extending along the first floor of the house, in the recess above the veranda--a woman came.

She was dressed in a white _négligé_ of some soft, woolen material, which hung straight in knife-edge pleatings from her shoulders to her feet, covering them--as the young man could see between the wide-spaced balusters--and lying outspread for some inches around her upon the floor. Over this she wore a black cloak, straight-hanging too, made of some fine and supple fur. The fronts of it, which were thrown open, leaving her arms free, appeared to be lined with ermine. Her peculiar garb and the perceptible angularity of her form and action suggested some crabbed medieval figure of church wood-carving or memorial brass.

The woman looked so tall standing there as in a mural pulpit, high against the house-front, that at first sight Adrian, took her to be Marion Chase. But medieval and ecclesiastical associations were a little too glaringly out of place in connection with that remarkably healthy young amazon and athlete. Adrian dismissed them, with a sensible sinking of the heart. Instinctively he moved aside, seeking the deepest of the shadows cast by the fir-trees, pressing himself back among the bushes of sweet-flowered allspice. Of two evils one must choose the least. Concealment was repugnant to him; but, to go forward meant to be recognized and compelled to speak. And, to play the part of hero in some grim travesty of the Garden Scene from "Romeo and Juliet," was of the two vastly the more repugnant.

Becoming aware of a movement in the garden below, the woman leaned forward and gazed fixedly in his direction, showing in the bleaching moonlight Joanna Smyrthwaite's heavy, upturned hair, strained, prominent eyes and almost terrible face, so ravaged was it by emotion.

The night traffics in exaggerations; and Adrian's senses and sensibilities were already somewhat over-stimulated. Perhaps, therefore, it followed that, looking up at Joanna, she appeared to him clothed in hieratic garments as the elect exponent and high-priestess of all lovelorn, unmated, childless womanhood throughout the world. To him, just then, her aspect gathered up and embodied the fiercely disguised sufferings of all the barren, the ugly, the ungifted, the undesired and unsought; of that disfranchised multitude of women whose ears have never listened to recitation of a certain Song of Songs. Her youth--she was as young as he--her wealth, the ease, leisure, solid luxury which surrounded her, her possession of those material advantages which make for gaiety and security, for pleasant vanities, for participation in all the light-hearted activities of modern life, only deepened the tragedy. Denied by man and--since she was without religion--denying God, she did indeed offer a piteous spectacle. The more so, that he apprehended a toughness of fiber in her, arguing a power of protracted and obstinate resistance. Happier for her, surely, had she been made of weaker stuff, like her wretched brother of the vile drawings upon René Dax's studio wall!

Adrian's own personal share in this second and tragic _affaire_ Smyrthwaite came home to him with added poignancy as he stood thus, in hiding, amid the luscious sweetness of the flowering allspice. For one intolerable moment he questioned whether he could, whether he should, sacrifice himself, transmuting Joanna's besotted delusion into fact and truth. But reason, honor, love, the demands of his own rich vitality, his keen value of life and of the delights of living, his poetic and his artistic sense, the splendid call of all the coming years, his shrewdness, his caution, his English humor and his Gallic wit, arose in hot and clamorous rebellion, shouting refusal final and absolute. He couldn't do it. Death itself would be preferable. It came very simply to this--he could not.

Just then he saw Joanna draw her costly cloak about her neck and shoulders, as though struck by sudden and sharp cold. Again the sinister note of the owls in greeting and in answer came from the recesses of the great woodland. And again Joanna, leaning forward, scrutinized the shadows of the garden path with pale, strained eyes. Then raising both hands and pressing them against her forehead as though in physical pain, she turned and went indoors, closing the window behind her.

Both pity and policy kept the young man for another, far from agreeable, five minutes in the shelter of the allspice bushes before venturing into the open. Upon the veranda he waited again, conscious of intense reluctance to enter the house. He knew his decision to be sane and right, the only one possible, in respect of Joanna; yet he felt like a criminal, a betrayer, a profligate trader in women's affections. He called himself hard names, knowing them all the while to be inapplicable and unjust; but his sympathies were excited, his imagination horror-struck by that lately witnessed vision of feminine disfranchisement and distress.

