Daphne Bruno

PART III: Daphne's Romance

CHAPTER XIV

Daphne was happy in her new life of freedom at Old Hall House, though it was less than it had promised to be when seen from a school-room window. Its worst failure was her father's postponement for a whole year of their residence in Paris, and a lingering doubt lest the day of packing and travelling never arrived. Another was her periods of dulness. Nobody ever seemed to come to Old Hall House; her father kept himself shut up in his study; and Owen for nine months of the year was at school. There were mornings and afternoons when she wandered about the passages and looked aimlessly out of windows, or strolled in the garden humming the fragmentary tunes of the lonely.

But she determined to believe in its delights; and indeed much of it was glorious. It was glorious to shut the door of the great playroom and loll in the tattered chair and read just what she wanted to. Her first plan of reading had been much more ambitious: she was going to work through all her father's critical books, and at the end of each volume study every masterpiece he had mentioned within its covers. But she could not do this. Nothing that required effort could she study for more than half an hour. She boggled at these Sir Thomas Brownes and Donnes and Emersons and Carlyles, many of whose sentences had to be enunciated twice or even three times before one glimpsed a meaning. And poetry wearied her as quickly, though every now and then a perfect phrase or a line of tragic emotion gave her a spasm of delight. But her love of these moments was not strong enough to overcome her indolence; and she decided that she would profit most by reading only those things that came easy to her—fiction, and the lighter essayists, such as Lamb and Stevenson, and the jollier parts of Shakespeare. With her reading of these people surged higher and higher the longing to do as they had done, and the confidence that she could do it. Sometimes she put books aside, and got her ink and paper with a view to starting; but nothing at present would come: the swelling something in her stayed in its darkness and refused to filter through a pen. So she resolved—as she preferred to resolve, for the deep chair was cosy, and reading was so much easier than creation—that she must go on stocking her mind.

"Besides, I must have experiences, of which at present I have nil."

And then she would look out of her window over the road that ran southward to the downs and the sea, and northward to the cities, and wonder what her experiences would be and where they lay.

Now she discovered the hollowness of Miss Carrell. Full of the excitement of her reading, she would want to pour it all out to her frequent companion, but quickly found that Miss Carrell was unable to understand, and consequently uninterested. She shammed an interest, certainly, but it was at first patronising, and always astonishingly uninformed. Daphne gradually arrived at the difficult conclusion that she knew more and understood better than her former governess.

Miss Carrell, in fact, was far from contented. Her gradual supplanting by Daphne was painfully proved by the invitations that at last began to arrive from neighbouring society. There had been none of these before Daphne appeared, Mr. Bruno having the reputation of a recluse. But now a few fluttered in like stray birds, and generally they were for "Mr. Tenter Bruno and Miss Bruno." Seldom Miss Carrell. She was not sure that with all her scheming she had not ruined herself. Here was she, thirty, and only a waning manageress in a country house. She had reached her highest point, five years ago, when she had sent Daphne to school, and entered upon her reign. At her age, this had been distinctly good. But now——? There was little chance of marrying, with so few people coming to Old Hall House. And yet nowhere else could she get so well paid a post. She was caught in a prison she had built for herself.

Hazily Daphne saw all of this; but she was too happy to desire the entrance of anything unpleasant, so strove to be affable and even humble with the apprehensive Miss Carrell.

Too good to be yet believed—Daphne had the regular loan of a saddle horse, a tall chestnut of sixteen hands. On frosty afternoons, just before sunset, or summer evenings before the dinner hour, she would ride it on Ditchling Common—astride. The whole neighbourhood, she suspected, was impressed, and talked about "new women." She pictured herself as she appeared to them: her hair still down her back and tied by a black bow; her costume consisting of riding breeches, overhung by a divided skirt; her seat good but not yet perfect. She would trot through the "toll-gate" on to Ditchling Common, still with the childish make-believe that she was a highwayman. When off the hard road and on the grass of the common, she would set the horse cantering; and, being a spirited creature, it would soon break into a stretch gallop. As a dance can be the rhythmic medium of urgent emotion, so this straight-flying, body-poising, breath-speeding gallop was the most satisfying art-form for her present feelings; it was the expression of her glorying in freedom and adulthood. The wind rushed through her hair, and the blood tingled in her veins. Her face heated and cooled in the air. She could have shouted. Had she not everything she wished for? Where had Time swept that schoolgirl of a few months back, who was punished in bedrooms? She checked the horse and reined him in, bumping slightly as he slowed down. Now he was walking, and she hollowed her back for relief; and, slackening the bridle, replaced a disordered hair.

