X
Dinner was over. It had succeeded so far beyond Mrs. Hammond's wildest dreams. Mrs. Neale had talked dogs and horses with Mr. Hammond, and Clare had been effectively subdued between Colonel Cartwright and the curate. The colonel himself had lent a distinguished air of political interest to the party, proving that these "confounded Radicals will be the death of the country, Mrs. Hammond. All this talk of Home Rule and Insurance and whatnot. What I say is that the people were happy enough before Lloyd George began to give 'em eightpennyworth of conceit of themselves." Mrs. Marshall Gurney, whose efforts to disengage Godfrey Neale's attention from Muriel had been unavailing, had been forced to console herself with the admirable saddle of mutton and the carnations from Kingsport, ninepence each. And the soufflé had been a dream, and Connie looked quite nice in her blue dress, and, best of all, something had happened to Muriel to startle her out of her usual dumb nervousness. Godfrey Neale really seemed to be quite taken by her. Why not? Mrs. Hammond looking down the charmingly appointed table smiled to herself. Why not, indeed, why not?
Afterwards, when the men reappeared from their cigars and excellent port, there was music in the drawing-room. As he entered, Godfrey Neale looked hurriedly round the room for Clare Duquesne. He was uneasy and puzzled. All through the interminable dinner he had searched across the barrier of flowers for Clare's charming face, but the ninepenny carnations had blocked his view. Once he heard her laugh, full-throated and merry. And all the time Muriel's prim little voice had told him tale after tale of Clare at school, Clare on the Continent, Clare galloping wildly along the sands at Hardrascliffe on a rough hackney, after a mad Saturday outing with a school friend's brother. Godfrey felt somehow that he would not have liked that brother, but he listened to the tales, greedy for more. Muriel, delighted to find in a man such unexpected interest and sympathy, unlocked to him the doors of her mind, and poured forth all the wistful hero-worship hitherto suppressed for fear of ridicule. Godfrey, completely oblivious of her, sunned himself in the wonder of Clare's swift vitality. Only when Muriel had left the past for the future did he check her with abrupt, almost discourteous questioning, afflicted suddenly again with his worst kind of stammering. She had faltered then, played with her fork, and looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes. So, for a moment, he had seen, not Clare, but Muriel, facing her as for the first time and noticing her solemn childish face, her mobile mouth, and the questioning trustfulness of her slow, quiet glance.
In a moment she had answered his question, and each lost the sense of the other in the concentration of their thoughts on Clare.
At first, on looking round the drawing-room, he did not see her; then she became clear to him, withdrawn from the circle round the fireplace, sitting with head erect against a heavy background of dark curtains. The gloom of the unlit window-bay had quenched the glowing crimson of her dress, but its folds of still brocade flowed round her like the drapery in a Pre-Renaissance drawing. The dress covered her arms, but left her shoulders bare, so that her clasped hands lay together on her lap like a pale flower, and the faint glimmer of her perfect shoulders moved him to sudden anger against the shadow that robbed him of the purity of their line.
Why did she wear that queer outrageous dress? Why had she never spoken to him before dinner, but only smiled demurely as she bowed? What right had she to come straight from Ostend and Naples to Marshington, where the girls were all dull and stiff? Besides, she was fast. That ridiculous exhibition at the station. That was just the sort of thing that Godfrey hated. And his mother disliked her, though as usual she said nothing, and—well, altogether Godfrey felt that he had good reason to be angry with Clare Duquesne.
He pushed his way through the chairs to the window seat, disregarding Mrs. Hammond's gentle invitation and Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pallid smile. He sat down on the narrow window seat beside her, making himself as uncomfortable as possible out of spite against her. There was a wretched draught.
"Are you going to sing, Miss Duquesne?" he asked.
His usually friendly voice bristled with his grievance.
Clare looked up at him in surprise. "Who told you that I sang?"
"Miss Hammond told me during dinner that you are going to be a professional singer. Are you?"
Clare laughed, still sitting upright with her hands lying on her wine-red dress. He could only see the profile of her face.
"That is as may be. It is not so easy as I had thought to become a great prima donna. They want me to work. I detest working." She shrugged her bare, smooth shoulders. "Life is too short for spending its best years in stuffy German parlours singing scales that no one but an old professor wants to hear." Suddenly she turned upon him her full loveliness. "Why do you ask?"
"I—I——" Godfrey Neale himself was at a loss for words, feeling gauche as any country bumpkin.
"Do you disapprove?" Clare continued cheerfully.
"Yes," he said, unreasoningly rude. "I do. Decidedly. You, singing for the public, for just any ass——"
She opened her dark eyes very wide. "But why not? Not all the public are asses. Besides, my mother does it. She acts."
"Oh, I did—didn't mean that. I mean, it seems somehow such a waste."
"Waste? Comme vous êtes drôle! Ils sont tous fous, les anglais." She laughed again, teasing him, knowing how much he hated for her to speak French, partly because it was a foreign language, partly because he dreaded more than anything in the world that she should make a fool of him. "Why a waste? Is it not better to sing for the many than for the few?"
