SUPPER WITH JANET MORELLI  
The little hall was lit by a single lamp that glimmered redly in the background. Small though the hall was, its darkness gave it space and depth. It appeared to be hung with many strange and curious objects—weapons of various kinds, stuffed heads of wild animals, coloured silks and cloths of foreign countries and peoples. The walls themselves were of oak, and from this dark background these things gleamed and shone and twisted under the red light of the lamp in an alarming manner. An old grandfather clock tick-tocked solemnly in the darkness.
Morelli led them up the stairs, with a pause every now and again to point out things of interest.
“The house is, you know,” he said almost apologetically, “something of a museum. I have collected a good deal one way and another. Everything has its story.”
Maradick thought, as his host said this, that he must know a great many stories, some of them perhaps scarcely creditable ones. The things that he saw had in his eyes a sinister effect. There could be nothing very pleasant about those leering animals and rustling, whispering skins; it gave the house, too, a stuffy, choked-up air, something a little too full, and full, too, of not quite the pleasantest things.
The staircase was charming. A broad window with diamond-shaped panes faced them as they turned the stair and gave a pleasant, cheerful light to the walls and roof. A silver crescent moon with glittering stars attending it shone at the window against an evening sky of the faintest blue; a glow that belonged to the vanished sun, and was so intangible that it had no definite form of colour, hung in the air and passed through the window down the stairs into the dark recesses of the hall. The walls were painted a dark red that had something very cheerful and homely about it.
Suddenly from the landing above them came voices.
“No, Miss Minns, I’m going to wait. I don’t care; father said he’d be back. Oh! I hear him.”
A figure came to the head of the stairs.
“Father, do hurry up; Miss Minns is so impatient at having to wait, and I said I wouldn’t begin till you came, and the potatoes are black, black, black.”
Maradick looked up and saw a girl standing at the head of the stairs. In her hand she held a small silver lamp that flung a pale circle of yellow behind and around her; she held it a little above her head in order that she might see who it was that mounted the stairs.
He thought she was the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen; her face was that of a child, and there was still in it a faint look of wonderment and surprise, as though she had very recently broken from some other golden dream and discovered, with a cry, the world.
Her mouth was small, and curved delicately like the petals of a very young rose that turn and open at the first touch of the sun’s glow. Her eyes were so blue that there seemed no end at all to the depth, and one gazed into them as into a well on a night of stars; there were signs and visions in them of so many things that a man might gaze for a year of days and still find secrets hidden there. Her hair was dark gold and was piled high in a great crown, and not so tightly that a few curls did not escape and toss about her ears and over her eyes. She wore a gown of very pale blue that fell in a single piece from her shoulders to her feet; her arms to the elbow and her neck were bare, and her dress was bound at the waist by a broad piece of old gold embroidered cloth.
Her colouring was so perfect that it might have seemed insipid were it not for the character in her mouth and eyes and brow. She was smiling now, but in a moment her face could change, the mouth would grow stiff, her eyes would flash; there was character in every part of her.
She was tall and very straight, and her head was poised perfectly. There was dignity and pride there, but humour and tenderness in the eyes and mouth; above all, she was very, very young. That look of surprise, and a little perhaps of one on her guard against a world that she did not quite understand, showed that. There was no fear there, but something a little wild and undisciplined, as though she would fight to the very last for her perfect, unfettered liberty: this was Janet Morelli.
She had thought that her father was alone, but now she realised that some one was with him.
She stepped back and blushed.
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t know——”
“Let me introduce you,” said Morelli. “Janet, this is Mr. Maradick and this Mr. Gale. They have come to have supper with us.”
She put the lamp down on the little round table behind her and shook hands with them. “How do you do?” she said. “I hope you’re not in the least bit hungry, because there’s nothing whatever to eat except black potatoes, and they’re not nice at all.”