Of her few friends Mrs. Montague Jevons, of Wildean Manor, was the best. Mrs. Montague Jevons was a large-boned, vivacious lady, who, as an intelligent admirer of the Tenter Bruno books, had shown a great interest in their author's daughter. A short acquaintance with Daphne had developed this interest into something like a sane favouritism. She called Daphne "her little friend" and treated her mind, not as a child's, but as the equal of her own. She would invite her to tea and a discussion on books, and would declare with sincerity that the daughter would one day be as famous as the father. It was she who daily sent the chestnut horse alongside of a groom.

In January of the second year, when Mr. Bruno really was making a move about the pied-à-terre in Paris, Mrs. Montague Jevons gave a ball at Wildean Manor. It would be the biggest that Daphne had gone to. She was excited. And since Mrs. Montague Jevons had been careful to invite Miss Carrell, she could discuss to her heart's content the ball, her dress and the tiring of her hair. Many experiments she tried with her hair, till she decided to keep it exactly the same as it was every day, only tidier. Any trace of effort was a flaw—as one learnt in literary criticism. It wasn't Greek. And her frock was Greek enough in its simplicity—an unornamented thing in a silk of that shining green that suited so well her brown hair and her colouring. As she turned before her cheval glass, to appraise her completed toilet, something childish and (as it were) breakable in the figure she saw there seemed to make foolish the dream of powerful books and world-wide fame. She provided sentences for the reporters who should one day interview her: "No one who has read the works of Miss Daphne Bruno, so masculine in their character, would conceive of her as a shy, slim, and exceedingly feminine girl. But there it is! Genius alights where it will. Miss Bruno clothes in all the grace and charm of her sex her exceptionally virile intellect."

Soon the carriage was at the door, and apprehensively Miss Carrell and she insinuated themselves under its roof, and were conveyed along the dark, country roads. Wildean Manor was a big, square, stone house to the east of Ditchling, and it was some time before their carriage wheels crunched its half-mile of drive. When the house, brilliantly alight, came into view, both Daphne and Miss Carrell were disturbed by the certainty that they were too early. Miss Carrell, Daphne could see, was pretending to be very much in her element, if only because she was feeling completely out of it; exactly as Daphne herself was trying to appear old and self-possessed, if only because she was feeling very young and ill at ease.

The sight of other guests in the Ladies' Room, and the glimpse as they stood in the big entrance hall of quite a few people in the drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Montague Jevons were receiving the guests, reassured them.

Daphne pushed Miss Carrell in front of her towards the loud-voiced gentleman in evening dress who was presenting the guests.

"Miss Carrell and Miss Tenter Bruno."

There was a flattering rustle and a silence as the famous name was bellowed out, and she longed for the day when the name of Miss Daphne Bruno could produce a silence and turn all heads. With her companion, after a few exchanges with the host and hostess, which included a whisper from Mrs. Montague Jevons, "My dear, you're looking beautiful," she walked across the floor to some chairs against the farther wall. Here they sat down, and, since they saw no one whom they knew, passed the time in watching the people as they were announced. The lofty rectangular drawing-room in which they were seated opened into a library of exactly the same dimensions, and as both rooms were to be used for dancing, the band had been placed on a platform in the farthest corner of the library. From Daphne's chair she could see both the band in the library and the people forming in the hall.

Among these a group of three suddenly made her crane her neck. A blush began to warm her cheeks, and it spread over her face as the group came through the doors into the drawing-room. The father was a short, big-hewn man of sixty and more, whose grim mouth was apiece with the thick chest and the heavy, competent hands; the mother was a slim, tired woman whose timidity might have been explained by her husband's mouth; and the third was a tall, dark youth who, if his features were not perfect (though indeed they were quite good), had surely a figure of unsurpassable beauty. It was the very measure of manhood: height, width, symmetry and grace. Daphne looked down, hoping she would not be recognised behind all these people. Fancy! Was that what he had grown into?

"Sir Roger and Lady Muirhead, and Mr. Roger Muirhead."

