The Lady Paramount

by Henry Harland

  XIV

  Adrian was clearly in a state of excitement. His hair was ruffled, hispink face showed a deeper flush, his lips were parted, his bosom heaved.

  He halted near the threshold, he threw up his hands, he rolled hiseyes, he nodded. It was patent that something had happened.

  "Oh, my dears! my dears!" he gasped.

  His dears attended, curious, expectant. But as he stood silent, andmerely cast intensely significant glances from one to the other, andthence to the walls and ceiling, Anthony, constituting himselfspokesman for the company, asked, "Well--? What's the row?"

  "Oh, my dears!" Adrian repeated, and advanced a few steps further intothe room, his hands still raised.

  "What _is_ it?" besought Susanna, breathless.

  "Oh, my dearie dears!" he gasped.

  He sank upon a chair.

  "I must have a cup of tea before I can speak. Perhaps a cup of teawill pull me together."

  Susanna hastily poured and brought him a cup of tea.

  "Ministering angel!" was his acknowledgment. He tasted his tea. "Butoh--unkind--you 've forgotten the sugar." He gazed helplessly at thetea-table.

  Anthony brought him the sugar-bowl.

  "Are those cruffins?" he asked, eyeing a dish on the cake-stand.

  "They 're mumpers," said Miss Sandus, pushing the cake-stand towardshim. "But you 're keeping us on tenter-hooks."

  "I 'm _so_ sorry. It's beyond my control. I must eat a mumpet.Perhaps then I 'll be able to tell you all about it."

  He ate his mumpet--with every sign of relish; he sipped his tea; hisaudience waited. In the end he breathed a deep, long sigh.

  "I 've had an experience--I 've had the experience of my life," he said.

  "Yes--?" said they.

  "I could n't lose an instant--I had to run--to tell you of it. I feltit would consume me if I could n't share it."

  Their faces proclaimed their eagerness to hear.

  "May I have another cup?" he asked Susanna.

  This time, however, he rose, and went to the table.

  "The world is so strange," he said.

  "Come! we 're waiting for the experience of your life," said Anthony.

  "You must n't hurry me--you must n't worry me," Adrian remonstrated."I 'm in a very over-wrought condition. You must let me approach it inmy own way."

  "I believe the flighty creature has forgotten it," said Anthony.

  "Flighty creature?" Adrian levelled eyes black with reproach upon him.Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Justbecause I had a witty mother,--just because I 'm not a stolid,phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,--just because I 'm sensitive andimpressionable,--he calls me flighty. But you know better, _don't_you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, youknow that I 'm really as steady and as serious as the pyramids ofEgypt. Even my very jokes have a moral purpose--and what I teach inthem, I learned in sorrow. Flighty!" He shot another black glance atthe offender, and held out his cup for a third filling.

  "Blessings be on the man who invented tea," he devoutly murmured. "OnFriday especially"--he appealed to Susanna--"_is n't_ it a boon? Idon't know how one could get through Friday without it. You poor dearfortunate Protestants"--he directed his remark to Miss Sandus--"have noconception how frequently Friday comes. I think there are sevenFridays in the week."

  Susanna was softly laughing, where (in that wonderful, crisp, fresh,close-fitting, blue-grey gown, with its frills and laces andembroideries) she sat in the corner of a long, red-damask-covered sofa,by the prettily decked tea-table. Anthony, standing near her, lookingdown at her, was conscious of a great content in his heart, and of agreat craving. "How splendid she is. Was there ever such hair? Werethere ever such eyes, such lips? Was there ever such a frock? Andthen that faint, faint, faintest perfume, like a remembrance ofviolets!" I daresay something to this effect was vaguely singingitself to his thoughts.

  "But the experience of your life? The experience of your life?" MissSandus insisted.

  "He's clean forgotten it," Anthony assured her.

  "Forgotten it? Tush," Adrian flung back, with scorn. "But you 're allso precipitate. One has to collect one's faculties. There are fiftypossible ways of telling a thing--one must select the most effective.And then, if you come to that, life has so many experiences, and somany different sorts of experience. Life, to the man with an open eye,is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments. I never could andnever shall understand how it is possible for people to be bored. Whatdo you say "--he looked towards the piano--"to my singing you a littlesong?"

  "You 're inimitable--but you 're inimitably exasperating." Miss Sandusgave him up, with a resigned toss of the head.

  "Do sing us a little song," Susanna begged.

  He set off, dancing, in the direction of the instrument. But midwaythere he stopped, and half turned round, poising, as it were, in hisflight.

  "Grave or gay? Sacred or profane?" he asked from over his shoulder.

  "Anything--what you will," Susanna answered.

  "I 'll sing you a little Ave Maria," he decided. Whereupon, instead ofproceeding, he turned his back squarely upon the piano, and squarelyfaced his hearers.

  "When a musician composes an Ave Maria," he instructed them, "what heought to try for is exactly what those nice old Fifteenth Centurypainters in Italy tried for when they painted their Annunciations. Heshould try to represent what one would have heard, if one had beenthere, just as they tried to represent what one would have seen. Now,how was it? What would one have heard? What did our Blessed Ladyherself hear? Look. It was the springtime, and it was the end of theday. And she sat in her garden. And God sent His Angel to announcethe 'great thing' to her. But she must not be frightened. She, sodear to God, the little maid of fifteen, all wonder and shyness andinnocence, she must not be frightened. She sat in her garden, amongher lilies. Birds were singing round her; the breeze was whisperinglightly in the palm-trees; near-by a brook was plashing; from thevillage came the rumour of many voices. All the pleasant, familiarsounds of nature and of life were in the air. She sat there, thinkingher white thoughts, dreaming her holy day-dreams. And, half as if itwere a day-dream, she saw an Angel come and kneel before her. But shewas not frightened--for it was like a day-dream--and the Angel's facewas so beautiful and so tender and so reverent, she could not have beenfrightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her,and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiarmusic of the world went on--the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind,the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all wenton--there was no pause, no hush, no change--nothing to startleher--only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become asingle sound. All the sounds of earth and heaven, the homely, familiarsounds of earth, but the choiring of the stars too, all the sounds ofthe universe, at that moment, as the Angel knelt before her, drewtogether into a single sound. And 'Hail,' it said, 'hail Mary full ofgrace!'"

  For a minute, after he had finished, Adrian stood still, and no onespoke. Then he returned to the fireside, and sank back into his chair.

  "What a beautiful--what a divinely beautiful--idea," Susanna said atlast, with feeling.

  "Beautiful," emphatically chimed in Protestant Miss Sandus.

  "Stand still, true poet that you are,--I know you, let me try and nameyou," laughed Anthony, from the hearth-rug.

  "Chrysostom--he should be named Chrysostom," said Miss Sandus.

  "The world is a garden of beautiful ideas," was Adrian's modestacceptance of these tributes. "One only has to cull them. Butnow"--he rose--"I must toddle home. Are you going my way?" he inquiredof Anthony.

  "What?" protested Miss Sandus. "You're leaving us, without telling theexperience of your life--the experience that you 'had to run' to tellus!"

  "And without singing us your song," protested Susanna.

  Adrian wrung his hands.

  "Oh, cruel ladies!" he complained. "H
ow can you be so unjust? I havetold you the experience of my life. And as for singing my song--"

  "He can always leave off singing when he hears a master talk," put inAnthony.

  "As for singing my song," said Adrian, ignoring him, "I must go homeand try to write it."