At The Relton Arms Part 5

"Daddy, _dear_," implored Sonny, tugging at his coat suggestively.

"Oh, the devil take the story!" shouted the musician; "didn't I tell you she never had a daddy? Don't ask so many questions, Sonny."

The big blue eyes became tearful at the unusual tone of anger and at the untimely end of the story, and Digby's conscience smote him a little.

"I aren't crying, only little girls cry," gasped the child between his hardly suppressed sobs. "I was only just thinking, daddy, what a welly funny booful lady she were, daddy."

"Yes, my son," said the musician, very much in the tone of respect he would have used to a man of his own age who was battling with some terrible grief, "yes, my son, she was a very funny beautiful lady, so funny that daddy could not understand her at all, although he loved her so much. And she laughed at daddy, and wouldn't be kind to him, though she was kind to the whole world besides."

The musician almost choked with his own emotion this time; but Sonny jumped up and down with glee at having at last discovered a human chord in the mythical beautiful lady.

"Oh, so she were a _naughty_ booful lady, daddy? Then she won't have jam for tea next Sunday, will she, daddy dear?"

The wooden door that led into the yard creaked open again, and again the red light from the setting sun flooded the little room.

"Yes, Sonny, of course, she was a naughty beautiful lady, that's just what she was! But do you know I've come back to say that I won't be naughty any more just yet, at least if daddy lets me, and I'm going to be kind to him--at least, if daddy wants me. Daddy, do say something.

May I be good for a change, and will you let me be kind to you? I've come to say I am sorry, like a good little girl; and--I may have jam for tea next Sunday, mayn't I? Oh, daddy, do say something, and don't look so doleful! Don't you understand? I was wrong, and you were right, and--oh, how stupid it all is! Why--daddy--I--I don't believe you want me now!"

And Lady Joan flung herself into the old high-backed wooden settle, and crossed her feet, and broke into her maddening, mocking laugh as if to hide something she was ashamed of showing. But the musician, who knew her better than she thought he did, in spite of his almost childish ignorance of woman's nature, went up to her and put the child on her lap, and smiled down into her upturned, laughing face.

"We both want our beautiful lady, don't we, Sonny? And may I make my confession too, Lady Joan? I was not sure that I did want you so desperately after you sent me away just now. But I found that I did directly you opened the door and the sunshine came in, and I can never do without you again. But it is better to understand one another at starting, isn't it?"

"Much better. And ideals are such bosh when we have grown out of our short frocks. So the understanding is quite complete; you don't know how much you love me, so we will call it desperately, and I don't know how much I love you, so we will call it desperately too. You have been in love shoals of times before, and I--well, I am capable of falling in love with some one else on my wedding-day. So neither of us will be disappointed if it does not answer, but we have agreed to try. Hey-day, what fun it is! The lonely lady at the Court marrying the musician at the inn; the lady has the establishment, and the musician has the money to keep it up: if you were truly modern you would have both, and be a risen cabinet-maker. Relton will have enough to talk about for a year.

But you will not behave as if we were engaged, _just_ yet, will you?

I--I don't feel as if I could quite stand it; do you understand?"

He had never heard her voice falter like that before, and he nodded to show that he quite understood. But she sprang to her feet with one of her quick gestures before he had time to realize the intoxicating feeling of that moment, and he experienced a sensation of chill.

"What wickedness to keep this child up so late; come along, Sonny lad, I told Nanny that I would put you to bed for a treat, and daddy is going to stay here and smoke his pipe."

And she vanished up the primitive staircase which led straight from the parlor up to the room above; and daddy was left somewhat with the feeling of having consented to Lady Joan's suggestion of marriage without receiving the right to kiss her, and he sat by the window again and looked among the fruit-trees, and called himself the happiest man in the world, and felt that he would be able to write his Swinburne song when the house was quiet.

A third time the wooden door creaked, and a third time the red sunlight filled the room. But the musician did not notice it, for he was still looking out of the window into the orchard, and he was telling himself with a sense of profound relief that his engagement was at last going right.

There was the sound of a low, soft, glad cry in the little inn parlor, and something glided in noiselessly, hesitated for a moment, and then sped across the ray of light to where he sat by the window. And the musician turned his eyes away from the fruit-trees then, and fixed them on the apparition before him, and a look of dumb amazement began to creep slowly over his face.

"Digby, I've come at last. You said you would not mind waiting ten years for me, and it has only been one; yet, oh! such a weary long one to me, Digby! But it has not been my fault, it hasn't really, dear; they never told me, and papa stopped your two first letters, and Roger Brill--it was Roger, wasn't it?--never brought me the last one at all. It was all a mistake, I can't tell you now, but I found it out and gave them the slip, and came straight here. Oh, Digby, you are not angry with me, are you? I never meant to keep you waiting so, but I did not find it all out till yesterday, so I could not come before. Oh, it has been so sad, waiting for you. And I have been so ill too, Digby; they did not know what was the matter with me, but _I_ knew all the time. It is all over now, though, and we are going to be happy at last, aren't we? And may I have my kiss now, the one you promised me? I think if you had kissed me before I went away I should never have been ill. But I am going to be happy now, so happy. Oh, Digby, I feel so greedy over my happiness that I am frightened of its slipping away again. Is it because I have startled you that you are so silent? Tell me you are not angry with me, Digby,--and--when may I have my kiss, please?"

