On that day when George left his Mary at the little lodgings in Meath Street, Battersea, Bill Wyvern returned to Paitley Hill after absence from home for a week upon a visit.
His Margaret was his first thought upon his arrival. Letters between the pair were, by the sharpness of Mr. Marrapit's eye, compelled to be exchanged not through the post but by medium of a lovers' postal box situate in the hole of a tree in that shrubbery of Herons' Holt where they were wont by stealth to meet. Thus when Bill, upon this day of his return, scaled the tremendous wall and groped among the bushes, he saw the trysting bower innocent of his love—then searched and found a letter.
A sad little note for lover's heart. Mr. Marrapit, it said, abed of a chill, prevented Margaret meeting her Bill that afternoon. Her father must be constantly ministered; impossible to say when she would be released. She heard him calling, she must fly to him. With fondest love. No time for more.
The lines chilled Bill's heart. His was a fidgety and nervous love that took fright at shadow of doubt. The week that had divided him from Margaret was the longest period they had not embraced since their discovery one of another. Was it not possible, he tortured himself, that loss of his presence had blurred his image in her heart? Countless heroes of his own stories who thus had suffered rose to assure him that possible indeed it was. The more he brooded upon it the more probable did it become.
Bedtime found him desolated. In apprehension he paced his room. The thought of sleep with this devil of doubt to thump his pillow was impossible. Leaning from his window he gazed upon the stars and groaned; dropped eyes to the lawn, silvered in moonlight, and started beneath the prick of a sudden thought. It was a night conceived for lovers' tryst. He would seek his Margaret's open window, whistle her from her bed, and bring this damned doubt of her to reality or knock the ghostly villain dead.
It was an inspiriting thought, and Bill started to whistle upon it until he remembered the demeanour in which he would have sent forth one of his own heroes upon such a mission. “Dark eyes gleaming strangely from a pale, set face,” he would have written. Bill's eyes were of a clearest, childlike blue which interfered a little with the proper conception of the role he was to play; but blanketing his spirits in melancholy he stepped from his room and passed down the stairs.
That favoured bull-terrier Abiram, sleeping in the hall, drummed a tattoo of welcome upon the floor.
“Chuck it,” said Bill morosely.
The “faithful hound” that gives solace to the wounded heart is a pretty enough thing in stories; Abiram had had no training for the part. This dog associated his master not with melancholy that needed caressing but with wild “rags” that gave and demanded tremendous spirits.
Intelligence, however, showed the wise creature that the tone of that command meant he was to be excluded from whatever wild rag might be now afoot. It was not to be borne. Therefore, to lull suspicion, Abiram ceased his drumming; rose when Bill had passed; behind him crept stealthily; and upon the door being opened bounded around his master's legs and into the moonlight with a joyous yelp.
Fearful of arousing Korah and Dathan in their kennels to tremendous din if he bellowed orders, Bill hissed commands advising Abiram to return indoors under threat of awful penalties.
Abiram frisked and skipped upon the lawn like a young lamb.
Bill changed commands for missiles.
Abiram, entering into the thing with rare spirit, caught, worried, and killed each clod of earth hurled at him, then bounded expectant forward for the next sacrifice that would be thrown for his delight in this entrancing game.
“Very well,” spoke Bill between his teeth. “Very well. You jolly well come, my boy. Wait till you get near enough for me to catch you, that's all.”
Beneath this understanding they moved forward across the lawn and down the road; Abiram sufficiently in the rear to harass rats that might be going about their business, without himself being in the zone of his master's strength.
Heaving a sigh burthened with fond memory as he passed the wall of Herons' Holt where it gave upon the secret meeting-place in the shrubbery, Bill skirted the grounds; for the second time in his life passed through the gate and up the drive.
Well he knew his adored's window. From the shrubbery she had pointed it him. Now with a bang of the heart he observed that the bottom sash stood open so that night breezes, mingling freely with the perfumes of her apartment, unhindered could bear in to her his tremulous love-signals.
He set a low whistle upon the air. It was not louder, he felt, than the agitated banging of his heart that succeeded it.
Again he whistled, and once again. There was a rustling from within.
“Margaret!” he softly called. “Margaret!”
She appeared. The blessed damosel leaned out. About her yearning face the long dark hair abundantly fell; her pretty bed-gown, unbuttoned low, gave him glimpse of snowy bosom, beautifully rounded.
“Oh, Bill!” she cried, stretching her arms.
