The Lure of the Mask, Harold MacGrath [best beach reads of all time .txt] 📗

side of the crumbling back, her chin lowered, and her eyes thoughtfully directed toward the little circle of disturbed water where the goldfish were urging for the next crumb. Now, as Phoebus was somewhere near four in the afternoon, he was growing ruddy with effort in the final spurt for the western horizon. So the marbles and the fountain and the water and the maiden all melted into a harmonious golden tone.

Merrihew was not so poetical as to permit this picture to go on indefinitely; so he stole up from behind with all the care of a practised hunter till he stood directly behind the maiden. She still dreamed. Then he put his hands over her eyes. She struggled for a brief moment, then desisted.

"It is no puzzle at all," she declared. "I can smell horse, horse, and again horse. Mr. Merrihew-"

"Yes, I know all about it. I should have fetched along a sachet-powder. I never remember anything but one thing, Kitty, and that's you." He came round and sat down beside her. "There's no doubt that I reek of the animal. But the real question is," bluntly, "how much longer are you going to keep me dangling on the string? I've been coming up here for ten days, now, every afternoon."

"Ten days," Kitty murmured. She was more than pretty to-day, and there was malice aforethought in all the little ribbons and trinkets and furbelows. She had dressed expressly for this moment, but Merrihew was not going to be told so. "Ten days," she repeated; and mentally she recounted the pleasant little journeys into the hills and the cherry-pickings.

"And dangling, dangling. I've been hanging in mid-air for nearly a year now. When are you going to put me out of my misery?" His tone was chiding and moody.

"But am I to be blamed if, after having refused twice to marry you, you still persist?" Kitty assumed a judicial air.

"All you have to do," sadly, "is to tell me to clear out."

"That's just it," cried Kitty wrathfully. "If I tell you to go it will be for good; and I don't want you to go that way. I like you; you are cheerful and amusing, and I find pleasure in your company. But every day in the year, breakfast and dinner!" She appealed to the god in the fountain. What unreasonable beings men were!

"But you haven't refused me this time."

"Because I wish to make it as easy as possible for you." Which of the two meanings she offered him was lost upon Merrihew; he saw but one, nor the covert glance, roguish and mischievous withal. "Come, let us be sensible for ten minutes."

Merrihew laid his watch on the bench beside him. Kitty dimpled.

"Don't you love it in Florence?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," scraping the gravel with his crop. "Hillard says I'm finishing my bally education at a canter. I can tell a saint from a gentleman in a night-gown, a halo from a barrel-hoop, and I can drink Chianti without making a face."

Kitty laughed rollickingly. For beneath her furbelows and ribbons and trinkets she was inordinately happy and light of heart. Her letter had come; she was only waiting for the day of sailing; and she was to take back with her the memory of the rarest adventure which ever befell a person, always excepting those of the peripatetic sailor from Bagdad.

"I want to go home," said Merrihew, when her laughter died away in a soft mutter.

"What! leave this beautiful world for the sordid one yonder?"

"Sordid it may be, but it's home. I can speak to and understand every man I meet on the streets there; there are the theaters and the club and the hunting and fishing and all that. Here it's nothing but pictures and concierges and lying cabbies. If I could collect all my friends and plant 'em over here, why, I could stand it. But I'm lonesome. Did you ever try to spread frozen butter on hot biscuits? Well, that's the way I feel."

This metaphor brought tears of merriment to Kitty's eyes. She would have laughed at anything this day.

"Daniel, you are hopeless."

"I admit it."

"How beautiful the cypresses are in the sunshine!" she exclaimed, standing.

He reached out and caught her hand, gently pulling her down to the bench.

"The ten minutes are up," he said.

"Oh, I said let us be sensible for ten minutes," she demurred.

"I've been telling you the truth; that's sensible enough. Kitty, will you marry me?"

"Could you take care of me?"

"I have these two hands. I'll work."

"That would be terrible! Oh, if you were only rich!"

"You don't mean that, Kitty."

"No," relenting, "I don't. But you bother me."

"All right. This will be the last time. Will you marry me? I will do all a man can to make you happy. I love you with all my heart. I know. You're afraid; you've an idea that I am fickle. But not this time, Kitty, not this time. Will you?"

"I can not give up the stage." She knew very well that she could, but she had an idea.

"I don't ask even that. I'll travel with you and make myself useful."

"You would soon tire of that." But Kitty eyed him with a kindly look. He was good to look at. Kitty was like the timid bather; she knew that she was going to take the plunge, but she must put one foot into the water, withdraw it, shudder, and try it again.