She was quite without embarrassment and smiled at Maradick. She put her arm on her father’s shoulder for a moment by way of greeting, and then they walked into the room opposite the staircase. This was in strong contrast to the hall, being wide and spacious, with but little furniture. At one end was a bow-window with old-fashioned lozenge-shaped panes; in this a table laid for three had been placed. The walls were painted a very pale blue, and half-way up, all the way round, ran a narrow oaken shelf on which were ranged large blue and white plates of old china, whereon there ran riot a fantastic multitude of mandarins, curiously twisted castles, and trembling bridges spanning furious torrents. There were no pictures, but an open blue-tiled fireplace, the mantelpiece of which was of dark oak most curiously carved. There were some chairs, two little round tables, and a sofa piled high with blue cushions. There were lamps on the tables, but they were dim and the curtains were not drawn, so that through the misty panes the lights of the town were twinkling in furious rivalry with the lights of the dancing stars.
By the table was waiting a little woman in a stiff black dress. There was nothing whatever remarkable about her. There was a little pretentiousness, a little pathos, a little beauty even; it was the figure of some one who had been left a very long time ago, and was at last growing accustomed to the truth of it—there was no longer very much hope or expectation of anything, but simply a kind of fairy-tale wonder as to the possibility of the pumpkin’s being after all a golden coach and the rats some most elegant coachmen.
“Miss Minns,” said Morelli, “let me introduce you. These are two gentlemen who will have supper with us. Mr. Maradick and Mr. Gale.”
“I am very pleased to meet you,” said Miss Minns a little gloomily.
There was a servant of the name of Lucy, who laid two more places clumsily and with some noise. Janet had disappeared into the kitchen and Morelli maintained the conversation.
There was, however, a feeling of constraint. Maradick had never known Tony so silent. He stood by the fireplace, awkwardly shifting from one leg to the other, and looking continually at the door. He was evidently in a state of the greatest excitement, and he seemed to pay no attention to anyone in the room. Miss Minns was perfectly silent, and stood there gravely waiting. Morelli talked courteously and intelligently, but Maradick felt that he himself was being used merely as a background to the rest of the play. His first feeling on seeing Janet had been that Tony was indeed justified in all his enthusiasm; his second, that he himself was in for rather a terrible time.
He had not in the least expected her to be so amazingly young. He had, quite without reason or justification, expected her to be older, a great deal older, than Tony, and that chiefly, perhaps, because he couldn’t, by any stretch of imagination, believe her to be younger. Tony was so young in every way—in his credibility, his enthusiasm, his impatience, his quite startling simplicity. With this in front of him, Maradick had looked to the lady as an accomplice; she would help, he had thought, to teach Tony discretion.
And now, with that vision of her on the stairs, he saw that she was, so to speak, “younger than ever,” as young as anyone possibly could be. That seemed to give the whole business a new turn altogether; it suddenly placed him, James Maradick, a person of unimaginative and sober middle age, in a romantic and difficult position of guardian to a couple of babies, and, moreover, babies charged to the full with excitement and love of hurried adventure. Why, he thought desperately, as he listened politely to Morelli’s conversation, had he been made the centre of all this business? What did he or could he know of young people and their love affairs?
“I am afraid,” he said politely, “I know nothing whatever about swords.”
“Ah,” said Morelli heartily, “I must show you some after supper.”
Janet entered with chops and potatoes, followed by Lucy with the coffee. Tony went forward to help her. “No, thank you,” she said, laughing. “You shan’t carry the potatoes because then you’ll see how black they are. I hope you don’t mind coffee at the beginning like this; and there’s only brown bread.” She placed the things on the table and helped the chops. Tony looked at his plate and was silent.
It was, at first, a difficult meal, and everyone was very subdued; then suddenly the ice was broken. Maradick had said that he lived in London. Miss Minns sat up a little straighter in her chair, smoothed her cuffs nervously, and said with a good deal of excitement—
“I lived a year in London with my brother Charles. We lived in Little Worsted Street, No. 95, near the Aquarium: a little house with green blinds; perhaps, sir, you know it. I believe it is still standing; I loved London. Charles was a curate at St. Michael’s, the grey church at the corner of Merritt Street; Mr. Roper was rector at the time. I remember seeing our late beloved Queen pass in her carriage. I have a distinct recollection of her black bonnet and gracious bow. I was very much moved.”