Then, glancing downwards at her person, she stepped back swiftly. Reappearing, the soft round of her twin breasts was not to view.
She had buttoned up her night-dress.
“Oh, Bill!”
“Oh, Margaret!”
“Wow!” spoke Abiram in nerve-shattering welcome. “Wow!”
The blessed damosel fled. Bill plunged a kick. Abiram took the skirt of it; waddled away across the lawn, his waving stern expressing pleasure at having at once shown his politeness by bidding a lady good evening, and at being, like true gentleman, well able to take a hint.
Bill put upon the breeze:
“It's all right. He's gone.”
No answer. Shuddering with terror lest that hideous wow! had disturbed the house the blessed damosel lay trembling abed, the coverings pressed about her straining ears.
“He's gone,” Bill strained again, his larynx torn with the rasp of whispers that must penetrate like shouts and yet speed soft-shod. “He's gone!”
Margaret put a white leg to the ground—listened; drew forth its companion—listened; glimpsed her white legs; shuddered at such immodesty with a man so close; veiled them to their toes with her bed-gown; listened; stepped again to the window.
“Oh, Bill!”
“Oh, Margaret!”
“Has anyone heard, do you think?”
“My darling, not a soul. It sounded loud to us. Oh, Margaret—”
“Hush! Yes?”
“Do you know why I am come?”
“Hush!—no.”
“I thought—from your note—that you didn't care to see me again. I thought-being away like that—that you found you didn't-love me after all. Oh, I was tortured, Margaret. Oh—!”
“Hush! Listen!”
“Damn!” said Bill.
The blessed damosel poked her beautiful head again into the night. “It's all right. I thought I heard a sound. We must be careful.”
“Oh, Margaret, I was tortured—racked. I had to come to you. Tell me I was wrong in thinking—”
“Oh, Bill, Bill, I—”
This girl was well-nigh in a swoon of delicious excitement. Emotion took her and must be gulped ere she found voice. She stretched her arms down towards him.
“Oh, Bill, I thought so, too.”
A steely pang struck at his heart. “You thought you didn't love me after all?”
“No, no, no.”
Emotion dragged her from the window to her waist. Her long hair cascaded down to him so that the delicious tips, kissing his face, might by his lips be kissed.
“No, no,” she breathed; “I thought the same of you. I thought you might have found—”
“Yes?”
“Hush!”
“Damn!” said Bill.
She reappeared; again her tresses trickled to him. “It's all right. I thought you might have found you didn't love me after all. Dearest, not hearing from you—”
In sympathy of spirit Bill groaned: “What could I do?”
She clasped her hands in a delicious ecstasy. “I know, I know. But you know how foolish I am. I felt—oh, Bill, forgive me!—I felt that, if you had really cared, a way of sending me a message might have been found. Of course, it was impossible. And there was more than that. When we parted last week, I thought you seemed not to care very much—”
“Oh, Margaret!”
“I know, I know. I know now how foolish I was, but that is what I thought—and, Bill, it tortured me. I've not been able to sleep at nights. That is how I was awake just now.”
“Margaret, I believe you're crying.”
“I'm so—so happy now.”
“Oh, so am I! Aren't you glad I came, Margaret?”
She murmured, “Oh, Bill!”; gave him a smile that pictured her answer.
Mutually they gazed for a space, drinking delight.
Her thirst quenched, Margaret said:
“Bill, those nights, those terrible nights when I have been doubtful of you, filled me with thoughts that shaped into a poem last night.”
“A poem to me?”
“About us. Shall I read it?—now that the doubt is all over.”
He begged her read.
She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful moon:
“Our meeting! Do you remember, dear, How Nature knew we met? Twilight soft with a gentle breeze Bearing scent of the slumbering seas; Music sweet—'twas a nightingale, Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail— Golden sky that was flecked with red (Ribands of rose on a golden bed). Ah, love! when first we met!”
She paused. “It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest,” she whispered, “and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That is the imagery of it—as it seemed to me.”
Bill said: “And to me; a beautiful imagery.”
She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: “Oh, it's nothing, really. You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in song. One has to set them down.”
“One is merely the instrument,” Bill said.
“Yes, the instrument.” She hugged the phrase. “The instrument. How cleverly you put things!”
Bill disavowed the gift. Margaret breathed, “Oh, you do; I have so often noticed it.” Bill again denied.