No resuscitation of an old love troubled Daphne; only rose the eagerness, since a recognition sooner or later was inevitable, to impress him as the possessor of unlimited friends and one of the most sought-after belles of the ball. Her programme must quickly be filled. She stared at the profiles and the occiputs of people she knew to induce them to turn round and perceive her. Gradually they did so, and brought their men up and introduced them. The names dropped into one place after another on her dance card: waltzes, lancers, polkas, barn-dances. It was like a game when one sought to fill vacant places against the clock. She must have a "House Full" before Roger recognised her and begged a place. But there were still some vacant numbers when the band struck up the first waltz. It seemed certain that he must see her as she danced among the other couples. But he did not; as she swung round, talking idly to her partner, she saw him dancing with a feathery girl and conceding to her chatter the familiar twinkle with its incomplete, tolerant smile. It would not have been Roger, nor that youth of the supreme shape, had any one in the room danced more gracefully than he.

After the first waltz, to her delight, more men were brought up and introduced. There was now but one place on her card. That would fill after the next dance—and then her single desire was to be discovered by Roger. But the next dance showed her to him. She had passed quite close and felt his quick, surprised look and thenceforward his ever-returning glances. Not once did she look his way, but talked with vivacity to her partner. Urged on by some of the younger men, the band was prolonging the music, and soon she was aware that Roger and his partner had sat down, Roger pretending to keep up a conversation, but really watching Daphne. Once he seemed to have mentioned her to the feathery girl.

"Would you like to sit down?" asked her partner.

"No, no," she smiled brightly. "Let's last out as long as any one else. I'm loving it."

On they danced among the thinning couples, Daphne hoping that her high colour would be attributed to the lengthened waltz. The few times her eyes were in danger of meeting Roger's he avoided them. He was evidently in doubt what to do. The band finished at last, and Daphne was escorted to a chair by her partner, who was gossiping gaily. She, too, made a pretence of gay talk, but was really keeping a watch on Roger. And in a little while Roger made an excuse to his feathery girl and came across the floor.

"Miss Bruno, isn't it?" he said with a smile.

At once Daphne suspected the course of action on which he had decided: he was going to make no mention of his boyish dropping of her, in the hope that she would have expected nothing else from a little fool. Her course had been planned for years past: a mixture of friendliness and indifference suggesting that his lordly shake-off had been a negligible incident, without power to hurt.

"Yes," said she. "I saw you before, and wondered if you would recognise me. I should hardly have recognised you, only I heard your name called out."

"Well, at any rate," said Roger, "you're going to dance with me."

The genial command was characteristic; Roger was priding himself on his imperiousness.

"I don't think I can. There's only one I've got free...."

"Well, let's see."

He compared his card with hers.

"Yes, I'm dancing with some wretched girl on your only vacant date."

"Oh, what a pity." She took back the card.

"Well, there'll have to be an extra extra, that's all. If there's an extra extra may I have the privilege——" He bowed.

"Oh, but there won't be one. There are three already."

"Oh, but there will be one. I shall see to it."

"All right, then.... Yes, thank you very much."

"Splendid. I'll go and tell the conductor fellow at once that there's got to be one.... I say, wait a minute...."

Rather self-consciously he walked across the floor, and she watched him speaking to the conductor, who smiled. Then he returned.

"That's settled all right.... Do you know what I said to the man?"

"No, how should I?"

"Well, perhaps you'd better not."

"All right."

"Perhaps I'll tell you what I said when we're dancing together."

"I don't particularly want to know."

"I didn't ask that. It may be good for you to know.... It's rather taken my breath away seeing you here. I half fancied I saw you the other day on horseback, riding a strapping chestnut. I only came down here three days ago. But then, I suppose it couldn't be."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I can't picture you quite like that. How's your young brother?"

"He's just gone back to school."

"Oh, yes. I'm afraid I didn't see much of him at Sillborough."

"You've left, I suppose."

It was meant to humiliate and didn't fail of its mark... "Left? Glory, yes. I've been at Oxford a year."

"Of course. I'd forgotten how old you were. Where was it you saw me the other day? I didn't see you."

"Then it was you. It must have been by the—just near the—no, I forget where it was now."

"Probably on Ditchling Common."

"Yes, of course, that's where it was.... Well, I must be getting back now."

The evening was old when he claimed her for his partner. An old evening with a glittering record. It would have been an exaggeration to say that she was the belle of the ball, but none had been more remarked, none more sought after, none more waited on, none more excited and vivacious than she. And all the while she had been conscious of his staring at her—staring in rather a dazed way. That was good. Good if he fell rapturously in love with her again, while she felt no stirring of love for him. When he besought her hand, she would reply: "It's no good, Roger. I can't help it, but I feel no love for you at all." She could wish that she were already engaged to some one that she might mention it carelessly to him.

