The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best contemporary novels .txt) 📕

drew slightly towards him, and at once he put a quiet arm about her. "I want to tell you something," she said.
"Something serious?" he questioned.
"I--I don't know." A faint note of distress sounded in her voice. She laid her cheek suddenly against his shoulder with a very confiding gesture. "I'm not quite happy," she said.
He held her closer. "Tell me, Chris!" he said very tenderly.
She uttered a little laugh that had a sob in it. "It's only that--that I can't help feeling that you're making rather a bad bargain. You know, the other day--when--when you proposed to me--I didn't have time to think. I've been thinking since."
"Yes?" he said.
"Yes. And now and then--only now and then--I feel rather bad. I--I like fair play, Trevor. It isn't right for me to take so much and give--so little." Her voice quivered perceptibly, and she ceased to speak. He pressed her closer to him, but he remained silent for several seconds.
At last, "Chris," he said, "will it comfort you to know that what you call a little is to me the greatest thing on earth?"
His voice was deep and very quiet, yet a tremor went through her at his words.
"That's just what frightens me," she said.
"It shouldn't frighten you," he said. "It need not."
"But it does," said Chris.
He was silent for another space, still holding her closely. In the room behind them they could hear the cousins talking; but they were alone together, shut off, as it were, from ordinary converse, alone under the stars.
"Suppose," said Mordaunt gently, "you leave off thinking for a bit, and take things as they come."
"Yes?" she said rather dubiously.
He bent down to her. "Chris, I will never ask more of you than you are able to give."
She moved at that in her quick, impulsive way, reached up and clasped his neck. "Oh, Trevor, I do love you!" she said, with a catch in her voice. "I do want you to have--the best!"
Her face was raised to his. For the first time she offered him her lips. They were nearer to understanding each other at that moment than they had ever been before.
But as he bent lower to kiss her the notes of the piano floated out to them again, this time in a soft melody, inexpressibly sweet, full of a subtle charm, the fairy gold of romance.
She kissed him indeed--and it was the first kiss she had ever given him; but he felt her stiffen in his hold even as she did it. And the next moment, almost with passion, she spoke--
"I wish Rupert wouldn't play that thing! He knows--he knows--that I can't bear it!"
"What is it?" Mordaunt asked in surprise.
She answered him with a laugh that did not ring quite true. "It is the '_Aubade a la Fiancee_.' He is only playing it to torment us. Let us go in and stop him!"
She turned inwards with the words, disengaging herself from his arm as casually as she might have pushed aside a chair. Mordaunt followed her in silence. There were no further confidences between them that night.


