The Brightener

CHAPTER II

THE HERMIT

Joyce Arnold was ready to begin work at once.

She had, it seemed, already given up her lodgings in the village near Robert Lorillard's cottage. Opal Fawcett had offered the hospitality of her house for a fortnight, and while there Joyce would pay her way by writing Opal's letters in spare hours, the newest secretary being absent on holiday. In the meantime, now that it was decided she should come to me, Miss Arnold would look for rooms somewhere in my neighbourhood.

I let it go at this for a few days. But when just half a week had passed I realized that Joyce Arnold wasn't merely a perfect secretary, she was a perfect companion as well. Not perfect in a horrid, "high-brow" way, but simply adorable to have in the house.

It was on a Wednesday that she brought me Lorillard's letter. On the following Saturday, at luncheon, I suddenly said, "Look here, Miss Arnold, how would you like to live with me instead of in lodgings?"

She blushed with surprise. (She blushed easily and beautifully.)

"Why, I – should love it, of course," she stammered, "if you're really sure that you – "

"Of course I'm sure," I cut her short. "What I'm beginning to wonder is, how I ever got on without you!"

She laughed.

"You've known me only three days and a half! And – "

"Long enough to be sure that you're absolutely IT," said I. "If already you seem to me indispensable, how could Robert Lorillard have made up his mind to part with you, after months?"

I didn't mean to be cruel or inquisitorial. The words sprang out – spoke themselves. But I could have boxed my own ears when I saw their effect on the girl. She grew red, then white, and tears gushed to her eyes. They didn't fall, because she was afraid to wink, and stared me steadily in the face, hoping the salt lake might safely soak back. All the same I saw that I'd struck a hard blow.

"Captain Lorillard was very nice, and really sorry in a way to lose me, I think," she replied, rather primly. "But he told you, didn't he, that he was going away?"

"Oh, of course! Stupid of me to forget for a minute," I mumbled, earnestly peeling a plum, so that she might have time to dispose of those tears without absorbing them. I was more certain than ever that here was a "story" in the broken connection between Joyce Arnold and Robert Lorillard: that if he were really leaving home it was for a reason which concerned her.

It wasn't all curiosity which made me rack my brain with mental questions. It was partly old admiration for Robert and new affection for his late secretary. "Why should he want to get rid of such a girl?" I asked myself, as at last I ate the plum.

The fruit was more easily swallowed than the idea that he hadn't wanted Joyce Arnold to go on working for him. It wouldn't be human for man or woman – especially man —not to want her. But – well – I tried to put the thought aside for the moment, in order to wrestle with it when those eyes of hers could no longer read my mind.

I turned the subject to Opal Fawcett.

"Could you leave Miss Fawcett at once, and come to me?" I asked. "Would she be vexed? Or would you rather stay with her over Sunday?"

"I could come this afternoon," Joyce said. "I'd be glad to. And I don't think Opal would mind. She wanted me at first. But – but – Well, I'm beginning to bore her now; or anyhow, we're getting on each other's nerves."

This reply, and the embarrassed look on Joyce's face, set me going upon a new track. Was Opal Fawcett in the "story" which my imagination had begun to write around Miss Arnold and Robert Lorillard? If so, what could be her part in it?

I found no satisfactory answer. Years ago, when she was on the stage and acting with Lorillard, Opal had perhaps been in love with him, like hundreds of other women. But since then he'd married, and fought in the war, and later had led the life of a hermit, while she pursued her successful "career" in town. It was unlikely that they had seen much of each other, even if their old, slight acquaintance had been kept up at all. Still, Opal might have been curious about Lorillard and the "simple life." She might have welcomed Joyce for the sake of what she could tell of him, and Joyce might have rebelled when she saw what Opal wanted from her.

I thanked my own wits for giving me this "tip." Without it, I mightn't have resisted the strong temptation to proceed with a little dextrous "pumping" on my own – just a word wedged into some chink in the armour now and then, to find out if poor Joyce had fallen a victim to Lorillard's undying charm.

As it was, I determined to shut up like a clam, and do as I would be done by were I in the girl's place. If she'd slipped into loving her employer, and he had thought best to banish her, for her own good, the wound in poor Joyce's self-respect must be as deep as that in her heart. Every sensitive nerve must throb with anguish, and only a wretch would deliberately probe the hurt with questions, in mere selfish curiosity.

"It's not your business," I said to myself. And I vowed to do all I could to make Joyce Arnold forget – whatever it was that she might want to forget.

