ROSE FORSTER had felt she must not lure Mr. Arranstoun over to Ebbsworth on false pretences; he was a very much sought after young man, and since his return from the wilds had been very difficult to secure, and therefore it was her duty to give him one of her beautiful Americans at dinner. The Princess was obviously the destiny of her husband with her brother Henry upon the other side, so Michael must take in Mrs. Howard. Mr. Arranstoun was one of the last two guests to assemble in the great drawing-room where the party were collected, and did not hear of his good fortune until one minute before dinner was announced.
Sabine had perhaps never looked so well in her life. She had not her father's nation's love of splendid jewels, and wore none of any kind. Her French mother may have transmitted to her some wonderful strain of tastes which from earliest youth had seemed to guide her into selecting the most beautiful and becoming things without great knowledge. Her ugly frocks at the Convent had been a penance, and ever since she had been free and rich her clothes and all her belongings had been marvels of distinction and simplicity.
Moravia was, strictly speaking, far more beautiful, but Sabine, as Henry had once said, had "it."
Her manner was just what it ought to have been, as she placed her hand upon her husband's arm—perfectly indifferent and gracious, and so they went in to dinner.
Michael had hardly hoped to have this chance and meant to make the most of it. At dinner before a ball was not the place to have a serious discussion about divorce, but was for lighter and more frivolous conversation, and he felt his partner would be no unskilled adversary with the foils.
"So you have got this far north, Mrs. Howard," he began by saying, making a slight pause over the name. "I wish I could persuade you to come over the border to Arranstoun; it is only thirty-five miles from here, and really merits your attention."
"I have heard it is a most interesting place," Sabine returned, suddenly experiencing the same wild delight in the game as she had done in the garden at Héronac. "Have you ghosts there? We do not have such things in France."
"Yes, there are a number of ghosts—but the most persistent and disconcerting one is a very young girl who nightly falls through a secret door into my room."
"How romantic! What is she like?" Two violet eyes looked up at him full of that mischief which lies in the orbs of a kitten when it contemplates some fearsome crime, and has to appear especially innocent.
Michael thrilled. If she had that expression he was quite ready to follow the lead.
"She is perfectly enchanting—shall I tell you exactly what she wears—and her every feature and the color of her eyes? The wraith so materializes that I can describe it as accurately as I could describe you sitting next me."
"Please do."
"She is about five foot seven tall—I mean she has grown as tall as that—when she first appeared she could not have been taller than five foot five."
"How strange!"
"Yes, isn't it—well, she has the most divine figure, quite slight and yet not scraggy—you know the kind, I loathe them scraggy!"
"I hate fat people."
"But she isn't fat. I tell you she is too sweet. She has a round baby face with the loveliest violet eyes in the world and such a skin!—like a velvet rose petal!" His unabashed regard penetrated Sabine who smiled slyly.
"You don't mean to say you can see all these material things in a ghost!" she cried with an enchanting air of incredulity.
"Perfectly—I have not half finished yet. I have not told you about her mouth—it is very curved and full and awfully red—and there is the most adorable dimple up at one side of it, I am sure the people in the ghost world that she meets must awfully want to kiss it."
Sabine frowned. This was rather too intimate a description, but bashfulness or diffidence she knew were not among Mr. Arranstoun's qualities—or defects.
"I think I am tired of hearing what this ghost looks like, I want to know what does she do? Aren't you petrified with fright?"
"Not in the least," Michael told her, "but you will just have to hear about her hair—when it comes down it is like lovely bronze waves—and her little feet, too—they are exquisite enough in shoes and stockings, but without——!"
Here he had the grace to look at his fish which was just being handed.
A flush as pink as the pinkest rose came into Sabine's cheeks—he was perfectly disgraceful and this was of course in shocking taste—but when he glanced up again his attractive blue eyes had her late look of an innocent kitten's in them and he said in an angelic tone:
"She has not a fault, you may believe me, and she jumps up after the fall into the room, and sits in one of my big chairs!"
"Does she scold you for your sins as denizens of another sphere ought to do?" Mrs. Howard was constrained to ask.
