Part 18 (2/2)

It was as a flower he looked at her, no more. It was all a dream, of course. It had come in dream-fas.h.i.+on, it would go in the fas.h.i.+on of a dream. At that moment she was not a warm human girl with a lovely face.

She was not the clever, lonely, subtle-simple maiden in the house of books. She was a flower he had met.

His mind began to weave words, the shuttle to glide in the loom of the poet, but words came to him that were not his own.

”Come hither, Child! and rest; This is the end of day, Behold the weary West!

”Now are the flowers confest Of slumber; sleep as they!

Come hither, Child! and rest.”

And then he sighed, for he thought of the other poet who had written those lines and of what had brought him to his dreadful death.

Why did thoughts like these come into the flower garden?

How true--even here--were the words he had put upon the t.i.tle-page of the book which had made him famous--

”_Say, brother, have you not full oft Found, even as the Roman did, That in Life's most delicious cup Surgit Amari Aliquid!_”

The girl heard him sigh and turned quickly. She saw that her friend's face was overcast.

It was so much to her, this moment, she was so happy since she had stepped from the hot streets of the city into fairyland with the Magician, that there must be no single shadow.

”Come!” she said gaily, ”this is perfect but there are other perfect things waiting. Wave your wand again, Prospero, and change the magic scene.”

Lothian jumped up from his seat.

”Yes! on into the sunset. You are right. We must go before we are satisfied. That's the whole art of living--Miranda!”

Her eyes twinkled with mischief.

”How old you have grown all of a sudden,” she said, but as they pa.s.sed through the inn once more he thought with wonder that if six years were added to his age he might have been her father in very fact. Many a man of forty-one or two had girls as old as she.

He sent her to the motor, on pretence of stopping to pay for the milk, but in the little bar-parlour he hurriedly ordered whiskey--”a large one, yes, only half the soda.”

The landlord poured it out with great speed, understanding immediately.

He must have been used to this furtive taking in of the fuel, here was another accustomed acolyte of alcohol.

”Next stop Brighton, sir,” he said with a genial wink.

Lothian's melancholy pa.s.sed away like a stone falling through water as the car started once more. He said something wildly foolish and discovered, with a throb of amazement and recognition, that she could play! He had never met a girl before who could play, as he liked to play.

There was a strain of impish, freakish humour in Lothian which few people understood, which few _sensible_ people ever can understand. It is hardly to be defined, it seems incredibly childish and mad to the majority of folk, but it sweetens life to those who have it. And such people are very rare, so that when one meets another there is a surprised and delighted welcome, a freemason's greeting, a shout of joy in Laughter Land!

”Good heavens!” he said, ”and you can play then!”

There was no need to mention the name of the game--it has none indeed--but Rita understood. Her sweet face wrinkled into impish mischief and she nodded.

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