Читать книгу Rosa Mundi and Other Stories - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 3

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Was the water blue, or was it purple that day? Randal Courteney stretched his lazy length on the shady side of the great natural breakwater that protected Hurley Bay from the Atlantic rollers, and wondered. It was a day in late September, but the warmth of it was as a dream of summer returned. The season was nearly over, or he had not betaken himself thither, but the spell of heat had prolonged it unduly. It had been something of a shock to him to find the place still occupied by a buzzing crowd of visitors. He never came to it till he judged the holidays to be practically over. For he loved it only when empty. His idea of rest was solitude.

He wondered how long this pearly weather would last, and scanned the sky for a cloud. In vain! There was no cloud all round that blue horizon, and behind him the cliffs stood stark against an azure sky. Summer was lingering, and even he had not the heart to wish her gone.

Something splashed noisily on the other side of the rocky breakwater. Something squeaked and gurgled. The man frowned. He had tramped a considerable distance to secure privacy. He had his new novel to think out. This invasion was intolerable. He had not even smoked the first pipe of his meditations. Impatiently he prepared to rise and depart.

But in that moment a voice accosted him, and in spite of himself he paused. "I want to get over the breakwater," said the voice. "There's such a large crab lives this side."

It was an engaging voice—a voice with soft, lilting notes in it—the voice of a child.

Courteney's face cleared a little. The grimness went out of his frown, the reluctance from his attitude. He stood up against the rocky barrier and stretched his hands over to the unseen owner of the voice.

"I'll help you," he said.

"Oh!" There was an instant's pause; then two other hands, wet, cool, slender, came up, clasping his. A little leap, a sudden strain, and a very pink face beneath a cloud of golden hair laughed down into his. "You must pull," she said; "pull hard!"

Courteney obeyed instructions. He pulled, and a pair of slim shoulders clad in white, with a blue sailor collar, came into view. He pulled again, and a white knee appeared, just escaping a blue serge skirt. At the third pull she was over and standing, bare-footed, by his side. It had been a fairy leap. He marvelled at the lightness of her till he saw her standing so, with merry eyes upraised to his. Then he laughed, for she was laughing—the infectious laugh of the truant.

"Oh, thank you ever so much," she said. "I knew it was much nicer this side than the other. No one can see us here, either."

"Is that why you wanted to get over?" he asked.

She nodded, her pink face all mystery. "It's nice to get away from everyone sometimes, isn't it? Even Rosa Mundi thinks that. Did you know that she is here? It is being kept a dead secret."

"Rosa Mundi!" Courteney started. He looked down into the innocent face upraised to his with something that was almost horror in his own. "Do you mean that dancing woman from Australia? What can a child like you know of her?"

She smiled at him, the mystery still in her eyes. "I do know her. I belong to her. Do you know her, too?"

A sudden hot flush went up over Courteney's face. He knew the woman; yes, he knew her. Was it years ago—or was it but yesterday?—that he had yielded to the importunities of his friend, young Eric Baron, and gone to see her dance? The boy had been infatuated, wild with the lure of her. Ah well, it was over now. She had been his ruin, just as she had been the ruin of others like him. Baron was dead and free for ever from the evil spell of his enchantress. But he had not thought to hear her name in this place and on the lips of a child.

It revolted him. For she had utterly failed to attract his fancy. He was fastidious, and all he had seen in her had been the sensuous charm of a sinuous grace which, to him, was no charm at all. He had almost hated her for the abject adoration that young Eric's eyes had held. Her art, wonderful though he admitted it to be, had wholly failed to enslave him. He had looked her once—and once only—in the eyes, judged her, and gone his way.

And now this merry-eyed, rosy-faced child came, fairy-footed, over the barrier of his reserve, and spoke with a careless familiarity of the only being in the world whom he had condemned as beyond the pale.

"I'm not supposed to tell anyone," she said, with sapphire eyes uplifted confidingly to his. "She isn't—really—here before the end of the week. You won't tell, will you? Only when I saw you plodding along out here by yourself, I just had to come and tell you, to cheer you up."

He stood and looked at her, not knowing what to say. It was as if some adverse fate were at work, driving him, impelling him.

The soft eyes sparkled into laughter. "I know who you are," chuckled the gay voice on a high note of merriment. "You are Randal Courteney, the writer. It's not a bit of good trying to hide, because everybody knows."

He attempted a frown, but failed in its achievement. "And who are you?" he said, looking straight into the daring, trusting eyes. She was, not beautiful, but her eyes were wonderful; they held a mystery that beckoned and eluded in the same subtle moment.

