Man and Maid Part 31

XII

WHILE IT IS YET DAY

"And is it really true? Are you going to govern the Fortunate Islands?"

"I am, indeed--or rather, to be accurate, I am going to deputy-govern them--I mean, father is--for a year."

"A whole year!" he said, looking down at her fan. "What will London do without you?"

"London will do excellently," she answered--"and that's my pet fan, and it's not used to being tied into knots." She took it from him.

"And what shall I do without you?"

"Oh! laugh and rhyme and dance and dine. You'll go out to the proper number of dinners and dances, and make the proper measure of pretty little speeches and nice little phrases; and you'll do your reviews, and try to make them as like your editor's as you can; and you'll turn out your charming little rondeaux and triolets, and the year will simply fly. Heigho! I'm glad I'm going to see something big, if it's only the Atlantic."

"You are very cruel," he said.

"Am I? But it's not cruel to be cruel if n.o.body's hurt, is it? And I am so tired of nice little verses and pretty little dances and dainty little dinners. Oh, if I were only a man!"

"Thank G.o.d you're not!" said he.

"If I were a man, I would do just one big thing in my life, even if I had to settle down to a life of snippets and trifles afterwards."

Her eyes were s.h.i.+ning. They always glittered, but now they were starry.

The drifted white folds across her breast stirred to her quickened breath.

"If you loved me, Sybil, I could do something great!" said he.

"But I _don't_," she said--"at any rate, not now; and I've told you so a dozen times. My dear Rupert, the man who needs a woman to save him isn't worth the saving."

"What would you call a big thing?" he asked. "Must I conquer an empire for you, or start a new religion? Or shall I merely get the Victoria Cross, or become Prime Minister?"

"Don't sneer," said she; "it doesn't become you at all. You've no idea how horrid you look when you're sneering. Why don't you----? Oh! but it's no good! By the way, what a charming cover Housman has designed for your _Veils and Violets_! It's a dear little book. Some of the verses are quite pretty."

"Go on," said he, "rub it in. I know I haven't done much yet; but there's plenty of time. And how can one do any good work when one is for ever sticking up one's heart like a beastly cocoanut for you to shy at?

If you'd only marry me, Sybil, you should see how I would work!"

"May I refer you to my speech--not the last one, but the one before that."

He laughed; then he sighed.

"Ah, my Pretty," he said, "it was all very well, and pleasant enough to be scolded by you when I could see you every day; but now----"

"How often," she asked calmly, "have I told you that you must not call me that? It was all very well when we were children; but now----"

"Look here," he said, leaning towards her, "there's not a soul about; they're in the middle of the Lancers. Let me kiss you once--it can't matter to you--and it will mean so very much to me."

"That's just it," she said; "if it didn't mean----"

"Then it shan't mean anything but good-bye. It's only about eight years since you gave up the habit of kissing me on every occasion."

She looked down, then she looked to right and left, then suddenly she looked at him.

"Very well," she said suddenly.

"No," he said; "I won't have it unless it _does_ mean something."

There was a silence. "Our dance, I think?" said the voice of one bending before her, and she was borne away on the arm of the partner from whom she had been hiding.

Rupert left early. He had not been able to secure any more dances with her. She left late. When she came to think the evening over, she sighed more than once. "I wish I loved him a little less, or a little more,"

she said; "and I wish--yes, I do wish he had. I don't suppose he'll care a bit for me when I come back."

So she set sail for the Fortunate or other Isles, and in dainty verses on loss and absence he found some solace for the pain of parting with her. Yet the pain was a real thing, and grew greater, and life seemed to have no taste, even tobacco no charm. She had always been a part of his life since the days when nothing but a sunk fence divided his father's park from her father's rabbit-warren. He grew paler, and he developed a wrinkle or two, and a buoyant friend meeting him in Piccadilly a.s.sured him that he looked very much off colour, and in his light-hearted way the friend advised the sort of trip round the world from which yesterday had seen his own jovial return.

"Do you all the good in the world, my boy. 'Pon my soul, you have a tired sort of look, as if you'd got some of these jolly new diseases people have taken to dying of lately--appendi-what's-its-name, you know, and things like that. You book your pa.s.sage to Ma.r.s.eilles at once. So long! You take my tip."

What Rupert took was a cab. He looked at himself in one of the little horseshoe mirrors. He certainly did look ill; and he felt ill--tired, bored, and nothing seemed worth while. He drove to a doctor friend, who punched and prodded him and listened with tubes at his chest and back, looked grave, and said: "Go to Strongitharm--he's absolutely at _the_ top. Twenty-guinea fee. But it's better to know where we are. You go to Strongitharm."

Rupert went, and Strongitharm gave his opinion. He gave it with a voice that trembled with sympathy, and he supplemented it with brandy-and-soda, which he happened to have quite handy.

Then Rupert disappeared from London and from his friends--disappeared suddenly and completely. He had plenty of money, and no relations near enough to be inconveniently anxious. He went away and he left no address, and he did not even write excuses to the people with whom he should have danced and dined, nor to the editor whose style he should have gone on imitating.

The buoyant friend rejoiced at the obvious and natural following of his advice.

"He was looking a little bit below himself, you know, and I said: 'Go round the world; there's nothing like it,' and, by Jove! he went. Now, that's the kind of man I like--knows good advice when he gets it, and acts on it right off."

So the buoyant one spread the rumour that ran its course and died, and had to be galvanised into life once more to furnish an answer to Sybil's questionings, when, returning from the Fortunate or other Isles, she asked for news of her old friend. And the rumour did not satisfy her.

She had had time to think--there was plenty of time to think in those Islands whose real name escapes me--and she knew very much more than she had known on the evening when Rupert had broken her pet fan and asked for a kiss which he had not taken. She found herself quite fervently disbelieving in the grand tour theory--and the disbelief was so strong that it distorted life and made everything else uninteresting. Sybil took to novel-reading as other folks have in their time taken to drink.

She was young, and she could still lose herself in a book. One day she lost herself most completely in a new novel from Mudie's, a book that every one was talking about. She lost herself; and suddenly, in a breathless joy that was agony too, she found _him_. This was his book.

No one but Rupert could have written it--all that description of the park, and the race when she rode the goat and he rode the pig--and--she turned the pages hastily. Ah yes, Rupert had written this! She put the book down and she dressed herself as prettily as she knew how, and she went in a hansom cab to the office of the publisher of that book, and on the way she read. And more and more she saw how great a book it was, and how no one but Rupert could have written just that book. Thrill after thrill of pride ran through her. He had done this _for her_--because of what she had said.

Arrived at the publisher's, she was met by a blank wall. Neither partner was visible. The senior clerk did not know the address of the author of "Work While it is Yet Day," nor the name of him; and it was abundantly evident that even if he had known, he would not have told.

Sybil's prettiness and her charm so wrought upon this dry-as-dust person, however, that he volunteered the address of the literary agent through whom the book had been purchased. And Sybil found him on a first floor in one of those imposing new buildings in Arundel Street. He was very nice and kind, but he could not give his client's name without his client's permission.

The disappointment was bitter.

"But I'll send a letter for you," he tried to soften it with.

Sybil's self-control almost gave way. A tear glistened on her veil.

"I do want to see him most awfully," she said, "and I know he wants to see me. It was I who rode the goat in the book, you know----"

She did not realise how much she was admitting, but the literary agent did.

"Look here," he said smartly, "I'll wire to him at once; and if he says I may, I'll give you the address. Can you call in an hour?"