"No—she is a little angel and always tells me that sins are forgiven."
"Does she come often?"
"Every single evening when I am alone—and—sometimes, she melts into my arms and stays with me all night. Binko—Ah!—you remember Binko!"—for Sabine's face had suddenly lit up—and at this passionate joy and emotion flooded Michael's and they both stopped dead short in their talk and Sabine took a quick breath that was almost a gasp.
"I remember—nothing," she said very fast, "how should I? The girl whose ghost you are speaking of ceased to exist five years ago—but I—recognize the portrait—I knew her in life—and she told me about the dog—he had fat paws and quantities of wrinkles, I think she said."
"Yes, that is Binko!" and his master beamed rapturously. "He is the most beautifully ugly bulldog in the world, but the poor old boy is getting on, he is seven years old now. Would not you like to see him—again—I mean from what you have heard!"
"I love animals, especially dogs—but tell me, is he not afraid of the ghost?"
Michael drank some champagne, even under all his unhappiness he was greatly enjoying himself. "Not at all, he loves her to come as much as I do. She haunts—both my rooms— and the chapel, too—she wears a white dress and has some stephanotis in her hair—and I am somehow compelled to enact a whole scene with her—there before the altar with all the candles blazing—and it seems as if I put a ring upon her hand—like the one you are wearing there—she has lovely hands."
The color began to die out of Sabine's cheeks and a strange look grew in her eyes. The footmen were removing the fish plates, but she was oblivious of that. Then the tones of Michael's voice changed and grew deeper.
"Soon all the vision fades into gloom, and the only thing I can see is that she is tearing my ring off and throwing it away into the darkness."
"And do you try to prevent her from doing this?" Sabine hardly spoke above a whisper, while she absently refused an entrée which was being handed. To talk of ghosts and such like things had been easy enough, but she had not bargained for him turning the conversation into one of serious meaning. She could not, however, prevent herself from continuing it, she had never been so interested in her life.
"No—I cannot do that—there is an archangel standing between."
At this moment Mrs. Howard's other neighbor claimed her attention; he was a man to whom she had been talking at tea, and who was already filled with admiration for her.
Michael had time for breathing space, and to consider whether the course he was pursuing was wisdom or not. That it was madly exciting, he knew—but where was it leading to? What did she mean? Did she feel at all? or was she one of the clever coquettes of her nation, a more refined Daisy Van der Horn—just going to lead him on into showing his emotion for her, and then going to punish and humiliate him? He must put a firmer guard over himself, for propinquity and the night were exciting influence, and the cruel fact remained that it was too late in any case. Henry's words this afternoon had cast the die forever; he—Michael—could not for any personal happiness be so hideously cruel to his old friend. Better put a bullet through his own brain than that. Whatever should develop on this night, and he meant to continue the conversation as it should seem best to him, and if she fenced too daringly with him to take the button off the foils—but whatever should come of it it should not be allowed to alter his intention of to-morrow instructing his lawyers in Edinburgh to begin divorce proceedings at once. He was like a gambler who has lost his last stake, and who still means to take what joy of life he can before the black to-morrow dawns. So, in the ten minutes or so while Sabine had turned from him, he laid his plans. He would see how much he could make her feel. He would dance with her later and then say a final farewell. If she were hurt, too, he must not care—she had made the barrier of her own free will. The person who was blameless and should not suffer was Henry. Then he began to look at Sabine furtively, and caught the outline of her sweet, averted head. How irresistibly attractive she was! The exact type he admired; not too intellectual-looking, just soft and round and babyish; there was one little curl on her snowy nuque that he longed to kiss there and then. What a time she was talking to the other man! He would not bear it!
And Sabine, while she apparently listened to her neighbor, had not the remotest idea of what he said. The whole of her being was thrilling with some strange and powerful emotion, which almost made her feel faint—she could not have swallowed a morsel of food, and simply played with her fork.
At the first possible pause, Michael addressed her again:
"Since you knew the lady in life who is now my ghost—and she told you of Binko—did she not say anything else about her visit to Arranstoun or its master?"