"I?" she said. "I am her companion, her familiar spirit. Sometimes she calls me her angel."

The man moved as if something had stung him, but he checked himself with instinctive self-control. "And your name?" he said.

She turned out her hands with a little gesture that was utterly unstudied and free from self-consciousness. "My name is Rosemary," she said. "It means—remembrance."

"You are her adopted child?" Courteney was, looking at her curiously. Out of what part of Rosa Mundi's strange, fretted existence had the desire for remembrance sprung to life? He had deemed her a woman of many episodes, each forgotten as its successor took its place. Yet it seemed this child held a corner in her memory that was to last.

She turned her face to the sun. "We have adopted each other," she said naïvely. "When Rosa Mundi is old, I shall take her place, so that she may still be remembered."

The words, "Heaven forbid!" were on Courteney's lips. He checked them sharply, but something of his original grimness returned as he said, "And now that you are on the other side of the breakwater, what are you going to do?"

She looked up at him speculatively, and in a moment tossed back the short golden curls that clustered at her neck. She was sublimely young. In the eyes of the man, newly awakened, she had the look of one who has seen life without comprehending it. "I always like to get the other side of things, don't you?" she said. "But I won't stay with you if you are bored. I am going right to the end of the rocks to see the tide come in."

"And be washed away?" suggested Courteney.

"Oh no," she assured him confidently. "That won't happen. I'm not nearly so young as I look. I only dress like this when I want to enjoy myself. Rosa Mundi says"—her eyes were suddenly merry—"that I'm not respectable. Now, don't you think that sounds rather funny?"

"From her—yes," said Courteney.

"You don't like her?" The shrewd curiosity of a child who desires understanding upon a forbidden subject was in the question.

The man evaded it. "I have never seen her except in the limelight."

"And you didn't like her—then?" Keen disappointment sounded in her voice.

His heart smote him. The child was young, though possibly not so young as she looked. She had her ideals, and they would be shattered soon enough without any help from him.

With a brief laugh he turned aside, dismissing the subject. "That form of entertainment doesn't appeal to me much," he said. "Now it's your turn to tell me something. I have been wondering about the colour of that sea. Would you call it blue—or purple?"

She looked, and again the mystery was in her face. For a moment she did not speak. Then, "It is violet," she said—"the colour of Rosa Mundi's eyes."

Ere the frown had died from his face she was gone, pattering lightly over the sand, flitting like a day-dream into the blinding sunshine that seemed to drop a veil behind her, leaving him to his thoughts.

Randal Courteney was an old and favoured guest at the Hurley Bay Hotel. From his own particular corner of the great dining-room he was accustomed to look out upon the world that came and went. Frequently when he was there the place was almost deserted, and always he had been treated as the visitor of most importance. But to-night, for the first time, he found himself supplanted. Someone of more importance was staying in the hotel, someone who had attracted crowds, whose popularity amounted almost to idolatry.

The hotel was full, but Courteney, despite his far-reaching fame, was almost entirely overlooked. News had spread that the wonderful Australian dancer was to perform at the Pier Pavilion at the end of the week, and the crowds had gathered to do her honour. They were going to strew the Pier with roses on the night of her appearance, and they were watching even now for the first sign of her with all the eager curiosity that marks down any celebrity as fair prey. Courteney smiled grimly to himself. How often it had been his lot to evade the lion-hunters! It was an unspeakable relief to have the general attention thus diverted from himself. Doubtless Rosa Mundi would revel in it. It was her rôle in life, the touchstone of her profession. Adulation was the very air she breathed.

He wondered a little to find her seeking privacy, even for a few days. Just a whim of hers, no doubt! Was she not ever a creature of whims? And it would not last. He remembered how once young Eric Baron had told him that she needed popularity as a flower needs the sun. His rose of the world had not been created to bloom unseen. The boy had been absurdly long-suffering, unbelievably blind. How bitter, how cruel, had been his disillusion, Courteney could only guess. Had she ever cared, ever regretted, he wondered? But no, he was sure she had not. She would care for nothing until the bloom faded. Then, indeed, possibly, remorse might come.

Someone passing his table paused and spoke—the managing director of the Hurley Bay Theatre and of a score of others, a man he knew slightly, older than himself. "The hive swarms in vain," he said. "The queen refuses to emerge."

Courteney's expression was supremely cynical. "I was not aware that she was of such a retiring disposition," he said.

The other man laughed. He was an American, Ellis Grant by name, a man of gross proportions, but keen-eyed, iron-jawed, and successful. "There is a rumour," he said, "that she is about to be married. Possibly that might account for her shyness."

