Through dinner and after she thought she had only been thinking of his strong, eager face, but now he was gone, all he had said she remembered. And she thought of hot China, and the sun-baked South, and the yellow rivers. And of Brazil with all its forests, and the speckled snakes, and the whistling monkeys, and the egrets standing by the fountains, and the little armadillo lumbering across the roads. And of New York, the vital city, with its houses challenging the thunder of summer skies, its explosion of light when evening came, its hurrying myriads, keen-eyed, alert. Against all these backgrounds she could see his clean-cut, gray-eyed face, and she could see herself small and slight, looking up at him in wonder and pride.
"I could go with him anywhere," she whispered.
And then something seemed to call: "Margery!"
She looked up. There was nothing there, but the dimmed loved room obtruded itself upon her, and through the moonlit window she could see the antique trees, and the silver glint to the greenhouses, and in a clairvoyant instant she could see the old men sleeping after the day's work, and the ancient maids, and Fenian in his paddock, and poor Sheila, and the foxhounds. She knew what called.
"Margery!"
"Yes, dears."
"Oh, Lady Margery!"
"Hush, now. It's all right."
She had thought that to-night she would sleep as a child sleeps, and try to recapture the magic day in dreams. And be so happy. But the voice of the trees, and the murmur of the old house, and the pleading eyes of dog and horse, and the wailing tyranny of the sleeping aging folk shocked her into the knowledge that there was a sterner thing than dreaming before her. To-night she would not sleep.
"Margery! Lady Margery!"
"Yes. Yes."
"You couldn't, little mistress, you couldn't.'
"Hush, hearts, hush. I will not go away."
VII
He was very handsome, very erect, very noble there, standing by the old fireplace. He was not merry to-night, so he was going to ask her to marry him, she knew. And in the black and white of evening things, bronzed face and curling hair, he looked the equal of any old Kyteler on the wall. And he had more than they had, she felt--abounding energy. She was very pretty herself to-night, too, she knew, and stately a little.
He was hurting, hurting her badly, for he was speaking now of South Africa, where he was going. And he was carefully telling her how wonderful he had heard that country was: the mass of Table Mountain and the rolling hills, the great acres of grapes, the miles of veldt with the white Boer farmhouses, the sun forever shining, hunting such as she had never dreamed of, great, majestic storms.
"You 'd like it; you 'd like it ever so much."
"Oh, I don't know," she lied. "Ireland is a lot to me."
He was telling her clumsily, shamefacedly of another thing--of a lucky chance he had had in Brazil many years ago, a chance he had taken laughingly, and that had made him indecently rich, and he still a very young man. She understood.
She moved away, and began hunting for a piece of music, so that her back was to him.
"Did you ever think," she said, "of settling down in Ireland? You 're Irish, you know.
"And it's not a bad place," she went on before he answered. "It's a sort of sportsman's paradise. Fishing and hunting and race-courses. And sailing. And if you get tired you can run over to London, or Paris, or Madrid.
"Oh, damn!" she said, "I can't find that thing at all!" She was trembling from head to heel. "Why don't you marry some nice Irish girl and settle down?"
"Oh, I could n't settle down in Ireland."
"No?"
"There 's my work to do."
"But you just said you were rich."
"That's no excuse for not working."
"I thought--I don't know."
"No, I 'd be a very poor sort," he laughed, "if I stopped work because I was rich. I 'd have no self-respect--"
"No?" she said dully. The trembling had passed now. She was just numb, numb and dead.
"But as to marrying an Irish girl, Lady Margery--Margery--"
She stood up and turned about. She was smiling quizzically.
"You 're not proposing to marry me, are you?"
"Yes."
"Don't. Don't, O'Conor," she said. "Please don't."
"Why?"
"Because of this--" she looked at him squarely--"I like you. I like you immensely. To me you 're everything a man should be, but just--I don't seem to see you that way. I don't love--do you see? And I don't think I ever could. No. I never could."
"Well, that's straight. Thanks."
"Are we friends still?"
"Of course, but--" He smiled. "Do you mind if I go?"
"I 'll see you out myself.