"Nothing—it was all apparently a blank horror, and she probably wanted to forget it and him."
"He made some kind of an impression upon her, then—good or bad, since she wanted to forget him—" eagerly.
Sabine admitted to herself that the umpires might have called "touché" for this.
"It would seem so," she allowed, with what she thought was generosity.
"That is better than only creating indifference."
"Yes—the indifference came later."
"One expected that; but there was a time, you have inferred, when she felt something. What was it? Can't you tell me?"
Excitement was rising high now in both of them, and the grouse on their plates remained almost untasted.
"At first, she did not know herself, I think; but afterwards, when she came to understand things, she felt resentment and hate, and it taught her to appreciate chivalry and gentleness."
Michael almost cried "touché!" aloud.
"He was an awful brute—the owner of Arranstoun, I suppose?"
"Yes—apparently—and one who broke a contract and rather glorified in the fact."
Michael laughed a little bitterly, as he answered:
"All men are brutes when the moment favors them, and when a woman is sufficiently attractive. We will admit that the owner of Arranstoun was a brute."
"He was a man who, I understand, lived only for himself and for his personal gratification," Mrs. Howard told him.
"Poor devil! He perhaps had not had much chance. You should be charitable!"
Sabine shrugged her shoulders in that engaging way she had. She had hardly looked up again at Michael since the beginning, the exigencies of the dinner-table being excuse enough for not turning her head; but his eyes often devoured her fascinating, irregular profile to try and discover her real meaning, but without success.
"He was probably one of those people who are more or less like animals, and just live because they are alive," Sabine went on. "Who are educated because they happen to have been born in the upper classes—Who drink and eat and sport and game because it gives their senses pleasure so to do—but who see no further good in things."
"A low wretch!"
"Yes—more or less."
Michael's eyes were flashing now—and she did peep at him, when he said:
"But if the original of the ghost had stayed with him, she might have been able to change this base view of life—she could have elevated him."
Sabine shook her head.
"No, she was too young and too inexperienced, and he had broken all her ideals, absolutely stunned and annihilated her whole vista of the future. There was no other way but flight. She had to reconstruct her soul alone."
"You do not ask me what became of the owner of Arranstoun—or what he did with his life."
"I know he went to China—but the matter does not interest me. There he probably continued to live and to kill other things—to seize what he wanted and get some physical joy out of existence as usual."
A look of pain now quenched the fire.
"You are very cruel," he said.
"The owner of Arranstoun was very cruel."
"He knows it and is deeply repentant; but he was and is only a very ordinary man."
"No, a savage."
"A savage then, if you will—and one dangerous to provoke too far;" the fire blazed again. "And what do you suppose your friend learned in those five years of men—after she had ceased to exist as the owner of Arranstoun knew her?"
Sabine laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound.
"Of men! That they are like children, desiring only the toys that are out of reach, wasting their souls upon what they cannot obtain and valuing not at all the gifts of the gods which are in their own possession."
"What a cynical view!"
"Is it not a true one?"
"Perhaps—in some cases—in mine certainly; only I have generally managed to obtain what I wanted."
"Then it may be a new experience for you to find there was one thing which was out of your reach."
He bent forward eagerly and asked, with a catch in his breath:
"And that was——?"
"The soul of a woman—shall we say—that something which no brute force can touch."
The fencing bout was over, the foils were laid aside, and grim earnest was in Michael's voice now—modulated by civilization into that tone which does not carry beyond one's neighbor at a dinner party.
"Your soul—Sabine—that is the only thing which interests me, and I was never able to touch your soul? That is not true, as you know—How dare you say it to me. There was one moment——"
"Hush," she whispered, growing very white. "You must not—you shall not speak to me so. You had no right to come here. No right to talk to me at all—it is traitorous—we are both traitors to Lord Fordyce, who is a noble gentleman above suspecting us of such wiles."