His look was critical. Courteney threw back his head almost with defiance. "It doesn't interest me," he said curtly.

Ellis Grant laughed again and passed on. He valued his acquaintanceship with the writer. He would not jeopardize it with over-much familiarity. But he did not believe in the utter lack of interest that he professed. No living man who knew her could be wholly indifferent to the doings of Rosa Mundi. The fiery charm of her, her passionate vitality, made that impossible.

Courteney finished his dinner and went out. The night was almost as hot as the day had been. He turned his back on the Pier, that was lighted from end to end, and walked away down the long parade.

He was beginning to wish himself out of the place. He had an absurd feeling of being caught in some web of Fate that clung to him tenaciously, strive as he would. Grant's laugh of careless incredulity pursued him. There had been triumph also in that laugh. No doubt the fellow anticipated a big haul on Rosa Mundi's night.

And again there rose before him the memory of young Eric Baron's ardent face. "I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd have me," the boy had said to him once.

The boy had been a fool, but straight. The woman—well, the woman was not the marrying sort. He was certain of that. She was elusive as a flame. Impatiently yet again he flung the thought of her from him. What did it matter to him? Why should he be haunted by her thus? He would not suffer it.

He tramped to the end of the parade and stood looking out over the dark sea. He was sorry for that adopted child of hers. That face of innocence rose before him clear against the gathering dark. Not much chance for the child, it seemed! Utterly unspoilt and unsophisticated at present, and the property of that demi-mondaine! He wondered if there could be any relationship between them. There was something in the child's eyes that in some strange fashion recalled the eyes of Rosa Mundi. So might she once have gazed in innocence upon a world unknown.

Again, almost savagely, he strove to thrust away the thoughts that troubled him. The child was bound to be contaminated sooner or later; but what was that to him? It was out of his power to deliver her. He was no rescuer of damsels in distress.

So he put away from him the thought of Rosa Mundi and the thought of the child called Rosemary who had come to him out of the morning sunlight, and went back to his hotel doggedly determined that neither the one nor the other should disturb his peace of mind. He would take refuge in his work, and forget them.

But late that night he awoke from troubled sleep to hear Ellis Grant laugh again in careless triumph—the laugh of the man who knows that he has drawn a prize.

It was not a restful night for Randal Courteney, and in the early morning he was out again, striding over the sunlit sands towards his own particular bathing-cove beyond the breakwater.

The tide was coming in, and the dashing water filled all the world with its music. A brisk wind was blowing, and the waves were high.

It was the sort of sea that Courteney revelled in, and he trusted that, at that early hour, he would be free from all intrusion. So accustomed to privacy was he that he had come to regard the place almost as his own.

But as he topped the breakwater he came upon a sight that made him draw back in disgust. A white mackintosh lay under a handful of stones upon the shingly beach. He surveyed it suspiciously, with the air of a man who fears that he is about to walk into a trap.

Then, his eyes travelling seaward, he spied a red cap bobbing up and down in the spray of the dancing waves.

The impulse to turn and retrace his steps came to him, but some unknown force restrained him. He remembered suddenly the current that had more than once drawn him out of his course when bathing in those waters, and the owner of the red cap was alone. He stood, uncertain, on the top of the breakwater, and watched.

Two minutes later the very event he had pictured was taking place under his eyes, and he was racing over the soft sand below the shingle at the top of his speed. Two arms were beating wildly out in the shining sparkle of water, as though they strove against the invisible bars of a cage, and a voice—the high, frightened voice of a child—was calling for help.

He flung off his coat as he ran, and dashed without an instant's pause straight into the green foaming waves. The water swirled around him as he struck out; he clove his way through it, all his energies concentrated upon the bobbing red cap and struggling arms ahead of him. Lifted on the crest of a rushing wave, he saw her, helpless as an infant in the turmoil. Her terrified eyes were turned his way, wildly beseeching him. He fought with the water to reach her.

He realized as he drew nearer that she was not wholly inexperienced. She was working against the current to keep herself up, but no longer striving to escape it. He saw with relief that she had not lost her head.

He had been prepared to approach her with caution, but she sent him a sudden, brave smile that reassured him.

"Be quick!" she gasped. "I'm nearly done."

The current caught him, but with a powerful stroke or two he righted his course and reached her. Her hand closed upon his shoulder.

"I'm all right now," she panted, and despite the distress of her breathing, he caught the note of confidence in her voice.

"We've got to get out of it," he made grim answer. "Get your hand in my belt; that'll help you best. Then, when you're ready, strike out with the other and make for the open sea! We shall get out of this infernal current that way."