At his request the men-servants had left the door opening from the veranda unlocked. Passing along the corridor into the hall, he became very sensible of the silence and suspended animation of the sleeping house. The curtains of the five-light, twenty-foot staircase window were drawn back. Through the leaded panes of thickened clouded glass moonlight filtered, stamping misty diaper-work upon walls and floor, painting polished edges and surfaces of woodwork with lines and patches of shining white. On a small table at the foot of the stairs decanters and glasses, a cut-glass jug of iced water, a box of cigars, silver candlestick and matchbox had been placed against his return. But the young man was in no humor just now for superfluous drinks or superfluous lights. He felt apprehensive, childishly distrustful of the quiet reigning in the house, as though, behind it, some evil lay in wait to leap upon and capture him He felt nervous. This at once annoyed him and made him keenly observant and alert. He stood a moment listening, then ran up the wide, shallow tread of the stairs lightly, three steps at a time. On the level of the half-flight, under the great window, he paused. The air was hot and heavy. His heart beat. A door opened from the right on to the gallery above. Some one came forward, with a soft dragging of draperies over the thick carpet, through the dim checkerings of the moonlight.

"Adrian," Joanna called, whisperingly, "Adrian, is that you?"

The young man took a long breath. His nerves grew steady. He came calmly up the remaining half-flight, his head carried high, his face serious, his eyes a little hard and very bright. Childish fears, exaggerations of self-condemnation, left him at the sound of Joanna's voice; but he was sorry, very sorry, both for her and--for himself.

"Yes, Cousin Joanna," he answered, and his speech, to his own hearing, had a somewhat metallic ring in it.

If there must be an interview at this highly indiscreet hour of the night it should at least be open and above-board, conducted in tones which the entire household could, if it chose, hear plainly enough. Both for his own honor and Joanna's this was best.

"I have just come back from Heatherleigh," he continued. "You will be glad to know that Mr. Challoner and I have finished the business connected with your father's property. All outstanding accounts and all duties upon the estate are now paid. All documents are signed, receipted, and in order."

Joanna made an impatient gesture as though thrusting aside some foolish obstruction.

"Yes," she said, "no doubt; but it is not about the property I need to speak to you, Adrian. My mind is quite at ease about that. It is about something else. It is about myself."

"Ah, yes?" the young man inquired, gravely.

"I did not come down to dinner to-night. I felt sure you would understand and excuse me. I could not. I could not have borne to be with Margaret and Marion Chase and to listen to their trivial talk in your presence, after our conversation of this afternoon. I had to be alone that I might think, that I might bring my temper into subjection to my will. Isherwood told me you had gone out after dinner. But I felt I could not rest without seeing you again to-night. I felt I must speak to you, must ask your forgiveness, must try to explain. So I waited up. The owls startled me, and I went on to the balcony. I fancied you were in the garden. But I could not see you. Later I heard your footsteps"--Joanna paused breathlessly--"your footsteps," she repeated, "upon the pavement of the veranda. My courage failed. I felt ashamed to meet you. But it would be so very dreadful to have you think harshly of me--so, so I came."

Owing to the vague quality of the light Adrian failed to see her face distinctly, and for this he was thankful. But he knew that her arms hung straight at her sides, and that, under cover of her costly cloak, her poor hands clutched and clutched against the white knife-pleatings of her dress.

"Dear cousin," he said, "I have no cause to think harshly of you. Indeed, my thought has been occupied with sympathy for the trials that you have already undergone, and with regret that I should be instrumental in recalling distressing events to your mind."

