The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories Part 5

Then he woke. Who was she? Where did she come from? From the flame-colored draperies that floated round her, to the tiny Mercury wings on her small Greek head, she was a being transitory and fugitive, standing out against the dull background with an effect of unreality.

Rudolph Wetterman came in, his broad expanse of gleaming shirtfront creaking as he walked. They went down informally to dinner.

Allegra Kerr talked to her host. John Segrave had to devote himself to Maisie. But his whole mind was on the girl on the other side of him. She was marvelously effective. Her effectiveness was, he thought, more studied than natural. But behind all that, there lay something else. Flickering fire, fitful, capricious, like the will-o'-the-wisps that of old lured men into the marshes.

At last he got a chance to speak to her. Maisie was giving her father a message from some friend she had met that day. Now that the moment had come, he was tongue-tied. His glance pleaded with her dumbly.

"Dinner-table topics," she said lightly. "Shall we start with the theatres, or with one of those innumerable openings, beginning, 'Do you like -?'"

John laughed.

"And if we find we both like dogs and dislike sandy cats, it will form what is called a 'bond' between us?"

"a.s.suredly," said Allegra gravely.

"It is, I think, a pity to begin with a catechism."

"Yet it puts conversation within the reach of all."

"True, but with disastrous results."

"It is useful to know the rules - if only to break them."

John smiled at her.

"I take it, then, that you and I will indulge our personal vagaries. Even though we display thereby the genius that is akin to madness."

With a sharp unguarded movement, the girl's hand swept a winegla.s.s off the table. There was the tinkle of broken gla.s.s. Maisie and her father stopped speaking.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Wetterman. I'm throwing gla.s.ses on the floor."

"My dear Allegra, it doesn't matter at all, not at all." Beneath his breath John Segrave said quickly: "Broken gla.s.s. That's bad luck. I wish - it hadn't happened."

"Don't worry. How does it go? 'Ill luck thou canst not bring where ill luck has its home.'"

She turned once more to Wetterman. John, resuming conversation with Maisie, tried to place the quotation. He got it at last. They were the words used by Sieglinde in the Walkure when Sigmund offers to leave the house.

He thought: "Did she mean -"

But Maisie was asking his opinion of the latest revue. Soon he had admitted that he was fond of music.

"After dinner," said Maisie, "we'll make Allegra play for us."

They all went up to the drawing room together. Secretly, Wetterman considered it a barbarous custom.

He liked the ponderous gravity of the wine pa.s.sing round, the handed cigars. But perhaps it was as well tonight. He didn't know what on earth he could find to say to young Segrave. Maisie was too bad with her whims. It wasn't as though the fellow were good-looking - really good-looking - and certainly he wasn't amusing. He was glad when Maisie asked Allegra Kerr to play. They'd get through the evening sooner. The young idiot didn't even play bridge.

Allegra played well, though without the sure touch of a professional. She played modern music, Debussy and Strauss, a little Scriabine. Then she dropped into the first movement of Beethoven's Pathetique, that expression of a grief that is infinite, a sorrow that is endless and vast as the ages, but in which from end to end breathes the spirit that will not accept defeat. In the solemnity of undying woe, it moves with the rhythm of the conqueror to its final doom.

Towards the end she faltered, her fingers struck a discord, and she broke off abruptly. She looked across at Maisie and laughed mockingly.

"You see," she said. "They won't let me."

Then, without waiting for a reply to her somewhat enigmatical remark, she plunged into a strange haunting melody, a thing of weird harmonies and curious measured rhythm, quite unlike anything Segrave had ever heard before. It was delicate as the flight of a bird, poised, hovering - Suddenly, without the least warning, it turned into a mere discordant jangle of notes, and Allegra rose laughing from the piano.

In spite of her laugh, she looked disturbed and almost frightened. She sat down by Maisie, and John heard the latter say in a low tone to her: "You shouldn't do it. You really shouldn't do it."

"What was the last thing?" John asked eagerly.

"Something of my own."

She spoke sharply and curtly. Wetterman changed the subject.

That night John Segrave dreamed again of the House.

John was unhappy. His life was irksome to him as never before. Up to now he had accepted it patiently - a disagreeable necessity, but one which left his inner freedom essentially untouched. Now all that was changed. The outer world and the inner intermingled.

He did not disguise to himself the reason for the change. He had fallen in love at first sight with Allegra Kerr. What was he going to do about it?

He had been too bewildered that first night to make any plans. He had not even tried to see her again. A little later, when Maisie Wetterman asked him down to her father's place in the country for a weekend, he went eagerly, but he was disappointed, for Allegra was not there.

He mentioned her once, tentatively, to Maisie, and she told him that Allegra was up in Scotland paying a visit. He left it at that. He would have liked to go on talking about her, but the words seemed to stick in his throat.

Maisie was puzzled by him that weekend. He didn't appear to see - well, to see what was so plainly to be seen. She was a direct young woman in her methods, but directness was lost upon John. He thought her kind, but a little overpowering.

Yet the Fates were stronger than Maisie. They willed that John should see Allegra again.

They met in the park one Sunday afternoon. He had seen her from far off, and his heart thumped against the side of his ribs. Supposing she should have forgotten him - But she had not forgotten. She stopped and spoke. In a few minutes they were walking side by side, striking out across the gra.s.s. He was ridiculously happy.

He said suddenly and unexpectedly: "Do you believe in dreams?"

"I believe in nightmares."

The harshness of her voice startled him.