"Now, Miss Bruno," said he, as he claimed her.

The band had begun. They were playing a little languishing waltz rather slowly. Both felt the wistfulness of the air and for a long time said nothing. Daphne had a sense of having lost several inches of her height and some years of her age now that she was in Roger's arm. He was the first to emerge from the abstraction into which the tune had sunk them.

"Ye gods, what a tune!"

"Yes, isn't it divine? Do you know what it is? I do."

"Why"—he smiled his patronising smile—"are you a great musician these days?"

"No; but I learnt the 'cello at school, and one of the girls used to play this on her violin. But I didn't know then it could be so—so troubling as this."

"Troubling—that's the very word. What is it?"

She told him its name, but he didn't acknowledge the information, and when she looked up at him she saw that his eyes had been waiting to twinkle into hers.

"From henceforth I shall always call it the Daphne Bruno waltz."

"Don't be silly."

"Don't be rude, Miss Bruno."

"Do you know, I've just been thinking I've never been properly introduced to you."

"On the contrary, madam, you introduced yourself to me with something approaching boldness from behind a blackberry bush on the King's highway."

"What silly kids we were!"

"I wasn't so silly as I thought——" The unfortunate sentence broke abruptly.

They danced through the door of the drawing-room into the library, and the sight of the conductor suffering (as Roger said) all the pains of the artistic temperament prompted him to ask:

"Shall I tell you what I said to yon fiddler?"

"If it's interesting."

Excitement and supper had heightened his natural temerity.

"I said, 'Look here, Sousa, unless you put on an extra extra, I shan't be able to dance with the only girl worth calling a girl in the room.' And he said—he seems a humorous fellow—he said, 'Well, sir, in that case there'll have to be an extra extra for an extra extra young lady.' And, of course, he got impertinent and said, 'May I ask which one she is?' I said, 'No, certainly not. Besides, it's perfectly obvious to any one with any eyes.'"

Daphne looked towards the conductor, and saw that over his violin he was watching Roger and her. She could not feel displeased with the man, since he had been told that she was the only girl in the room. But she chose to turn colder with Roger, and did not speak till he asked:

"What sort of life are you living now?"

She gave him an attenuated answer and deliberately refrained from asking him anything about himself. He was obliged to proffer the story unsought. As soon as he had finished with Oxford he was to travel, and then go in for politics. Possibly he would stand for their Cornish constituency.

"Cornish?" queried Daphne.

"Yes. Didn't you know? That holiday we went to Cornwall"—he blushed as he recalled which holiday it was—"father fell in love with a little smuggler's cove, and swore he'd buy it up and build a house there right on the rocks. And on his principle of 'What I've once determined on, that I do,' he went and did it. I wish you could see the place. It's rather exciting. And what are you going to do in the future?"

"Stay with father, I suppose."

The whimsical sparkle had come again into his eyes, she saw, as she looked up for an explanation of his silence; and the trembling, incomplete smile was at his lips.

"Not for long," said he. "You'll marry."

"No, I shan't."

"Of course you'll marry."

"And why 'of course'?"

"Because—because you're the sort."

"I've just told you I'm not."

"You've just told me you don't want to be the sort, but you'd no say in the matter."

"I wish you'd explain."

He hummed the waltz to the accompaniment of the band. Then in a muted way he whistled it.

"I can't very well. But it's a theory of mine that you can always tell the girls who will marry—bar tragedies. I don't know what it is about them. It's not beauty."

"Thank you very much."

"Don't mention it. I'm speaking generally. It's some other quality—a sort of sensuous attraction"—he stuttered, probably not clear as to the meaning of sensuous—"though the quality is rarely absent from beauty."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Well, I suppose you can't understand.... If your looking-glass doesn't tell you, it's quite impossible for a man to."

They danced on, and she noticed that once or twice his lips moved as though he were trying to force words through the inhibitions of pride. And at a moment when the band was likely to dwindle to a finale, he jerked out:

"Miss Bruno, I'd like to see you sometimes. Now that the Downway House is vacant, we're——"

She had been waiting for this advance, and quickly replied:

"It's no good. I'm going abroad, and——"

His look drove the rest from her head. His mouth had set like his father's, and she guessed that he was enjoying the strong man's huff. She decided to hurt him further.

"What a long time the band's playing for."

"Is it?"

"Well, isn't it?"

"Why?" he muttered. "Do you want to stop?"

