Simon the Jester Part 55

"How did you find me?"

"Through Conto and Blag. I tried all other means, you may be sure. But now I've found you I shan't let you go again."

This was not the time for elaborate explanations. She asked for none. When one is very ill one takes the most unlikely happenings as commonplace occurrences. It seemed enough to her that I was by her side.

We talked of her nurses, who were kind; of the skill of Dr. Steinholz, who brought into his clinique the rigid discipline of a man-of-war.

"He wouldn't even let me have your flowers," she said. "And even if he had I shouldn't have been able to see them in this dark hole."

She questioned me as to my doings. I told her of my move to Barbara's Building.

"And I'm keeping you from all that splendid work," she said weakly. "You must go back at once, Simon. I shall get along nicely now, and I shall be happy now that I've seen you again."

I kissed her fingers. "You have to learn a lesson, my dear, which will do you an enormous amount of good."

"What is that?"

"The glorious duty of selfishness."

Then the minute hand of the clock marked the end of the interview, and the nurse appeared on the click and turned me out.

After that I saw her daily; gradually our interviews lengthened, and as she recovered strength our talks wandered from the little incidents and interests of the sick-room to the general topics of our lives. I told her of all that had happened to me since her flight. And I told her that I wanted her and her only of all women.

"Why--oh, why, did you do such a foolish thing?" I asked.

"I did it for your good."

"My dear, have you ever heard the story of the tender-hearted elephant?

No? It was told in a wonderful book published years ago and called 'The Fables of George Was.h.i.+ngton AEsop.' This is it. There was once an elephant who accidentally trod on the mother of a brood of newly-hatched chickens. Her tender heart filled with remorse for what she had done, and, overflowing with pity for the fluffy orphans, she wept bitterly, and addressed them thus: 'Poor little motherless things, doomed to face the rough world without a parent's care, I myself will be a mother to you.' Whereupon, gathering them under her with maternal fondness, she sat down on the whole brood."

The unbandaged half of her face lit up with a wan smile. "Did I do that?"

"I didn't conceive it possible that you could love me except for the outside things."

"You might have waited and seen," said I in mild reproof.

She sighed. "You'll never understand. Do you remember my saying once that you reminded me of an English Duke?"

"Yes."

"You made fun of me; but you must have known what I meant. You see, Simon, you didn't seem to care a hang for me in that way--until quite lately. You were goodness and kindness itself, and I felt that you would stick by me as a friend through thick and thin; but I had given up hoping for anything else. And I knew there was some one only waiting for you, a real refined lady. So when you kissed me, I didn't dare believe it. And I had made you kiss me. I told you so, and I was as ashamed as if I had suddenly turned into a loose woman. And when Miss Faversham came, I knew it would be best for you to marry her, for all the flattering things she said to me, I knew--"

"My dear," I interrupted, "you didn't know at all. I loved you ever since I saw you first lying like a wonderful panther in your chair at Cadogan Gardens. You wove yourself into all my thoughts and around all my actions. One of these days I'll show you a kind of diary I used to keep, and you'll see how I abused you behind your back."

Her face--or the dear half of it that was visible--fell. "Oh, why?"

"For making me turn aside from the nice little smooth path to the grave which I had marked out for myself. I regarded myself as a genteel semi-corpse, and didn't want to be disturbed."

"And I disturbed you?"

"Until I danced with fury and called down on your dear head maledictions which for fulness and snap would have made a mediaeval Pope squirm with envy."

She pressed my hand. "You are making fun again. I thought you were serious."

"I am. I'm telling you exactly what happened. Then, when I was rapidly approaching the other world, it didn't matter. At last I died and came to life again; but it took me a long time to come really to life. I was like a tree in spring which has one bud which obstinately refuses to burst into blossom. At last it did burst, and all the love that had been working in my heart came to my lips; and, incidentally, my dear, to yours."

This was at the early stages of her recovery, when one could only speak of gentle things. She told me of her simple Odyssey--a period of waiting in Paris, an engagement at Vienna and Budapest, and then Berlin. Her agents had booked a week in Dresden, and a fortnight in Homburg, and she would have to pay the forfeit for breach of contract.

