The Halo Part 6

Inspired to a dramatic act totally foreign to her nature, impelled by his sheer strength of imagination and his buoyant personality, Lady Brigit Mead threw back her veil.

"Theo is engaged--to me," she answered.

CHAPTER FIVE

Joyselle stared at her, his eyes like two lamps. Then rus.h.i.+ng at her, he took her hands in his and bent over her. "Good G.o.d! Good G.o.d!" he cried rapidly in French, "_you_ are Lady Brigit Mead? You--you Diana--you _splendeur de femme_? But I dream--I dream!"

"Indeed, no, I am Brigit Mead, M. Joyselle,"--she was laughing, laughing with delightful amus.e.m.e.nt. He was too delicious! Then she added hastily, "You are crus.h.i.+ng my hands!"

Sitting down by her, he patted her reddened fingers tenderly. "_Chere enfant, chere enfant_, forgive an old papa--_qui t'a fait bobo_--and you are actually going to marry my Theo?"

"I am."

"Then," with a solemnity that was as overwhelming as his joy, he returned, bowing his head as if in church, "_il a une sacree chance_. He is--the luckiest boy in the world."

Brigit had forgotten what boredom meant. This spontaneous, warm-hearted person with--oh, horror,--a white satin tie, and a low, turned-down collar, filled her with the gentlest and most affectionate amus.e.m.e.nt.

And as he was to be her father-in-law, why not enjoy him? "It is kind of you to be so pleased," she said, "it is very interesting, our meeting like this----"

"Interesting! It is--romance, my dear, romance, of the most unusual. And you are so beautiful that I cannot look away from you. He told me you were beautiful--yes--but I had pictured to myself a pink and white miss with a head as big as a pumpkin--and, just Heaven--a 'drawing-room voice.' Tell me, oh, tell me, _fille adoree_, that you do not sing!"

His anxiety was perfectly sincere, and she hastened to rea.s.sure him.

"Indeed, I do not."

"Nor play--not even 'simple little things,' and 'c.o.o.n-songs'?"

"Nothing."

"G.o.d be praised!" he returned with a sort of whimsical reverence, in French. "Then you are perfect."

"Indeed I am not. Oh, I _really_ am not!" Before she knew what he was about to do, he had kissed her forehead, and then, as the train stopped, he rushed at the window.

"But where are you going?" he cried, so rapidly that she hardly understood him. "Why are you--why are we both--going away from London?

We must go _home_--to my house--to my wife."

"I am going to make a visit----"

"_Mais non, mais non, mais non_--come, there is a train going to London--hurry, we will go back. You will telegraph your friends. This evening--the betrothal evening, you must spend with us. Come, hurry, or we shall be too late."

"But I cannot, it is impossible," she protested weakly, as, he took her dressing-case and umbrella from the seat, after scrambling into his furry coat. "My friend is expecting me!"

"Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta! Come, _ma fille, bella signorina_, the train is just there--I will telegraph your friend. Let me help you, _comme ca, ca y est_!"

And almost before she knew what had happened, they were in the other train speeding back to town.

"Theo is at home--he went to tell his mother," Joyselle said, nearly braining an old lady with his violin-case as he swung round to speak.

"And they will be sitting by the fire, and I--who was going to spend the night at the Duke of c.u.mberland's--will appear, and after we have embraced, hey, presto--I produce you--Diana--his _adoree_--my daughter."

The old lady, who was engaged to n.o.body (and who, what was much worse, never had been), resented his loud voice and his way of handling his violin-case as if it had been a baby. "Sir," she said, "you are crowding me."

"_Sacre nom d'une pipe_--I beg your pardon, madame, but you must not push that box. You must not _touch_ it," he returned, all his smiles gone and a ferocious frown joining his big black eyebrows. "It contains my violin, madame, my Amati!"

Brigit, convulsed with laughter, laid her hand on his arm as if she had known him for years, and he became like a lamb at her touch.

"I beg your pardon, madame," he added, smiling angelically (and an angelic smile on a dark, middle-aged face is a very winning thing), "I will put it over here."

Then, his beloved fiddle safe from profane touch, he again turned to Brigit.

