The Magpies Nest

by Isabel Paterson

  Hope did not rise at his entrance, but offered him her hand, still clutching little Bobby with a kind of desperation, and terribly conscious of her tumbled hair. Bobby had pulled it down into her eyes, and her collar was unfastened, and she felt too confused to correct either negligence. It would have been like decking herself for his approval, and she wanted him, somehow, to accept her as "a poor thing, but his own," without garnishment.

  "How domestic you look," he said, laughing, "But I am horribly domestic," she assured him.

  He laughed again, and insisted on hearing the rest of the story, looking at her sketches with real interest and some amazement, such as most of us feel when one we know displays a talent, however slight. Achievement, to the majority of us, seems to be possible only to persons we do not know; super-beings, not accessible in daily life.

  "But you're alarmingly clever," he said, to her great embarrassment.

  She clutched Bobby till he squirmed, and murmured, "No, no," very positively. Then the baby insisted on being let go; she led him to the door, came back and sat down tentatively. She felt as if she must entertain Tony, although she herself wished merely to sit and see him opposite her. But she must have talked of something, for they laughed a great deal in the next half-hour, and at the end of it he was sitting beside her on the cushioned wicker settee. The awkwardness had passed.

  Tony Yorke enjoyed life because he never knew exactly what he was going to do, and so suffered no disappointments, while at the same time everything had for him the flavour of novelty. He had not meant to make love to Hope when he set out to see her, but neither had he any resolution formed against it. He followed the line of least resistance. When he touched her hand in taking a match from her fingers, he had not meant to retain it, but he did. It lay in his, submissive and yet uncertain; and then he captured the other one and drew her toward him. It was dusk now; she had not put on the lights, but her clear yet clouded blue eyes, fixed on his, had an illumination of their own, and her hands were pearly white in his brown ones. She said nothing as he bent to her, but watched him, and he waited on her word, ready to release her, even while he still drew her closer. Then her eyelids fell softly, and he knew he was going to kiss her.

  And when he touched her cool, trembling mouth he knew that, however incredible it would have seemed but an hour earlier, he loved her.

  He had been aware of a kind of charm that had fallen on them at their first meeting, but had afterward put it down to the music, the excitement of the dance, the exotic atmosphere of an assemblage of young and light-hearted pleasure-seekers. Now, with her in his arms, he knew she had sounded the deeps of his nature —shallow water all, but all of him. He was essentially a lover of women, not of one woman, but at the least he loved them all for their fineness, and his own type of woman was not the type that touched him emotionally. Rather, perhaps, he was all things to all women —but himself first and last.

  His tribute was the conventional one, but still again his best, and all he had, and even a little more. For he spoke of marriage, not that night, but the next time. And he knew quite well that, by his own standard, he could not afford to marry. Subconsciously, he had always expected to marry a girl with money. Not for her money, but it would just happen so. Yet he said, after Hope had come forward timidly and put her hands in his:

  "I'm going to marry you, you know."

  "Are you?" she said, and might have added, "'I have laid my life at thy feet; do as it please thee with it, for what shall please thee is sweet.' "

  But neither then nor ever was she able to put into words to him all the romance and wonder he meant to her. No doubt they would be married; she had not really thought of that, although she had often contemplated her own possible marriage before meeting him. One had to be born; one had to die; one had to be married also; these were the inevitable trilogy. And since marriage was the only one of the three in which the principal actor had any say, it lent itself generously to speculation. Very erratic speculation. But the fact is that, not out of lawlessness, but in keeping with its own laws, romantic love does not trouble about marriage. It can feed on moonlight, nourish itself on sonnets. So to Hope the idea of marrying Tony was quite by the way. But of course if he said so they would be married. That would not make any difference.

  After he had gone, however, she treasured the words, as a guarantee of the permanence of her happiness. Him she had never doubted as loving her always, but an instinct as old as time and the changing seasons had warned her that this wonder would not last. Not any more does one expect spring to remain after its appointed period. Something, somehow, would come between them, and leave her only a memory. To this absurd tangle of "for ever" and "but a little while" Tony had brought the word marriage like a sword, and the knot was cut cleanly. He had spoken. He would overawe the face of Fate.