"Tire?" said Merrihew. "If I did I shouldn't let you know it. I'm a homeless beggar, anyhow; I've always been living in boarding-houses and clubs and hotels; it won't matter so long as you are with me."

Kitty threw a crust to the goldfish and watched them swirl about it greedily. Merrihew had no eyes but for her. Impulsively he held out his hand. Kitty looked at it with thought; this would be the final plunge. Then, without further hesitance, indifferent to the future or the past, conscious only of the vast happiness of the present, Kitty laid her hand in his. He would have drawn her into his arms had not they both seen O'Mally pushing through the box-hedge, followed by some belated tourists. Merrihew swore softly and Kitty laughed.

On the terrace the tea-table dazzled the eye with its spotless linen, its blue Canton, and its bundle of pink roses. Hillard extended his cup for a second filling, vaguely wondering where Merrihew was. They had threshed continental politics, engineering, art and the relative crafts, precious stones, astronomy and the applied sciences, music, horses, and geology, with long pauses in between. Both knew instinctively that this learned discourse was but a makeshift, a circuitous route past danger-points. "Have you ever heard of telling fortunes in tea-grounds?" he asked.

"Yes. It is a pleasant fallacy, and nothing ever comes true." And La Signorina vaguely wondered where Kitty was. She needed Kitty at this moment, she who had never needed anybody.

The tramp of feet beyond the wall diverted them for a space. A troop of marksmen from the range were returning cityward. They were dirty and tired, yet none seemed discontented with his lot. They passed in a haze of dust.

The man and woman resumed their chairs, and Hillard bent his head over the cup and stared at the circling tea-grounds in the bottom. The movement gave her the opportunity she desired: to look freely and without let at his shapely head. Day after day, serene and cloudless Florentine days, this same scene or its like had been enacted. It took all her verbal skill to play this game safely; a hundred times she saw something in his eyes that warned her and armed her. When he passed that evening on horseback she knew that these things were to be. She had two battles where he had only one; for she had herself to war against. Each night after he had gone she fought with innocent desire; argument after argument she offered in defense. But these were all useless; she must send him away. And yet, when he came, as she knew he would, she offered him tea! And in rebellion she asked, Why not? What harm, what evil? Was it absolutely necessary that she should let all pleasure pass, thrust it aside? The suffering she had known, would not that be sufficient penance for this little sin? But on his side, was this being fair to him? This man loved her, and she knew it. Up to this time he had met her but twice, and yet he loved her, incredible as it seemed. And though he never spoke of this love with his lips, he was always speaking it with his eyes; and she was always looking into his eyes.

She never looked into her own heart; wisely she never gave rein to self-analysis; she dared not. And so she drifted on, as in some sunny dream of remote end.

How inexplicable were the currents and cross-currents of life! She had met a thousand men, handsomer, more brilliant; they had not awakened more than normal interest. And yet this man, quiet, humorous, ordinarily good-looking, aroused in her heart discord and penetrated the barriers to the guarded sentiment. Why? Always this query. Perhaps, after all, it was simply the initial romance which made the impression so lasting. Ah, well; to-morrow or the next day the end would come; so it did not matter.

There was one bit of light in this labyrinth: Worth had spoken; that disagreeable incident was closed. And this present dream, upon what reef would it carry her? She shrugged. This action brought Hillard back to earth, for he, too, had been dreaming. He raised his head.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"Shrug."

"Did I shrug? I did so unconsciously. Perhaps I was thinking of O'Mally and his flock of tourists."

"Doesn't it annoy you?"

"Not in the least. It has been a fine comedy. I believe he is the most accomplished prevaricator I ever met. He remembers the lie of yesterday and keeps adding to it. I don't see how he manages to do it. He is better than Pietro. Pietro used to bring them into the house." She gathered up a handful of the roses and pressed them against her face, breathing deeply.

Hillard trembled. She was so beautiful; the glow of the roses on her cheeks and throat, the sun in her hair, and the shadows in her eyes. To smother the rush of words which were gathering at his lips, he raised his cup and drank. Ten days! It was something. But the battle was wearing; the ceaseless struggle not to speak from his full heart was weakening him. Yet he knew that to speak was to banish the dream, himself to be banished with it.

"If I were a poet, which I am not-" He paused irresolutely.

"You would extemporize on the beauty of the perspective," she supplemented. "How the Duomo shines! And the towers, and the Arno-"

"I was thinking of your hair," he interrupted. "I have never seen anything quite like it. It isn't a wig, is it?" jestingly.

"No, it is my own," with an answering smile.

"Ah, that night! It is true, as you said; it is impossible to forget the charm of it."

She had recourse to the roses again. Dangerous ground.

"You have not told me the real reason why you sang under my window that night."