Maradick had, very fortunately, touched on the only topic that could possibly be said to make Miss Minns loquacious. Everyone became interested and animated.
“Oh! I should so love London!” Janet said, looking through the window at the stars outside. “People! Processions! Omnibuses! Father has told me about it sometimes—Dick Whittington, you know, and the cat. I suppose you’re not called Dick?” she said, looking anxiously at Tony.
“No,” said Tony, “I’m afraid I’m not. But I will be if you like.”
“It is scarcely polite, Janet,” said Morelli, “to ask a gentleman his name when you’ve only known him five minutes.”
“I wasn’t,” she answered. “Only I do want to know a Dick so very badly, and there aren’t any down here; but I expect London’s full of them.”
“It’s full of everything,” said Tony, “and that’s why I like this place so awfully. London chokes you, there’s such a lot going on; you have to stop, you know. Here you can go full tilt. May I have another chop, please? They’re most awfully good.”
Tony was rapidly becoming his usual self. He was still a little nervous, but he was talking nonsense as fluently as ever.
“You really must come up to London though, Miss Morelli. There are pantomimes and circuses and policemen and lots of funny things. And you can do just what you like because there’s no one to see.”
“Oh! theatres!” She clapped her hands. “I should simply love a theatre. Father took me once here; it was called ‘The Murdered Heir,’ and it was most frightfully exciting; but that’s the only one I’ve ever seen, and I don’t suppose there’ll be another here for ages. They have them in Truro, but I’ve never been to Truro. I’m glad you like the chops, I was afraid they were rather dry.”
“They are,” said Morelli. “It’s only Mr. Gale’s politeness that makes him say they’re all right. They’re dreadfully dry.”
“Well, you were late,” she answered; “it was your fault.”
She was excited. Her eyes were shining, her hands trembled a little, and her cheeks were flushed. Maradick fancied that there was surprise in her glance at her father. Miss Minns also was a little astonished at something. It was possibly unusual for Morelli to invite anyone into the house, and they were wondering why he had done it.
Morelli was a great puzzle. He seemed changed since they had sat down at the table. He seemed, for one thing, considerably younger. Outside the house he had been middle-aged; now the lines in his forehead seemed to disappear, the wrinkles under his eyes were no longer there. He laughed continually.
It was, in fact, becoming very rapidly a merry meal. The chops had vanished and there was cheese and fruit. They were all rather excited, and a wave of what Maradick was inclined to call “spirited childishness” swept over the party. He himself and Miss Minns were most decidedly out of it.
It was significant of the change that Morelli now paid much more attention to Tony. The three of them burst into roars of laughter about nothing; Tony imitated various animals, the drawing of a cork, and a motor-omnibus running into a policeman, with enormous success. Miss Minns made no attempt to join in the merriment; but sat in the shadow gravely silent. Maradick tried and was for a time a miserable failure, but afterwards he too was influenced. Morelli told a story that seemed to him extraordinarily funny. It was about an old bachelor who always lived alone, and some one climbed up a chimney and stuck there. He could not afterwards remember the point of the story, but he knew that it seemed delightfully amusing to him at the time. He began to laugh and then lost all control of himself; he laughed and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. He stopped for a moment and then started again; he grew red in the face and purple—he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Oh, dear!” he said, gasping, “that’s a funny story. I don’t know when I’ve laughed like that before. It’s awfully funny.” He still shook at the thought of it. It was a very gay meal indeed.
“You have been at the University, I suppose, Mr. Gale?” said Morelli.
“Yes, Oxford,” said Tony. “But please don’t call me Mr.; nobody calls me Mr., you know. You have to have a house, a wife and a profession if you’re Mr. anybody, and I haven’t got anything—nothing whatever.”
“Oh, I wonder,” said Janet, “if you’d mind opening the door for me. We’ll clear the table and get it out of the way. Saturday is Lucy’s night out, so I’m going to do it.”
“Oh, let me help,” said Tony, jumping up and nearly knocking the table over in his eagerness. “I’m awfully good at washing things up.”
“You won’t have to wash anything up,” she answered. “We’ll leave that for Lucy when she comes back; but if you wouldn’t mind helping me to carry the plates and things into the other room I’d be very grateful.”