She obeyed him implicitly, asking no question. Side by side they drew out of the current, the man pulling strongly, his companion seconding his efforts with a fitfulness that testified to her failing powers. They reached calmer water at length, and then curtly he ordered her to turn on her back and rest.

Again without a word she obeyed him, and he floated beside her, supporting her. The early sun smote down upon them with increasing strength. Her face was deathly pale against the red of her cap.

"We must get to shore," said Courteney, observing her.

"That dreadful current!" she gasped through quivering lips.

"No. We can avoid that. It will mean a scamper over the sands when we get there, but that will do you good. Stay as you are! I will tow you."

Had she been less obedient, he would have found his task infinitely harder. But she was absolutely submissive to his will. Ten minutes later he landed her close to his own bathing-cove, which he discovered with relief to be deserted.

She would have subsided in a heap upon the sand the moment she felt it warm and dry beneath her feet; but he held her up.

"No. A good run is what you need. Come! Your mackintosh is half-a-mile away."

She looked at him with dismay, but he remained inexorable. He had no desire to have her fainting on his hands. As if she had been a boy, he gripped her by the elbow.

Again she submitted stumblingly to his behest, but when they had covered half the distance Courteney had mercy.

"You're fagged out," he said. "Rest here while I go and fetch it!"

She sank down thankfully on the shingle, and he strode swiftly on.

When he returned she had hollowed a nest for herself, and was lying curled up in the sun. Her head was pillowed on her cap, and the soft golden curls waved tenderly above her white forehead. Once more she seemed to him a mere child, and he looked down upon her with compassion.

She sat up at his approach with a boyish, alert movement, and lifted her eyes to his. He likened them half-unconsciously to the purple-blue of hare-bells, in the ardent light of the early morning.

"You are kind!" she said gratefully.

He placed the white mackintosh around her slim figure. "Take my advice," he said in his brief fashion, "and don't come bathing alone in this direction again!"

She made a small shy gesture of invitation. "Sit down a minute!" she said half-pleadingly. "I know you are very wet; but the sun is so warm, and they say sea-water never chills."

He hesitated momentarily; then, possibly because she had spoken with so childlike an appeal, he sat down in the shingle beside her.

She stretched out a slender hand to him, almost as though feeling her way. And when he took it she made a slight movement towards him, as of one about to make a confidence. "Now we can talk," she said.

He let her hand go again, and felt in the pocket of his coat, which he carried on his arm, for his pipe.

She drew a little nearer to him. "Mr. Courteney," she said, "doesn't 'Thank you' sound a silly thing to say?"

He drew back. "Don't! Please don't!" he said, and flushed uneasily as he opened his tobacco-pouch. "I would infinitely rather you said nothing at all to any one. Don't do it again, that's all."

"Mustn't I even tell Rosa Mundi?" she said.

His flush deepened as he remembered that she would probably know him by name. She must have known in those far-off Australian days that he was working with all his might to free young Baron from her toils.

He sat in silence till, "Will you tell me something?" whispered Rosemary, leaning nearer.

He stiffened involuntarily. "I don't know."

"Please try!" she urged softly. "I feel sure you can. Why—why don't you like Rosa Mundi?"

He looked at her, and his eyes were steely; but they softened by imperceptible degrees as they met the earnest sweetness of her answering look. "No, I can't tell you that," he said with decision.

But her look held him. "Is it because you don't think she is very good?"

"I can't tell you," he said again.

Still she looked at him, and again there seemed to be in her eyes that expression of a child who has seen life without understanding it. "Perhaps you think I am too young to know good from evil," she said after a moment. "I am not. I have told you I am older than I look, and in some things I am older even than my years. Then, too, I belong to Rosa Mundi. I told you, didn't I? I am her familiar spirit. She has even called me her angel, or her better self. I know a great many things about her, and some of them are very sad. May I tell you some of the things I know?"

He turned his eyes away from her abruptly, with the feeling that he was resisting some curious magnetism. What was there about this child that attracted him? He was not a lover of children. Moreover, she was verging upon womanhood approaching what he grimly termed "the dangerous age."

He filled his pipe deliberately while she waited for his answer, turning his gaze upon the dazzling line of the horizon.

"You can do as you like," he said at last, and added formally, "May I smoke?"

She nodded. "Yes, I would like you to. It will keep you from being bored. I want to tell you about Rosa Mundi, because you do not judge her fairly. You only know her by repute, and I—I know her heart to heart."