"No, no. It is not." He fumbled indignantly with his ideas, only knowing that he could not bear the thought of her, standing on show for any fool to gape at, any ill-bred, foreign fool, greasy Germans, nincompoop Frenchmen, Italians—ugh!
"How very English you are, Mr. Neale. That proprietary instinct. You want everything for yourself, land, ladies, music. You would like to put up a notice on me like you put up on your woods. 'Trespassers will be prosecuted.'"
"When did you see my woods?"
"Hush, I want to hear Mr. Smallwood sing."
Godfrey could not sing. He disliked fellows who chirruped inanely in drawing-rooms; but he had to sit there, consoling himself by watching Clare's intent, uplifted face.
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all,
I see thee in my garden and I dare
To love thee, and though my deserts be small,
Thou art the only flower I would wear."
"O flower of all the world," thought Godfrey, seeing only Clare's glowing dress, her hands, her perfect arms.
"I dare to love thee," triumphed Dennis Smallwood's pleasant baritone voice.
Clare Duquesne was going back to Germany, to flirt with dapper little German officers. A good thing that she was going. Godfrey knew her type.
"A rotten song, that, isn't it?" he growled. "Smallwood plays a decent game of tennis. I wish that he'd stick to it."
"He sings rather well. Ah! Mon Dieu!"
"What is it?" Godfrey was all solicitude.
"Nothing. Except that our friend Connie is going to sing, and I—I have heard her before."
Her whisper soothed the young man's ruffled feelings. He did what all the evening he had been intending not to do. This connection with the Hammond ménage had gone far enough. He said:
"Look here, do you ever care to ride, Miss Duquesne?"
"When I have a mount," she answered.
"When the birds go north again!" shrilled Connie.
"I wondered if perhaps, I've got rather a jolly little mare, a perfect lady's hack. My mother was going to ride her, but she hasn't been awfully fit, and hasn't been riding much. It would be a perfect charity if you would be good enough to exercise her. If you could come up one afternoon."
Clare smiled demurely. "Well, if Mrs. Hammond does not object, we might all come up one afternoon."
"All?"
"Well, you can hardly expect me to go alone, surely?"
He saw that it was not possible, but a new scheme was at work in his mind.
"Look here, I'll get the mater to ask up the Hammond girls one afternoon next week, if you'll sing to us to-night."
Clare frowned. "You see," she confided, "I've received not exactly orders but intimations that I am to keep in the background to-night. I'll sing when I go to tea with your mother."
"You'll sing to-night," said Godfrey. He was determined now that she should do so, not so much because he wanted to hear her, as because he wanted her to do something just because he willed it. "Just wait until Connie has sent those birds north again, and then you shall sing."
She shook her head, but as Connie left the piano, Godfrey rose.
"Mrs. Hammond," he said, "we have had a great stroke of luck. I have persuaded Miss Duquesne to sing."
So Mrs. Hammond had to be delighted, and Clare followed Muriel to the piano, and whispered to her. Muriel nodded once or twice, a frown of responsibility upon her face. She was a good accompanist, and had played for Clare many times at Heathcroft.
Mr. Hammond, leaning back in his chair, winked at Colonel Cartwright. "Now we shall have a treat," he said.
Muriel began to play. Her soft dress faded into the white walls of the room. Her hair was a brooding shadow above her earnest face. But about Clare was nothing pale nor shadowy. Her vivid dress had caught all light and colour from the room, and held them, glowing with barbaric splendour. She stood, not stooping over her music like the Marshington young ladies, but by herself in front of the piano, her head lifted proudly with the triumphant power of undaunted youth.
The accompaniment paused. The last chord hung for a moment poised above the waiting stillness. Across the room Clare looked full into the expectant face of Godfrey Neale.
Then she sang.
She had chosen Mignon's song, and at first she sang plaintively the cry of the lost maiden. But, at the end of the verse, with the sweeping melody of the refrain, she released the full power of her voice.
"Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin!
Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."
Mrs. Hammond pulled herself together. She could not understand German. Neither, she was thankful to reflect, could Arthur or the girls; but of one thing she was certain. No one could have sung with such impassioned appeal a song that was completely proper.
She decided that Clare must sing no more.
Directly the song was over, she rose amid the spontaneous applause that for once replaced the conventional thanks of Marshington "musical at homes."
"Thank you so much, Clare, dear. That was very nice. And how clever of you to remember all that German by heart. You must have worked very hard. And now, Arthur, did you say that you were going to carry the colonel and Mr. Neale off to bridge? Mr. Vaughan, you play, don't you?"
So Godfrey heard Clare sing no more, but at the end of the evening, when the company met again to say good-bye, she smiled up at him.
"Well," she said, "and when are we coming to tea?"
All the way home in his mother's stuffy little brougham, Godfrey forgot Clare and talked about the roof to be repaired on the Thaskholme cottages, and the agent at Mardlehammar; but as he ran up the shallow steps of the Weare Grange he suddenly saw Clare standing, the delicate contour of her face outlined against the curtain, her provocative smile teasing him.
"Damned pretty little minx," he told himself, determined that he would not be caught so soon. And, as he undressed, the song which he found himself whistling, with a cheerful disregard for time or tune, was not Clare's song, but Dennis Smallwood's.
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all."