She looked very charming, Maradick thought, as she stood piling the plates on top of one another with most anxious care lest they should break. Several curls had escaped and were falling over her eyes and she raised her hand to push them back; the plates nearly slipped. Maradick, watching her, caught suddenly something that seemed very like terror in her eyes; she was looking across the table at her father. He followed her glance, but Morelli did not seem to have noticed anything. Maradick forgot the incident at the time, but afterwards he wondered whether it had been imagination.
“Do be careful and not drop things,” she said, laughing gaily, to Tony. “You seem to have got a great many there; there’s plenty of time, you know.”
She was delightful to watch, she was so entirely unconscious of any pose or affectation. She passed into the kitchen singing and Tony followed her laden with plates.
“Do you smoke, Mr. Maradick?” said Morelli. “Cigar? Cigarette? Pipe?—Pipe! Good! much the best thing. Come and sit over here.”
They drew up their chairs by the window and watched the stars; Miss Minns sat under the lamp sewing.
Maradick was a little ashamed of his merriment at dinner; he really didn’t know the man well enough, and a little of his first impression of cautious dislike returned. But Morelli was very entertaining and an excellent talker, and Maradick reproached himself for being unnecessarily suspicious.
“You know,” said Morelli, “it’s a great thing to have a home like this. I’ve been a wanderer all my days—been everywhere, you might say—but now I’ve always got this to come back to, and it’s a great thing to feel that it’s there. I’m Italian, you know, on my father’s side, and hence my name; and so it seems a bit funny, perhaps, settling down here. But one country’s the same to me as another, and my wife was English.”
He paused for a moment and looked out of the window; then he went on—
“We don’t see many people here; when you’ve got a girl to bring up you’ve got to be careful, and they don’t like me here, that’s the truth.”
He paused again, as though he expected Maradick to deny it. He had spoken it almost as an interrogation, as though he wanted to know whether Maradick had heard anything, but Maradick was silent. He felt strongly again, as he had felt at the time of their first meeting, that they were hostile to one another. Polite though Morelli was, Maradick knew that it was because of Tony, and not in the least because of himself. Morelli probably felt that he was an unnecessary bore, and resented his being there. It was Tony that he cared about.
“That is a very delightful boy,” Morelli said, nodding in the direction of the kitchen. “Have you known him a long while? Quite one of the most delightful people——”
“Oh, no,” said Maradick a little stiffly. “We are quite new acquaintances. We have only known each other about a week. Yes, he is an enormously popular person. Everyone seems to like him wherever he goes. He wakes people up.”
Morelli laughed.
“Yes, there’s wonderful vitality there. I hope he’ll keep it. I hope that I shall see something of him while he is here. There isn’t much that we can offer you, but you will be doing both my daughter and myself a very real kindness if you will come and see us sometimes.”
“Thank you,” said Maradick.
“Oh! I promised to show you those swords of mine. Come and see them now. I think there are really some that may interest you.”
They got up and left the room. In a moment the door was opened again and Janet and Tony returned.
“Let’s sit in front of the window,” Janet said, “and talk. Father’s showing your friend his swords and things, I expect, and he always takes an enormous time over that, and I want to talk most frightfully.”
She sat forward with her hands round her knees and her eyes gazing out of the window at the stars. Tony will always remember her like that; and as he sat and watched her he had to grip the side of his chair to prevent his leaning forward and touching her dress.
“I want to talk too,” he answered; “it’s an ‘experience’ evening, you know, one of those times when you suddenly want to exchange confidences with some one, find out what they’ve been doing and thinking all the time.”
“Oh! I know that feeling,” she answered eagerly, “but I’ve never had anyone to exchange them with. Sometimes I’ve felt it so that I haven’t known what to do; but it’s been no good, there’s been nobody except father and Miss Minns. It’s very funny, isn’t it? but you’re the first person of my own age I’ve ever met. Of course you’re older really, but you’re near enough, and I expect we think some of the same things; and oh! it’s so exciting!”
She said “person” like a creature of fifty, and he smiled, but then her “exciting” brought his heart to his mouth. She was obviously so delighted to have him, she accepted him so readily without any restrictions at all, and it was wonderful to him. Every girl that he had ever met had played a game either of defence or provocation, but there was perfect simplicity here.
“Let’s begin,” he said, “and find out whether we’ve had the same things. But first I must tell you something. This isn’t the only time that I’ve seen you.”
“It’s not!” she cried.
“No; there was the other day on the beach; you were with your father. I looked at you from behind a rock and then ran away. And the other time was one night about a week ago, quite late, and you leaned out of a window and said something to Miss Minns. There was a lamp, and I saw your face.”
“Oh! which night?” she said quite eagerly.
“Well, let me see, I think it was a Thursday night—no, I can’t remember—but there was a fair in the town; they danced round the streets. We had been, Maradick and I, and were coming back.”
“Oh! I remember perfectly,” she said, turning round and looking at him. “But, do you know, that’s most curious! I was tremendously excited that night, I don’t quite know why. There was no real reason. But I kept saying to Miss Minns that I knew something would happen, and she laughed at me and said, ‘What could?’ or something, and then I suddenly opened the window and two people were coming up the street. It was quite dark. There was only the lamp!”
She spoke quite dramatically, as though it was something of great importance.
“And fancy, it was you!” she added.
“But, please,” she said, “let’s begin confidences. They’ll be back, and we’ll have to stop.”
“Oh! mine are ordinary enough,” he said, “just like anybody else’s. I was born in the country; one of those old rambling country houses with dark passages and little stairs leading to nowhere, and thick walls with a wonderful old garden. Such a garden, with terraces and enormous old trees, and a fountain, and a sun-dial, and peacocks. But I was quite a kid when we left that and came to town. It is funny, though, the early years seem to remain with one after the other things have gone. It has always been a background for me, that high old house with the cooing of pigeons on a hot summer’s afternoon, and the cold running of some stream at the bottom of the lawn!”
“Oh! how beautiful,” she said. “I have never known anything like that. Father has talked of Italy; a little town, Montiviero, where we once lived, and an old grey tower, and a long, hard white road with trees like pillars. I have often seen it in my dreams. But I myself have never known anything but this. Father has stayed here, partly, I think, because the old grey tower in the market-place here is like the tower at Montiviero. But tell me about London,” she went on. “What is it like? What people are there?”
“London,” he said, “has grown for me as I have grown to know it. We have always lived in the same house. I was six when I first went there, an old dark place with large solemn rooms and high stone fireplaces. It was in a square, and we used to be taken out on to the grass in the morning to play with other children. London was at first only the square—the dark rooms, my nurse, my father and mother, some other children, and the grass that we played upon. Then suddenly one day the streets sprang upon me—the shops, the carriages, some soldiers. Then it grew rapidly; there were the parks, the lake, the Tower, and, most magical of all, the river. When I was quite a small boy the river fascinated me, and I would escape there when I could; and now, if I lived alone in London, I would take some old dark rooms down in Chelsea and watch the river all day.”
“Chelsea!” she said. “I like the sound of that. Is there a very wonderful river, then, where London is?”
“Yes,” he answered, “it is dirty and foggy, and the buildings along the banks of it are sometimes old and in pieces. But everyone that has known it will tell you the same. Then I went to a pantomime with my nurse.”
“Oh! I know what a pantomime is,” she said. “Miss Minns once saw one, but there was a man with a red nose and she didn’t like it. Only there were fairies as well, and if I’d been there I should only have seen the fairies.”
“Well, this was ‘Dick Whittington.’ There was a glorious cat. I don’t remember about the rest; but I went home in a golden dream and for the next month I thought of nothing else. London became for me a dark place with one glorious circle of light in the midst of it!”
“Oh! It must have been beautiful!” she sighed.
“Then,” he went on, “it spread from that, you know, to other things, and I went to school. For a time everything was swallowed up in that, beating other people, coming out top, and getting licked for slacking. London was fun for the holidays, but it wasn’t a bit the important thing. I was like that until I was seventeen.”