Her voice deepened suddenly, and the man glanced downwards for an instant, but immediately looked away again. She should tell him what she would, but by no faintest sign should she imagine that she had succeeded in arousing his interest. The magnetism was drawing him. He was aware of the attraction, and with firmness he resisted it. Let her strive as she would, she would never persuade him to think kindly of Rosa Mundi.

"You think her—bad," said Rosemary, her voice pitched very low. "I know—oh, I know. Men—some men—are very hard on women like her, women who have had to hew their own way in the world, and meet temptation almost before"—her voice quivered a little—"they knew what temptation meant."

He looked down at her again suddenly and searchingly; but her clear eyes never flinched from his. They were pleading and a little troubled, but wholly unafraid.

"Perhaps you won't believe me," she said. "You'll think you know best. But Rosa Mundi wasn't bad always—not at the beginning. Her dancing began when she was young—oh, younger than I am. It was a dreadful uphill fight. She had a mother then—a mother she adored. Did you ever have a mother like that, I wonder? Perhaps it isn't the same with men, but there are some women who would gladly die for their mothers. And—and Rosa Mundi felt like that. A time came when her mother was dying of a slow disease, and she needed things—many things. Rosa Mundi wasn't a success then. She hadn't had her chance. But there was a man—a man with money and influence—who was willing to offer it to her—at—at—a price. She was dancing for chance coppers outside a San Francisco saloon when first he made his offer. She—refused."

Rosemary's soft eyes were suddenly lowered. She did not look like a child any longer, but a being sexless, yet very pitiful—an angel about to weep.

Courteney watched her, for he could not turn away.

Almost under her breath, she went on: "A few days later her mother began to suffer—oh, terribly. There was no money, no one to help. She went again and danced at the saloon entrance. He—the man—was there. She danced till she was tired out. And then—and then—she was hungry, too—she fainted." The low voice sank a little lower. "When she came to herself, she was in his keeping. He was very kind to her—too kind. Her strength was gone, and—and temptation is harder to resist when one is physically weak too. When she went back to her mother she had accepted—his—offer. From that night her fortune was made."

Two tears gathered on the dark lashes and hung there till she put up a quick hand and brushed them away.

The man's face was curiously softened; he looked as if he desired to dry those tears himself.

Without looking up she continued. "The mother died—very, very soon. Life is like that. Often one pays—in vain. There is no bargaining with death. But at least she never knew. That was Rosa Mundi's only comfort. There was no turning back for her then. And she was so desolate, so lonely, nothing seemed to matter.

"She went from triumph to triumph. She carried all before her. He took her to New York, and she conquered there. They strewed her path with roses. They almost worshipped her. She tried to think she was happy, but she was not—even then. They came around her in crowds. They made love to her. She was young, and their homage was like a coloured ball to her. She tossed it to and fro, and played with it. But she made game of it all. They were nothing to her—nothing, till one day there came to her a boy—no, he was past his boyhood—a young man—rich, well-born, and honourable. And he—he loved her, and offered her—marriage. No one had ever offered her that before. Can you realize—but no, you are a man!—what it meant to her? It meant shelter and peace and freedom. It meant honour and kindness, and the chance to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for goodness. She was tired—so tired of the gaudy vanities of life, so—so—what is the word—so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing—oh, longing—for what she calls respectability? And then—this chance, this offer of deliverance! It meant giving up her career, of course. It meant changing her whole life. It meant sacrifice—the sort of sacrifice that you ought to be able to understand—for she loved her dancing and her triumphs, just as you love your public—the people who read your books and love you for their sake. That is different, isn't it, from the people who follow you about and want to stare at you just because you are prosperous and popular? The people who really appreciate your art—those are the people you would not disappoint for all the world. They make up a vast friendship that is very precious, and it would be a sacrifice—a big—sacrifice—to give it up. That is the sort of sacrifice that marriage meant to Rosa Mundi. And though she wanted marriage—and she wanted to be good—she hesitated."

There was a little pause. Randal Courteney was no longer dissembling his interest. He had laid his pipe aside, and was watching with unvarying intentness the downcast childish face. He asked no questions. There was something in the low-spoken words that held him silent. Perhaps he feared to probe too deep.

In a few moments she went on, gathering up a little handful of the shining shingle, and slowly sifting it through her fingers as though in search of something precious.

