Whom God Hath Joined: A Question of Marriage

by Fergus Hume

"What man in the Merchant of Venice?"

"Oh, if you don't know your Shakespeare, I'm afraid I can't teach it to you," retorted Eustace, and stepping lightly across the terrace, he sat down at the piano, which was placed near the window of the drawing-room, and ran his fingers lightly over the ivory keys. Within the party on the terrace could see the gleam of the marble floor, the dull glitter of heavily embroidered curtains, the faint reflection of a mirror, and over all the rosy light of a red-shaded lamp the glare of which streamed out into the pale moonlight.

Everyone sat silently in the wonderful mystic world created by the magic of the moon, and from the piano a stream of melody, sad and melancholy, in a minor key, broke forth on the still night. The spell of the shadows, the weirdness of the hour, and the presence of Lady Errington, to whom he felt strangely drawn, all had their influence on Gartney's wonderfully impressionable nature, and he began to improvise delicate melodies on a story suggested to him by the calm lake gleaming without.

"In the crystal depths of the blue lake," he chanted in a dreamy monotone, while the subtle harmonies wove themselves under his long lithe fingers, "there dwells a beautiful fairy, in a wondrous palace. She is in love with the nightingale who sings so sweetly from the laurels that hang their green leaves over the still waters. The voice of the hidden singer has strange power and tells her of the cool green depths of the forest; of the rich perfumes shaken from the flowers by the gentle night-wind, and of the ruined shrines from whence the gods have fled. As the passionate notes well forth from amid the dusky shadows the eyes of the beautiful fairy fill with hot tears, for she knows that the bird sings of a long dead love, of a long dead sorrow. But she has no soul, the beautiful fairy, and cannot feel the rapture, the passion, the sadness of love. She rises to the glittering surface of the lake, and waves her slender white arms to the nightingale that sings so sweetly in the moonlight. But the dawn breaks rosy in the eastern skies, the rough wind of the morning whitens the lake, and the nightingale sings no more. Then the beautiful fairy, broken-hearted, sinks far down into the placid waters, to where there blooms strange flowers of wondrous hues, and weeps, and weeps, and weeps for the love which she can never feel without a soul."

A chord, and the player let his hands fall from the keyboard.

"That is a beautiful story, such as Heine might have told," said Lady Errington softly.

"The inspiration is Heine," replied Eustace dreamily, and relapsed into silence.

Victoria, eminently a woman of the world, grew weary of this poetical talk and made a sign to Otterburn, who, understanding her meaning, arose to his feet as she left her chair, and they strolled along the terrace laughing gaily. A sound from within showed that Mrs. Trubbles was once more awake, so Guy in his capacity of host went inside to attend to her, and Eustace, sitting at the piano, was left alone with Lady Errington.

So frail, so pale, so ethereal she looked in the thin cold beams of the moon, lying back, still and listless, in her wicker chair, with her hands crossed idly on her white dress. The man at the piano was in the radiance of the rosy lamplight, but the woman, dreaming in the silence, looked a fitter inhabitant for this weird, white world of mystery and chilly splendour. Watching her closely, even in the distance, Eustace caught a glimpse of her eyes for the moment, and fancied, with the vivid imagination of a poet, that he saw in their depths that undefinable look of unfulfilled motherhood which had led him to call her an "incomplete Madonna."

Filled with this idea, a sudden inspiration of ascertaining the truth seized him, and without changing his position, he replaced his fingers on the ivory keys and broke into the steady rhythmical swing of a cradle song.