“You were very lucky,” Janet said, “to go to school. I asked father once, but he was very angry; and, you know, he is away for months and months sometimes, and then it is most dreadfully lonely. I have never had anyone at all to talk to until you came, and now they’ll take you away in a moment, so do hurry up. There simply isn’t a minute!”
Miss Minns was heard to say:
“Aren’t you cold by the window, Janet? I think you’d better come nearer the table.”
“Oh! please don’t interrupt, Miss Minns!” She waved her hand. “It’s as warm as toast, really. Now please go on, it’s a most terribly exciting adventure.”
“Well,” he said, sinking his voice and speaking in a dramatic whisper, “the next part of the tremendous adventure was books and things. I suddenly, you know, discovered what they were. I’d read things before, of course, but it had always been to fill in time while I was waiting for something else, and now I suddenly saw them differently, in rows and rows and rows, each with a secret in it like a nut, and I cracked them and ate them and had the greatest fun. Then I began to think that I was awfully clever and that I would write great books myself, and I was very solemn and serious. I expect I was simply hateful.”
“And did you write anything?” she said in an awed voice.
“Yes,” he answered solemnly, “a very long story with heaps of people and lots of chapters. I have it at home. They liked it down in the kitchen, but it never had an end.”
“Why not?” Janet asked.
“Because, like the Old Woman in the Shoe, I had so many children that I didn’t know what to do. I had so many people that I simply didn’t know what to do with them all. And then I grew out of that. I went to Oxford, and then came the last part of the adventure.”
“Where is Oxford?” she asked him.
“Oh! It’s a university. Men go there after leaving school. It’s a place where a man learns a good many useless habits and one or two beautiful ones. Only the beautiful ones want looking for. The thing I found was walking.”
He looked at her and laughed for the very joy of being so near to her. In the half light that the lamp flung upon them the gold of her hair was caught and fell like a cloud about her face, the light blue of her dress was the night sky, and her eyes were the stars. Oh! it was a fine adventure, this love! There had been no key to the world before this came, and now the casket was opened and stuffs of great price, jewels and the gold-embroidered cloths of God’s workshop were spread before him. And then a great awe fell upon him. She was so young and so pure that he felt suddenly that all the coarse thoughts and deeds of the world rose in a dark mist between them, and sent him, as the angel with the flaming sword sent Adam, out of so white a country.
But she suddenly leant over and touched his arm. “Oh! do look at Miss Minns!” she said. Miss Minns was falling asleep and struggling valiantly against the temptation. Her hands mechanically clicked the needles and clutched the piece of cloth at which she was working, but her head nodded violently at the table as though it was telling a story and furiously emphasising facts. The shadow on the wall was gigantic, a huge fantastic Miss Minns swinging from side to side on the ceiling and swelling and subsiding like a curtain in the wind. The struggle lasted for a very short time. Soon the clicking of the needles ceased, there was a furious attempt to hold the cloth, and at last it fell with a soft noise to the ground. Miss Minns, with her head on her breast, slept.
“That’s better,” said Janet, settling herself back in her chair. “Now about the walking!”
“Ah! you’re fond of it too,” he said. “I can see that. And it’s the only thing, you know. It’s the only thing that doesn’t change and grow monotonous. You get close right down to earth. They talk about their nature and culture and the rest, but they haven’t known what life is until they’ve felt the back of a high brown hill and the breast of a hard white road. That saved me! I was muddled before. I didn’t know what things stood for, and I was unhappy. My own set weren’t any use at all, they were aiming at nothing. Not that I felt superior, but it was simply that that sort of thing wasn’t any good for me. You couldn’t see things clearly for the dust that everybody made. So I left the dust and now I’m here.”
“And that’s all?” she said.
“Absolutely all,” he answered. “I’m afraid it’s disappointing in incident, but it is at any rate truthful.”
“Oh, but it’s adventurous,” she said, “beside mine. There’s nothing for me to tell at all. I’ve simply lived here with father always. There have been no books, no children, nothing at all except father.”
She paused then in rather a curious way. He looked up at her.
“Well?” he said.