She did come to me that afternoon. I had one spare room in my flat, and I made it as pretty and homelike as I could with flowers and books and little things I stole from my own quarters. The girl was pathetically grateful! She opened out to me like a flower – that is, in affection. I felt in her a warm, eager anxiety to serve and help me, not for the wages I gave, but for love. It was like a perfume in the place. And Joyce Arnold was intelligent as well as sweet. She had been highly educated, and there seemed to be few things she hadn't thought about. Most of the old aunt's money had been spent in making the girl what she was, so there was little left; but Joyce would always be able to earn her living.

If she tired of secretarial work, she could quite well teach music, both piano and voice production. She had taken singing lessons from a famous and successful man. Had her voice been strong enough, she might have got concert engagements, it was so honey-sweet, so exquisitely trained. But she called it a "twilight voice"; which it really was, and often I gave up going out for the joy of having her sing to me alone in the dusk.

It was only at those times that I knew – actually knew! – how sad she was, to the point of heartbreak. By day, when we worked or talked together, her manner was charmingly bright. She was interested in my affairs, and her quiet, delicious sense of humour was one of her greatest attractions for me. But at the piano, before the lights were on, the girl was at the mercy of her secret, whatever it might be. It came like a ghost, and stared her in the eyes. It said to her: "You can't shut me out. It is to me you sing. I make you sing!"

To hear that "twilight voice" of hers, half crooning, half chanting, those passion-flower songs of Laurence Hope's, or "Omar," would have waked a soul in a stone image!

Good heavens! how could Robert Lorillard have sent her away? How, on the contrary, could he have helped wanting this noble, brave, sweet creature to warm his life for ever?

That's what I asked myself over and over again. And on top of that question another. What if – he hadn't helped it?

It was one evening, while she improvised a queer little "song of sleep" for me that this thought came. It burst like a bombshell in my brain; and the reason it hadn't burst before was because my mind always pictured June and Robert together.

I was lying deep among cushions on a sofa, and involuntarily I started up.

Joyce broke off her song in the midst.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said; "only – it just popped into my head that I'd forgotten to telephone for – for a car to-morrow."

"For a car?" Joyce echoed. "How stupid of me, if you mentioned it! I can't remember – "

"No, I didn't mention it," I said. (No wonder, when I hadn't even thought of it until this minute!) "But I – I meant to. I'd made up my mind to go to 'Pergolas,' the Duchess of Stane's place on the river; you must have seen it when you were working for Robert Lorillard."

It was the first time I'd uttered his name since that impulsive break at the luncheon table, over a fortnight ago now!

Whether or not her face blushed I couldn't see in the twilight, but her voice blushed as she said:

"Oh, yes! I've seen – the gates. Surely the duchess isn't there at this time of the year?"

"She generally takes a 'rest cure' of a week or two at Pergolas this month. It's perfect peace, and you know how dreamlike the river is in autumn."

"I – know," Joyce murmured. "The woods all golden, and mists like creamy veils across the blue distance. I know!"

There was a passion of suppressed longing and regret in her tone.

"Wouldn't you like to go with me?" I coaxed. "It's such lovely country for a spin. And – I've never been there; but I suppose we must pass close to Robert Lorillard's cottage? We go through Stanerton village. We could stop and see if he's still at home, or if he's gone – "

"No – no, thank you, Princess," Joyce said, hastily, "I don't – care very much for motoring. If you're to be away to-morrow I'll get through some mending, and some letters of my own."

I didn't argue. I should have been surprised if she'd accepted. It would have made the thing commonplace. And it would have upset my plan. I can't call it a "deep-laid plan," because I'd laid it on no firmer foundation than the spur of the moment; but I was wildly excited about it. Fully armoured like Minerva it had leapt into my brain while I said to myself, "What if– ?"

Joyce 'phoned to the garage where I hired cars occasionally, and ordered something to come at ten o'clock next morning. For me to take this joy ride meant throwing over a whole day's engagements like so many ninepins. But I didn't care a rap!

I could see when I was ready to start that Joyce was even more excited than I. No doubt she was thinking that, when I came back, I might bring news of him. We spoke, however, only of the duchess.

To me, a harmless, necessary fib isn't much more vicious than a cat of the same description; that is, if the fib is for the benefit of a friend. But I'd rather tell the truth if it can be managed, so I really intended to call on the Duchess. The village of Stanerton – on the outskirts of which Lorillard lived – happened to be on my way to Pergolas. I couldn't help that, could I? So I told my chauffeur to ask for River Orchard Cottage – the address on Robert's note introducing Miss Arnold.

Everyone seemed to know the place. It was half a mile out of the village, and you went to it up a side road: a very old cottage altered and modernized. The name was old, too: it really was an orchard, and it was really on the river. That was what half a dozen people informed us in a breath, and they would have added much information about Lorillard himself if I'd cared to hear. But all I wanted to learn about him from them was whether he had gone away. He hadn't. He had been seen out walking the day before.

"I told you so!" I said to myself.