CHAPTER V
DE PROFUNDIS

It was pouring with rain, and the man with the flute at the corner shivered and pulled his rags more closely about him. He had not been lucky that day, or, indeed, for many days, as the haggard eyes that stared out of his white face testified.
He had spent the past three nights in the open, but to-night--to-night was cruelly wet. He questioned with himself what he should do.
In his pocket was that which might procure a night's lodging or a meagre supper; but it would not supply both. He had to decide between the two, unless he elected to go on playing till midnight in the drenching rain on the chance of augmenting his scanty store.
Though it was June, he was chilled to the bone. In the intervals between his flute-playing his teeth chattered. He looked horribly ill, but no one had noticed that. Men who wander about the streets with musical instruments seldom have a prosperous appearance. Passers-by may fling them a copper if they have one handy, but otherwise they do not even look at them. There are so many of these luckless ones, and each looks more wretched than the last. Most of them look degraded also, but, save for his rags, this man did not. There was a foreign air about him, but he did not look the type of foreigner that lives upon English charity. There was nothing hang-dog about him. He only looked exhausted and miserable.
At the suggestion of a policeman he abandoned his corner. After all, he was doing no good there. It was not worth a protest. He turned and trudged up a side-street, with head bent to the rain.
It was growing late, high time to seek some shelter for the night if that were his intention. But he pressed on aimlessly with dragging feet. Perhaps he had not yet decided whether to perish from cold or hunger, or perhaps he regarded the choice as of small importance. Possibly even, he had forgotten that there was a choice to be made.
The street he travelled was deserted, but he heard the buzz of a motor at a cross-road, and mechanically almost he moved towards it. He was not quite master of himself or his sensations. He may have vaguely remembered that there is sometimes money to be earned by opening the door of a taxi, but it was not with this definite end in view that he took his way. For, as he went, he put his flute once more to his lips, and poured a sudden, silvery melody--the "_Aubade a la Fiancee_"--that a young French officer had onced hummed so gaily among the rocks of Valpre--into the rain and the darkness.
It began firm and sweet as the notes of a thrush, exquisitely delicate, with the high ecstasy that only music can express. It swelled into a positive paen of rejoicing, eager, wonderful, almost unearthly in its purity. It ended in a confused jumble like the glittering fragments of a beautiful thing shattered to atoms at a blow. And there fell a silence broken only by the throbbing of the taxi, and the drip, drip, drip, of the rain.
The taxi came to a stand close to the lamp-post against which the flute-player leaned, but he made no move to open the door. The light flared on his ashen face, showing it curiously apathetic. His instrument dangled from one nerveless hand.
A man in evening dress stepped from the taxi. His look fell upon the wretched figure that huddled against the lamppost. For a single instant their eyes met. Then abruptly the new-comer wheeled to pay his fare.
"He's in for a wet night by the looks of him," observed the chauffeur facetiously.
"The gentleman is a friend of mine," curtly responded the man in evening dress.
And the taxi-cab driver, being quite at a loss, shot away into the darkness to hide his discomfiture.
The flute-player straightened himself with a manifest effort and turned away. If he had heard the words, he had not comprehended them. His wits seemed to be wandering that night, but he would not even seem to beg an alms.
But a hand on his shoulder detained him. "Monsieur de Montville!" a quiet voice said.
He jerked round, bringing his heels together with instinctive precision. Again, in the glare of the lamp-post their eyes met.
"I have not--the pleasure," he muttered stiffly.
"My name is Mordaunt," the other told him gravely. "You will remember me presently, though not probably by name. Come in out of the rain. It is impossible to talk here."
He spoke with a certain insistence. His hand held the Frenchman's arm. It was obvious that he would listen to no refusal. And the man in rags attempted none. He went with him meekly, as if bewildered into docility. His single flash of pride had died out like the final flicker of a match.
With the Englishman's hand supporting him, he stumbled up a flight of steps that led to the door of one of the houses in the quiet street, waited till the turning of a latch-key opened the door, and again numbly yielded to the steady insistence that drew him within.
He stood on a mat under a glaring electric lamp. The wet streamed down him in rivulets; he was drenched to the skin.
Mechanically he pulled the cap from his head and tried to still his chattering teeth. His lips were blue.
"This way," said the quiet voice. "Take my arm."
"But I am so damp, monsieur," he protested shakily. "It will make you damp also."
"What of it? I daresay I shall survive it if you do." Very kindly the voice made answer. He could not see the speaker plainly, for his brain was in a whirl. He even wondered in a dull fashion if it were all a dream, and if he would wake in a moment from his uneasy slumber to hear the rain splashing down the gutters and the voice of a constable in his ear bidding him move on.
He went up a flight of stairs, moving almost without his own volition, the Englishman's arm around him, urging him upwards.
They came to the threshold of a room of which Mordaunt switched on the light at entering, and in a moment more the tottering Frenchman found himself pressed down into a chair. He covered his face with his hands and sat motionless, trying to still the confusion in his brain. He was shivering violently from head to foot.
There followed a pause of some duration, during which he must have been alone; then again his unknown friend touched him, patted his shoulder, spoke.
"Here's a hot drink. You will feel better when you have had it. Afterwards you shall go to bed."
He raised his head and stared about him. Mordaunt, holding a cup of steaming milk that gave out a strong aroma of brandy, was stooping over him. There was another man in the room, evidently a servant, engaged in kindling a fire.
Slowly the vagabond's gaze focussed itself upon Mordaunt's face. He saw it clearly for the first time and gave a slight start of recognition.
"I have seen you before," he muttered, frowning uncertainly. "Where? Where?"
"Never mind now," returned the Englishman gently. "Drink this. You need it."
He lifted a shaking hand and dropped it again. All the strength seemed to have gone out of him.
"Monsieur will pardon my feebleness," he murmured almost inarticulately. "I am--a little--fatigued. It is nothing. It will pass."
"Drink!" Mordaunt said insistently.
He held the rim of the cup against the trembling lips, and perforce the Frenchman drank, at first slowly, then with avidity, till at last he clasped the cup in both his quivering hands and drained it.
His eyes sought Mordaunt's apologetically as he gave it back. The apathy had gone out of them. They looked out of his pinched face with brightening intelligence. His lips were no longer blue.
"Ah!" he said, with a deep breath. "But how it was good, monsieur!"
He glanced downwards, discovered himself to be sitting in a chintz-covered chair, and blundered hastily to his feet.
"Tenez!" he exclaimed almost incoherently. "But how I forget! See, I have--I have--"
He groped out before him suddenly, words failing him, and only Mordaunt's promptitude spared him a headlong fall.
"Bit light-headed, sir?" suggested the servant, glancing round with an inscrutable countenance.
"No, he'll be all right. Go and turn on the hot water," said Mordaunt.
To the Frenchman as the man departed he spoke as to an equal. "Monsieur de Montville, I am offering you the hospitality of a friend, and I hope