“Oh! father’s so different—you never know. Sometimes he’s just as I am, plays and sings and tells stories. And then, oh! he’s such fun. There never was anybody like him. And sometimes he’s very quiet and won’t say anything, and then he always goes away, perhaps it’s only a day or two, and then it’s a week or a month even. And sometimes,” she paused again for a moment, “he’s angry, terribly angry, so that I am awfully frightened.”
“What! with you?” Tony asked indignantly.
“No; with no one exactly, but it’s dreadful. I go and hide.” And then she burst out laughing. “Oh, and once he caught Miss Minns like that, and he pulled her hair and it fell all over her shoulders. Oh! it was so funny. And a lot of it came out altogether; it was false, you know. I think that father is just like a child. He’s ever so much younger than I am really. I’m getting dreadfully old, and he’s as young as can be. He tells stories—beautiful stories! and then he’s cross and he sulks, and sometimes he’s out of doors for days together, and all the animals simply love him.”
All these facts she brought out, as it were, in a bunch, without any very evident connexion, but he felt that the cord that bound them was there and that he could find it one day. But what surprised him most was her curious aloofness from it all, as if he were a friend, perhaps a chum, sometimes a bother and sometimes a danger, but never a father.
“But tell me about yourself,” he said, “what you like and what you do.”
“No, there’s really nothing. I’ve just lived here always, that’s all. You’re the first man I’ve talked to, except father, and you’re fun. I hope that we shall see you sometimes whilst you are staying here,” she added, quite frankly.
“Somebody told you to say that,” he said, laughing.
“Yes, it’s Miss Minns. She teaches me sometimes about what you ought to say, and I’m dreadfully stupid. There are so many of them. There’s ‘at a wedding’ and ‘at a funeral’ and there’s ‘the dinner party,’ a nice one and a dull one and a funny one, and there’s ‘at the theatre,’ and lots more. Sometimes I remember, but I’ve never had anyone to practise them on. You’re quite the first, so I think I ought to give you them all.”
The door opened and Maradick and Morelli came in. The pair at the window did not see them and the two men stood for a moment at the door. Morelli smiled, and Maradick at once felt again that curious unfounded sensation of distrust. The man amazed him. He had talked about his “things,” his armour, some tapestry, some pictures, with a knowledge and enthusiasm that made him fascinating. He seemed to have the widest possible grip on every subject; there was nothing that he did not know. And there had been, too, a lightness of touch, a humorous philosophy of men and things for which he had been quite unprepared.
And then again, there would be suddenly that strange distrust; a swift glance from under his eyelids, a suspicious lifting of the voice, as though he were on his guard against some expected discovery. And then, most puzzling of all, there was suddenly a simplicity, a na?veté, that belonged to childhood, some anger or pleasure that only a child could feel. Oh! he was a puzzle.
At the sight of those two in the window he felt suddenly a sharp, poignant regret! What an old fool he was to meddle with something that he had passed long, long before. You could not be adaptable at forty, and he would only spoil their game. A death’s head at the feast indeed, with his own happy home to think of, his own testimony to fling before them. But the regret was there all the same; regret that he had not known for ever so many years, and a feeling of loneliness that was something altogether new.
He knew now that, during these last few days, Tony had filled his picture, some one that would take him out of himself and make him a little less selfish and even, perhaps, a little younger; but now, what did Tony—Tony in love, Tony with a new heaven and a new earth—want with a stout cynic of forty! It would have been better, after all, if they had never met.
Suddenly Miss Minns awoke, and was extremely upset. Some half-remembered story of gentlemen winning a pair of gloves under some such circumstances flew to her mind; at any rate it was undignified with two new persons in the room.
“I really——” she said. “You were quite a long time. I have been sewing.”
At the sound of her voice Tony turned back from the window. He was so happy that he would have clasped Miss Minns round the neck and kissed her, if there had been any provocation. The lamp flung a half-circle of light, leaving the corners in perfect darkness, so that the room was curved like a shell; the shining tiles of the fireplace sparkled under the leaping flame of the fire.
“You have been a very long time,” said Janet.
“That’s scarcely a compliment to Mr. Gale,” said Morelli.
“Oh, but I haven’t found it so,” she answered quickly. “It has been enormously interesting. We have been discovering things. And now, father, play. Mr. Gale loves music, I know.”