"Yes, I do. I'm tired. I've been dancing all the evening."

"All right."

He guided her quickly towards the chairs, and released her. It was done with the courtesy that never failed him and yet with suddenness, that she might feel he was not used to being snubbed. His features had tightened—"gone tight"—she invented the phrase that moment to express what Roger looked like when thwarted or misunderstood. Triumph trembled through her. The conductor, seeing that the two for whom he had played the waltz had deserted, brought it to an end.

"Well, good-bye, Miss Bruno. It's been quite nice to see you again and dance once with you."

"Good-bye. There's Miss Carrell, I must run and speak to her."

She ran off, unconsciously humming the waltz; and Roger strode as best he could towards his people.

CHAPTER XV

For quite satisfying reasons she thought frequently about Roger during the next few weeks; there was no one else much to think of; the only person who had ever leapt your breastworks and kissed you behind a bush must always have a romantic interest; and still more, a man who was patently in love with you, when you couldn't feel the slightest stir of emotion for him, was some one to be rather proud of. She wondered if his passion would overcome his pride and force him to write to her; and was already phrasing her friendly but discouraging answer. But no letter appeared, so she indulged herself in pictures of Roger with love gnawing at his heart and pride denying him a cry. Once when cantering on Ditchling Common she passed him, and, answering his raised hat with a friendly bow, galloped away. At a safe distance she swung her horse round to get a covert glimpse of him, and saw him staring after her. He was standing not far from Jacob's Post. One evening she was certain he passed her house and gave it a quick glance.

She determined to learn more about him from Mrs. Montague Jevons. The subject was not easy to open till an afternoon, when, calling at Wildean Manor after the dance, she found Lady Muirhead among other ladies in the drawing-room. Lady Muirhead, she discerned, was a woman of one subject—her son. When other subjects were being bandied across the carpet she was silent, but her interest immediately quickened if some one asked, "And what is Roger doing now?" or remarked, "How handsome your boy is getting!" Daphne moved to sit beside her.

"You've met Roger then," said Lady Muirhead, in response to a casual allusion.

"Oh yes, I danced with him here the other day."

"Did you?" She glanced round the drawing-room, and through the door into the library. "I didn't really catch your name just now."

"Daphne Bruno."

"Oh, you're Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter. I've heard about you."

Daphne coloured. "Have you?"

"Oh yes. Your father's quite a famous man, isn't he?"

"Well, he's written a lot of books," acknowledged Daphne, with a deprecating smile.

"Yes. I'm afraid I don't read much. I never had much time when Roger was young, and you get out of the habit when they go to school."

"You've only one son, haven't you?"

"Yes, only one, though Roger was equal to a dozen in trouble."

"Was he really? Not in health, surely?"

"In health, good gracious, no! I suppose his bounding health was the source of all his masterfulness and mischief."

"Oh, was he mischievous?" exclaimed Daphne. "How ripping!"

"He's essentially a dominating character, I think, and I suppose as they can't help themselves, it's not fair to call it mischief."

Daphne nodded.

And Lady Muirhead, encouraged by such a listener, rattled on with a record of Roger's domestic tyrannies, of which she seemed very proud.

When she had gone and the other visitors were departing, Mrs. Montague Jevons begged Daphne to stay a little longer.

"There, sit down," said she, after the door had closed on the last lady. "And let me sit here.... Ah, for this relief much thanks.... A particularly boring afternoon. And I was so sorry for you, cooped up with the Muirhead Dowager. I suppose she carried on insufferably about her boy?"

"Yes, it was chiefly about him."

"Pity she goes on like that."

"But it isn't all praise," suggested Daphne. "She spent much of the time deploring his tyrannies."

"Bless you, that's indirect praise. She's as proud as a peacock of them,"

"But is it all true?"

"Well, I like Roger. He and I get on splendidly. He's got the most courtly manners with women. I think it's a sort of feudal pose and unconsciously based on conceit, but as it's spiced with a soupçon of humour and cheek it makes him a pleasant companion."

Daphne pursued her adverse criticism.

"I should think he's now irreparably spoiled by his mother."

"He's not been spoiled in the usual sense—old Sir Roger's seen to that—but what's happened is this." Mrs. Montague Jevons crumpled her brow so as to find a description worthy of her keen analysis. "She's created a legend about the masterfulness of the Muirhead men, and especially about the last specimen of them, and the wretched boy's heard nothing else all his life. The damage is probably final—he'll live up to the amiable legend till the end of his days. You'll find the characters he likes in history and books are the honourable but merciless Cavalier overlords—Strafford, or people like the Earl of Warwick, the King Maker. I try to chaff him about it, but every man's sense of humour fails when it comes to himself. Probably my chaffing only makes matters worse. He likes to be chaffed about his 'indomitable will,' and all the rest of the trash. No man ever didn't."

