"Who is the lady sitting next to your father?" he asked in a low voice.
"Mrs. Graham? Oh! no, you mean Mabelle. Don't you know her? Mabelle Annesley. She was a Clydesley--one of the ill-fated Clydesleys."
He started. The ill-fated Clydesleys. He remembered. A brother had shot himself, a sister had been drowned, another had perished in an earthquake. A queer, doomed family. This girl must be the youngest of them.
His thoughts were recalled suddenly. Madge's hand touched his under the table. Everyone else was talking. She gave a faint inclination of her head to her left.
"That's him," she murmured ungrammatically.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded quickly in comprehension. So this young Graham was the man of Madge's choice. Well, she could hardly have done better as far as appearances went--and Mr. Satterthwaite was a shrewd observer. A pleasant, likeable, rather matter-of-fact young fellow. They'd make a nice pair--no nonsense about either of them--good, healthy, sociable young folk.
Laidell was run on old-fashioned lines. The ladies left the dining room first. Mr. Satterthwaite moved up to Graham and began to talk to him. His estimate of the young man was confirmed, yet there was something that struck him as being not quite true to type. Roger Graham was distrait, his mind seemed far away, his hand shook as he replaced the glass on the table.
_He's got something on his mind_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite acutely. _Not nearly as important as he thinks it is, I daresay. All the same, I wonder what it is._
Mr. Satterthwaite was in the habit of swallowing a couple of digestive pastilles after meals. Having neglected to bring them down with him, he went up to his room to fetch them.
On his way down to the drawing room, he passed along the long corridor on the ground floor. About halfway along it was a room known as the terrace room. As Mr. Satterthwaite looked through the open doorway in passing, he stopped short.
Moonlight was streaming into the room. The latticed panes gave it a queer rhythmic pattern. A figure was sitting on the low windowsill, drooping a little sideways and softly twanging the strings of a ukulele--not in a jazz rhythm, but in a far older rhythm, the beat of fairy horses riding on fairy hills.
Mr. Satterthwaite stood fascinated. She wore a dress of dull dark blue chiffon, ruched and pleated so that it looked like the feathers of a bird. She bent over the instrument crooning to it.
He came into the room--slowly, step by step. He was close to her when she looked up and saw him. She didn't start, he noticed, or seem surprised.
"I hope I'm not intruding," he began.
"Please--sit down."
He sat near her on a polished oak chair. She hummed softly under her breath.
"There's a lot of magic about tonight," she said. "Don't you think so?"
Yes, there was a lot of magic about.
"They wanted me to fetch my uke," she explained. "And as I passed here, I thought it would be so lovely to be alone here--in the dark and the moon."
"Then I--" Mr. Satterthwaite half rose, but she stopped him.
"Don't go. You--you fit in, somehow. It's queer, but you do."
He sat down again.
"It's been a queer sort of evening," she said. "I was out in the woods late this afternoon, and I met a man--such a strange sort of man--tall and dark, like a lost soul. The sun was setting, and the light of it through the trees made him look like a kind of Harlequin."
"Ah!" Mr. Satterthwaite leaned forward--his interest quickened.
"I wanted to speak to him--he--he looked so like somebody I know. But I lost him in the trees."
"I think I know him," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Do you? He is--interesting, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is interesting."
There was a pause. Mr. Satterthwaite was perplexed. There was something, he felt, that he ought to do--and he didn't know what it was. But surely--surely, it had to do with this girl. He said rather clumsily, "Sometimes--when one is unhappy--one wants to get away--"
"Yes. That's true." She broke off suddenly. "Oh! I see what you mean. But you're wrong. It's just the other way round. I wanted to be alone because I'm happy."
"Happy?"
"Terribly happy."
She spoke quite quietly, but Mr. Satterthwaite had a sudden sense of shock. What this strange girl meant by being happy wasn't the same as Madge Keeley would have meant, by the same words. Happiness, for Mabelle Annesley, meant some kind of intense and vivid ecstasy--something that was not only human, but more than human. He shrank back a little.
"I--didn't know," he said clumsily.