That Morelli played was a little surprising. There was no piano in the room, and Maradick wondered what the instrument would be. They all sat down in a circle round the fireplace, and behind them, in the dusk of the room, Morelli produced a flute from his pocket. He had said nothing, and they were all of them suddenly silent.
The incident seemed to Maradick a key—a key to the house, to the man, and, above all, to the situation. This was not a feeling that he could in the least understand. It was only afterwards that he saw that his instinct had been a right one.
But the idea that he had of their all being children together—Tony, Janet, Morelli—was exactly represented by the flute. There was something absolutely irresponsible in the gay little tune piped mysteriously in the darkness, a little tune that had nothing in it at all except a pressing invitation to dance, and Maradick could see Tony’s feet going on the floor. It would not be at all impossible, he felt, for them suddenly to form a ring and dance riotously round the room; it was in the air.
He was a person of very slight imagination, but the tune gave him the long hillside, the white sails of the flying clouds, the shrill whistle of wind through a tossing forest of pines, white breakers against a black cliff, anything open and unfettered; and again he came back to that same word—irresponsible. The little tune was repeated again and again, with other little tunes that crept shyly into it for a moment and then out and away. The spell increased as the tune continued.
For Tony it was magical beyond all words. Nothing could have put so wonderful a seal on that wonderful evening as that music. His pulse was beating furiously and his cheeks were burning; he wanted now to fling himself on his knees, there on the floor, and say to her, “I love you! I love you!” like any foolish hero in a play. He moved his chair ever so slightly so that it should be nearer hers, and then suddenly, amazed at his daring, his heart stopped beating; she must have noticed. But she gazed in front of her, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes gravely bent towards the floor.
And this melancholy little tune, coming mysteriously from some unknown distance, seemed to give him permission to do what he would. “Yes, love,” it commanded. “Do what is natural. Come out on to the plain where all freedom is and there are winds and the clear sky and everything that is young and alive.”
He could almost fancy that Morelli himself was giving him permission, but at a thought so wild he pulled himself up. Of course Morelli didn’t know; he was going too fast.
Maradick began to be vaguely irritated and at last annoyed. There was something unpleasant in that monotonous little tune coming out of the darkness from nowhere at all; its note of freedom seemed to become rapidly something lawless and undisciplined. Had he put it into pictures, he would have said that the open plain that he had seen before became suddenly darkened, and, through the gloom, strange animals passed and wild, savage faces menaced him. Afterwards, in the full light of day, such thoughts would seem folly, but now, in the darkened room, anything was possible. He did not believe in apparitions—ghosts were unknown in Epsom—but he was suddenly unpleasantly aware that he would give anything to be able to fling a glance back over his shoulder.
Then suddenly the spell was broken. The tune died away, revived for an instant, and then came to an abrupt end.
Morelli joined the circle.
“Thank you so very much,” said Maradick. “That was delightful.” But he was aware that, although the little tune had been played again and again, it had already completely passed from his memory. He could not recall it.
“What was the name of it?” he asked.
“It has no name,” Morelli answered, smiling. “It’s an old tune that has been passed down from one to another. There is something rather quaint in it, and it has many centuries behind it.”
Then Tony got up, and to Maradick’s intense astonishment said: “I say, Maradick, it’s time we were going, it’s getting awfully late.”
He had been willing to give the boy as long a rope as he pleased, and now—but then he understood. It was the perfect moment that must not be spoiled by any extension. If they waited something might happen. He understood the boy as far as that, at any rate.
Morelli pressed them to stay, but Tony was firm. He went forward and said good night to Miss Minns, then he turned to Janet.
“Good night, Miss Morelli,” he said.
“Good night,” she answered, smiling. “Please come again and tell me more.”
“I will,” he said.
Morelli’s good-bye was very cordial. “Whenever you like,” he said, “drop in at any time, we shall be delighted.”
They walked back to the hotel in absolute silence. Tony’s eyes were fixed on the hill in front of him.
As they passed under the dark line of trees that led to the hotel he gripped Maradick’s hand very hard.
“I say,” he said, “help me!”