"Nightmares," he said stupidly. "I didn't mean nightmares."

Allegra looked at him.

"No," she said. "There have been no nightmares in your life. I can see that."

Her voice was gentle - different - He told her then of his dream of the white house, stammering a little. He had had it now six - no, seven times. Always the same. It was beautiful - so beautiful!

He went on.

"You see - it's to do with you - in some way. I had it first the night before I met you -"

"To do with me?" She laughed - a short bitter laugh. "Oh, no, that's impossible. The house was beautiful."

"So are you," said John Segrave.

Allegra flushed a little with annoyance.

"I'm sorry - I was stupid. I seemed to ask for a compliment, didn't I? But I didn't really mean that at all. The outside of me is all right, I know."

"I haven't seen the inside of the house yet," said John Segrave. "When I do I know it will be quite as beautiful as the outside."

He spoke slowly and gravely, giving the words a meaning that she chose to ignore.

"There is something more I want to tell you - if you will listen."

"I will listen," said Allegra.

"I am chucking up this job of mine. I ought to have done it long ago - I see that now. I have been content to drift along knowing I was an utter failure, without caring much, just living from day to day. A man shouldn't do that. It's a man's business to find something he can do and make a success of it. I'm chucking this, and taking on something else - quite a different sort of thing. It's a kind of expedition in West Africa - I can't tell you the details. They're not supposed to be known; but if it comes off well, I shall be a rich man."

"So you, too, count success in terms of money?"

"Money," said John Segrave, "means just one thing to me - you! When I come back -" he paused.

She bent her head. Her face had grown very pale.

"I won't pretend to misunderstand. That's why I must tell you now, once and for all: I shall never marry."

He stayed a little while considering, then he said very gently: "Can't you tell me why?"

"I could, but more than anything in the world I want not to tell you."

Again he was silent, then he looked up suddenly and a singularly attractive smile illumined his faun's face.

"I see," he said. "So you won't let me come inside the House - not even to peep in for a second? The blinds are to stay down."

Allegra leaned forward and laid her hand on his.

"I will tell you this much. You dream of your House. But I - I don't dream. My dreams are nightmares!"

And on that she left him, abruptly, disconcertingly. That night, once more, he dreamed. Of late, he had realized that the House was most certainly tenanted. He had seen a hand draw aside the blinds, had caught glimpses of moving figures within.

Tonight the House seemed fairer than it had ever done before. Its white walls shone in the sunlight. The peace and the beauty of it were complete.

Then, suddenly, he became aware of a fuller ripple of the waves of joy. Someone was coming to the window. He knew it. A hand, the same hand that he had seen before, laid hold of the blind, drawing it back. In a minute he would see - He was awake - still quivering with the horror, the unutterable loathing of the Thing that had looked out at him from the window of the House.

It was a Thing utterly and wholly horrible, a Thing so vile and loathsome that the mere remembrance of it made him feel sick. And he knew that the most unutterably and horribly vile thing about it was its presence in that House - the House of Beauty.

For where that Thing abode was horror - horror that rose up and slew the peace and the serenity which were the birthright of the House. The beauty, the wonderful immortal beauty of the House was destroyed for ever, for within its holy consecrated walls there dwelt the Shadow of an Unclean Thing!

If ever again he should dream of the House, Segrave knew he would awake at once with a start of terror, lest from its white beauty that Thing might suddenly look out at him.

The following evening, when he left the office, he went straight to the Wettermans' house. He must see Allegra Kerr. Maisie would tell him where she was to be found.

He never noticed the eager light that flashed into Maisie's eyes as he was shown in, and she jumped up to greet him. He stammered out his request at once, with her hand still in his.

"Miss Kerr. I met her yesterday, but I don't know where she's staying."

He did not feel Maisie's hand grow limp in his as she withdrew it. The sudden coldness of her voice told him nothing.

"Allegra is here - staying with us. But I'm afraid you can't see her."

"But -"

"You see, her mother died this morning. We've just had the news."

"Oh!" He was taken aback.

"It is all very sad," said Maisie. She hesitated just a minute, then went on. "You see, she died in - well, practically an asylum. There's insanity in the family. The grandfather shot himself, and one of Allegra's aunts is a hopeless imbecile, and another drowned herself."

John Segrave made an inarticulate sound.

"I thought I ought to tell you," said Maisie virtuously. "We're such friends, aren't we? And of course Allegra is very attractive. Lots of people have asked her to marry them, but naturally she won't marry at all - she couldn't, could she?"

"She's all right," said Segrave. "There's nothing wrong with her."

His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e and unnatural in his own ears.

"One never knows; her mother was quite all right when she was young. And she wasn't just - peculiar, you know. She was quite raving mad. It's a dreadful thing - insanity."

"Yes," he said, "it's a most awful Thing -"

He knew now what it was that had looked at him from the window of the House.

Maisie was still talking on. He interrupted her brusquely.

"I really came to say good-bye - and to thank you for all your kindness."

"You're not - going away?"

There was alarm in her voice.

He smiled sideways at her - a crooked smile, pathetic and attractive.

"Yes," he said. "To Africa."

"Africa!"

Maisie echoed the word blankly. Before she could pull herself together he had shaken her by the hand and gone. She was left standing there, her hands clenched by her sides, an angry spot of color in each cheek.

Below, on the doorstep, John Segrave came face to face with Allegra coming in from the street. She was in black, her face white and lifeless. She took one glance at him then drew him into a small morning room.

"Maisie told you," she said. "You know?"