Daphne's head nodded, implying that her experience was the same.

"I tell him," pursued Mrs. Montague Jevons, "that it's a popular type beloved of housemaids, but the obsession's too strong for chaff to expel it.... That's Roger."

The cost of a furnished flat in Paris, capable of housing himself, his daughter, Miss Carrell, Hollins, and Owen in vacations, was high enough to drive Mr. Bruno's mercury very low. A new idea shaped in his mind, and the infernal noise of the Gay City, as he walked its pavement seeking his pied-à-terre, gave it stronger outline; he would find within a dozen miles of Paris some inexpensive villa, from which Daphne and Miss Carrell might descend as often as they liked on the Gare du Nord, while he stayed with his manuscripts and his books in a countryside peace.

He found the place, and returned to England, not a little eager to tell his daughter all about it. It was a Tuesday evening, just after dark, when he arrived at Old Hall House, flung himself into an easy chair, and cried for tea. That his daughter had met him with a hail of questions, and hurried after him into his study, and was now sitting on the edge of his writing-table demanding information, he affected to have hardly perceived.

"What have you decided, Daddy—what have you decided?"

"It's not her father that she welcomes," said he to his boot-laces, "but the things he may have brought for her. A selfish girl, and one without natural affection."

"Oh, Daddy, what have you decided?"

"Slippers, dear. If you like, you can get me my slippers. It would have already occurred to a more beautiful nature."

"If I get them for you, will you tell me what you have decided?"

"I have decided to say nothing about anything till I have been fed, and fed very satisfyingly."

"Oh, Father, don't be a cad. I've been waiting weeks to know."

"And I've been waiting weeks for a cup of tea.... I spent a very enjoyable time in Paris, thank you. It's a city eternally romantic, classic, realistic. You can imagine me entering the Louvre with a worshipper's feet, and lighting my poor candle at the shrines of Leonardo, Titian, Veronese, Rubens...."

"Oh, blow them! I'm screwed up to hear everything. I made sure you'd tell me at once."

"The music of English tea-things! It's unmistakable—and it's music that Paris, in spite of its singular imitations, has never learned."

"Well, you shan't have any till you have told me. I shall hold it back."

"Ah, it's Hollins. Put it here, Hollins.... Thank you very much."

Hollins laid the tea-tray on a little table by the side of his easy chair; and Mr. Bruno, with a running commentary on Paris and its wickedness and English tea, poured out a cup and folded over a thin slice of bread and butter. Daphne sat on the writing-table. And over his bread and butter, despite his jesting manner, his mind was asking the usual questions: why, though the sight of her and the nearness of her could inflate his love, he could never really get close to her, but must always protect himself, as he approached, with a cloud of persiflage; whether now at sixty it was too late to learn the art of emptying himself and becoming like unto her; whether he had exchanged life for books? "This man chose not to live but read." Disproportion. Disproportion. Books should be an elixir to heighten one's awareness to life, not a drug in which to escape from it.

"There." He pushed the tea-things away, and signalled to her to come and sit on the pouffe which was his footstool.

"Come here. I have a tale to tell you."

And he lit a cigarette and began.

"Some ten or a dozen miles nor'-nor'-west of Paris there's a little cocksure village that calls itself St. Leu Taverny. It straggles at the very feet of the Montmorency Forest. A few days ago I climbed a cobbled street to the outer verge of the forest trees, among which rose the turrets, not unpicturesque, of the plaster châteaux, or villas, of wealthy Parisians. Grocers, for the most part, I expect. In a little new-made avenue, that finished in nothing, as if it had forgotten that it had ever started, I found a very modest little villa in the centre of a tiny garden of firs. Its windows had shutters thrown back against the bricks, and on the sills those flamboyant iron-work railings that so delight the French. Strange how the French think themselves classical, and are the most flamboyant people in Europe! In many ways the absurd little villa reminded me of you. It was tall and narrow—and pretentious."

"Are you being funny?" submitted Daphne.

"Pretentious, with its turret up one corner for the staircase. At the top of the turret—and this completes the simile—was a cone-shaped roof, like a dunce's hat."

