The Halo Part 26

He was pale, but to her surprise looked younger rather than older than usual. His mental disturbance had left traces on his face, and they were, as it was, young in their nature. He had fallen in love, and the youth in him, both physical and mental, flared up responsively to the call of the emotion.

Suddenly she saw her line of action clearly marked out for her, and without an instant's hesitation took it. If he suspected that she loved him, nothing in the world could keep him by her. So he must not know. In all her dreams and reflections about their relations, she had never taken into account the possibility of things turning out as they had.

She had always tacitly taken for granted that it would be by her will that the man should be waked up to the real state of his own mind. Even after the evening of the dragon-skin frock he had not known the real explanation of his amazement on her entrance, and had, she knew, merely advanced in his perilous path to the point of realising that she was, although his future daughter, an amazingly desirable woman.

So far she had read him correctly. But that something outside her own personal sway should open his eyes she had not antic.i.p.ated.

This had, however, happened, and with the acute intuition of a woman fighting for her life, she understood what she must do to prevent his flight.

So, turning towards him, she smiled amusedly.

"_Eh, b'en_, Beau-papa? Got over your fright? You big baby!"

He stared, and she went on without a pause, but speaking slowly, to give an idea of leisure, "To think that you of all people should be afraid of _thunder_! It was lucky you had your valorous daughter to s.h.i.+eld you."

He gave a short, nervous laugh. "Yes, it is very idiotic, I know, but----"

"And then to bolt away into the very thick of it! That was because you were _ashamed_! I shall tell _pet.i.te mere_ and Theo. But it was an awful storm, and so fearfully warm afterwards, wasn't it? I couldn't sleep at all--that's why I'm up so early. I came over to ask you to go up to Hampstead with me to get some real air. This London extract of air is a very poor subst.i.tute, isn't it? Now don't say no to a poor daughter whose young man is out of town!"

As she talked, looking casually at the pa.s.sers-by, she could, so tense were her nerves, almost hear him think. "She is quite unsuspecting," he was telling himself, "there is no danger for her, and--it doesn't matter about _me_. And I am strong and need never betray myself----"

She talked on, the kind of unconcerned nonsense that was, her strange, new instinct told her, best calculated to quite his vibrant nerves.

"Little child, little child," he returned mutely, "how little you know!

Well--as you are so innocent, why should not I s.n.a.t.c.h this fearful joy while I may? It harms no one but myself, and such pain is better than any happiness on earth----"

"Yes, _ma fille_," he said at length, as she pointed to a barrow of nodding daffodils, "we will go to Hampstead; it is a good idea. But first I must send a wire or two. And--you must promise to return to me, unopened, the note you will find in Pont Street."

Her wandering stare was admirable. "Return unopened? But why? Was it--cross?"

He laughed aloud, his brilliant teeth flas.h.i.+ng. "_Si, si_, that is it.

Cross! You know how stupid I was last night? The coming storm--well--it was a silly note, and you will return it."

"Oh, of course, if you wish me to," she answered carelessly, but clenching her hands. "_C'est une boutade comme une autre!_"

He laughed again. His spirits were flying upwards like those of a criminal unexpectedly reprieved.

"Yes--just a fad. Hi, cab_bee_, stop here, will you?"

While he was in the telegraph-office Brigit allowed her muscles to relax and her face to express her hitherto rigidly concealed triumph.

He was not going. He would stay; she should continue to see him, and the world was full of joy. "Heavens, how I can lie," she whispered softly, "and now we shall both have to lie. We both know about him; he thinks I don't know; and he doesn't know about me! It is a comedy. Oh, Victor, Victor, Victor!"

He came out a moment later, seeming to fill the world with his giant bulk and his astounding radiation of joy. Two narrow-chested city clerks stood still to stare at him, their pallid little faces blank with amazement. A red-nosed flower-girl thrust a great bunch of yellow roses up at him with certainty of sale written all over her. "Roses? Of course. How much?"

He laughed aloud as he gave her some money and then got into the hansom.

"Hampstead Heath, cabby. At Falaise there are millions of these roses--see, with the outside leaves wrinkled and red. Oh, Brigit, Brigit, what a day!"

CHAPTER TEN

If it be true that everything is in the eye of the beholder, then Joyselle's and Brigit Mead's eyes must have been full of beauties that day.

