Anthony Lyveden Part 18

I can do as I please."

Her promise of his peaceful possession after supper made the meal, so far as Lyveden was concerned, an Olympian banquet. The a.s.semblage, indeed, was remarkable, and the hostess--a very Demeter--must have been the oldest present by some twenty years. The sprightliness of Hermes alone, in the guise of the man called Berry, kept a lively table in roars of laughter.

Yet, full as his cup was, for Anthony the old Falernian was to come....

As good as her word, when the others were straying back to the gallery in response to the lure of a lullaby valse, Valerie led Lyveden to a lobby and let him help her into a chamois-leather coat. A cloak of Irish frieze was hanging there, and she bade him put it about his shoulders against the night air. Anthony protested, but she just stamped her foot.

"It's my birthday," she flashed.

Anthony donned the garment, and she opened a garden-door. A moment later they were walking upon a wide terrace at the back of the house.

"Well?" said Valerie.

"It is my bounden duty," said Anthony, "to remind you that I am a footman. Now that you know, it's very easy to tell you."

"And what if you are?"

"Well, if we happened to visit the same house, I should go in by the tradesmen's entrance."

Valerie tossed her head.

"You might go in by the back, but if you weren't shown out of the front door, _I_ shouldn't visit that house again."

Anthony sighed.

"Then your visiting-list would shrink," he said, "out of all knowledge.

How did you know my calling?"

"Did you think I didn't recognize you that night?"

"At first I was uncertain. That I thought you must have. Then you misled me, and made me think you hadn't. Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," said Valerie. She could not tell him the truth. "It seemed easier. How did you come to The Shrubbery?"

"I wasn't happy where I was, and I saw the b.u.mbles' advertis.e.m.e.nt. It seemed meant for me."

That it was meant for him, and that she and not the b.u.mbles had paid for its insertion, Valerie thought it unnecessary to state.

"We're fated to be brought together," she said.

"How did you know I was at The Shrubbery?"

Valerie raised her eyebrows.

"Betty's my oldest friend," she replied.

Lyveden swallowed the _suggestio falsi_ without a thought. Indeed, so soon as she had spoken, his mind sped back, bee-like, to suck the honey of her previous words: "We're fated to be brought together." Fated....

The moon was up now, and he lifted his eyes and gazed at its clear-cut beauty. A power, then, greater than he had ruled against his resolve.

Why? To what end? It was very kind of the power--at least, he supposed it was--but what was to come of it?

He had wandered straight into her arms. Very good. But--he and she could not stroll upon this terrace for ever. The relentless rubric of Life insisted that he must move--whither he chose, of course, but somewhither. The truth was, he did not know which way to turn. His heart pointed a path, certainly--a very precious path, paved all with silk, hung with the scent of flowers, shadowed by whispering plumage.... His head, however, beyond denouncing his heart as a guide, pointed no way at all.

Anthony wanted desperately to do the right thing. Fortune, it seemed, was at her old tricks. Here she was handing a palace to a beggar who had not enough money to maintain a hovel. It would not have been so hopeless if he had possessed "prospects." With these in his pack, he might have essayed the way his heart showed him. They were, however, no part of a footman's equipment....

Anthony began to wonder what became of old footmen. One or two, perhaps, became butlers. As for the rest...

Valerie, too, was in some perplexity. She was wondering, now that she had her man here, how best to deal with him. Pride and honour make up a ground which must be trodden delicately. One false step on her part might cost them both extremely dear. Her instinct was to take the bull by the horns, Anthony by the arm, and Time by the forelock. The last of these was slipping away--slipping away. She was actually twenty-six. In a short fourteen years she would be actually forty.

Forty! For a moment she was upon the very edge of exercising the privilege of a sovereign lady who has fallen in love. All things considered, she would, I think, have been justified. Something, however, restrained her. It was not modesty, for modesty had nothing to do with the matter. It was not the fear of rejection, for she was sure of her ground. It was probably a threefold influence--a rope, as it were, of three stout strands. The first was consideration for Anthony's pride; the second, an anxiety lest she should beggar him of that which he prized above rubies, namely, his self-respect; the third, an innate conviction that while the path of Love may look easy, it is really slippery and steep out of all conscience.

Thus absorbed in the delicacy of their relations.h.i.+p, they stepped the length of the terrace in silence. Then--

"I don't know what you're thinking about," said Valerie, "but I should like to."

Anthony shook his head.

"I'll tell you a story instead," he said. "If you like, that is."

"Please."

She turned and leaned her arms upon the stone bal.u.s.trade, overlooking dim lawns and, beyond, the pale ghost of a great park that seemed to stretch and roll unlimited into the depths of a distance which Night had bewitched.

"There was once," said Anthony, "a frog. He wasn't much of a frog, as frogs go. In fact, with the exception that he had no home and no friends, he was a very ordinary frog indeed. One day when he was sick and tired of being alone, he went out and bought a tame minnow.

Considering how poor he was, it was very reckless, because it meant that there were now two mouths to feed instead of one, but the minnow and the frog became such great friends that that didn't seem to matter.

At last, sure enough, the day of reckoning arrived. The larder was empty, the minnow's appet.i.te was as healthy as ever, and the frog was down to his last penny. So, after a lot of thought, he left the minnow playing in a quiet pool, and went out to earn some flies. By dint of toiling very hard all day, he managed to earn enough to keep the minnow and himself, but it meant that the two had very little time together, and that was a shame.

"Well, one day the frog got back to the pool a little earlier than usual, and, chancing to lift up his eyes, there seated upon the bank he saw a real live Princess. What the frog thought, when he saw her, may be imagined. What he felt doesn't matter. Enough that he was profoundly moved. So moved that he almost forgot to give the minnow his flies. And long after the Princess had risen and gone away, the frog kept thinking of her, and thinking, and thinking.... And then, all of a sudden, he began to wish, as he had never wished before, that he wasn't a frog.

"Now, vain desires are the most persistent of all.

"The frog wished and wished, and cursed himself for a fool, and wished again.... At last he could bear it no longer, so he went to a water-rat who was so old that he was said to be wise, and sought his advice.

"The water-rat was painfully outspoken. 'Once a frog, always a frog,'

he said.

"'Always?'

"'Always. Unless you can find a Princess and persuade her to kiss you.' And, being an old rat, he chuckled at his own joke.

"But the frog didn't see anything to laugh at. He just became so excited that he could hardly float, and then he turned round and started to swim back to the pool as hard as ever he could....

"By the next morning his excitement had somewhat abated. Of course he was tremendously lucky to have found a Princess. (Being an optimist, you see, he a.s.sumed that she would reappear.) But it was quite another matter to persuade her to kiss him. Still, he didn't give up hope, and every day he raced and tore after the flies, so as to get back early to the pool.

"Then one day the impossible thing happened.

"There was the Princess again on the bank of the pool, and when the frog put up his nose and fixed her with a bulging and gla.s.sy eye, she smiled at him. Very haltingly the frog swam to land and crouched at her feet, and, before he knew where he was, she had stooped and kissed him.

"The frog just shut his eyes in ecstasy and gloated upon the fulfilment of his desire. It had happened. His wish had been gratified. The change had come. He was no longer a frog. For the first time he began to wonder what he was. Probably a Prince. Oh, undoubtedly a Prince.

All clad in gold and silver, with a little fair moustache. He hoped very much that he had a fair moustache. But he wouldn't put up his hand and feel, for fear of spoiling it. He wanted to look at himself gradually, beginning with his feet and working upwards. He began to wonder what sort of boots he had on. He decided that he was wearing soft gold boots, with silver laces....