"I think if she had really loved the man, it wouldn't have mattered. Nothing counts like love, does it? But—you see—she didn't. She wanted to. She knew that he was clean and honourable, worthy of a good woman. He loved her, too, loved her so that he was willing to put away all her past. For she did not deceive him about that. He was willing to give her all—all she wanted. But she did not love him. She honoured him, and she felt for a time at least that love might come. He guessed that, and he did his best—all that he could think of—to get her to consent. In the end—in the end"—Rosemary paused, a tiny stone in her hand that shone like polished crystal—"she was very near to the verge of yielding, the young man had almost won, when—when something happened that altered—everything. The young man had a friend, a writer, a great man even then; he is greater now. The friend came, and he threw his whole weight into the scale against her. She felt him—the force of him—before she so much as saw him. She had broken with her lover some time before. She was free. And she determined to marry the young man who loved her—in spite of his friend. That very day it happened. The young man sent her a book written by his friend. She had begun to hate the writer, but out of curiosity she opened it and read. First a bit here, then a bit there, and at last she sat down and read it—all through."

The little shining crystal lay alone in the soft pink palm. Rosemary dwelt upon it, faintly smiling.

"She read far into the night," she said, speaking almost dreamily, as if recounting a vision conjured up in the glittering surface of the stone. "It was a free night for her. And she read on and on and on. The book gripped her; it fascinated her. It was—a great book. It was called—Remembrance." She drew a quick breath and went on somewhat hurriedly. "It moved her in a fashion that perhaps you would hardly realize. I have read it, and I—understand. The writing was wonderful. It brought home to her—vividly, oh, vividly—how the past may be atoned for, but never, never effaced. It hurt her—oh, it hurt her. But it did her good. It showed her how she was on the verge of taking a wrong turning, of perhaps—no, almost certainly—dragging down the man who loved her. She saw suddenly the wickedness of marrying him just to escape her own prison. She understood clearly that only love could have justified her—no other motive than that. She saw the evil of fastening her past to an honourable man whose good name and family demanded of him something better. She felt as if the writer had torn aside a veil and shown her her naked soul. And—and—though the book was a good book, and did not condemn sinners—she was shocked, she was horrified, at what it made her see."

Rosemary suddenly closed her hand upon the shining stone, and turned fully and resolutely to the man beside her.

"That night changed Rosa Mundi," she said; "changed her completely. Before it was over she wrote to the young man who loved her and told him that she could not marry him. The letter did not go till the following evening. She kept it back for a few hours—in case she repented. But—though she suffered—she did not repent. In the evening she had an engagement to dance. The young man was there—in the front row. And he brought his friend. She danced. Her dancing was superb that night. She had a passionate desire to bewitch the man who had waked her soul—as she had bewitched so many others. She had never met a man she could not conquer. She was determined to conquer him. Was it wrong? Anyway, it was human. She danced till her very heart was on fire, danced till she trod the clouds. Her audience went mad with the delight of it. They raved as if they were intoxicated. All but one man! All but one man! And he—at the end—he looked her just once in the eyes, stonily, piercingly, and went away." She uttered a sharp, choking breath. "I have nearly done," she said. "Can you guess what happened then? Perhaps you know. The man who loved her received her letter when he got back that night. And—and—she had bewitched him, remember; he—shot himself. The friend—the writer—she never saw again. But—but—Rosa Mundi has never forgotten him. She carries him in her heart—the man who taught her the meaning of life."

She ceased to speak, and suddenly, like a boy, sprang to her feet, tossing away the stone that she had treasured in her hand.

But the man was almost as quick as she. He caught her by the shoulder as he rose. "Wait!" he said. "Wait!" His voice rang hard, but there was no hardness in his eyes. "Tell me—who you are!"

She lifted her eyes to his fearlessly, without shame. "What does it matter who I am?" she said. "What does it matter? I have told you I am Rosemary. That is her name for me, and it was your book called Remembrance that made her give it me."

He held her still, looking at her with a growing compassion in his eyes. "You are her child," he said.

She smiled. "Perhaps—spiritually. Yes, I think I am her child, such a child as she might have been if—Fate—had been kind to her— or if she had read your book before—and not after."

He let her go slowly, almost with reluctance. "I think I should like to meet your—Rosa Mundi," he said.

Her eyes suddenly shone. "Not really? You are in earnest? But—but— you would hurt her. You despise her."

"I am sorry for her," he said, and there was a hint of doggedness in his voice, as though he spoke against his better judgment.

The child's face had an eager look, but she seemed to be restraining herself. "I ought to tell you one thing about her first," she said. "Perhaps you will disapprove. I don't know. But it is because of you—and your revelation—that she is doing it. Rosa Mundi is going to be married. No, she is not giving up her career or anything—except her freedom. Her old lover has come back to her. She is going to marry him now. He wants her for his wife."

"Ah!" It was the man who was eager now. He spoke impulsively. "She will be happy then? She loves him?"