For to them Hampstead Heath was the most marvellously lovely place on earth.

His light-heartedness, chiefly due to his faculty for ignoring side-issues and enjoying the present, was of course magnified as well by the fact that it followed close on the heels of one of his despairing black fits. Yesterday he had been, because of an unsatisfactory morning's work in Chelsea, in the very depths, honestly despising himself as an artist, sincerely loathing his incorrigible love of amus.e.m.e.nt and consequent wasting of time.

So this sunny, rather windy morning, Brigit by his side, and his newly awakened conscience stilled for the moment, was to him as near Paradise as anything he could imagine.

They lunched somewhere--neither of them could ever remember where--on very tough cold ham and insufficiently cooled beer, but they were both too happy to mind, or even to observe the faults of the _menu_. And as neither of them had ever before set eyes on the Heath, it was full of surprises, as well as of beauties. Yielding to some unexplained instinct, they both took off their hats (what is it that induces people to uncover their heads in high places?), and the warm sun shone down on their hair.

"Your hair must be very long, Brigitte?" observed Joyselle once, as he looked at her silky plaits that covered her crown in disregard of the laws of fas.h.i.+on.

"It is. Comes to my knees. Oh, look!"

Two people, a man and a girl, sat in the shade of an isolated tree only a few yards below the place where they stood. They were evidently enjoying an unlawful holiday, for they were workers--factory hands, probably, and they were as palpably rejoicing in their freedom.

The girl, whose brilliant red hair was pulled out at the sides until her head was as big as a bushel basket, wore a pink blouse and a green skirt. The youth, stunted and pale, was gorgeous only as to tie, but quite evidently she considered him her complement. For they were busy drinking beer from a bottle, turn about, and kissing each other delightedly between swallows. Joyselle started, drawing a deep breath, and Brigit, without moving her head, looked at him sideways, as the so-called Fornarina looks in the Uffizi, in Florence.

"They are cheery, aren't they?" she asked hastily, and he, nodding, turned away. For a few moments he was silent, and then he began to talk rather loudly about nothing in particular, and in a few moments was himself--the Joyselle of that particular day. Brigit realised that their stronghold of reserves and lies had been dangerously threatened by his mounting emotion. If he had broken down in his _role_--and she knew that the playing of any kind of a _role_ was foreign to his nature, and therefore perilous--she would have lost him.

His mind, of course, except in certain moments when it all unconsciously was subjugated by her will, was a closed book to her.

For he was not only a man (and no woman can ever wholly understand any man's mind), but he was nearly twenty years older than she, and he was a Norman--a race very complicated, in its mixture of shrewd cunning and simplicity, and difficult for even other French people to comprehend.

But groping in the dark though she was, the girl had grasped two essential facts: if Joyselle learned that she loved him, he would go away if it killed him; and if, though remaining in ignorance of her love, he was led to betray his, the result would be the same.

So her aim must be to keep him well under his own control, and to avoid betraying her personal feelings in the very least degree.

It was easy that first day. He was still more or less dazed and taken up with his discovery that he loved her, and therefore not so shrewd as usual. The future, she knew, would be harder.

But that one day was a delight to them both. He told her about his youth--as truthful an account as his wife's, but oh, how infinitely more picturesque and interesting.

His acquisition of the Amati was recounted with a wealth of detail that enchanted her, and she closed her eyes the better to see the little dark shop on the _quai_ at Rouen, and the old man who would not sell his treasure, even for a good price, until he had heard the would-be purchaser play on it. "And then, my dear, I tuned it, and played. It was a bit from Tschaikovsky's Pathetic Symphony--the adagio movement. It was dark in the shop, with the velvety darkness old places get on a sunny day, and on the other side of the street lay the suns.h.i.+ne like gold. He sat, _le vieux_, in his chair away from the light, for his eyes were bad, and listened. And I played well, for I was playing for the greatest price I had ever commanded!"

"And then?" she asked softly, stroking her cheek with some young beech-leaves.

"And then he kissed me, and--I took out my cheque-book," returned Joyselle simply.

It was after four, and the wind had gone down, freeing the common from the beautiful cloud-streams that had chased over it earlier in the day.

The red-headed girl and her young man had disappeared, and from where they sat Joyselle and Brigit saw no signs of life.

"To-morrow it will be crowded with odious people," Brigit sighed.

"Why odious?"