Mr. Satterthwaite looked to left and right. A very charming lane, shady and green, with high hedges--a rural lane that twisted and turned in good old-fashioned style. He remembered the stamped address: _Ashmead, Harlequin's Lane_--remembered, too, a local name for it that Mrs. Denman had once told him.
"Harlequin's Lane," he murmured to himself softly. "I wonder--"
He turned a corner.
Not at the time, but afterward, he wondered why this time he felt no surprise at meeting that elusive friend of his: Mr. Harley Quin. The two men clasped hands.
"So _you're_ down here," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Yes," said Mr. Quin. "I'm staying in the same house as you are."
"Staying there?"
"Yes. Does it surprise you?"
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. "Only--well, you never stay anywhere for long, do you?"
"Only as long as is necessary," said Mr. Quin gravely.
"I see," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
They walked on in silence for some minutes.
"This lane--" began Mr. Satterthwaite, and stopped.
"Belongs to me," said Mr. Quin.
"I thought it did," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Somehow I thought it must. There's the other name for it, too, the local name. They call it the 'Lovers' Lane.' You know that?"
Mr. Quin nodded. "But surely," he said gently, "there is a 'Lovers' Lane' in every village."
"I suppose so," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and he sighed a little.
He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very green and alive.
"Where does this lane end, I wonder?" he asked suddenly.
"It ends--_here_," said Mr. Quin.
They came round a last bend. The lane ended in a piece of waste ground, and almost at their feet a great pit opened. In it were tin cans gleaming in the sun, and other cans that were too red with rust to gleam, old boots, fragments of newspapers, a hundred and one odds and ends that were no longer of account to anybody.
"A rubbish heap," exclaimed Mr. Satterthwaite, and breathed deeply and indignantly.
"Sometimes there are very wonderful things on a rubbish heap," said Mr. Quin.
"I know, I know," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, and quoted with just a trace of self-consciousness: "_'Bring me the two most beautiful things in the city,' said God._ You know how it goes, eh?"
Mr. Quin nodded.
Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at the ruins of a small cottage perched on the brink of the wall of cliff.
"Hardly a pretty view for a house," he remarked.
"I fancy this wasn't a rubbish heap in those days," said Mr. Quin. "I believe the Denmans lived there when they were first married. They moved into the big house when the old people died. The cottage was pulled down when they began to quarry the rock here--but nothing much was done, as you can see."
They turned and began retracing their steps.
"I suppose," said Mr. Satterthwaite, smiling, "that many couples come wandering down this lane on these warm summer evenings."
"Probably."
"Lovers," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He repeated the word thoughtfully and quite without the normal embarrassment of the Englishman. Mr. Quin had that effect upon him. "Lovers. You have done a lot for lovers, Mr. Quin."
The other bowed his head without replying.
"You have saved them from sorrow--from worse than sorrow, from death. You have been an advocate for the dead themselves."
"You are speaking of yourself--of what _you_ have done--not of me."
"It is the same thing," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "You know it is," he urged, as the other did not speak. "You have acted--through me. For some reason or other you do not act directly--yourself."
"Sometimes I do," said Mr. Quin.
His voice held a new note. In spite of himself Mr. Satterthwaite shivered a little. The afternoon, he thought, must be growing chilly. And yet the sun seemed as bright as ever.
At that moment a girl turned the corner ahead of them and came into sight. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, wearing a pink cotton frock. Mr. Satterthwaite recognized her as Molly Stanwell, whom he had met down here before.
She waved a hand in welcome to him. "John and Anna have just gone back," she cried. "They thought you must have come, but they simply had to be at the rehearsal."
"Rehearsal of what?" inquired Mr. Satterthwaite.
"This masquerade thing--I don't quite know what you'd call it. There is singing and dancing and all sorts of things in it. Mr. Manly (do you remember him down here?), he has quite a good tenor voice, is to be Pierrot, and I am Pierrette. Two professionals are coming down for the dancing--Harlequin and Columbine, you know. And then there is a big chorus of girls. Lady Roscheimer is so keen on training village girls to sing. She's really getting the thing up for that. The music is rather lovely--but very modern--next to no tune anywhere. Claude Wickam. Perhaps you know him?"
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded, for, as has been mentioned before, it was his métier to know everybody. He knew about that aspiring genius Claude Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer, who was fat and had a penchant for young men of the artistic persuasion. And he knew all about Sir Leopold Roscheimer, who liked his wife to be happy and, most rare among husbands, did not mind her being happy in her own way.
They found Claude Wickam at tea with the Denmans, cramming his mouth indiscriminately with anything handy, talking rapidly, and waving long white hands that had a double-jointed appearance. His short-sighted eyes peered through large horn-rimmed spectacles.
John Denman, upright, slightly florid with the faintest possible tendency to sleekness, listened with an air of bored attention. On the appearance of Mr. Satterthwaite, the musician transferred his remarks to him. Anna Denman sat behind the tea things, quiet and expressionless as usual.
Mr. Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin, with the skin tightly stretched over high cheekbones, black hair parted in the middle, a skin that was weather-beaten. An out-of-door woman who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman, wooden, lifeless--and yet--
He thought, _There_ should _be meaning behind that face, and yet there isn't. That's what's all wrong. Yes, all wrong._ And to Claude Wickam he said, "I beg your pardon? You were saying?"
Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over again. Russia, he said, that was the only country in the world worth being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but still they experimented. "Magnificent!" He crammed a sandwich into his mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate éclair he was waving about in the other. "Take," he said (with his mouthful), "the Russian Ballet." Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did _she_ think of the Russian Ballet?
The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point--what Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet--but her answer was unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride.
"I have never seen it."
"What?" He gazed at her open-mouthed. "But--surely--"
Her voice went on level and emotionless. "Before my marriage, I was a dancer. So now--"
"A busman's holiday," said her husband.
"Dancing." She shrugged her shoulders. "I know all the tricks of it. It does not interest me."
"Oh!"
It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb.
"Talking of lives," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "and experimenting in them, the Russian nation made one costly experiment."
Claude Wickam swung round on him. "I know what you are going to say," he cried. "Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her dance?"
"Three times," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Twice in Paris, once in London. I shall--not forget it."
He spoke in an almost reverent voice.
"I saw her too," said Claude Wickam. "I was ten years old. An uncle took me. God! I shall never forget it."
He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.
"There is a statuette of her in a museum in Berlin," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It is marvelous. That impression of fragility--as though you could break her with a flip of the thumbnail. I have seen her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph." He paused, shaking his head. "There was genius. It will be long years before such another is born. She was young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the first days of the Revolution."
"Fools! Madmen! Apes!" said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of tea.
"I studied with Kharsanova," said Mrs. Denman. "I remember her well."
"She was wonderful?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Yes," said Mrs. Denman quietly. "She was wonderful."
Claude Wickam departed, and John Denman drew a deep sigh of relief, at which his wife laughed.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. "I know what you think. But in spite of everything, the music that that boy writes _is_ music."
"I suppose it is," said Denman.
"Oh! undoubtedly. How long it will be--well, that is different."
John Denman looked at him curiously. "You mean?"
"I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous." He looked across at Mr. Quin. "You agree with me?"
"You are always right," said Mr. Quin.