As the car slowed down and stopped before a white gate I seemed to lose my identity for a moment. It became merged with that of Joyce Arnold. I felt as if she – the real Joyce – had raced here in some winged vehicle of thousand-spirit power, travelling far faster than any road-bound earthly car, and, having waited for me, now slipped into my skin.

The sight of that gate made my heart beat as it must have made hers beat every day when she came in the morning to work. Yes! As I laid my hand on the latch I wasn't my somewhat blasée and sophisticated self: I was the girl to whom this place was Paradise.

The white gate was flanked by two tall clipped yews. Inside, a wide path of irregular paving-stones, with grass and flowers sprouting between, led to a low thatched cottage – oh, but a glorified cottage: a cottage that looked as if it had died and gone to heaven! The flagged path had tubs on either side. In them grew funny little Dutch treelets shaped like birds and animals of different sorts; and the lawn kept all the noble, gnarled giants that once had made it an orchard. The cottage was yellow, like cottages in Devonshire, and the old thatch had the gray satin sheen of chinchilla. A huge magnolia was trained over the front, and climbing roses and wisteria, all in the sere and yellow leaf or bare now; but I could picture the place in spring, when the diamond-paned bow windows sparkled through a canopy of flowers, when the great apple trees were like a pink-and-white sunrise of blossom, and underneath spread a carpet of forget-me-nots and tulips.

How sweet must have been the air then, how blue the river background, and how melodious the low song of a distant weir!

To-day, the air was faintly acrid with the scent of bonfire smoke – the odour of autumn; and the sounds of wind and water over the weir were sad as a song of homesickness.

I tapped an old-fashioned knocker upon a low green door. An elderly maid appeared. I saw by the bleak glint of a pale eye that she meant to say, "Not at home," and hastened to forestall her.

"See if Captain Lorillard is in, and if so tell him that Princess di Miramare has come from town on purpose for a talk with him," I flung in the stolid face.

There was no answer to that except obedience! The woman left me waiting in a delightful little square hall furnished with a very few, very beautiful, old things. And in a minute Robert Lorillard almost bounded out of a room into which the maid had vanished.

It was the first time we had seen each other since the day he married June Dana.

I had sat down on a cushioned chest in the hall. At sight of him I jumped up, and meaning to hold out a hand, found myself holding out two! He took both, pressed them, and without speaking we looked long at each other. For both of us the past had come alive.

He was the same, yet not the same. Certainly not less handsome, but changed, as all men who have been through the war are changed – anyhow, imaginative men. Though he had been back from the Front for over a year (he was invalided out after his last wound, just before the Armistice) the tan wasn't off his face yet, perhaps never would be. There were a few lines round his eyes and a few silver threads in his black hair. He smiled at me; but it was the smile of a man who has suffered, and known a hell of loneliness.

It was Robert who spoke first, saying entirely commonplace things in the beautiful voice that used to thrill London. He was so glad to see me! How nice it was of me to come! Then, suddenly, he remembered something. I could see him remembering. He remembered that he was supposed to be away.

"I ought to be in France," he said. "All my arrangements are made to go. Yet I haven't got off. I'm glad now that I haven't."

"So am I, very glad," I echoed. "I should have been too disappointed! But – I felt you wouldn't be gone."

He looked somewhat startled.

"I always was a procrastinator," he said. "Come into my study, won't you?"

Still holding me by the hand he led me like a child into the room out of which he had shot – an adorable room, with a beamed ceiling and diamond-paned windows looking under trees to the river. In front of his desk – where he could glance up for inspiration as he wrote – was a life-sized portrait of June, by Sargent; June in the gray dress and hat she had worn the day she promised – no, offered– to marry Robert.

"You see!" he said, with a slight gesture toward the picture, with its bunched red-bronze hair and brilliant eyes of blue, "this is where I sit and work."

"And where used Joyce Arnold to sit and work?" something in me blurted out.

The man winced – just visibly – no more. His eyes flashed to mine a kind of challenge. There was sudden anger in it, and pleading as well. Then, of course, I knew– all I had come to find out. And he must have known that I knew!

But I'd come for a great deal more than finding out.

I don't think I'm a coward, yet I was dreadfully frightened – in a blue funk of doing or saying the wrong thing at a moment when it might be "now or never." My knees felt like badly poached eggs with no toast to repose upon. I lost my head a little, and what I did I didn't do really, because it did itself.

I looked as scared as I felt, and gasped: "Oh, Robert!" (I'd never called him "Robert" to his face before; only behind his back.)

My face of fright deflected his rage. You can't be furious with a quivering jelly! But he didn't speak. The challenge in his eyes softened to reproach. Then he looked at the portrait.

"Miss Arnold sat where she, too, could see June," he answered quietly.