Conventionality demanded this little exchange of them, and to-day the empress sway of conventionality is rarely rebelled. Even, as here, when treading the path of love, the journey must constantly be stopped while handfuls of the sweet-smelling stuff are tossed about our persons. Neglect the duty and you must walk alone. For to neglect conventionality is like going abroad without clothes; the naked man appears. Now, nothing can be more utterly horrid to our senses than a stark woman or stark man walking down the street. We should certainly pull aside the blind to have a peep, and the more we could see of the nakedness the further would we crane our heads (provided no one was by to watch); but to go out and chat, to be seen in company with the naked creature, is another matter. We would sooner chop off our legs. So with the conventions. The fewer of them you wear, the more naked (that is to say, real) do you become. Eyes will poke at you round the blinds, but you must walk quickly past the gate, please. If you will not go through the machine and come out a nice smooth sausage, well, you must remain original flesh and gristle; but you will smell horrid in nice noses.
Is it not warming, as you read this, to know perfectly well that you are not one of the sausages?
When they had sufficiently daubed themselves, Margaret asked:
“Shall I read the next verse? That was the imagery of our meeting; this of our parting.”
Bill gulped. This man was fondling the scented tresses that trickled about his face; speech was a little difficult.
She put her page beneath the moon; gave her voice to its rapture:
“Our parting! Do you remember, dear, How Nature our folly knew? Mournful swish of the sobbing rain; Distant surge of the Deep in pain; Whispering wail of the wandering wind, Seeking, sobbing, a rest to find; Fitful gleam from a troubled sky (Nature weeping to see love die). Ah, love, when last we met!
“It was a perfect day, really,” she said. “Very hot, and just before lunch, do you remember? But there, again, it is the imagery of it as it seemed to our inner selves. It comes to one, and one is the instrument.”
Bill's voice was hoarse. “Margaret, come down to me,” he said.
“I dare not.”
“You must. I must touch you—kiss you. You must come down!”
“Bill, I dare not; I should be heard.”
He bitted his next words as they came galloping up. Dare he give them rein? And then again he bathed in the ecstasy of the scene. The black square of the open window; the scented roses that framed it; the silver night that lit its picture—her dusky face between her streaming hair, her white arms, bare to where the pushed-back sleeves gave them to the soft breeze to kiss, the soft outline of her breast where the press of her weight drew close her gown.
It was not to be borne. The bitted words lashed from his hold. He gasped:
“Then I am coming up!”
Was she aghast at him? he asked himself. He stood half-checked while her steady eyes left his face, roamed from him—contrasting, as ashamed he felt, the purity of the still night with the clamour of his turbulent passions—and settled on an adjacent flowerbed.
At last she spoke, very calmly.
“There is a potting-box just there,” she said. “If you turned it on end you could reach the window, and then—”
The box gave him two feet of reach. He jumped for the ledge—caught it; pulled; fetched the curve of an arm over the sill.
Then between earth and paradise he hung limp; for a sudden horror was in his Margaret's eyes.
She put upon his brow a hand that pressed him back; gave words to her pictured alarm: “A step upon the gravel!”
'Twixt earth and window, with dangling legs and clutching arms, in muscle-racking pain he hung.
Truly a step, and then another step.
And then a very tornado of sound beat furiously upon the trembling night; with it a flash; from it the pattering of a hundred bullets.
Someone had discharged a gun.
As Satan was hurled, so, plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill fell. And now the still air was lashed into a fury of sound-waves, tearing this way and that in twenty keys; now the sleeping garden was torn by rushing figures, helter-skelter for life and honour.
Sounds!—the melancholy bellow of that gardener, Mr. Fletcher, as the recoil of the bell-mouthed blunderbuss he had fired hurled him prone upon the gravel; the dreadful imprecations of Bill striving to clear his leg of the potting-box through whose side it had plunged; piercing screams of Mrs. Major from a ground-floor room; shrills of alarm from Mr. Marrapit; gurr-r-ing yelps from Abiram in ecstasy of man-hunt.
Rushing figures!—Bill, freed from his box, at top speed towards the shrubbery; Mr. Fletcher, up from his fall, with tremendous springs bounding across the lawn; Abiram in hurtling pursuit.
More sounds!—panic screams from Mr. Fletcher, heavily labouring; the protest of a window roughly raised; from George's head, thrust into the night: “Yi! Yi! Yi! Hup, then! Good dog! Sock him! Sock him! Yi! Yi! Yi!”
We must seek the fuse that touched off this hideous turbulence.
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