Wild Honey Part 32

The hostess gave her into his charge, and, like all the other guests, they went away in a ricksha, with the bells tinkling and the Zulu boy's white suit gleaming in the vapoury, delicate light shed by a slender fragment of moon and a star-splashed sky.

"Doesn't it appal you sometimes to think how much that little fragment of moon knows about you?" she asked. "She has seen all one's sins and all one's sufferings--"

"And knows the reason for both," he said quietly.

She s.h.i.+vered, and her little lonely hands, lying on the ricksha coverlet like white flowers, trembled, so that he took them up and held them.

"Some day she will see you happy, too," he said, "for she is a very tender old moon."

And when Dolores would have laughed her little bitter laugh at the thought of happiness, no sound would come, for the bitterness was all gone, and a great peace had fallen on her heart.

At her door he spoke of a reception which was to be given the next night to a famous singer who was visiting Natal. They were both going to the reception, but he would be late, he said. He was "on" in the last act of _Romeo and Juliet_. Would she keep him a dance if there was any dancing afterwards? She promised.

When the next night came he was very late, but he came straight to her, and the peace within her deepened as she felt his arm about her.

She did not look up at him, for his eyes had grown so deeply, fiercely blue, that she dared not meet them there, before all the world.

While they danced, and all too soon, the music swerved suddenly from the waltz into "G.o.d Save the Queen," and their evening was over. He was fain to take her to the cloak-room, where a woman friend waited; but in the shadow of the doorway he spoke.

"I find I want something else, besides fame. Will you give it to me, you sweet, sad woman?"

She could not speak, her heart was in her throat; but the droop had gone from her lips, and her eyes were s.h.i.+ning in the dark like velvet stars.

"When may I come to you! To-morrow?"

Her heart urged yes, but her brain remembered that to-morrow she must interview the famous singer. She would give it up, she thought swiftly, and let her newspaper go. But no! Perhaps, if she denied herself for a few short hours, the G.o.ds would remember, and make her reward the sweeter. She must make some sacrifice for this great happiness.

"No; Wednesday," she whispered, and quickly, for fear she should revoke:

"Good-night."

For a day of general rejoicing, as the twenty-fourth of May always is in the Colonies, Tuesday dawned drab and dreary.

Looking from her window in the early morning, Dolores could see the waves rus.h.i.+ng and ravening wildly in the bay, and beating themselves in foamy fury against the embankment.

"They will have a dreadful day for their aquatic sports," she thought, recalling a typed headline she had seen in the editor's office the day before, and remembering how, on public holidays, everyone in Durban went on to the bay; but she did not care very much. The wind might blow and the sea might lash from that day forth for evermore, it would not matter to her. Nothing mattered but that the G.o.ds had relented. The G.o.ds!

What G.o.ds? There was only one G.o.d. Cecil Scarlett's G.o.d, and He was very good. He had forgiven her for her pagan heart, and the years of misery had dropped from her. Cecil Scarlett wanted her, and she was the King's daughter among women. Life seemed worth the trouble again, and the joy of eventful living came back with the flush and swell of a tide.

She fell to mapping out her day so that every c.h.i.n.k of it should be filled up until she saw him again. Her interview with Madame, the singer, at eleven; the afternoon to write it up, and to finish some other work for her editor; then the famous lady's concert, which she must attend that night and criticise for her paper. And after? The thought came over her that she could not wait till to-morrow, she must see him before. She would go to the theatre after the concert, slip into her place in the stage-box, and he would see her and come to her afterwards. So it would come sooner after all. She would wear her primrose gown--years ago she had been beautiful in yellow--she would be beautiful again to-night for him (a wild-rose flush flew into her cheeks); no more black and white gowns for her. Ah! surely the day would be too long.

As she dressed, words to fit her mood came to her in the lines of Alice Meynell's _Renouncement_:--

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong, I shun the thought that dwells in all delight-- The thought of thee--and in the blue heavens' height, And in the sweetest pa.s.sage of a song.

Once during the afternoon she left her work on an impulse and went into the balcony for a moment.

A fresh, strong wind, smelling of the sea, was blowing, and the sun had burst radiantly from behind the clouds.

Suddenly she had a strong impression of Cecil Scarlett.

She closed her eyes involuntarily, and the wind rushed across her parted lips. It was almost as if he had kissed her--the kiss she had seen in his eyes the night before.

"And in the sweetest pa.s.sage of a song," she whispered, as, her day's work over, she sat facing the platform in the crowded concert hall; and she told herself that she would not give up one of the tormented moments that kept her from him.

While the audience waited for the appearance of the woman whose wonderful voice had never before been heard on African sh.o.r.es, not she, but one of her company--a dark, sombre-eyed woman--came on to the platform with music in her hand.

Dolores trembled. Why was this? Who was this sorrowful woman? Had not she, Dolores, done forever with sorrow?

Then Sarah Berry's tragic contralto at its wildest and saddest rang out and filled the hall with words of Cowen's _Promise of Life_. When she had finished, and the whole house was on its feet calling her back, Dolores sat hushed, stricken in her seat by the conviction which had come to her with the song--the conviction that Sorrow had not done with her--that she was Tragedy's own.

The old cold gnaw was back at her heart; she felt with a terrible sense of premonition that she was waiting to be struck; and, while she waited, a woman's smooth, superficial voice said behind her:

"Have you heard, Miss Wilde, that one of the Ravenhill Company was drowned in the bay this afternoon? He and some others were going to the rescue of some wrecked people. Quite young, they say. Dreadful, isn't it? The theatre is closed."

Someone cried, "Hus.h.!.+" Sarah Berry had come back, and was singing again the last verse of her song.

There is no life that hath not held some sorrow, There is no soul but hath its secret strife.

Still our eyes smile--our hearts pray for to-morrow, Fair in its promise of more perfect Life.

Earth is not all. His angels ever hearken Heaven shall make perfect our imperfect life.

Dolores sat ashen-faced and stony-eyed; but peace was in her heart. She could not grieve "as others which have no hope."