That's a 'Penelope secret,' as Francesca says.
Perhaps you doubt my intuitions altogether. Perhaps you believe in
your heart that it was an ordinary ball, where a lot of stupid
people arrived, danced, supped, and departed. Perhaps you do not
think his name was Terence or hers Patricia, and if you go so far as
that in blindness and incredulity I should not expect you to
translate properly what I saw last night under the oak-tree, the
night of the ball on the opposite side, when Patricia made her
debut.
Chapter XIV. Love and lavender.
How well I remember our last evening in Dovermarle Street!
At one of our open windows behind the potted ferns and blossoming
hydrangeas sat Salemina, Bertie Godolphin, Mrs. Beresford, the
Honourable Arthur, and Francesca; at another, as far off as
possible, sat Willie Beresford and I. Mrs. Beresford had sanctioned
a post-prandial cigar, for we were not going out till ten, to see,
for the second time, an act of John Hare's Pair of Spectacles.
They were talking and laughing at the other end of the room; Mr.
Beresford and I were rather quiet. (Why is it that the people with
whom one loves to be silent are also the very ones with whom one
loves to talk?)
The room was dim with the light of a single lamp; the rain had
ceased; the roar of Piccadilly came to us softened by distance. A
belated vendor of lavender came along the sidewalk, and as he
stopped under the windows the pungent fragrance of the flowers was
wafted up to us with his song.
'Who'll buy my pretty lavender?
Sweet lavender,
Who'll buy my pretty lavender?
Sweet bloomin' lavender.'
The tune comes to me laden with odours. Is it not strange that the
fragrances of other days steal in upon the senses together with the
sights and sounds that gave them birth?
Presently a horse and cart drew up before an hotel, a little further
along, on the opposite side of the way. By the light of the street
lamp under which it stopped we could see that it held a piano and
two persons beside the driver. The man was masked, and wore a soft
felt hat and a velvet coat. He seated himself at the piano and
played a Chopin waltz with decided sentiment and brilliancy; then,
touching the keys idly for a moment or two, he struck a few chords
of prelude and turned towards the woman who sat beside him. She
rose, and, laying one hand on the corner of the instrument, began to
sing one of the season's favourites, 'The Song that reached my
Heart.' She also was masked, and even her figure was hidden by a
long dark cloak the hood of which was drawn over her head to meet
the mask. She sang so beautifully, with such style and such
feeling, it seemed incredible to hear her under circumstances like
these. She followed the ballad with Handel's 'Lascia ch'io pianga,'
which rang out into the quiet street with almost hopeless pathos.
When she descended from the cart to undertake the more prosaic
occupation of passing the hat beneath the windows, I could see that
she limped slightly, and that the hand with which she pushed back
the heavy dark hair under the hood was beautifully moulded. They
were all mystery that couple; not to be confounded for an instant
with the common herd of London street musicians. With what an air
of the drawing-room did he of the velvet coat help the singer into
the cart, and with what elegant abandon and ultra-dilettantism did
he light a cigarette, reseat himself at the piano, and weave Scots
ballads into a charming impromptu! I confess I wrapped my shilling
in a bit of paper and dropped it over the balcony with the wish that
I knew the tragedy behind this little street drama.
Willie Beresford was in a royal mood that night. You know the mood,
in which the heart is so full, so full, it overruns the brim. He
bought the entire stock of the lavender seller, and threw a shilling
to the mysterious singer for every song she sung. He even offered
to give - himself - to me! And oh! I would have taken him as gladly
as ever the lavender boy took the half-crown, had I been quite,
quite sure of myself! A woman with a vocation ought to be still
surer than other women that it is the very jewel of love she is
setting in her heart, and not a sparkling imitation. I gave myself
wholly, or believed that I gave myself wholly, to art, or what I
believed to be art. And is there anything more sacred than art? -
Yes, one thing!
It happened something in this wise.
The singing had put us in a gentle mood, and after a long peroration
from Mr. Beresford, which I do not care to repeat, I said very
softly (blessing the Honourable Arthur's vociferous laughter at one
of Salemina's American jokes), "But I thought perhaps it was
Francesca. Are you quite sure?"
He intimated that if there were any fact in his repertory of which
he was particularly and absolutely sure it was this special fact.
"It is too sudden," I objected. "Plants that blossom on shipboard-"
"This plant was rooted in American earth, and you know it, Penelope.
If it chanced to blossom on the ship, it was because it had already
budded on the shore; it has borne transplanting to a foreign soil,
and it grows in beauty and strength every day: so no slurs, please,
concerning ocean-steamer hothouses."
"I cannot say yes, yet I dare not say no; it is too soon. I must go
off into the country quite by myself and think it over."
"But," urged Mr. Beresford, "you cannot think over a matter of this
kind by yourself.