  Mary noticed she no longer complained of the stagnation of life, though on the surface it was all the same. At hazard, Mary guessed correctly: being in love was itself an adventure, and all-absorbing. The impatience of her moments of waiting for Tony was not her old tugging at the leash. She even withdrew as far as possible what tentative feelers she had thrown out before. With Ned she was distrait to the point of rudeness. He tried to sulk. She did not even notice, and he returned, after telling Lisbeth and Mary in strict confidence that she was a disagreeable little beast and that only his high regard for them made him tolerate her. She had always been high-handed with Allen Kirby, but Allen's philosophy permitted him to enjoy what he could get. He had never made any claims. He was always ready, if she had nothing better to do. And since she liked him very well, and he had accepted with equanimity her first tacit definition of their relations, she did not feel that they infringed upon Tony's possesion of all that was herself.

  But with Edgerton she was vaguely troubled, and seemed to be in a perpetual retreat. He felt her slipping away from him, half surmised the truth, but could put no name to the cause. Of her life he knew nothing except what she told him herself. And she had the straightforward reticence of the truthful. Clumsily he tried to hold her, accepting each rebuff with a dogged gentleness that made her feel pitiful toward him. At the same time she was at a loss to understand what he wanted. He had so much already.

  Once she voiced the question to Mary. Edgerton had been to see her. He came but the once. The last time he had been in town she had put him off prettily, because she had an engagement with Tony. Her rudeness smote her; in answer to a note Mary had tossed in her lap, she had telephoned, told him to call. He had been strangely unwilling, though plainly he wanted to see her. But he came.

  What she remembered most was the way his eyes followed her about the room, as if photographing every trivial gesture she made. When she gave him her hand he tried to take her in his arms, and she said "No, no," and avoided him. Afterwards, just as the first time, she shyly gave him her cheek to kiss, as an amende. But his uneasiness perplexed her.

  "What is it?" she asked. "Aren't you comfortable? Have a cigarette. I'm going to make some coffee."

  It seemed he did not want coffee, and she sat pondering him. "You're different," was all she could make of it.

  "No, you are," he returned bluntly. "Well, I might have known it would come. I say..."

  "Yes?"

  "If—if anything goes wrong, if I can help you, let me know." And he was for going. "Oh, why?" she said gently. "It's early."

  She held him by the lapel of his coat, looking up at him engagingly, and he would have kissed her again. But he knew too well she had nothing for him. And, after all, with a heavy heart he knew he had nothing for her.

  "No, I must. I've got some things to see to. Emily, my daughter, is coming up. I want you to meet her."

  "I should like to," said Hope bravely, concealing her horror and alarm at the idea of meeting a strange girl.

  There was a certain incredibility, too, about his having a grown daughter. Hope had been bred to the old order. A man married was married, and that was the end of him. Edg
erton, appearing always alone, had somehow in her mind extricated himself from that fixed position, and now it seemed she must replace him, and he really would not quite fit. He would not fit anywhere; that was the trouble. A man of his age. She had dissociated him from all that, his age, his circumstances, his very physical appearance, at last; she no longer felt inclined to giggle secretly at the spectacle of his grey hairs abasing themselves before her triumphant youth; and now she would have to laboriously recreate him in her mind. Actually, she never did. It would have comforted him to know that, strangely. But he never did know it.

  After he had gone she interrogated Mary, as she had been wont to question Agnes.

  "He must be worried about something," she said sagely, interrupting Mary's peaceful scribbling in the bedroom. "He seemed to be on pins and needles."

  "It was me," said Mary, disregarding syntax, and further replied to Hope's stare. "He wondered where I might be; he feels rather silly before me. Did he ask?"

  "No. Was that it?"

  Mary nodded, smiling.

  "Certainly. He could feel my eye gimleting through the keyhole. Wicked child, why don't you let that poor man alone!"

  "I don't do anything to him," said Hope indignantly.

  "Horrid little flirt," said Mary calmly.

  "I am not!"

  "No? What then do you want with all those men?" Mary's voice, sweetly lazy and receptive, wooed to confidence.

  "Only four," Hope protested. "I don't flirt with them!"—she paused a long time—"Maybe you can understand. It's like this: there are so many things I'd like to do and see and feel, all at once; I should like to reach out in every direction. I wish the world were an orange and I could eat it..."