CHAPTER SIX

Number 57 Golden Square was dark when Joyselle's cab stopped in front of it, and he, after tenderly depositing his violin-case under the little portico, a.s.sisted Brigit to alight. "They are, of course, in the kitchen," he remarked as he paid the cabby. "Come, _ma belle_."

She followed him as if she were in a dream, watching him open the door with a latchkey, after a frantic search for that object in all his pockets, tiptoeing after him as, a finger to his lips, a delighted, boyish smile crinkling his eyelids, he led her down the narrow, oilclothed pa.s.sage.

"Why are they in the kitchen?" she asked, as excited as he.

"It is nearly eight; she is busy with supper."

Even in the dim light of the single gas burner Brigit caught at once the predominating note of the house: its intense and wonderful cleanliness.

The walls, painted white, were snowy, the chequered oilcloth under her feet as spotless as if it had that moment come from the shop, and the slender handrail of the steep staircase glanced with polish, drawing an arrow of light through the dusk.

Putting his violin-case on the table, Joyselle took off his hat and with some difficulty pulled his arms out of his greatcoat sleeves. Then, taking his guest by the arm, he very softly opened the door leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and started down the stairs, soft-footed as a great cat.

Could it possibly be she, Brigit Mead, creeping stealthily down a bas.e.m.e.nt staircase, her arm firmly held by a man to whom she had never spoken until that afternoon?

The stairs turned sharply to the left half-way down, and at the turning a flood of warm light met them, together with a smell of cooking.

"Ah, little mother, little mother," Theo's voice was saying, "just wait till you _see_ her."

Joyselle's delight in the artistic timeliness of the speech found vent in his putting his arm round his companion's slim waist and giving her a hearty, paternal hug. Her whole face, in the darkness, quivered with amus.e.m.e.nt. She had never in her whole life been so thoroughly and satisfactorily amused. Then, having gone forward as far as his now simply restraining hold would let her, she looked down into the kitchen.

It was a large room, snowy with whitewash as to walls and ceiling, spotless as to floor. At the far end of it, opposite a paG.o.da-like and beautiful but apparently unlighted modern English stove, was a huge, deep, cavernous fireplace, unlike any the girl had ever seen. It was, in fact, a perfect copy of a Norman fireplace, with stone seats at the sides, an old-fas.h.i.+oned spit, and the fire burning l.u.s.tily on the floor of it, unhemmed by dogs or grate. On a long, sand-scoured table in the middle of the room sat Theo, in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, deftly breaking eggs into a big, green-lined bowl, while before the fire, gently swinging to and fro over the flames a saucepan with an abnormally long handle--Madame Joyselle. Her short, dark-clad figure, half-covered with a blue ap.r.o.n, showed all its too-generous curves as she bent forward, and when, at Theo's remark, she turned to him with a smile, she showed a round, wrinkled, rosy face and small blue eyes that wrinkled with sympathetic kindness. "She is beautiful, my little bit of cabbage?"

Theo broke the last egg, sat down the bowl, and got down from the table.

"Tannier--you remember him? The man who painted everybody last winter--said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen." The pride in his voice was good to hear.

"_Tant mieux!_ Beauty is a quality like another. And--_voila mon pet.i.t_, give me the eggs--she loves you?" As she put the question she took the bowl and began beating the eggs violently yet lightly with a whisk. She had turned the mixture into her hot saucepan and was holding it over the fire before the young man answered. He stood, his hands in his trousers-pockets, his head bent thoughtfully. Then he spoke, and his words mingled with the hissing of the omelet. "I think she must," he said with a certain dignified simplicity, "or she would not have accepted me. But--not as I love her. That could not be, you know."

The eavesdroppers started apart guiltily, and for a second Brigit wanted to rush up the stairs and out of the house. She had heard too much.

But Joyselle, gently pus.h.i.+ng her out of his way, ran down the steps and with a big laugh threw his arms round his boy and kissed him.

"_Voyons l'amoureux_," he cried, "show me thy face of a lover, little boy, who only yesterday wore ap.r.o.ns and climbed on my knees to search for sweets in my pockets!"