Chapter II

MAX MEBIVAI, was tying his black tie with great care that evening in front of the tall swinging glass in his room, and wondering whether his face was really quite as brick-red as it appeared, when a tap came on the door, and Norah demanded if she might come in. •

Max was extremely pleased with himself. It was the first stalk of the season, and he had got his stag; and that surely was enough to make any man happy; but there were other reasons as well, which he was just beginning to suspect but had not yet examined very closely.

" Yes: come in," he said.

Norah was just a shade too complete to satisfy an artist's eye, but there was no doubt that she was very good-looking, even in a brother's opinion, and he watched her without speaking as she came across to the window-seat. She was in a filmy kind of white gown that suited her slender dark grace very well, and she carried her crown of black hair really splendidly. She was as dark as her mother had been, with the same regular small features, and vivid brown eyes, but without any sign yet of her mother's meek pathos.

" Well," she said, " I hear you got your stag."

" I did," said Max, looking for his waistcoat.

" And a twelve-pointer? "

" He is," said Max, beginning to put it on.

"I've just left Marion," went on Norah, beginning 18 to swing the window-tassel. " She says she's not a bit tired, of course."

" I suppose she would say so," remarked Max, taking up his dinner-jacket. "My word! She can go. Never once asked to sit down, or anything."

" Yes; she's strong enough," murmured Norah, staring out at the still bright evening outside.

" Look here," said Max, " you've got your mysterious air on. What's the matter? "

Norah nodded.

" Yes," she said. " It's father, of course. He doesn't like her having gone with you a bit. He was talking about it to mother on the terrace this morning."

Max burst out with enough promptness to show that he had a bad conscience.

"What blithering rot!" he said. "How could I say ' No,' when she asked to come, right out? "

" I know: but that's what he doesn't like."

" Good Lord! And he thinks he's modern! Why, what does he think'll happen? "

Norah swung the tassel a little more vehemently, and her brother arranged his cuffs.

" I think he thinks she's not our sort — that a girl of our sort wouldn't have asked such a thing."

Max snorted.

" Probably not. A girl of our sort, to use your own beastly phrase, would have been more likely to have gone stalking herself and taken me with her. That's what Gladys What's-her-name did in the next forest last year; only she would not let Johnnie come — said it would tire him too much. Talking of that, how's Jerry? "

Norah smiled.

" Dear Jerry! He... he sat about with me all the morning."

" And went to lie down in the afternoon, no doubt."

" I think he did doze a little," admitted Norah, who was not in the least sensitive on the point. " And I really don't see that plunging about on the moors all day, and coming back with a face like a beet "

" No! I say. Am I as red as all that? "

Max examined himself again in the glass.

"Well; but about Marion "

"I think it's a lot of rot, if you ask me," commented Max, still intent on his complexion. " And I'm astonished the governor doesn't see it — I mean that a Genius is above all that sort of thing — conventions and that. That's just exactly a part of her — take it or leave it, you know. By the way, she said she'd sing to-night."

"Max!"

He was hunting for his small flat gold matchbox, and did not appear to hear.

"Where the blazes that new chap Charles puts all my things, I can't make out," he said.

"Max!"

"Ah! — here it is.... Yes?"

"I'm going to say something that'll make you angry."

He turned so abruptly and promptly that again it was evident he was not easy in his mind.

" Look here, old girl: you'd better not. You and I manage very well so long as we don't interfere in the other's job. You've got yours, and I've got mine. Well let's keep to them."

Norah rose.

" I wonder whether you're wise," she said meditatively, staring out again over the steep pine plantation that fell away rapidly behind the house to the deep valley and the great hills opposite, all blue in the sunset shadow. " Why, there's the moon coming up."

She turned again. They were good friends, these two.

" All right," she said, " I won't. But remember I've warned you."

Max felt extraordinarily happy and content as he strolled out on to the terrace with his cigarette and Gerald (in that order), after dinner that night, leaving his father and the parish minister who had been bidden to dine, to find their own way to the hall. He had shot his stag; and the pleasant evening glow of the day had been brought to the surface, so to speak, by his hot bath before dinner, and his excellent meal closed by two glasses of the very best port-wine. Also his artistic appreciation, he was telling himself, had been aroused by Marion's promise to sing just one song.