Daphne only continued to watch the fire. She was getting used to this sort of thing from her men-folk.

"No," pursued Mr. Bruno, after thought. "The resemblance can be carried farther, for I found the furniture within to be adequate to its purposes and inoffensive, but quite uninspired and quite without distinction."

"But the outlook was beautiful," interrupted Daphne.

"The outlook was good. Yes, the outlook was good, stretching over the garden of firs to the high ground and the trees of Montmorency. Here and there, however, was a château such as the vulgar dream of. One could wish for an earthquake to remove them. I walked among the rooms, peopling them to my fancy with a certain girl, and the excellent Miss Carrell, and the entirely fundamental Hollins. Also perhaps a French slut for the meaner tasks. I have taken the place for a year."

Daphne leapt up.

"Daddy, let's go to-morrow."

"'Some having no root sprang up.' ... We shall not go to-morrow nor the next day, but possibly the day after that. The épicier's wife was recommended to me as a person who would light a fire and dress a dish to welcome us. She'll have to be communicated with. But you can think about packing."

Packing! The word was galvanising. Packing to go anywhere was among the liveliest excitements, but packing to go abroad was in a class by itself. In what a cloud of romance had her father, when she was a child, set off abroad! Refusing to hearken to her brain, which assured her there was nothing remarkable in a visit to Paris, she told every one she met in the next few days that they were leaving for Paris on Friday. Once over there she would really start writing. Foreign scenes would be a spring of inspiration. Against this expected seizure by inspiration she pushed into her trunks pens, pencils, scribbling paper and manuscript books, having vague ideas that French pencils and paper would not be the same thing at all.

Miss Carrell and Hollins, never having travelled before, were equally if more secretly excited. Miss Carrell's inward pleasure was slightly marred by the reflection that her meagre knowledge of French, in which she had once instructed Daphne, would be horridly exposed. Hollins, though pretending to be "put about" by it all and to wonder how she would be able to manage with a fast French kitchen girl, was really much pleased, and inclined to emphasise to the other servants that in this accompanying of the family, she was as usual a privileged person.

Friday, seen from Daphne's bedroom window at six-thirty in the morning, was overcast, but windless and dry. It stayed so. Throughout the day she had a sense that the excitement of continental travel could be measured, as in a graph, by a rising and falling line. The line began at a high point when the carriage came to the door; it shot higher at the London terminus where the words "Boat Train" flashed at you, and French beards and French tongues wagged among the encumbered people; it dropped and ran straight during the rumble through Kentish meadows and hop-fields; it rose again, very high, when they saw the boat with its twin funnels; it stayed high, as they mingled in the bustle on the quay, and walked a trembling gangway, and were confused by the voices, the loaded porters, the luggage swung in upper air by the crane, the bell from the bridge, and the throbbing of the engines; it was kept high by the rush of wind and the repeated booming of the siren as the boat moved out, and the hand-waving of less fortunate friends ashore. Then it dropped and ran in a straight line as they spent two hours in the grey channel; only to rise to its highest at the first sight of French hills and the gradual delineation of domes and roofs and lighthouses of Boulogne. Through the greyness, France boomed a welcome.

Miss Carrell, though rendered ill at ease by this rapid approach to France and exposure, pretended to all the interest, loudly voiced by Daphne. Hollins, too, smiled pleasantly at her young mistress's happiness. "It's folks as young as them that gets the full enjoyment out of this," said she to Miss Carrell, and a few minutes later was sick.

Dark had almost fallen before they were safely against the quay; and they saw nothing of the place except the hideous Customs and the ill-lit station with its comfortable Paris train. Once the train had started and run into the complete darkness outside the town, the glamour departed from the journey, factitiously recovered sometimes by translating the Avis aux Voyageurs printed round the alarm bell. Miss Carrell had a bad moment when Daphne sought her aid, but luckily Mr. Bruno's desire to display his knowledge was as great as her desire to hide her ignorance. He did the translating, and she prepared them for the worst by saying:

"Really, I have rusted so. I can scarcely remember anything. I used to be able to speak quite well."

She need not have worried; both Mr. Bruno and her old pupil had forgotten that she had ever been paid to teach the language.

All were tired, and Hollins after her sickness slept. The excitement only reached its former heights when they ran through the lighted suburbs into the Gare du Nord, Paris.

"Here we are. Out you get. Tumble out."

