The Brightener Part 11

My flat is in the same house as the Carstairs', a charming old house in which I couldn't afford to live if Dame Caroline (t.i.tle given by me, not His Gracious Majesty) hadn't taught me the gentle, well-paid Art of Brightening.

You might imagine that a Brightener was some sort of patent polisher for stoves, metal, or even boots. But you would be mistaken. _I_ am the one and only Brightener!

But this isn't what I was thinking about when I said, "Oh, that's it?" I was attempting to track that benevolent female fox, Caroline Carstairs, to the fastness of her mental lair. When I flattered myself that I'd succeeded, I spoke again.

"I see what you'd be at, Madame Machiavelli," I warned her. "You and your husband are so fed up with the son of your ancient loves, that he's spoiling your holiday in your country house. You've been wondering how on earth to shed him, anyhow for a breathing s.p.a.ce, without being unkind. So you thought, if you could lure him to London, and lend him your flat----"

"Dearest, you are an ungrateful young Beastess! Besides, you're only half right. It's true, poor Henry and I are worn out from sympathy. Our hearts are squeezed sponges, and have completely collapsed. Not that Terry complains. He doesn't. Only he is so horribly bored with life and himself and us that it's killing all three. I _had_ to think of something to save him. So I thought of you."

"But you thought of Sir Humphrey Hale. Surely, if there's any cure for Mr.----"

"Captain----"

"Burns. Sir Humphrey can----"

"He can't. But I had to _use_ him with Terry. I couldn't say: 'Go live in our flat and meet the Princess di Miramare. He would believe the obvious thing, and be put off. You are to be thrown in as an extra: a charming neighbour who, as a favour to me, will see that he's all right.

When you've got him interested--not in yourself, but in life--I shall explain--or confess, whichever you choose to call it. He will then realize that the fee for his cure ought to be yours, not Sir Humphrey's, though naturally you couldn't accept one. Sir Humphrey has already told me that, judging from the symptoms I've described, it seems a case beyond doctor's skill. You know, Sir H---- has made his pile, and doesn't have to tout for patients. But he's a good friend of Henry's and mine."

"You have very strong faith in _me_!" I laughed.

"Not too strong," said she.

The Carstairs' servants had gone with them to the house near Haslemere; but if Dame Caroline wanted a first-rate cook at a moment's notice, she would w.a.n.gle one even if there were only two in existence, and both engaged. The sh.e.l.l-shock man had his own valet--an ex-soldier--so with the pair of them, and a char-creature of some sort, he would do very well for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I hardly thought that, in the end, he would be braced up to the effort of coming, and I should not have been surprised to receive a wire:

Rather than move, Terry has cut his throat in the j.a.panese garden.

Which shows that despite all past experiences, I little knew my Caroline!

Captain Burns--late of the American Flying Corps--did come; and what is more, he called at my flat before he had been fifteen minutes in his own. This he did because Mrs. Carstairs had begged him to bring a small parcel which he must deliver by hand to me personally. She had telegraphed, asking me to stop at home--quite a favour in this wonderful summer, even though it was July, the season proper had pa.s.sed; but I couldn't refuse, as I'd tacitly promised to brighten the man. So there I sat, in my favourite frock, when he was ushered into the drawing room.

Dame Caroline had told me that "Terry" was good-looking, but her description had left me cold, and somehow or other I was completely unprepared for the real Terry Burns.

Yes, _real_ is the word for him! He was so real that it seemed odd I had gone on all my life without having known there was this Terence Burns.

Not that I fell in love with him. Just at the moment I was much occupied in trying to keep alight an old fire of resentment against a man who had saved my life; a "forty-fourth cousin four times removed" (as he called himself), Sir James Courtenaye. But when I say "real," I mean he was one of those few people who would seem important to you if you pa.s.sed him in a crowd. You would tell yourself regretfully that there was a friend you'd missed making: and you would have had to resist a strong impulse to rush back and speak to him at any price.

If, at the first instant of meeting, I felt this strong personal magnetism, or charm, or whatever it was, though the man was down physically at lowest ebb, what would the sensation have been with him at his best?

He was tall and very thin, with a loose-boned look, as if he ought to be lithe and muscular, but he came into the room listlessly, his shoulders drooping, as though it were an almost unbearable bore to put one foot before another. His pallor was of the pathetic kind that gives an odd transparence to deeply tanned skin, almost like a light s.h.i.+ning through.

His hair was a bronzy brown, so immaculately brushed back from his square forehead as to remind you of a helmet, except that it rippled all over. And he had the most appealing eyes I ever saw.

They were not dark, tragic ones like Roger Fane's. I thought that when he was well and happy, they must have been full of light and joy. They were slate-gray with thick black lashes, true Celtic eyes: but they were dull and tired now, not sad, only devoid of interest in anything.

