Set in Silver

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

For an instant I stood still, bewildered, as if I'd walked into a dream, beguiled by a false clue of boots; and during my few seconds of temporary aberration my dazed eyes fell upon a book which lay on the table. It was Sir Lionel's "Morte d'Arthur" (second volume; he's lent me the first), and in it for a marker was a glove of mine. I'd lost it at Torquay, after we had our dear, good talk, and he knew I was looking for it, all about the sitting room we had at the hotel there, yet he never said a word.

Oh, dear little French mother, you can't think what an odd feeling it gave me to see he had kept my glove, and had put it in his book! Yes, I believe you can think, too, because probably you've felt just like that yourself when you were a girl, only you never thought it convenable to describe your symptoms for your daughter's benefit. I know it was perfectly schoolgirlish of me, and I ought to have outgrown such sentimentality with my teens; but if you could see Sir Lionel, and understand the sort of man he is, you wouldn't think me so outrageous. That he—he, of all men—should care to keep anything which would remind him of an insignificant child like me! I'm afraid there came a prickly feeling in my eyelids, and I had the most idiotic desire to kiss the book, which I knew would have a nice smell of his cigarettes, because my borrowed volume has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything, though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind of infatuated fascination of a moth—not for a candle, but for a great, brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I know how hopelessly they smash their soft, silly wings. I should have been like them if I'd kissed the book; but instead, after that one look which told me the glove really was my glove, I bounced out of the room, snatching my boots up as I dashed across the threshold.

Bump! as I did so I almost telescoped with Sir Lionel who had retrieved his boots, probably from my doormat. And at the same moment came a boyish yelp from somewhere, followed by the smart slap of a door shutting. I wished it had been a smart slap of my hand on the Tyndal boy's ear, for of course the boot-changing was that little fiend's work, I guessed in a second.

So did Sir Lionel, and we both laughed—at ourselves, at each other, and everything. It seems that the Youthful Horror had changed every pair of boots along the corridor, and made the most weird combinations. I don't suppose Sir Lionel thought about the glove in the book, anyway at the time, and luckily there was nothing tell-tale in my room, in case he strayed in, except your photograph in the silver frame you gave me on my last birthday. And of course he could make nothing of that.

He had got out of playing bridge, because when Mrs. Tyndal saw he wasn't keen, she offered to take a hand, and he said he did want to write to a man in Bengal, his best friend.

We talked to each other only a few minutes, after the boot-puzzle had been put right; but would you believe it, up came Mrs. Senter, while Sir Lionel and I were bidding each other good night in front of my door? She looked as stiff and wicked as a frozen snake for an instant; then she smiled too sweetly, and said she'd come for her Spanish lace mantilla. But I almost know she had fancied that Sir Lionel might have made an excuse to get a word with me, and had flown up to find out for herself.

You can imagine, dear, that I didn't feel much like going to bed when I'd finished saying good-night, and shut my door upon the world. It seemed to me that this birthplace of Sir Lionel's ancestor, King Arthur Pendragon, was too romantic and wonderful to go tamely to sleep in. And what was my covered balcony for, if not to dream dreams and think thoughts, by moonlight?

So I switched off the electricity in my room, and went out to find that the moon (which is big and grand now) had come out, too, tearing apart a great black cloud in order to look down on Arthur-land, and see if she had any adorers. Anyway, she must have seen me, for she turned the night into silver dawn, so clear and bright that she couldn't have missed me if she tried.

I did wish for you to be with me then, and I'm ashamed to confess I wouldn't have minded Sir Lionel as a companion, because Tintagel seems so much more his than mine.

Never did I hear the sea talk poetry and legend as it does round those dark rocks of old "Dundagel." I thought as I leaned out from my balcony, a lonely, unappreciated Juliet—that the sound was like the chanting voice of an ancient bard, telling stories of the golden days to himself or to all who might care to listen. I fancied I could hear the words: