CHAPTER XXIX
THE universe is compounded of the miraculous; but love is the miracle of miracles. Again the impossible had been contrived; again Maxine and Blake were standing together on the balcony. The Parisian night seemed as still as a held breath, and as palpitating with human possibilities; the domes of the Sacré-Coeur loomed white against the sky, dumb witnesses to the existence of the spirit. The scene was undoubtedly poetic; yet, placed in the noisiest highway of London or the most desolate bog-land of Blake's native country, these two would have been as truly and amply cognizant of the real and the ideal; for the cloak of love was about them, the vapor of love was before their eyes, and for the hour, although they knew it not, they were capable of reconstructing a whole world from the material in their own hearts.
But they were divinely ignorant; they each tricked themselves with the age-old fallacy of a unique position, each wandered onward in the dream-like fields of romance, content to believe that the other knew the hidden way.
The scene bore a perfect similarity to the scene of the first meeting—about them, the darkness and the quiet—behind them, the little salon lit by the familiar lamp, showing all the reassuring evidences of the boy's occupation. For close upon an hour they had enjoyed this intimacy of the balcony, at first talking much and rapidly upon the ostensible object of their meeting—Max's quarrel with Blake, later falling to a happy silence, as though they deliberately closed their lips, the more fully to drink in the secrets of the night through eyes and ears. Strange spells were in the weaving, and no two souls are fused to harmony without much subtle questioning of spirit, many delicate, tremulous speculations compounded of wordless joy and wordless fear.
Some issue, it was, in this matter of fusing personalities, that at last caused Maxine to turn her head and find Blake studying her.
The circumstance was trivial—a mere crossing of glances, but it brought the color to her face as swiftly as if she had been taken in some guilty act.
Blake saw the expression, and interpreted it wrongly.
"You are displeased, princess? I am a bad companion to-night?" He spoke impulsively, with an anxiety in his voice that spurred her to a desire to comfort him.
"When people are sympathetic, monsieur, they are companions, whether good or bad. Is it not so?"
He moved a little nearer to her; neither was aware of the movement.
"Do you find me sympathetic?"
"Indeed, yes!" Her luminous glance rested on him thoughtfully.
"But you scarcely know me."
"Monsieur, I do know you."
"Through the boy, perhaps—" He spoke with a touch of impatience, but she stopped him with upraised hand.
"You are angry with Max, therefore you must be silent! Anger does not make for true judgment."
"Ah, that's unfair!" He laughed. "'Tis Max who is angry with me! You know I came here to-night with open arms—to find him flown! Still, I am willing to keep them open, and give the kiss of peace whenever he relents—to please you."
"Ah, no, monsieur! To please him. To please him."
"Indeed, no! To please you—and no one else. If I followed my own devices, I'd wait till he comes back, and box his ears. He'd very well deserve it."
Maxine laughed; then, swift as a breeze or a racing cloud, her mood changed.
"Monsieur, you care for Max?"
"What a question! I love Max. He's a star in my darkness—or was, until the sun shone."
He paused, fearful of where his impulses had led him; but Maxine was all sweetness, all seriousness.
"Am I, then, the sun, monsieur?"
In any other woman the words must have seemed a lure; but here was a fairness, a frankness and dignity that lifted the question to another and higher plane. Blake, comprehending, answered simply with the truth.
"Yes, you are the sun; and all my life I have been a sun-worshipper."
She made no comment; she accepted the words, waiting for the flow of speech that she knew was close at hand—the speech, probably irrelevant, certainly delightful, that he invariably poured forth at such a moment.
"Princess, do you know my country?"
She shook her head, smiling a little.
"Ah, then you don't understand my worship! In Ireland, nature condemns us to a long, black, wet winter and a long, gray, wet spring, so that the heart of a man is nearly drowned in his body, and he grows to believe that his country is nothing but a neutral-tinted waste; but one day, when even hope is dying, a miracle comes to pass—the sun shines out! The sun shines out, and he suddenly sees that his waste land is the color of emeralds and that his dripping woods are gardens, tinted like no stones that jewellers ever handle. Oh, no wonder I am a sun-worshipper!"