The house was the result of a real triumph of engineering. Out of the vast mountain shoulder that sloped steeply down towards the valley at the northern end of which lay Loch Droom, a huge terrace had been blasted, wide at the northern end, and narrowing, in the shape of a long spoon, to a breadth sufficient to hold a carriage drive, twisting away to the south. At the northern end the house had been built, a vast grey stone place, erected round a little court, with the usual capped Scotch towers at the four corners. Then pines had been planted in every direction, above and below the house, which gave it a protected kind of air; and terraces had been built to the north and west, resembling ramparts, the northern one giving access by broad steps to the flower-garden that looked towards the loch. All such vulgar things as kitchen-gardens and stables were completely invisible.

The air was still comparatively bright, though the sun had long ago set, and mingled with the moonlight that blazed down from the great silver shield over the Home Loch above the house, had a strangely beautiful effect, as if for once day and night had thrown their glories into a common stock. The flowers were drowsy, but not asleep, and the scent of mignonette lay heavy and perfumed on the air; the colours of the late geraniums were still ardent, but the moonlight refined and softened their brightness.

"Well, you've been slacking it, as usual, I hear," said Max.

" My dear chap, that's what I've come to Scotland for — complete rest and change."

The young man who so defended himself was very true to his type. He was the younger son of an Irish peer who had never done anything except live on his estates, which he had declared to be occupation enough for any one in these days; and he had not only lived but had died on them, leaving his eldest son to reign in his stead, and Gerald to pursue his vocation in the Home Civil Service. It was difficult for any one to discover exactly in what this vocation consisted, beyond affording its pursuer an excellent excuse to refuse any invitations he didn't wish to accept; but Gerald always carried with him a small leather case, inscribed with his name in full, and was accustomed to inquire for this at railway stations; and it was understood by such of his friends as did not know him very well, to be bulging with State documents of the highest importance.

Max did not quite know how Gerald had dawned over his horizon: he became aware of him, soon after Easter, as haunting the house in Park Lane — (that delightful Moorish erection about half way up, built by the eminent Australian, which the Merivals had taken on a long lease seven years ago) — and had grown to accept him, so inevitably that by the time July came it was scarcely any shock at all to find that Norah had accepted him as her future husband. He had no objections to him whatever, except that he seemed an amateurish kind of idler, whereas Max was a very busy professional; he had no particular vices so far as appeared, and was an extremely easy person to get on with, with a tendency to remain, in contentment, just where he was put, which was a great convenience at times. In any case, it was Norah's business, and not Max's, and he had complete confidence in her power to manage, at any rate, her own affairs.

" I can't make out how you can stand it," he said. " And I'm all in a glow."

" I hate glows," murmured Gerald.

" And I feel virtuous, too," said Max.

" Ah! there I envy you indeed," murmured Gerald, even more softly. " Because you've killed something, I suppose? "

" Lord! What an evening! " remarked Max. Gerald's last observation really was not worth answering. He remained staring out at the warm light on sky and loch.

*' Aren't we going to hear the prima donna? " asked Gerald plaintively, from a stone seat.

"Yes, yes; presently. I think I shall stop out and listen here."

He did not quite know why he had taken this sudden resolution. Partly he was aware that his father's slight displeasure had affected him; partly he thought that it would be pleasant to listen to that beautiful voice out here, alone in the scented dusk. Honestly he was not quite sure as to which motive were the stronger. But it would never do for Gerald's presence to interrupt him, in any case. He turned to him from the low terrace-wall, and the sight of that trim dawdler became suddenly irritating.

" I wish to goodness you'd smoke or drink or do something," he said. " But if you won't, at least you can go and do tame cat, can't you, -and turn over the pages, or whatever it is? "

".Why will you be so cruel? " murmured Gerald again, who affected the feminine pose now and again. Max's irritation rose suddenly higher. It was entirely superficial: he really did quite like Gerald, but at this moment that smooth, expressionless face and that sleek, black hair brushed straight back from the forehead, and that neat figure lounging on the seat, annoyed him like a smell of patchouli in a lavender-garden.

" Go on, old chap," he said, " I'll be in presently. I want to think about... about the stag. All over again."

" Oh, well! " said Gerald, and rose.

" She's not a bad little thing," he added, " very artless and all that, of course; but not pretty."

"Eh?"

" Is she really all that people say? " he continued, staring blankly out at nothing. " I mean her voice, and all that? She's not a bit like any other prima donna I've ever seen."