"Of course you couldn't. And it's not--the actual thing--I'm not happy yet--but I'm going to be." She leaned forward. "Do you know what it's like to stand in a wood--a big wood with dark shadows and trees very close all round you--a wood you might never get out of--and then, suddenly--just in front of you, you see the country of your dreams--shining and beautiful--you've only got to step out from the trees and the darkness and you've found it?"
"So many things look beautiful," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "before we've reached them. Some of the ugliest things in the world look the most beautiful."
There was a step on the floor. Mr. Satterthwaite turned his head. A fair man with a stupid, rather wooden, face stood there. He was the man Mr. Satterthwaite had hardly noticed at the dinner table.
"They're waiting for you, Mabelle," he said.
She got up; the expression had gone out of her face; her voice was flat and calm. "I'm coming, Gerard," she said. "I've been talking to Mr. Satterthwaite."
She went out of the room, Mr. Satterthwaite following. He turned his head over his shoulder as he went and caught the expression on her husband's face, a hungry despairing look. _Enchantment_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. _He feels it right enough. Poor fellow--poor fellow._
The drawing room was well lighted. Madge and Doris Coles were vociferous in reproaches. "Mabelle, you little beast--you've been ages."
She sat on a low stool, tuned the ukulele, and sang. They all joined in. _Is it possible_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite, _that so many idiotic songs could have been written about My Baby._
But he had to admit that the syncopated, wailing tunes were stirring. Though, of course, they weren't a patch on the old-fashioned waltz.
The air got very smoky. The syncopated rhythm went on.
_No conversation_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. _No good music. No peace._ He wished the world had not become definitely so noisy.
Suddenly Mabelle Annesley broke off, smiling across the room at him, and began to sing a song of Grieg's.
"_My swan--my fair one--_"
It was a favorite of Mr. Satterthwaite's. He liked the note of ingenuous surprise at the end.
"_Wert only a swan then? A swan then?_"
After that, the party broke up. Madge offered drinks, while her father picked up the discarded ukulele and began twanging it absent-mindedly. The party exchanged good nights, drifted nearer and nearer to the door. Everyone talked at once. Gerard Annesley slipped away unostentatiously, leaving the others.
Outside the drawing room door, Mr. Satterthwaite bade Mrs. Graham a ceremonious good night. There were two staircases, one close at hand, the other at the end of a long corridor. It was by the latter that Mr. Satterthwaite reached his room. Mrs. Graham and her son passed up the stairs near at hand, where the quiet Gerard Annesley had already preceded them.
"You'd better get your ukulele, Mabelle," said Madge. "You'll forget it in the morning if you don't. You've got to make such an early start."
"Come on, Mr. Satterthwaite," said Doris Coles, seizing him boisterously by one arm. "Early to bed--etcetera."
Madge took him by the other arm and all three ran down the corridor to peals of Doris's laughter. They paused at the end to wait for David Keeley, who was following at a much more sedate pace, turning out electric lights as he came. The four of them went upstairs together.
* * * * *
Mr. Satterthwaite was just preparing to descend to the dining room for breakfast on the following morning when there was a light tap on the door and Madge Keeley entered. Her face was dead white and she was shivering all over.
"Oh! Mr. Satterthwaite."
"My dear child, what's happened?" He took her hand.
"Mabelle--Mabelle Annesley--"
"Yes?"
What had happened? What? Something terrible--he knew that. Madge could hardly get the words out.
"She--she hanged herself last night. On the back of her door. Oh! it's too horrible." She broke down--sobbing.
Hanged herself. Impossible. Incomprehensible!
He said a few soothing, old-fashioned words to Madge and hurried downstairs. He found David Keeley looking perplexed and incompetent.
"I've telephoned to the police, Satterthwaite. Apparently that's got to be done. So the doctor said. He's just finished examining the--the--Good Lord, it's a beastly business. She must have been desperately unhappy--to do it that way. Queer, that song last night. Swan Song, eh? She looked rather like a swan--a black swan."
Yes.
"Swan Song," repeated Keeley. "Shows it was in her mind, eh?"
"It would seem so--yes, certainly it would seem so."