"I'm sorry for Anastasius's sake," she said. "The poor little mite wrote me rapturous letters when he heard I was out with the cats. He gave me a long special message for each, which I was to whisper in its ear."

Poor little Anastasius Papadopoulos! She showed me his letters, written in a great round, flouris.h.i.+ng, sanguine hand. He seemed to be happy enough at the Maison de Sante. He had formed, he said, a school for the cats of the establishment, for which the authorities were very grateful, and he heralded the completion of his gigantic combinations with regard to the discovery of the a.s.sa.s.sin of the horse Sultan. Lola and I never spoke of him without pain; for in spite of his crazy and bombastic oddities, he had qualities that were lovable.

"And now," said Lola, "I must tell him that Hephaestus has been killed and the rest are again idling under the care of the faithful Quast. It seemed a pity to kill the poor beast."

"I wish to Heaven," said I, "that he had been strangled at birth."

"You never liked him." She smiled wanly. "But he is scarcely to be blamed. I grew unaccountably nervous and lost control. All savage animals are like that." And, seeing that I was about to protest vehemently, she smiled again. "Remember, I'm a lion-tamer's daughter, and brought up from childhood to regard these things as part of the show. There must always come a second's failure of concentration. Lots of tamers meet their deaths sooner or later for the same reason--just a sudden loss of magnetism. The beast gets frightened and springs."

Exactly what Quast had told me. Exactly what I myself had divined at the sickening moment. I bowed my head and laid the back of her cool hand against it, and groaned out my remorse. If I had not been there! If I had not distracted her attention! She would not listen to my self-reproach. It had nothing to do with me. She had simply missed her grip and lost her head. She forbade me to mention the subject again. The misery of thinking that I held myself to blame was unbearable. I said no more, realising the acute distress of her generous soul, but in my heart I made a deep vow of reparation.

It was, however, with no such chivalrous feelings, but out of the simple longing to fulfil my life that I asked her definitely, for the first time, to marry me as soon as she could get about the world again. I put before her with what delicacy I could that if she had foolish ideas of my being above her in station, she was above me in worldly fortune, and thus we both had to make some sacrifices to our pride. I said that my work was found--that our lives could be regulated as she wished.

She listened, without saying a word, until I had finished. Then she took my hand.

"I'm grateful," she said, "and I'm proud. And I know that I love you beyond all things on earth. But I won't give you an answer till I'm up and about on my feet again."

"Why?" I insisted.

"Don't ask. And don't mention the matter again. You must be good to me, because I'm ill, and do what I say."

She smiled and fondled my hand, and cajoled a reluctant promise from me.

Then came days in which, for no obvious reason, Lola received me with anxious frightened diffidence, and spoke with constraint. The cheerfulness which she had hitherto exhibited gave place to dull depression. She urged me continually to leave Berlin, where, as she said, I was wasting my time, and return to my work in London.

"I shall be all right, Simon, perfectly all right, and as soon as I can travel, I'll come straight to London."

"I'm not going to let you slip through my fingers again," I would say laughingly.

"But I promise you, I'll swear to you I'll come back! Only I can't bear to think of you idling around a woman's sick-bed, when you have such glorious things to do at home. That's a man's work, Simon. This isn't."

"But it is a man's work," I would declare, "to devote himself to the woman he loves and not to leave her helpless, a stranger in a strange land."

"I wish you would go, Simon. I do wish you would go!" she would say wearily. "It's the only favour I've ever asked you in my life."

Man-like, I looked within myself to find the reason for these earnest requests. In casting off my jester's suit had I also divested myself of the power to be a decently interesting companion? Had I become merely a dull, tactless, egotistical bore? Was I, in simple, naked, horrid fact, getting on an invalid's delicate nerves? I was scared of the new picture of myself thus presented. I became self-conscious and made particular efforts to bring a little gaiety into our talk; but though she smiled with her lips, the cloud, whatever it was, hung heavily on her mind, and at the first opportunity she came back to the ceaseless argument.

In despair I took her nurse into my confidence.

"She is right," said the nurse. "You are doing her more harm than good.