"Ah! I deserve no sympathy," she declared, vehemently, turning aside and moving restlessly to and fro. "I do not deserve that excuses should be made for me. This afternoon I showed my character in a shocking light. Perhaps it was the true light. Perhaps my character is objectionable. I both felt and said what was cruel and intemperate. I was selfish. I only considered my own happiness. I repudiated my duty toward my brother. I wished him dead, because his return, and all the anxiety and thought the probability of that return necessarily occasions, interfered with my own plans, with my own beautiful prospects and hopes."

She came close, standing before the young man, her hands clasped, her body visibly shuddering beneath her hieratic garments.

"Now I have come to myself, Adrian. I realize--indeed I realize--the enormity of my own callousness, my own selfishness. I realize, too, the dreadful impression of my nature which you must have received. If you repudiated me I should have no valid cause for complaint. My reason forces me to acknowledge that I deserve your censure; that if you turn from me--dreadful, dreadful as it would be--I shall have brought that misery upon myself. Dreadful, dreadful," she moaned, "too dreadful to contemplate--yet deserved, invited by the exhibition of my own ungovernable temper--deserved--there is the sting of it."

"But--but, my dear Joanna," Adrian broke forth, carried out of himself by the spectacle of her grief, "you are fighting with shadows. You are torturing yourself with non-existent iniquities. Calm yourself, dear cousin. Look at things quietly and in a reasonable spirit. Your brother is, unfortunately, unsatisfactory and troublesome, a difficult person to deal with. His errors of conduct have caused his family grave inconvenience and sorrow. Let us be honest. Let us freely admit all that. He is not a young man to be proud of. What more natural then than that you should recoil from the idea of his return? That, in the first shock of the idea being presented to you, you should strongly express your alarm, your distaste? It is only human. Who but a hypocrite or pedant would condemn you for that! Calm yourself, dear cousin. Be just to yourself. I could not permit you to revoke your gifts to your brother. My own honor was a little involved there perhaps--"

Adrian smiled at her reassuringly, putting some force upon himself.

"Let us be sensible," he continued. "Let us be moderate. At the present time we have no reliable information as to where your brother is. We may not discover him. He may never come back. Meanwhile, I implore you, dismiss this painful subject from your mind. Be merciful to your own nerves, dear Joanna. Remember Andrew Merriman and I engage to do our best, to exercise all care, all delicacy, in the prosecution of our inquiries. When necessary we will consult with you"--he spread out his hands, his head a little on one side, consolatory, debonair, charming.--"Ah! dear cousin, be advised--do not agitate yourself further. Leave it all at that."

Joanna sighed once or twice. Put up her hands, pressing them against her forehead. Her body swayed slightly as she stood. Her hands dropped at her side again. She looked fixedly, intently, at Adrian Savage. Her mouth was a little open. The ecstatic expression, so nearly touching upon idiocy, had come back.

"Then nothing is changed--nothing is altered between us?" she whispered.

The young man took her hand, and bowing low over it, kissed it. As he raised himself he looked her full in the face.

"No, nothing, my dear cousin," he said.

There were tears in his eyes, and his voice shook. He was filled with apology, with immeasurable concern and regret, with an immeasurable craving for her forgiveness, in that he spoke actual and literal truth. For nothing was changed--no, nothing.--He never had loved, he did not love, he never could love Joanna Smyrthwaite.

He stayed for no further word or look. Practically he ran away. But there is just one thing, on the face of the earth, from which a brave man may run without smallest accusation of cowardice--namely, a woman who loves him and whom he does not love! Once in his room Adrian bolted the door on the inside as well as locking it, and began to pack. He would take the mid-day rather than the night cross-Channel boat to-morrow. Then, with relief, he remembered that it was already to-morrow. In a few hours the servants would be about.

Twice before dawn he fancied he heard footsteps and a soft dragging of draperies over the carpet of the corridor. He opened the windows wide, and let in the singing of birds greeting the morning from the woodland. For the sound of those footsteps and softly dragging draperies cut him to the heart with sorrow for womanhood unfulfilled--womanhood denied by man, and, not having religion, denying God.

IV

THE FOLLY OF THE WISE

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