" For God's sake stop jawing," snapped Max. " I've only heard her once myself; and she'll be beginning directly, I expect."

" Oh, well! " said Gerald again. He still stood an instant, then he turned and went up the terrace towards the great lighted doors, set wide in the hall to receive the scented air of the evening. As soon as he had gone up the stairs and disappeared, Max went swiftly down the steps into the garden, turned a corner or two and sat down invisible from the house, yet himself capable of hearing the music which he knew presently would begin.

Ill

He did not know himself in the least in this new experience through which he seemed to be passing. Certainly he had been in love, and that was precisely why he did not believe himself in love now. There was a particular kind of softness associated in his mind with previous experiences — a desire to humiliate himself and yet to patronise; to buy small expensive presents or flowers out of season and offer them with a negligent sort of tremulousness. But he had no wish at all to offer small expensive presents to Marion; or to patronise her, or to humiliate himself; and there appeared to be no softness anywhere. Yet he liked her particularly and, simultaneously, did not know why he liked her. Their adventure to-day represented exactly the relationship in which he now wished to stand with her • — a comradeship as between two men: she in homespun, he in tweed. That was the kind of thing.

He began to think it all over once more.

Old Jerry was right. She was not at all pretty in any accepted sense: she was far more like a young boy than a mature girl; and yet she was oddly attractive. It was not that she was at all unfeminine: in fact, he could not quite imagine her doing and saying the kind of things that other girls " of his sort " did. There was even a touch of Victorianism about her. (He supposed that that might perhaps be the effect of her religion.) Yet she was attractive.

There was first her little pointed face, of which the whole life appeared to be concentrated in the eyes. Her heavy dark hair formed a framework at the top; her thin lips, rather grave in line, except when they trembled or twitched, as their manner was, with the beginnings of laughter, said nothing in particular. Then there was her straight little figure and her thin, nervous hands. Really there was nothing more to say.... Yes: there was one more point, and that was the air of romance that lay round her, anticipatively at least, from her connection with the stage. Certainly this was an element. It had occurred to him in the forest, yesterday, quite distinctly, several times, that it was really rather romantic and exciting, to be climbing like this with a future prima donna. That suggested all kinds of things: he remembered seeing Tetrazzini a few years ago; and the flowers and the lights about her; and thinking that it really must mean something to be her friend. And now here was he, on the reverse side of the medal, a friend — (he thought he might call it that) — in private life of one who might, possibly, one day be as Tetrazzini herself. Certaily that added a romance — this element of the stage: but he assured himself that it was but a very slight one.

Then he remembered the first time he had seen her, at tea one evening in Park Lane, and how almost remarkably undistinguished he had thought her to be a friend of Norah's, who usually had a more flamboyant taste. He had handed her bread and butter, he remembered, and had presently made an excuse to get away to the smoking-room where Jerry was already established; and they had not even spoken of her. True, as he had been crossing the hall half an hour later he had stopped to listen to a voice pealing from the drawing-room overhead — a voice of an extraordinary freshness and force — and it was not until he had listened for a minute or two that he had remembered that Norah had said something at lunch about a new prima donna she had " discovered." He had gone upstairs at that, just in time to find the girl standing by the piano and putting her music together — a little flushed and smiling, with her eyes tremendously alive.

And that was the first time he had met her; and that was the manner in which he had first perceived that she was not so completely ordinary as she appeared.

Well; he had met her perhaps half a dozen times after that; and on no one of those occasions had he been aware of any marked attraction towards her, though he certainly liked her more every time. Then she had come to Scotland, a fortnight ago; and he had awakened on the first morning after her arrival with a distinct sensation of pleasure at the thought that she was there. He had taken her and Norah up to fish in the Home Loch that evening, with another girl who hacf since gone again: and it was then that a sense of distinct comradeship had dawned upon him. She was so natural and humorous and boyish. Certainly she had not exactly the manner of girls whom he believed to be of " his sort "; there was always a faint air about her of being particular about her behaviour; but she was none the worse for that. Then if this was all the tale, why was it that this sense of comradeship — for he was certain it was no more than that — so strangely disturbed him?... Was it perhaps the stage-romance, after all?

He got up presently and began to walk about on the further terrace of the garden, whence he could see up, over the inner wall, with the curved steps in the middle, into the lighted windows of the great hall that looked towards Loch Droom. He wondered why the music had not begun, and stood a moment looking up.