Rosemary looked at him with her clear, unfaltering eyes. "Oh, no," she said. "He isn't that sort of man at all. Besides, there is only one man in the world that she could care for in that way. No, she doesn't love him. But she is doing the right thing, and she is going to be good. You will not despise her any more?"

There was such anxious appeal in her eyes that he could not meet it. He turned his own away.

There fell a silence between them, and through it the long, long roar of the sea rose up—a mighty symphony of broken chords.

The man moved at last, looked down at the slight boyish figure beside him, hesitated, finally spoke. "I still think that I should like to meet Rosa Mundi," he said.

Her eyes smiled again. "And you will not despise her now," she said, her tone no longer a question.

"I think," said Randal Courteney slowly, "that I shall never despise any one again."

"Life is so difficult," said Rosemary, with the air of one who knew.

They were strewing the Pier with roses for Rosa Mundi's night. There were garlands of roses, festoons of roses, bouquets of roses; roses overhead, roses under foot, everywhere roses.

Summer had returned triumphant to deck the favourite's path.

Randal Courteney marked it all gravely, without contempt. It was her hour.

No word from her had reached him, but that night he would meet her face to face. Through days and nights of troubled thought, the resolve had grown within him. To-night it should bear fruit. He would not rest again until he had seen her. For his peace of mind was gone. She was about to throw herself away upon a man she did not love, and he felt that it was laid upon him to stop the sacrifice. The burden of responsibility was his. He had striven against this conviction, but it would not be denied. From the days of young Eric Baron's tragedy onward, this woman had made him as it were the star of her destiny. To repudiate the fact was useless. She had, in her ungoverned, impulsive fashion, made him surety for her soul.

The thought tormented him, but it held a strange attraction for him also. If the story were true, and it was not in him to doubt it, it touched him in a way that was wholly unusual. Popularity, adulation, had been his portion for years. But this was different, this was personal—a matter in which reputation, fame, had no part. In a different sphere she also was a star, with a host of worshippers even greater than his own. The humility of her amazed him. She had, as it were, taken her fate between her hands and laid it as an offering at his feet.

And so, on Rosa Mundi's night, he went to the great Pavilion, mingling with the crowd, determined when her triumph was over, to seek her out. There would be a good many seekers, he doubted not; but he was convinced that she would not deny him an interview.

He secured a seat in the third row, avoiding almost by instinct any more conspicuous position. He was early, and while he waited, the thought of young Eric Baron came to him—the boy's eager-face, the adoration of his eyes. He remembered how on that far-off night he had realized the hopelessness of combating his love, how he had shrugged his shoulders and relinquished the struggle. And the battle had been his even then—a bitter victory more disastrous than defeat.

He put the memory from him and thought of Rosemary—the child with the morning light in her eyes, the innocence of the morning in her soul. How tenderly she had spoken of Rosa Mundi! How sweetly she had pleaded her cause! With what amazing intuition had she understood! Something that was greater than pity welled up within him. Rosa Mundi's guardian angel had somehow reached his heart.

People were pouring into the place. He saw that it was going to be packed. And outside, lining the whole length of the Pier, they were waiting for her too, waiting to strew her path with, roses.

Ah! she was coming! Above the wash of the sea there rose a roar of voices. They were giving her the homage of a queen. He listened to the frantic cheering, and again it was Rosa Mundi, splendid and brilliant, who filled his thoughts as she filled the thoughts of all just then.

The cheering died down, and there came a great press of people into the back of the building. The lights were lowered, but he heard the movement, the buzz of a delighted crowd.

Suddenly the orchestra burst into loud music. They were playing "Queen of the Earth," he remembered later. The curtain went up. And in a blaze of light he saw Rosa Mundi.

Something within him sprang into quivering life. Something which till that moment he had never known awoke and gripped him with a force gigantic. She was robed in shimmering, transparent gold—a queen-woman, slight indeed, dainty, fairy-like—yet magnificent. Over her head, caught in a jewelled fillet, there hung a filmy veil of gold, half revealing, half concealing, the smiling face behind. Trailing wisps of golden gossamer hung from her beautiful arms. Her feet were bound with golden sandals. And on her breast were roses—golden roses.

She was exquisite as a dream. He gazed and gazed upon her as one entranced. The tumult of acclamation that greeted her swept by him unheeded. He was conscious only of a passionate desire to fling back the golden veil that covered her and see the laughing face behind. Its elusiveness mocked him. She was like a sunbeam standing there, a flitting, quivering shaft of light, too spiritual to be grasped fully, almost too dazzling for the eye to follow.

