'Well, Harry, and to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most miss,—the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an uncharted world,—a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, and the actual world became one of childhood's shrug-provoking bugbears dimly remembered.'
'I do not understand poetry,' the Earl apologetically observed. 'It appears to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable,' said Lord Brudenel, with a change of tone; 'yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a house- breaker—?'
Then the Earl gave an exclamation, for in full view of them Lord Humphrey Degge was kissing Lord Brudenel's daughter.
'Oh, the devil!' said the Earl. 'Oh, the insolent young ape!'
'Nay,' said the Duke, restraining him; 'not particularly insolent, Harry. If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly object to his caresses—quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that you should not permit Spring about the premises.'
The Earl wheeled in an extreme of astonishment. 'Come, come, sir! she is your betrothed wife! Do you not intend to kill the fellow?'
'My faith, why?' said his Grace of Ormskirk, with a shrug. 'As for betrothals, do you not see that she is already very happily paired?'
In answer Brudenel raised his hands toward heaven, in just the contention of despair and rage appropriate to parental affection when an excellent match is imperilled by a chit's idiocy.
Marian and Lord Humphrey Degge were mounting from the scrap of forest that juts from Pevis Hill, like a spur from a man's heel, between Agard Court and Halvergate. Their progress was not conspicuous for celerity. Now they had attained to the tiny, elm-shadowed plateau beyond the yew-hedge, and there Marian paused. Two daffodils had fallen from the great green-and-yellow cluster in her left hand. Humphrey Degge lifted them, and then raised to his mouth the slender fingers that reached toward the flowers. The man's pallor, you would have said, was not altogether due to his recent wound.
She stood looking up at him, smiling a little timidly, her teeth glinting through parted lips, her eyes star-fire, her cheeks blazoning gules in his honor; she seemed not to breathe at all. A faint twinge woke in the Duke of Ormskirk's heart. Most women smiled upon him, but they smiled beneath furtive eyes, sometimes beneath rapacious eyes, and many smiled with reddened lips which strove, uneasily, to provoke a rental; how long was it he wondered, simply, since any woman had smiled as Marian smiled now, for him?
'I think it is a dream,' said Marian.
From the vantage of the yew-hedge, 'I would to Heaven I could think so, too,' observed her father.
III
The younger people had passed out of sight. But from the rear of the hedge came to the Duke and Lord Brudenel, staring blankly at each other across the paper-littered table, a sort of duet. First tenor, then contralto, then tenor again,—and so on, with many long intervals of silence, during which you heard the plashing of the fountain, grown doubly audible, and, it might be, the sharp, plaintive cry of a bird intensified by the stillness.
'I think it is a dream,' said Marian….
'What eyes you have, Marian!'
'But you have not kissed the littlest finger of all. See, it is quite stiff with indignation.'
'They are green, and brown, and yellow—O Marian, there are little gold specks in them like those in
Silence. 'Pee-weet!' said a bird. 'Tweet?'
And Marian replied: 'I am devoted to Dorothy, of course, but I have never admired her fashion of making advances to every man she meets. Yes, she does.'
'Nay, 'twas only her money that lured me, to do her justice. It appeared so very sensible to marry an heiress…. But how can any man be sensible so long as he is haunted by the memory of your eyes? For see how bright they are,—see, here in the water. Two stars have fallen into the fountain, Marian.'
'You are handsomer so. Your nose is too short, but here in the fountain you are quite handsome—'
'Marian,—'
'I wonder how many other women's fingers you have kissed—like that. Ah, don't tell me, Humphrey! Humphrey, promise me that you will always lie to me when I ask you about those other women. Lie to me, my dear, and I will know that you are lying and love you all the better for it…. You should not have told me about Dorothy. How often did you kiss all of Dorothy's finger-tips one by one, in just that foolish, dear way?'
'But who was this Dorothy you speak of, Marian? I have forgotten. Oh, yes—we quarrelled—over some woman,—and I went away. I left you for a mere heiress, Marian. You! And five days, ago while I lay abed, wounded, they told me that you, were to marry Ormskirk. I thought I would go mad…. Eh, I remember now. But what do these things matter? Is it not of far greater importance that the sunlight turns your hair to pure topaz?'
'Ah, my hair, my eyes! Is it these you care for? You would not love me, then, if I were old and ugly?'
'Eh,—I love you.'
'Animal!'
There was a longer silence now. 'Tweet!' said a bird, pertly.
Then Marian said, 'Let us go to my father.'
'To tell him—?'
'Why, that I love you, I suppose, and that I cannot marry Jack, not even to be a duchess. Oh, I did so much want to be a duchess! But when you came back to me yonder in the forest, somehow I stopped wanting anything more. Something—I hardly know—something seemed to say, as you came striding through the dead leaves, laughing and so very pale,—something seemed to say, 'You love him'—oh, quite audibly.'
'Audibly! Why, the woods whispered it, the birds trilled it, screamed it, the very leaves underfoot crackled assent. Only they said, 'You love her—the girl yonder with glad, frightened eyes, Spring's daughter.' Oh, I too, heard it, Marian! 'Follow,' the birds sang, 'follow, follow, follow, for yonder is the heart's desire!'
The Duke of Ormskirk raised his head, his lips sketching a whistle. 'Ah! ah!' he muttered. 'Eureka! I have recaptured it—the message of April.'
IV
When these two had gone the Duke flung out his hands in a comprehensive gesture of giving up the entire matter. 'Well,' said he, 'you see how it is!'
'I do,' Lord Brudenel assented. 'And if you intend to sit patient under it, I, at least, wear a sword. Confound it, Jack, do you suppose I am going to have promiscuous young men dropping out of the skies and embracing my daughter?' The Earl became forceful in his language.
'Harry,—' the Duke began.
'The fellow hasn't a penny—not a stick or a stiver to his name! He's only a rascally, impudent younger son— and even Venour has nothing except Agard Court yonder! That—that crow's nest!' Lord Brudenel spluttered. 'They mooned about together a great deal a year ago, but I thought nothing of it; then he went away, and she never spoke of him again. Never spoke of him—oh, the jade!'