"Poor, poor Joyce!" I said. "And poor you!"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Why, I mean – and I, too, can see June while I say it! – I mean that you are making a terrible mistake. Oh, Robert Lorillard, don't pretend not to understand. We're not two strangers fencing! I'm not just a bold creature rushing in where angels fear to tread. I know! – I have rushed in, but I'm not bold. I'm frightened to death. Only – I had to come. Every day I see that glorious girl breaking her heart. She hasn't said a word, or looked a look, or wept a weep. She's a soldier. But she's like a lost soul turned out of Paradise. The more I got to know of her the more I felt you couldn't have sent her away and found another place for her because you were bored. So I came to see you. And you needn't mind my knowing the real reason you sent her out of your house. I won't tell her. If any one does that it must be you. And it ought to be you. You love each other. You belong to each other. You'd be divinely happy together. You're wretched apart."

"You say that?" Robert exclaimed, when by sheer force of lungs I'd made him hear me through. "You – June's friend!"

"Yes. It's because I was her friend, and knew her so well, that I want you to listen to your own heart; for if you don't, you'll break Joyce Arnold's. June wouldn't want you to sacrifice your two lives on the shrine of her memory. She loved happiness, herself. And she liked other people to be happy."

Robert's eyes lit, whether with joy or anger I couldn't tell.

"You think June would be willing to have me marry another woman?" he said.

"Yes, I do, if you loved the woman. And you do love her. It would be useless to tell me you don't."

"I'm not going to tell you I don't. I've tried not to. I hoped she didn't care."

"She does. Desperately, frightfully. I do believe it's killing her."

"God! And she saved my life. Elizabeth, I'd give mine for her, a dozen times over, but – "

"What she needs is for you to give it to her, not for her: give it once and for all, to have and to hold while your heart's in your body."

I fired advice at him like bullets from a Maxim gun, and every bullet reached its billet. I was so carried away by my wish for joy to rise from tragedy that I hardly knew what I said, yet I felt that I had caught Lorillard and carried him with me. The next thing I definitely knew with my mere brain, I was sitting down with elbows on Robert's desk, facing him as he leaned toward me. My whole self was a listening Ear, while he told – as a man hypnotized might tell the hypnotizer – the tale of his acquaintance with Joyce Arnold.

I'd already learned from his letter and from words she had let drop that Joyce had nursed him in a hospital in France, when she was "doing her bit" as a V. A. D. But she had been silent about the life-saving episode, which had won for her a decoration and Robert Lorillard's deep admiration and gratitude.

It seemed that during an air raid, when German machines were bombing the hospital, Joyce had in her ward three officers just operated upon, and too weak to walk. A bomb fell and killed one of these as Joyce and another nurse were about to move his cot into the next ward. Then, in a sudden horror of darkness and noise of destroying aeroplanes, she had carried Robert in her arms to a place of comparative safety. After that she had returned to her own ward and got the other man who lay in his cot, though her fellow nurse had been struck down, wounded or dead.

"How she did it I've never known, or she either," said Lorillard, dreaming back into the past. "She's tall and strong, of course, and at that time I was reduced to a living skeleton. Still, even in my bones I'm a good deal bigger than she is. The weight must have been enough to crush her, yet she carried me from one ward to another, in the dark, when the light had been struck out. And the wound in my side never bled a drop. It was like a miracle."

"'Spect she loved you lots already, without quite knowing it," I told him. "There've been miracles going on in the world ever since Christ, and they always will go on, because love works them, and only love. At least, that's my idea! And I don't believe God would have let Joyce work that one, the way she did, if He hadn't meant her love to wake love in you."

"If I could think so," said Robert, "it would make all the difference; for I've been fighting my own heart with the whole strength of my soul, and it's been a hard struggle. I felt it would be such a hideous treachery to June – my beautiful June, who gave herself to me as a goddess might to a mortal! – the meanest ingratitude to let another woman take her place when her back is turned – even such a splendid woman as Joyce Arnold."

"I know just how you feel," I humoured him. "You remember, I was with June when she threw herself into your arms and offered to marry you. You were in love with her, and you'd never dreamed till that minute there was any hope. But that was a different love from this, I'm sure, because no two girls could be more different, one from another, than June Dana and Joyce Arnold. Your love for June was just glorious romance. Perhaps, if she'd lived, and you and she had passed years together as husband and wife, the wonderful colours of the glory would have faded a little. She tired so of every-day things. But Joyce is born to be the companion of a man she loves, and she would never tire or let him tire. You and June hardly had enough time together to realize that you were married. And it's over three years and a half since she – since the gods who loved her let her die young. She can't come to this world again. She basked in joy herself; and she won't grudge it to you, if she knows. And for you, joy and Joyce are one, for the rest of both your lives."