34
THE following was compiled by Ambrose after listening to both the girls. At two o’clock in the morning a lamp still burned in their bedroom. Ruby, with a garment in her hand, was being addressed by Lychnis, who still wore her white dress and had not even unbuttoned her shoes.
“Can’t you see, little idiot, that death’s not important? It isn’t real. Neither is life real. Life and death are not real. Something else is, and that something else is in Yuan and Wang Li, and it goes on and is everywhere, and death doesn’t make any difference. Yuan and Wang are dead, too. I mean they are not alive in the way we understand life.”
But Ruby was not in an amiable mood. “At any rate,” she said savagely, “there’s no doubt that we shall go away now from this horrible place.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I heard daddy say to your father that he couldn’t feel comfortable here again. ‘With those cold-blooded freaks,’ he said.”
“Oh! And did my father agree?”
“I think so. He nodded.”
“Well——” Lychnis was aware of an unwonted nervous disturbance, a desire to cry, at the secession and hostility of her obedient friend. She concealed it. “It’s time we were in bed.” She stood up, unfastened her dress, and let it slide to the floor, bending meanwhile on Ruby her frowning brows. “We shall stay,” she added definitely.
Her anger had usually the effect of reducing Ruby to sulks or submission. To-night she became defiant, and replied, looking at her persecutor with shining, fascinated eyes. (And no wonder, thought Ambrose, as he pictured the slim, contemptuous figure that had the matter of subjugation in hand.)
“You think it’s for you to decide, Lychnis. It isn’t. We’ve made up our minds to consider ourselves in future.”
“You’ve been plotting with Fulke, have you?”
Ruby’s eyes quivered. “Let me tell you daddy thinks so, too. If we want to go now we shall.”
“Not without my permission—and Yuan’s.”
“Oh, Yuan! Why don’t you go to him altogether?”
The words had slipped out, and with the realization of what she had said came the end of her courage.
The reply darted at her was, “Get into bed.”
She still had an ounce or two. “I won’t!”
“Do you remember last time you said that?”
Ruby remembered a night when a fury who exuded a sort of elemental invincibleness had used a slipper on her until she howled for pain. She did not care for pain.
Lychnis slid in beside her, and switched out all the lights in the room except the one that hung in the ebony ceiling of their bed. “You hate it when that light goes out, don’t you?” she asked in a cold voice. “Every night you shake for fear of the strangeness of this house and this valley and the tall, plum-cheeked Yuan with gimlet eyes. When the queer moonlight creeps in through the lattices, as if Yuan were there, flooding us with some cold emanation of his cold, unhuman spirit, you lie and tremble. I am going to put the light out now.”
She switched it out with one hand and with the other gave Ruby a pinch. Ruby sat up. “I hate you! Oh, you beast, I hate you!”
“You’d better ask Fulke to do something about it.” Lychnis spoke in a ghostly voice.
But all at once Ruby collapsed into her pillow and began violently crying. “Don’t—oh, please don’t tease me about Fulke!” she sobbed.
Lychnis had an intimation. “What’s the matter?”
For some time there was no answer; then a buried voice came from the pillow: “I can’t bear you to speak of him.” A silence. Then: “I—I want him. I love him.”
Lychnis peered into the dim moonlight, silent for a little. Then: “But, my dear, I didn’t realize it was like that. I am surprised.” She put her arms round Ruby. “Since when?”
There followed long confidences and comfortings. “And that’s why,” concluded the afflicted one, “I said I hate you. I’ve been hating you a long time—because you keep him from me!”
Lychnis smiled in the dark. “But don’t you see? That’s nearly over. You will have him from me altogether—very soon.”
“Do you really think so?” Consoled, glowing, and happily doubtful, Ruby fell asleep. When she was asleep Lychnis turned over on her face and sobbed her heart out. She saw clearly that Ruby would soon have Fulke—the chimpanzee-like Fulke—away from her altogether. She didn’t mind that. But it gave her a sense of desertion. It was strange that soon Fulke should lie in her place, or take Ruby to his. She would be alone. It was the case that she was losing her friends—even her father. Her heart sank at the deep silence. The shadow of the lattice lengthened out on the floor. Outside a spray of leaves brushed monotonously against the roof of the verandah. Soon she would be alone, quite alone—face to face with a queer reality—except for Ambrose. The name floated to her in the silence. Ambrose. Perhaps he was on the verandah composing. She crept from the bed, crept out on the verandah. Outside there was nothing but the warm moonlight and the leaves brushing on the roof. She came back, alone with the spectre of Yuan. She shivered and lay deathly still, clutching the bedclothes, while the ghostly moonlight peered in through the lattice, stole in and embraced her like an emanation from his cold, unearthly mind. The spray of leaves swished to and fro on the roof of the verandah.