And at that moment, through a gap in the flowers of the long table, they both saw Henry's gray eyes fixed upon them with a rather questioning surprise—and then Mrs. Forster gave the signal to the ladies, and Sabine with the others swept from the room, leaving Michael quivering with pain and emotion.
As for Sabine, she was trembling from head to foot.
During dinner, Moravia had had an interesting conversation with Henry. They had spoken of all sorts of things and eventually, toward the end of it, of Sabine.
"She is the strangest character, Lord Fordyce," Moravia said. "She is more like a boy than a girl in some ways. She absolutely rules everyone. When we were children, she and all the others used to call me the mother in our games, but it was really Sabine who settled everything. She was always the brigand captain. She got us into all the mischief of clandestine feasts and other rule breaking—and all the Sisters simply adored her, and the Mother Superior, too, and they used to let her off, no matter what she did, with not half our punishments. She was the wildest madcap you ever saw."
Henry was, of course, deeply interested. "She is sufficiently grave and dignified now!" he responded in admiration, his worshiping eyes turned in Sabine's direction; but it was only when she moved in a certain way that he could see her, through the flowers. Michael he saw plainly all the time, and perceived that he was not boring himself.
"Her character, then, would seem to have been rather like my friend's, Michael Arranstoun's," he remarked. "They have both such an astonishing, penetrating vitality, one would almost know when either of them was in the room even if one could not see them."
"He is awfully good-looking and attractive, your friend," Moravia returned. "I have never seen such bold, devil-may-care blue eyes. I suppose women adore him; I personally have got over my interest in that sort of man. I much prefer courteous and more diffident creatures."
Lord Fordyce smiled.
"Yes, I believe women spoil Michael terribly, and he is perfectly ruthless with them, too; but I understand that they like that sort of thing."
"Yes—most of them do. It is the simple demonstration of strength which allures them. You see, man was meant to be strong," and Moravia laughed softly, "wasn't he? He was not designed in the scheme of things to be a soft, silky-voiced creature like Cranley Beaton, for instance—talking gossip and handing tea-cups; he was just intended to be a fierce, great hunter, rushing round killing his food and capturing his mate; and women have remained such primitive unspoiled darlings, they can still be dominated by these lovely qualities—when they have a chance to see them. But, alas! half the men have become so awfully civilized, they haven't a scrap of this delightful, aboriginal force left!"
"I thought you said you personally preferred more diffident creatures," and Lord Fordyce smiled whimsically.
"So I do now—I said I had got over my interest in these savages—but, of course, I liked them once, as we all do. It is one of our fatal stages that we have to pass through, like snakes changing their skins; and it makes many of us during the time lay up for ourselves all sorts of regrets."
Henry sought eagerly through the flowers his beloved's face. Had she, too, passed through this stage—or was it to come? He asked himself this question a little anxiously, and then he remembered the words of Père Anselme, and an unrest grew in his heart. The Princess saw that some shadow had gathered upon his brow, and guessed, since she knew that his thoughts in general turned that way, that it must be something to do with Sabine—so she said:
"Sabine and I have come through our happinesses, I trust, since Convent days—and what we must hope for now is an Indian summer."
Henry turned rather wistful eyes to her.
"An Indian summer!" he exclaimed. "A peaceful, beautiful warmth after the riotous joy of the real blazing June! Tell me about it?"
Moravia sighed softly.
"It is the land where the souls who have gone through the fire of pain live in peace and quiet happiness, content to glow a little before the frosts of age come to quench all passion and pleasure."
Henry looked down at the grapes on his plate.
"There is autumn afterwards," he reasoned, "which is full of richness and glorious fruit. May we not look forward to that? But yet I know that we all deceive ourselves and live in what may be only a fool's paradise"—and then it was that he caught sight of his adored, as she bent forward after her rebuke to Michael—and with a burst of feeling in his controlled voice, he cried: "But who would forego his fool's paradise!"—and then he took in the fact that some unusual current of emotion must have been passing between the two—and his heart gave a great bound of foreboding.
For the keenness of his perceptions and his honesty of judgment made him see that they were strangely suited to one another—his darling and his friend—so strong and vital and young.