The doors were set wide through which Gerald had passed just now, and he could see right across to the fireplace on one side and the foot of the carved staircase on the other. His father was standing with his back to the fire, a thin, round-shouldered figure, more like a lawyer than a banker, clean-shaven, with iron-grey hair, rather resembling a polite eagle. Norah was sitting on a low chair beside him; and Max could make out the top of Gerald's head over the back of a chair in the fore-ground. His mother was invisible.

Really it was a wonderful place, to be set here, in the wilds of Ross-shire. The windows to right and left glowed with painted glass; and there were other windows lighted in the dining-room and little drawing-room to the left. Overhead the great grey mass of house, bordered by the round-capped towers, rose, light against the pines on the hill and dark against the luminous evening sky. With small local concessions it was simply a great English country-house, planted in the wilderness.

Then, suddenly, he saw her coming down the last broad flight of stairs, in her white dress, carrying a large thin book. Ah! she had been to fetch her music.

He went hastily back to his seat against the rocks, having just caught a glimpse of his father's figure making a courteous movement forward from the hearth. He threw away his cigarette, sat down quickly, crossed his legs and set himself to listen.

The music began with four arpeggio chords, played lightly, and then the voice came in. Now if there is one art in existence of which the transcription in words is supremely impossible, it is that of music. It is possible to describe, in a fashion, colouring and line and shape, and even dramatic art; but music, imitative as it is of nothing, must always be untranslatable, and the more so if it is the music of a voice.

It was not a song that he had ever heard before; and when he inquired later as to its name and composer, the information meant nothing to him, except that the composer must be a Pole. In itself the air might have been that of a nursery rhyme, simple, slow and inevitable, and actually childish. But there were two circumstances that gave it distinction. First there was the accompaniment. There were three verses; and in the first the chords were what the air itself would suggest — as simple as water or air: it was as if a child sang to herself by the side of a brook in summer. The bars of accompaniment that followed changed the atmosphere altogether, as if a storm approached; and the second verse ended in a medley of crashing notes, as if the storm had broken. The third Terse was the most poignant of all, for while the air remained the same, the accompaniment coloured and transformed it entirely and unexpectedly into a song of dreadful loneliness and desolation.

The second circumstance was the voice; and here description breaks down altogether. Only those who heard Marion Tenterden sing can even imagine it. But it may be said, for those who never heard her, that she sang not so much like a woman as like a boy, with a tone of an extraordinary innocence and directness. It was not that she had no passion; those who heard her sing Elsa in Lohengrm can speak to that; but that even her passion was that of a child (and there is none more tragic) as her joy was that of a child also. It would seem, from what has been said, that she did not possess a true dramatic soprano at all; and there were critics who made that statement on the occasion of her first appearance at Covent Garden; but they were in a hopeless minority and always remained so. With regard to the public, there was never any question at all; and the public, after all, is the last arbiter.

The effect upon Max was overwhelming, for, of his own purpose he had placed himself under just those circumstances in which it would be most forcible. He had been out with this extraordinary girl all day in a situation that was at once intimate and natural: they had climbed together and laboured together, and talked like two boys: and now he had deliberately isolated himself from his fellows, and even from her, with the express intention of letting her influence, transmitted through by far the greatest faculty which she possessed, play straight upon him.

As he listened it seemed to him as if she sang to him and to him only. In the first verse it was as if he, as an invisible traveller, had come upon a happy child playing in a meadow, singing as she played; as if she had lifted up her face, looked at him, and continued singing as if unconscious that he was there. In the second verse the sky had darkened, and he had seen her terrified and miserable, yet still singing as if at once to reassure herself and to appeal for help; and he could do nothing. Then, in the third verse, the storm was gone, but the meadow was in ruins, and the child brokenhearted; yet still she sang from her desolation, alone and unbef riended; and he could not help her. He was an imaginative young man on very elementary lines.

When the song ended he mechanically took out his cigarette-case again, opened it, drew out a cigarette, and remained, tapping it on the palm of his hand, meditative and motionless. Then he heard very distinctly Norah's voice from the door of the hall.

" Where did you say he was? "

He stood up as he heard a murmur from Gerald's voice answering.

" Oh! " said Norah, " let's all go down to him. What a delicious evening! "

Max crouched a little; then he took a couple of quick steps to safety; and went down the stairs that led from the garden to the woods beneath.