  "An apple, you mean," murmured Mary. "Well?"

  "When I hear of a strange country, I long to be there immediately," Hope pursued resolutely. "To read of some new discovery makes me wish I were at the inventor's elbow; to hear of a big adventure fills me with an awful longing to have experienced it. And I'd like to be a man; but I'd like to be a woman, too. Of course I simply can't have any of those things. But Ned and Allen and Con Edgerton and all of them"—she hesitated obviously over Tony Yorke's name—"they're my foreign countries, my other lives. I explore them and watch them: I take some of their lives from them. Because they let me see themselves. So do you, maybe Lisbeth does; but no one else. People in a crowd aren't interesting. A crowd brings out points of resemblance; in extreme cases it turns into one creature, a mob! But that wasn't what I started to say, was it?"

  "No," said Mary. "Never mind, je vous comprends. Yes—'But he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.' "

  "I've died a million times here in the last two years," retorted Hope. "I think I'm getting used to it now."

  "You don't fidget so much," agreed Mary. "But is that it? Is—it...?"

  There was no answer.

  "Aren't you engaged to Tony Yorke?"

  Hope looked up quickly, her eyes round with surprise, a defensive blankness clouding them.

  "Why do you ask that?" she parried.

  "Because I have no manners," Mary smiled. "Now aren't you?" But her real reason she could not tell.

  "Yes," said Hope, rosily shamefaced and a little proud. "But I'll never forgive you if you tell any one. You won't, will you?"

  "Not unless you say I may," Mary hesitated. "But you ought to announce it. Did—did Tony ask you not to?"

  "No, of course not," said Hope placidly astonished. "We never spoke of it. Who cares, anyway? No one would be interested, except maybe you and Lisbeth. And I don't want to be served up with the sandwiches at every afternoon tea from now till next year. If you tell I'll hate you!"

  "As you say," agreed Mary, secretly resolved to alter that decision. "When shall you be married?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Sometime." Hope laughed happily.

  "It will be never," said Mary to herself. But aloud she spoke, "I forgot to say the usual thing, my dear. But you know I hope you find the magpie's nest."

  "What magpie's nest?" inquired Hope, round-eyed again.

  "A façon de parler, dear; the French say happiness is to be found in a magpie's nest. Because the magpie always builds out of reach!"

  Hope smiled to herself, with deep assurance.

  "But I forgot to ask you," she said, "what does Mr. Edgerton want?"

  Mary, in silent despair, refused to answer.

  CHAPTER X

  GOSSIP that builds up slowly, like accretions to a coral reef, is more dangerous and difficult than a rumour that runs like sudden flame in dry grass. That will burn itself out, and new grass grow. But the other remains, fetters its hapless object; unless it concerns one of unusual mental and spiritual stature, who can calmly rise clear and use it as a footing. And that takes time.

  These tiny, ever-increasing tributes of idleness and malice Mary dreaded for Hope, saw them piling about her, and was helpless. Warn her? It would not help. The girl might struggle to amend, but wanted experience to perceive her error. She would be simply overwhelmed, frightened and sickened of the unprovoked baseness it would seem to show her in human nature. She had never injured anyone; lacking the flavour of reprisal, the attack would seem merely wanton. Hope still had that terrible sense of poetic justice discernible in young, and, unhappily, inarticulate children. She would see herself punished for an unintended fault. She would not know how to recover herself and strike back, and the wound would be poisoned thereby.

  There was nothing to be done. And perhaps luck would incline the other way. If there was such a thing as fool's luck—well, Hope deserved it. She juggled her own fortunes as carelessly as if they were ivory instead of crystal.

  Emily Edgerton's visit, though delayed, had materialised. She was much lunched and refreshed with vast quantities of tea by the local ladies, but Hope had met her first. Emily was just eighteen, but tall and well-grown, attractive with health and good nature and her father's millions. She was brown, and rather pretty; brown eyes, brown hair, a few golden freckles, and a figure rounded from tennis and dancing. She was armed point-de-vise with that knowledge of security which is the portion of daughters of the rich. Hope wondered and envied. Mary understood, and wished Hope might have a few years of the same ease, to put her on her feet.