It wasn't flattering that they should be devoid of interest in me. I am used to having men's eyes light up with a gleam of surprise when they see me for the first time. This man's eyes didn't. I seemed to read in them: "Yes, I suppose you're very pretty. But that's nothing to me, and I hope you don't want me to flirt with you, because I haven't the energy or even the wish."

I'm sure that, vaguely, this was about what was in his mind, and that he intended getting away from me as soon as would be decently polite after finis.h.i.+ng his errand. Still, I wasn't in the least annoyed. I was sorry for him--not because he didn't want to be bothered with me, but because he didn't want to be bothered with anything. Millionaire or pauper, I didn't care. I was determined to brighten him, in spite of himself. He was too dear and delightful a fellow not to be happy with somebody, some day. I couldn't sit still and let him sink down and down into the depths. But I should have to go carefully, or do him more harm than good. I could see that. If I attempted to be amusing he would crawl away, a battered wreck.

What I did was to show no particular interest in him. I took the tiny parcel Mrs. Carstairs had ordered him to bring, and asked casually if he'd care to stop in my flat till his man had finished unpacking.

"I don't know how _you_ feel," I said, "but I always hate the first hour in a new place, with a servant fussing about, opening and shutting drawers and wardrobes. I loathe things that squeak."

"So do I," he answered, dreamily. "Any sort of noise."

"I shall be having tea in a few minutes," I mentioned. "If you don't mind looking at magazines or something while I open Mrs. Carstairs'

parcel, and write to her, stay if you care to. I should be pleased. But don't feel you'll be rude to say 'no.' Do as you like."

He stayed, probably because he was in a nice easy chair, and it was simpler to sit still than get up, so long as he needn't make conversation. I left him there, while I went to the far end of the room, where my desk was. The wonderful packet, which must be given into my hand by his, contained three beautiful new potatoes, the size of marbles, out of the Carstairs' kitchen garden! I bit back a giggle, hid the rare jewels in a drawer, and scribbled any nonsense I could think of to Dame Caroline, till I heard tea coming. Then I went back to my guest.

I gave him tea, and other things. There were late strawberries, and some Devons.h.i.+re cream, which had arrived by post that morning, anonymously.

Sir James Courtenaye, that red-haired cowboy to whom I'd let the ancestral Abbey, was in Devons.h.i.+re. But there was no reason why he should send me cream, or anything else. Still, there it was. Captain Burns, it appeared, had never happened to taste the Devons.h.i.+re variety.

He liked it. And when he had disposed of a certain amount (during which time we hardly spoke), I offered him my cigarette case.

For a few moments we both smoked in silence. Then I said, "I'm disappointed in you."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you haven't looped any loops through your nose."

He actually laughed! He looked delightful when he laughed.

"I was trying something of the sort one day, and failing," I explained.

"Mrs. Carstairs said she had a friend who could do it, and his name was Terence Burns."

"I've almost forgotten that old stunt," he smiled indulgently. "Think of Mrs. Carstairs remembering it! Why, I haven't had time to remember it myself, much less try it out, since I was young."

"That _is_ a long time ago!" I ventured, smoking hard.

"You see," he explained quite gravely, smoking harder, "I went into the war in 1915. It wasn't _our_ war then, for I'm an American, you know.

But I had a sort of feeling it ought to be everybody's war. And besides, I'd fallen out of love with life about that time. War doesn't leave a man feeling very young, whether or not he's gone through what I have."

"I know," said I. "Even we women don't feel as young as we hope we look.

I'm twenty-one and a half, and feel forty."

"I'm twenty-seven, and feel ninety-nine," he capped me.

"Sh.e.l.l shock is--the _devil_!" I sympathized. "But men get over it. I know lots who have." I took another cigarette and pushed the case toward him.

"Perhaps they wanted to get over it. I don't want to, particularly, because life has rather lost interest for me, since I was about twenty-two; I'm afraid that was one reason I volunteered. Not very brave! I don't care now whether I live or die. I didn't care then."

"At twenty-two! Why, you weren't grown up!"

"_You_ say that, at twenty-one?"

"It's different with a girl. I've had such a lot of things to make me feel grown up."

"So have I, G.o.d knows." (By this time he was smoking like a chimney.) "Did _you_ lose the one thing you'd wanted in the world? But no--I mustn't ask that. I don't ask it."

"You may," I vouchsafed, charmed that--as one says of a baby--he was "beginning to take notice." "No, frankly, I didn't lose the one thing in the world I wanted most, because I've never quite known yet what I did or do want most. But not knowing leaves you at loose ends, if you're alone in the world as I am." Then, having said this, just to indicate that my circ.u.mstances conduced to tacit sympathy with his, I hopped like a sparrow to another branch of the same subject. "It's bad not to get what we want. But it's dull not to want anything."

"Is it?" Burns asked almost fiercely. "I haven't got to that yet. I wish I had. When I want a thing, it's in my nature to want it for good and all. I want the thing I wanted before the war as much now as ever.

That's the princ.i.p.al trouble with me, I think. The hopelessness of everything. The uselessness of the things you _can_ get."