The applause died down to a dead silence. Her audience watched her with bated breath. Her dance was a thing indescribable. Courteney could think of nothing but the flashing of morning sunlight upon running water to the silver strains of a flute that was surely piped by Pan. He could not follow the sparkling wonder of her. He felt dazed and strangely exhilarated, almost on fire with this new, fierce attraction. It was as if the very soul were being drawn out of his body. She called to him, she lured him, she bewitched him.

When he had seen her before, he had been utterly out of sympathy. He had scorned her charms, had felt an almost angry contempt for young Baron's raptures. To him she had been a snake-woman, possessed of a fascination which, to him, was monstrous and wholly incomprehensible. She had worn a strange striped dress of green—tight-fitting, hideous he had deemed it. Her face had been painted. He had been too near the stage, and she had revolted him. Her dance had certainly been wonderful, sinuous, gliding, suggestive—a perfectly conceived scheme of evil. And she had thought to entrap him with it! The very memory was repulsive even yet.

But this—ah! this was different. This thing of light and air, this dancing sunbeam, this creature of the morning, exquisite in every detail, perfectly poised, swifter than thought, yet arresting at every turn, vivid as a meteor, yet beyond all scrutiny, all ocular power of comprehension, she set every nerve in him a-quiver. She seized upon his fancy and flung it to and fro, catching a million colours in her radiant flights. She made the hot blood throb in his temples. She beat upon the door of his heart. She called back his vanished youth, the passion unassuaged of his manhood. She appealed to him directly and personally. She made him realize that he was the one man who had taught—and could teach—her the meaning of life.

Then it was over. Like a glittering crystal shattered to fragments, his dream of ecstasy collapsed. The noise around him was as the roar of thundering breakers. But he sat mute in the midst of it, as one stunned.

Someone leaned over from behind and spoke to him. He was aware of a hand upon his shoulder.

"What do you think of her?" said Ellis Grant in his ear. "Superb, isn't she? Come and see her before she appears again!"

As if compelled by some power outside himself, Courteney rose. He edged his way to the end of the row and joined the great man there. The whole house was a seething turmoil of sound.

Grant was chuckling to himself as one well pleased. In Courteney's eyes he looked stouter, more prosperous, more keenly business-like, than when he had spoken with him a few nights previously. He took Courteney by the arm and led him through a door at the side.

"Let 'em yell 'emselves hoarse for a bit!" he said. "Do 'em good. Guess my 'rose of the world' isn't going to be too cheap a commodity. … Which reminds me, sir. You've cost me a thousand English pounds by coming here to-night."

"Indeed?" Courteney spoke stiffly. He felt stiff, physically stiff, as one forcibly awakened from a deep slumber.

The man beside him was still chuckling. "Yes. The little witch! Said she'd manage it somehow when I told her you weren't taking any. We had a thousand on it, and the little devil has won, outwitted us both. How in thunder did she do it? Laid a trap for you; what?"

Courteney did not answer. The stiffness was spreading. He felt as one turned to stone. Mechanically he yielded to the hand upon his arm, not speaking, scarcely thinking.

And then—almost before he knew it—he was in her presence, face to face with the golden vision that had caught and—for a space at least—had held his heart.

He bowed, still silent, still strangely bound and fettered by the compelling force.

A hand that was lithe and slender and oddly boyish came out to him. A voice that had in it sweet, lilting notes, like the voice of a laughing child, spoke his name.

"Mr. Courteney! How kind!" it said.

As from a distance he heard Grant speak. "Mr. Courteney, allow me to introduce you—my wife!"

There was a dainty movement like the flash of shimmering wings. He looked up. She had thrown back her veil.

He gazed upon her. "Rosemary!"

She looked back at him above the roses with eyes that were deeply purple—as the depths of the sea. "Yes, I am Rosemary—to my friends," she said.

Ellis Grant was laughing still, in his massive, contented way. "But to her lover," he said, "she is—and always has been—Rosa Mundi."

Then speech came back to Courteney, and strength returned. He held himself in firm restraint. He had been stricken, but he did not flinch.

"Your husband?" he said.

She indicated Grant with a careless hand. "Since yesterday," she said.

He bowed to her again, severely formal. "May I wish you joy?" he said.

There was an instant's pause, and in that instant something happened. She had not moved. Her eyes still met his own, but it was as if a veil had dropped between them suddenly. He saw the purple depths no more.

"Thank you," said Rosa Mundi, with her little girlish laugh.

As he strode down the Pier a few minutes later, he likened the scent of the crushed roses that strewed the way to the fumes of sacrifice—sacrifice offered at the feet of a goddess who cared for nothing sacred. Not till long after did he remember the tears that he had seen her shed.