Contact, and Other Stories

by Frances Noyes Hart

But the light feet finished their journey down the gray corridor and the worn flight of stone steps in an ominously sedate fashion. No, it was no use; it was no use at all. She felt suddenly discouraged and baffled, she who a few minutes before had been a candle, brave and warm and shining—only to have a careless breath blow out the light, leaving nothing but a cold little white stick with a dead black wick for a heart. It was horribly unfair, and someone should most certainly pay for it; someone who was sitting blithe and callous and safe behind those heavy doors—heavy doors of oak, and heavier ones of cool indifference. She drew a quivering breath, and straightened, as though she had heard far off a bugle sing. Oh, how dared he, how dared he be indifferent? He, who idled all his life away, paying no tribute to the world save laughter, a useless, black-haired, arrogant young good-for-nothing? How dared he be indifferent to beauty and riches and grace and wit and kindness, when they lingered at his side, tremulous and expectant? It was worse than cruel to be indifferent to the personification of all these attributes—it was crass, intolerable stupidity. She made a sudden violent gesture, pushing something far from her. That dream was ended; she was through. She would tell them to-night that her visit was over—that to-morrow she must be on her way to Paris—and America.

But at the thought of America her feet faltered to a halt, as though she were reluctant to go one step nearer to that enchanted country, empty now and strange, since Dad had gone. How could she go back to that great house with its white pillars and echoing halls?—how could she face its cold and silent beauty without his arms about her? No, no, she couldn’t—she was afraid—she was afraid of loneliness. While she had had her work, while she had had those thousands of brown young faces lifted to her in comradeship and worship and mirth, she had fought off the nightmare of his going. No one had known but Laure—Laure who had loved “the little American” from the first day that she had come laughing and tiptoeing down the long room with contraband chocolates for Laure’s bitter, dying poilus—Laure who had held her in her tired young arms all the terrible night after the cable came—Laure who had wept when a tearless and frozen Fair had set off for Germany with her division—Laure who had come all the way to Coblenz to bring her back to Normandy when she had literally dropped in her tracks two years later. Dear Laure, who had healed and tended this small alien, she would be loath to leave her go.

Fair’s lip quivered; she felt suddenly too small and solitary to face a world that could play such hideous tricks. It was bad enough and thrice incredible to have rendered Laure’s brother impervious to her every enchantment, but it was sheer wanton cruelty to have made him utterly unworthy of any lady’s straying fancy—and alas, alas, how fancy strayed! The bravest of all the fighting Carters was badly frightened; the whole thing savoured of black magic. She, who had flouted and flaunted every masculine heart that had been laid at her feet since she had put on slippers, to have fallen, victim to a laugh and a careless word! Why, she barely knew him, he held so lightly aloof, courteous and smiling and indifferent; it was hatefully obvious that he preferred his own society to any that they could offer. He wouldn’t play—he wouldn’t work—he wouldn’t even eat with them. Of course he had been in the hospital for ages, but he had been out of it for ages, too, and it was criminal folly to continue to pamper any one as he was pampered. A man—a real man—would die of shame before he would permit his sisters to give music lessons while he locked himself in his room and laughed. Never was he with them, save for the brief hour after déjeuner when they drank their cups of black coffee under the golden beech trees—and for that heavenly space after dinner in the great salon, full of firelight and candlelight and falling rose-leaves and music, with Madame de Lautrec stitching bright flowers into her tapestry frame and Monsieur le Vicomte smiling his courteous and tragic smile into the leaping fire in the carved chimney, and the fresh young voices rising and falling about the piano over which Laure bent her golden head—Diane’s silver music lifting clearly, Laure’s soft contralto murmuring like far waters, and Philippe singing as his troubadour ancestor might have sung, fearless and true and shining—Fair caught her breath at the memory of that ringing splendour, and then looked stern. It was ridiculous to worship any one as the De Lautrecs worshipped their tall Philippe and it was obviously highly demoralizing for him—highly. Laure was the worst; it was as though she couldn’t bear to have him out of her sight for a minute; if he rose to go—oh, if he even stirred, she was at his side in a flash, her hand slipped into his, all her white tranquillity shaken into some mysterious terror at the thought that he might escape her again.

“No, no!” she would cry passionately when Fair rallied her with flying laughter. “You do not know what you say, my Fair. I have no courage left; none, none, I tell you. He is my life—and for four years every morning, every night I made myself say: ‘You will not see him again, you will not hear him again, you will not touch him again. But you will be brave, you hear? You will be brave because it is for France.’ Now France has no more need of my courage—and that is very well, because I have no more to give her. It is all gone. I will never be brave again.”

She was the only one that Philippe would suffer to come near him in all the long hours that he spent behind those dark barred doors; often, as Fair sped by on light feet, she could hear the murmur of their voices, low and absorbed—shutting her out, thought Fair forlornly, more than any lock on any door. What did they find to talk about, hour after hour, blind and deaf to the world that lay about them, golden under the October sun? What spell did Laure use to bind him, what magic to dispel all the endless witchery that Fair had spread before him, first carelessly, then startled into wide-eyed consciousness and finally, during these last flying days, driven to despairing prodigality? She bit her lip, blinking back the treacherous tears fiercely. Some day—some day he should pay for this indifference, and pay with interest. The loitering feet paused again while their owner visualized, through the mist of unwelcome tears, a contrite Philippe dragging himself to grovel abjectly at her feet, begging for one small word of mercy and of hope. The vivid countenance suddenly assumed an expression of exquisite contentment.

“No, Philippe,” she would tell him, lightly but inflexibly, “no, my poor boy, it would be sheer cruelty to mislead you. Never, under any circumstances could I——”

“Enfin!” rang out a richly indignant voice. “Do you walk in your sleep, my good goose? We wait and we wait until we are one half frozen, and you arrive like the snail he was your little brother and——”

“Oh, Laure, I am sorry! Box my ears—no, hard—you tell her to box them hard, Monsieur André!”

“I, Mademoiselle? But never—I think we are well repaid for our vigil, hey, Raoul? Here is that very red mallet with which you will beat us all. We take Bravo with us, Diane?”

Diane shook her curly head dubiously at the frantic police dog.