The Man and the Moment Part 24

"Since you knew the lady in life who is now my ghost--and she told you of Binko--did she not say anything else about her visit to Arranstoun or its master?"

"Nothing--it was all apparently a blank horror, and she probably wanted to forget it and him."

"He made some kind of an impression upon her, then--good or bad, since she wanted to forget him--" eagerly.

Sabine admitted to herself that the umpires might have called "_touche_"

for this.

"It would seem so," she allowed, with what she thought was generosity.

"That is better than only creating indifference."

"Yes--the indifference came later."

"One expected that; but there was a time, you have inferred, when she felt something. What was it? Can't you tell me?"

Excitement was rising high now in both of them, and the grouse on their plates remained almost untasted.

"At first, she did not know herself, I think; but afterwards, when she came to understand things, she felt resentment and hate, and it taught her to appreciate chivalry and gentleness."

Michael almost cried "_touche_!" aloud.

"He was an awful brute--the owner of Arranstoun, I suppose?"

"Yes--apparently--and one who broke a contract and rather glorified in the fact."

Michael laughed a little bitterly, as he answered:

"All men are brutes when the moment favors them, and when a woman is sufficiently attractive. We will admit that the owner of Arranstoun was a brute."

"He was a man who, I understand, lived only for himself and for his personal gratification," Mrs. Howard told him.

"Poor devil! He perhaps had not had much chance. You should be charitable!"

Sabine shrugged her shoulders in that engaging way she had. She had hardly looked up again at Michael since the beginning, the exigencies of the dinner-table being excuse enough for not turning her head; but his eyes often devoured her fascinating, irregular profile to try and discover her real meaning, but without success.

"He was probably one of those people who are more or less like animals, and just live because they are alive," Sabine went on. "Who are educated because they happen to have been born in the upper cla.s.ses--Who drink and eat and sport and game because it gives their senses pleasure so to do--but who see no further good in things."

"A low wretch!"

"Yes--more or less."

Michael's eyes were flas.h.i.+ng now--and she did peep at him, when he said:

"But if the original of the ghost had stayed with him, she might have been able to change this base view of life--she could have elevated him."

Sabine shook her head.

"No, she was too young and too inexperienced, and he had broken all her ideals, absolutely stunned and annihilated her whole vista of the future. There was no other way but flight. She had to reconstruct her soul alone."

"You do not ask me what became of the owner of Arranstoun--or what he did with his life."

"I know he went to China--but the matter does not interest me. There he probably continued to live and to kill other things--to seize what he wanted and get some physical joy out of existence as usual."

A look of pain now quenched the fire.

"You are very cruel," he said.

"The owner of Arranstoun was very cruel."

"He knows it and is deeply repentant; but he was and is only a very ordinary man."

"No, a savage."

"A savage then, if you will--and one dangerous to provoke too far;" the fire blazed again. "And what do you suppose your friend learned in those five years of men--after she had ceased to exist as the owner of Arranstoun knew her?"

Sabine laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound.

"Of men! That they are like children, desiring only the toys that are out of reach, wasting their souls upon what they cannot obtain and valuing not at all the gifts of the G.o.ds which are in their own possession."

"What a cynical view!"

"Is it not a true one?"

"Perhaps--in some cases--in mine certainly; only I have generally managed to obtain what I wanted."

"Then it may be a new experience for you to find there was one thing which was out of your reach."

He bent forward eagerly and asked, with a catch in his breath:

"And that was----?"

"The soul of a woman--shall we say--that something which no brute force can touch."

The fencing bout was over, the foils were laid aside, and grim earnest was in Michael's voice now--modulated by civilization into that tone which does not carry beyond one's neighbor at a dinner party.

"Your soul--Sabine--that is the only thing which interests me, and I was never able to touch your soul? That is not true, as you know--How dare you say it to me. There was one moment----"

"Hush," she whispered, growing very white. "You must not--you shall not speak to me so. You had no right to come here. No right to talk to me at all--it is traitorous--we are both traitors to Lord Fordyce, who is a n.o.ble gentleman above suspecting us of such wiles."

And at that moment, through a gap in the flowers of the long table, they both saw Henry's gray eyes fixed upon them with a rather questioning surprise--and then Mrs. Forster gave the signal to the ladies, and Sabine with the others swept from the room, leaving Michael quivering with pain and emotion.

As for Sabine, she was trembling from head to foot.

During dinner, Moravia had had an interesting conversation with Henry.

They had spoken of all sorts of things and eventually, toward the end of it, of Sabine.

"She is the strangest character, Lord Fordyce," Moravia said. "She is more like a boy than a girl in some ways. She absolutely rules everyone.

When we were children, she and all the others used to call me the mother in our games, but it was really Sabine who settled everything. She was always the brigand captain. She got us into all the mischief of clandestine feasts and other rule breaking--and all the Sisters simply adored her, and the Mother Superior, too, and they used to let her off, no matter what she did, with not half our punishments. She was the wildest madcap you ever saw."