"O'Conor," she half whispered in the hall, "I'm an awful son of a gun. I should love you--you 're so fine, so decent, so--so everything--but I don't. I 'm sure I could never love any one. I 'm a very selfish woman, I sometimes think. It wouldn't have been worth while marrying me."
"You're not selfish, and you're very sweet, Margery."
"No, no! Shall I see you again?"
"I 'm afraid not. To-morrow I go to London, and from there to Africa."
"O'Conor, will you do something for me because we are friends?"
"Yes."
"Will you send me pictures of South Africa, and an occasional one of you, because we are friends?"
"Yes, Margery."
"And, O'Conor, if twenty years from now you want to settle down, come to me and let me find you a nice girl to marry--oh! the nicest girl in the world--or if you are sick or crippled, come."
He smiled.
"Promise me."
"All right, Margery. I will." He put out his hand.
"O'Conor," she said. Again she was trembling, but her voice--thank God!--her voice was all right. "I know you 're disappointed, and--O'Conor, would it help if you kissed me?"
"No," he said, "I 'm afraid it would hurt more. So I won't."
"I suppose it would hurt more." She stepped forward and put out her hand. "I am always your friend, O'Conor, your assured friend. And good-by now, O'Conor, and God bless you wherever you go!"
"And you too, Margery."
"You 'll come back, O'Conor, if you 're sick or hurt, or want to settle down, and talk to me about it--your friend, O'Conor, your little Irish friend. You won't forget?"
"I 'll never forget."
He walked down the path under the cloud-touched moon. Would he look back? No, he would n't. He did n't. Oh, there went a man!
VIII
She heard the wicket-gate close, and in her heart she knew that she would never again see him. No gray eyes any more, nor curly hair. Her face had become now a white and quivering mask. She snatched a cloak up and, wrapping it round her, she went blindly into the garden.
She began to shake with great silent sobs. Her face was wet now, and she could n't see. She sank at the roots of the mountain-ash.
"Rowan-tree, rowan-tree!" she cried, "I shall never see him any more!"
And as she sobbed, a little breeze came from the Three Rock Mountain, and all the trees in the garden murmured gently. The great ash unbent, the elm swayed, and the little apple-trees nodded with compassion. All the shrubs in the garden rustled.
_Hush--hush! Hush--hush! Hush--hush!_
"Oh, rowan-tree! rowan-tree!"
_Hush--hush! Hush--hush!_
The moon came gently from behind a great saffron-edged cloud and seemed to bend toward her. Its rays poured sweetly toward the dark head. A rabbit had come somehow into the garden and sat up near her, its ears lop, its pink nose twitching.
_See--see! See--see! See--see!_ The trees were like kindly muses. The sobbing ceased as she watched, as a child's sobbing might.
It scampered off now, for in the kennel the foxhound puppies had wakened--her step or some cry of hers, maybe--and were snuffling and whining to get at her. And from the stables came the rap-rap of Fenian's hoofs, uneasy in his stall.
"I must go in," she said.
Her hand patted the bark of the rowan-tree, and she turned to go into the old house that had been there so many centuries and was there still, sheltering the complement of aging, tyrannous servants in their peaceful sleep, and was beckoning her, she felt, beckoning her to its wide lap....
REYNARDINE
I
The big gray hunter caracoled under him, and with a vicious twitch of curb and snaffle Morgan brought him to stand. He smacked the croup and touched the gelding's fore thigh with the toe of his riding boot until the great hunter stood like a horse in an illustration. Then Morgan turned around.
About him was the cold gray of an Irish morning in November. Woolly, dull, frost on the roads and a touch of easting to the wind--a perfect day for hunting. Forward of him a hundred and fifty yards the hounds were circling around the copse, while the leaders were inside, raising the red fox. Through the gray branches of the wood, gaunt as witches' arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle back of a screen. And here and there were knots of the hunt, talking to one another as neighbors talk. There were the women's fluting voices; there was the men's deep laughter. All were friendly, toward one another, toward the world, toward the red fox himself, friendly toward every one except Morgan. Well, to blazes with them, Morgan swore to himself. What the blazes did he care about them--a crowd of country squires and young army men, of stray farmers, and an occasional doctor or parson. What did they amount to, anyway? he 'd like to know.