Daphne descended from the train into a confusion that bruised all her senses at once: voices, pushing people, hiss of steam, smell of smoke and soot, rumble of porters' trucks, and cries of "Attention là!" The sounds and the smell—the smell especially—raised into memory the day when first they had trained into a London station, and she but eight years old. Overtones of pleasant melancholy hung round the recollection. "I am in Paris," she told herself. "I am now standing in Paris."

Alone in that overhanging noise and buffeting stream of people Mr. Bruno seemed—or affected to seem—majestically unperturbed. Conscious of the respect of his women, he talked fluently to the porters, and led the way to the Banlieue booking office. He chaffed his daughter, telling her to exercise her French by ordering the tickets for St. Leu; but when she tried she could only giggle into the little window. Miss Carrell kept well in the background. Hollins, in spite of her weight and difficulty in walking, often ran to keep in close touch with the master, lest she were lost in this wilderness of unintelligible people.

Soon they were in a far less comfortable train. After travelling first-class all the way, Mr. Bruno, alarmed by the expenses on the journey, had decided that they could do this last little bit in the troisième classe. The seats were distressingly upright and wooden. Nor did they have the compartment to themselves. Two Frenchmen, unaware of Daphne's wrinkled nose, got in; one an enormously fat gentleman, with a black square beard which made Hollins stare and Daphne giggle at Miss Carrell, and the other a younger man who never stopped talking and gesticulating to his companion. He struck Daphne as equally funny. The fat man expressed his real interest by nodding and picking his teeth through his black beard; and Daphne whispered that he was perfectly sweet. She maintained this view, even when he spat one of his diggings out of the window, causing Miss Carrell to retire further into her corner.

Sitting in that train, after viewing the crowds in the Gare du Nord, Daphne discovered afresh the distingué appearance of her father. She felt proud that all should recognise him as an Englishman. Tall and slender as an athletic youth, with his pointed beard now grey, and his hair whitening over the ears—in his faultless grey suit and grey overcoat—he had been splendid among the English people on the boat, and was a lesson to all Frenchmen in France.

The train slowed into a badly lit station, and voices called "St. Leu ... St. Leu." Daphne, with some idea of having won a five hundred mile race, determined to step out first. She threw open the door, saw a yawning blackness where the platform should have been, and, stepping on to it, fell heavily to the pavement—only saving herself from going on to her hands and knees by her slippery hold on the carriage door.

"There!" said her father. "The daughter arrives. Credulous child to expect such advantages as platforms in a country which calls itself à la tête de la civilisation! Are you hurt?"

"No, it's lovely," said Daphne, though she could scarcely put her right foot to the ground. She was not going to be disloyal to her vision of this as one of the perfect days of her life.

The luggage was left on the station, no carriages being visible outside its doors; and Mr. Bruno led his party into the darkness of a street lit only by occasional private windows. Daphne could receive no impression of St. Leu as they climbed the hill-road towards their house, except that they were often walking on cobbles which sometimes stirred in that airy emptiness of her ankle the strange, sweet pain.

The little house, as they passed through the double gate into its garden, showed a bright light at the hall door, and the épicier's wife standing above the steps, smiling amiably and rattling French. Everything was ready for them, said she, but would monsieur like a glass of wine? Mr. Bruno accepted this in the little dining-room. "Et pour madame? ... Madame Bruno, n'est-ce pas?" queried the woman, with a look at Miss Carrell. That Miss Carrell should be taken for his wife was an error that amused Mr. Bruno, and, pointing to his whitening hairs, he laughed, "Non, non, madame. Regardez mes neiges."

"Oui, monsieur," said she, her head dropping knowingly, "mais souvent sous les neiges on trouve des volcans."

And Mr. Bruno roared with laughter.

"What did she say—what did she say?" demanded his daughter.

"Didn't you understand? Well, perhaps you'd better not. A sad people, the French."

In a few minutes Daphne had been all over the house, delighted with everything, though marvelling that it could so fit her father's description, and yet be so different from what she had pictured.

"Oh, I'd like to live here always. Why can't they build places like this in England?"

"Because the French are always faintly fantastic," explained her father.

He then led her to a bedroom at the top and in the front, whose windows, as he threw them open, gave on to the stars above the Forest of Montmorency.

"This is undeniably the best room, Duffy, and it is to be yours. Miss Carrell and Hollins can have the two smaller rooms on this floor."

"But, Father——" began she. Having always kept her schoolgirl room at home, she was diffident of taking a room superior to Miss Carrell.

"No, no," interrupted Mr. Bruno. "You are the mistress of this house."