Maxine, glowing to his sudden enthusiasm, clasped her hands, as when she heard the music of M. Cartel.
"Ah, and that is your country?"
"That is my country, princess."
"I wish——" She stopped.
"That you could see it?"
She nodded.
"And why not? Why not—when this boy sees reason? How I would love to show it to you! You would understand."
"When would you show it to me?" She spoke very low.
"When? Oh, perhaps in April—April, when the washed skies are a blue that even Max could not find in his color-box, and the bare boughs tremble with promise. In April—or, better still, in the autumn. In October, when the lights are cool and white and the sea is an opal; when you smell the ozone strong as violets, and at every turn of the road a cart confronts you, heaped with bronze seaweed and stuck with a couple of pikes that rise stark against the sky-line, to suggest the taking of the spoils. Yes, in October! In October, it should be!"
He was carried away, and she loved him for his enthusiasm.
"You care for your country?" she said, very softly.
"Yes—in an odd way! When wonder or joy or ambition comes to me, I always have a craving to walk those roads and watch the sea and whisper my secrets to the salt earth, but I never gratify the desire; it belongs to the many incongruities of an incongruous nature. But I think if great happiness came to me, I should go back, if only for a day; or if—" He paused. "—If I were to break my heart over anything, I believe I'd creep back, like a child to its mother. We're odd creatures—we Irish!"
"I understand you," said Maxine. "You have the soul."
He looked down into the rue Müller, and a queer smile touched his lips.
"A questionable blessing one is apt to say, princess—in one's bad moments!"
"But only in one's bad moments!" Her tone was warm; her words came from her swiftly, after the manner of Max—the manner that Blake loved.
"You are quite right!" he said, "and I despise myself instantly I have uttered such a cynicism. The capacity to feel is worth all the pain it brings. If one had but a single moment of realization, one should die content. That is the essential—to have known the highest."
Once again Maxine had the sense of lifting a tangible veil, of gaining a glimpse of the hidden personality—not the half-sceptical, pleasant, friendly Blake of the boy's acquaintance, but Blake the dreamer, the idealist who sought some grail of infinite holiness figured in his own imagination, zealously guarded from the scoffer and the worldling. A swift desire pulsed in her to share the knowledge of this quest—to see the face of the knight illumined for his adventure—to touch the buckles of his armor.
"Monsieur," she whispered, "if you were to die to-night, would you die satisfied?"
In the silence that had fallen upon them, Blake had turned his face to the stars, but now again his glance sought hers.
"No, princess," he said, simply.
No weapons are more potent than brevity and simplicity. His answer brought the blood to her face as no long dissertation could have brought it; it was so direct, so personal, so compounded of subtle values.
"Then you have not known the highest?" It was not she who framed the question; some power outside herself constrained her to its speaking.
"I have recognized perfection," he said, "but I have not known it. And sometimes my weaker self—the primitive, barbaric self—cries out against the limitation; sometimes—"
"Sometimes—?"
"Nothing, princess—and everything!" With a sudden wave of self-control he brought himself back to the moment and its responsibilities. "Forgive me! And, if you are merciful, dismiss me! They say we Irish talk too much. I am afraid I am a true Irishman." He laughed, but there was a sound behind the laughter that brought tears to her eyes.
"Monsieur, it has been happy to-night?"
"It has been heaven."
"We are not wholly a trouble to you—Max and I?"
She put out her hand, and he took it.
"Max is my friend, princess; you are my sovereign lady."
The night was close about them; Paris was below, gilding the rose of human love; the church domes were above, tending whitely toward the stars. Maxine moved nearer to him, her heart beating fast, her whole radiant being dispensing fragrance.
"Monsieur, if I am your lady, pay me homage!"
The enchantment was delicate and perfect; her voice wove a spell, her slight, strong fingers trembled in his. He had been less than man had he refused the moment. Silently he bent his head, and his lips touched her hand in a swift, ardent kiss.