He took her mechanically into his arms and kissed the mouth that was held up to him, and he experienced dully the sort of shock that an unconventional man feels when a woman he has always considered the type of purity does something which a woman of the world would know better than to risk her reputation by doing. Upstairs, in the room overhead, he could hear Lady Joan singing his child to sleep. He pa.s.sed his hand across his brow and wondered in a vague sort of way how it was all going to end; it seemed years since Lady Joan had spoken to him.

"No, Norah child, of course I am not angry with you; how could any one be that? But--"

"I don't mind anything if you are not angry with me. Only, why are you so quiet? Have you been suffering too, Digby; haven't they been kind to you?"

"Who? the fates? No, I fancy they have not been kind to me. Did you come alone, childie?"

"I came with old nurse; she is at the station. Digby, tell me, have you been ill?"

"No, I have not been ill; I have been working rather hard, and perhaps worrying as well. Forgive me, dear; you must own it is all rather startling?"

She put her arms round him, and laughed her low, soft laugh; and he writhed at the contrast it made to Lady Joan's loud mocking one, which still rang in his ears.

"Of course it is; I feel as if I had begun to live all over again after being asleep in a cold, dark place ever since last year. Have you ever felt like that, Digby? Oh, I have never asked after Sonny; how is he?

Has he gone to bed? May I go up and kiss him?"

"No, stay here," he said vehemently, and then bit his moustache savagely when she opened her great eyes at him; and he added in a quieter tone, "he is quite bonny, but we--we won't disturb him yet. There is a lady with him who--who has been kind to me, and--and she will be coming down perhaps--"

"A lady? Oh, I see," wonderingly. "I am glad she has been kind to you--very. Do you like her?"

Should he tell her then? It was not yet absolutely necessary.

"Yes, I like her," he said in a toneless voice, and he forced himself to smile rea.s.suringly at her.

"I should like to see her, then. Hark, she is coming downstairs; how merry she is, your friend!" as the full healthy laugh came down the stairs.

If there had been any means, however desperate, of putting off the crisis for another ten seconds, the musician would have stooped to it.

But he realized that there was none, and with the same flash of consciousness as he realized it he braced himself to meet the event as manfully as such a pitiful situation would allow.

"Norah," he said sternly, putting her off his knee and standing up in front of her, "I have something to say to you. Will you be brave and hear me? It may all come right, of course, but--this lady was kind to my boy--and to me, when no one else would hold out a hand to us; and I thought you had forgotten me, and so--I asked her to marry me. It was only this afternoon, and of course--"

The noisy peals of laughter came right into the room through the inner door, and Lady Joan stood in the dull glow which was all that remained of the sunlight.

"Oh, daddy, what do you think Sonny said? Why--who--what is it?"

Something white, and quivering, and small, had fallen with a thud across her feet, and again the low, long child's cry with the joy gone out of it sounded in the stillness of the summer evening.

The musician had sunk on a chair with his face in his hands.

CHAPTER VI.

"My engagements never do seem to go right," sighed the musician.

He was sitting in the little bedroom upstairs by the side of his sleeping son, with his thumb tightly clasped in a fat brown hand. But he was not thinking of Sonny, although the clasp of the tiny fingers was comforting, as betokening some one who still believed in him.

"There is a curse upon my love affairs," said the musician. "Why should those letters never reach her? And why did she choose that moment of all others to come back? Another man might do a dirty trick and not be found out. G.o.d knows I never wanted to harm a woman in my life, least of all those two; and yet I've blundered in and got engaged to both of them at once; and I've broken the heart of the purest and most innocent child--merciful heavens, what haven't I done? And here I am, left up here like a great fool, while they are tearing my character to ribbons downstairs. Was there ever such an unfortunate brute as myself?"

The musician's voice became husky, whether from self-pity, or from the recollection of the poor little scared face of the child who had found her happiness only to lose it again, it would be impossible to say.

"Women are such deuced odd things," continued the musician, complainingly; "they expect you to look on while they scratch one another's eyes out, and then if you touch a hair of their heads you have the whole lot of them against you. Bless her! I would give my life to undo what I have done to her to-day."

Which did he mean? Perhaps he hardly knew. But Lady Joan did all the while that she sat by Norah Bisley on the horse-hair sofa, downstairs in the oak-panelled parlor.

The child stirred in his sleep.

"Happy Sonny," murmured the musician, sentimentally, "your turn has yet to come. Why can't children always remain children? Norah ought never to have grown up; she was meant for eternal childhood. It was a mistake to make Lady Joan a child at all, she ought to have been born a full-grown woman. _I_ ought never to have been born at all, of course. Who arranges these things?"