  This was at tea, and they were planning some way to pass the evening without boredom—a difficult thing in that city. Nothing offered but a second-rate theatrical performance; it would undoubtedly be second-rate, since none others came so far from the centres of civilisation. But Edgerton and Emily professed themselves quite willing to take what chance there might be of a smile, and while he was thinking whom he might ask to complete the party—"I'd feel altogether too greedy, with three pretty women to myself," he said—Tony Yorke was observed on the veranda. He was brought in, like the wedding guests who were gathered in the hedges and by-ways; and the party was declared filled, for their box would not possibly hold more than five.

  So they sat very splendidly in the stage box; there were only four boxes and they were all stage boxes. One could not see all that went on on the stage, but Mary said the audience was much more amusing anyway. From the other side of the house, Mrs. Shane nodded to Mary, scrutinised Hope through an opera-glass and smiled at Tony.

  Tony and Mary tossed the ball between them at first. She knew him, heart and soul, reading him, perhaps, through another she had once known. But she had grown clever now: so that he could not guess how clever she was. "A silly muddle," she was saying to herself before the evening was well begun, looking at Hope, slim and shrinking in her black gown, with drooped lids, so that Mary's eyes outshone her, and the rose of Emily Edgerton's cheek. With a little pang at heart Mary saw that Edgerton still turned to her. After all, he was twice the man Tony was; it had never been her surface that had caught him. For all his simplicity, he phrased himself very neatly, apropos of what Mary did not catch.

  "I can see through a ladder when there's a lantern on the other side."

>   "Well, daddy, I always told you I wasn't a ladder," remarked Emily cheerfully, and pinched his arm. That was about the depth of the conversation.

  "Aren't you?" murmured Hope idiotically, and they laughed until Mrs. Shane heard them.

  "Are you?" asked Tony very seriously, addressing Hope.

  She rallied.

  "Yes, I am," she declared. "Anyone can see through me, or put a foot on me." Her eyes acknowledged that he at least could.

  "Your vocation," said Mary, "is evidently marriage."

  "Marriage isn't a vocation," returned Hope lightly, swimming on the tide of her own frivolity; "it's an accident. And accidents never happen to me; I'm always on the verge of them, right under the chariot wheels, you may say, but some rude person always rescues me."

  She avoided Tony's glance as she spoke, Another woman would have looked at him with coquettish denial of her words. Mary saw Hope's attitude in advance; what hurt and shocked her despite herself was that Tony too looked deliberately preoccupied and gay. Ah, he should have been possessive, given himself away. He left his rightful part to Edgerton—who accepted it. It was a muddle, indeed.

  "Oh, you'll marry," said Edgerton rather gloomily.

  She shook her head, contradicting, with a little lift of her eyelashes at him.

  "Why do you think so?"

  But he did not seem able to say. Tony had fallen into a low-toned conversation with Emily Edgerton; Mary, smiling dreamily out over the orchestra, felt like an exceedingly exclusive audience. Tony had got Emily's fan, and they retreated behind it, and Emily dimpled and smiled—she was really rather charming, and Tony's eyes had not forgotten their old trick "The next day?" Mary heard him ask. "Perhaps," said Emily. "Shall we all go?" She looked at the others. "If you like," said Tony gallantly.

  Later, he confessed to himself that the idea of squiring a nursery chit for a whole afternoon's ride out to the big dam was rather boring—since she had not included the others, despite her query—but, hang it, she had been openly expectant of his pursuing the acquaintance. It was plain she had taken Tony's inclusion in the party as for her special benefit: Mary and Hope were her father's friends, and he was her sop, tribute of custom to the debutante, a man for her vis-à-vis. At eighteen, Emily had been practically "out" for a year, and knew her social dues. She thought it rather good of the other two women to leave Tony to her so unreservedly. Especially since he was so—well, so "nice." Her summum cum laude of masculine perfection was to he "nice." She was herself very nice indeed; and, if her world was all surfaces, she had some of her father's own qualities latent in her. Stirred by some singular prescience, toward the end of the evening Mary drew her out dropped a metaphorical noose over her—and had her ready to bring to hand later if she should need. What the need might be, she did not know yet.