The Masque of Love/Chapter 3

HE clock struck one. Immediately in the quiet studio there was a faint rustle of movement which increased gradually to a noisy bustle as one by one the students began to take their departure. Only one worker remained, absorbed and apparently indifferent to the passage of time. She was young and very pretty. The north light fell softly on her red-brown hair, and touched the transparent complexion with an ethereal brightness. Her eyes, fixed intently on the charcoal drawing before her, were deep gray and heavily shadowed with black lashes. Her fellow-students of both sexes glanced at her with an ungrudging admiration, but they did not speak to her and gradually the room cleared. One young man lingered, however. He had discarded his overall and now stood in the doorway looking back at her, and, as though she felt his gaze, a delicate flush crept into her cheeks and she looked up smilingly.

“I didn't know you were there,” she said.

“I waited,” he answered and flushed also in a confused, boyish way that did not detract from his essential manliness. “I thought perhaps I might see you part of the way home, Miss Monkhouse.”

“Are you afraid I shall be run over?” she asked maliciously, but began to put away her materials in good-humored acquiescence.

“I wanted to be with you,” he retorted very simply.

“Disarmed!” she declared, and laughed, though with a touch of sadness that seemed causeless. “Help me with the easel and you shall come to the very doorstep.”

He obeyed eagerly, and ten minutes later they passed together out of the studio buildings into the quiet square. They were both rather silent, as people are whose intimacy debars trite conventionalities and permits a quiet companionship, but presently he looked down at her with a faintly troubled curiosity written on his fine brows.

“Do you know—I thought you'd be awfully happy to-day,” he began abruptly. “You've been so quiet and brave about it, but the strain of uncertainty must have been awful. I've wanted to congratulate you all the morning.”

“Congratulate?” she echoed, and half stopped, and then went on again more quickly than before. “Yes, of course, I heard yesterday. They were picked up by a tramp steamer and were a long time getting to port. My—father comes home to-day.”

“I am so glad for you.”

“Thank you, Geoff.”

It was his turn to stop, and he stopped completely, forcing her to turn and look at him.

“You've never called me Geoff before.”

“Haven't I? I always think of you as Geoff.”

“And I always think of you as Margaret.”

They looked each other full in the eyes with the open-hearted simplicity of youth that knows no mean subterfuges and reservations.

“Then we'll say what we think, shall we?”

“Thank you, Margaret.”

They lingered a minute longer and then walked on more slowly. The very carriage of Geoffrey Archdale's shoulders bespoke the thought that possessed him, but there was still something at once anxious and listless in his companion's mood that presently penetrated his momentary egotistical happiness.

“Margaret,” he said gently, “aren't you happy? Aren't you glad that we care for each other?”

“I've been glad a long time, dear.”

“But you aren't happy. Surely your father's safety—” he broke off and then went on hesitatingly, as though conscious of treading on painful ground. “You do care for him, don't you? Forgive me—perhaps I haven't the right—even now—but I've often wondered—you never speak of him to me—and now—I don't understand—I don't know what you feel—”

“I don't feel anything,” she interrupted. “Or perhaps—fear and wonder. I've never seen my father, Geoff.”

“Margaret!”

“It's true.” She walked on rapidly, her step and voice betraying an increasing excitement. “I've never told anyone—though I've wanted to tell you—often, often. But it seemed so incredible, so amazing. I've never seen him. Till a year ago I was always at school—in England and then abroad. Then I came home—and we live in the same house—in different wings—and we've never set eyes on each other. It's his wish—his orders. It's as though he hated me. Sometimes I've crept up to the corridor which leads to his rooms and listened to his footsteps—but that's all—all I've ever heard.”

“And your mother?” Archdale asked dully.

“She died—years ago. No one talks to me about her. I've never seen a picture—”

“Margaret—my poor darling!”

He spoke now passionately—as he felt; and she accepted the impulsive tenderness without question, as though it had been the habit of years.

“Geoff, I don't know whether I need pity or not. I've had everything I want, but wherever I've been the mystery of it all has haunted me. Girls at school asked me questions—I couldn't answer. I know nothing even now—but I had to tell you.” Suddenly she slipped her arm through his and he felt, with a tremor of mingled  pride and pain, how she clung to him; “Sometimes I'm  frightened. There's been no one to turn to—not a friend—not a relation. I've the feeling of danger, of being afraid of I don't know what—as though some disaster hung over me. I haven't dared think—” “You don't need to think now,” he said proudly. “You've got to leave things to me. I'm going to bear some of your burdens, I shall see your father.”

“You, Geoff?” She stopped this time and there was something final and significant in the way she turned to him. “Geoff—I've brought you home on purpose. You've. never seen my home before, have you? I've always kept you away from it. I live here.”

He looked up at the great house which loomed up in somber stateliness beside them, and every trace of color had left his cheeks when his eyes fell to meet hers. She caught his hand in a sudden agony of pity.

“Oh, my dear, I didn't mean to hurt you. I felt you didn't know—and I couldn't tell you—”

He steadied himself with a big effort.

“No, I didn't realize—” he said hoarsely. “Perhaps I didn't want to. I thought you were like the rest of us—like me—poor and struggling. I might have known—you could only be a fairy princess from a fairy castle—”

“From a dungeon,” she interrupted passionately.

He shook his head, smiling faintly with lips that were not wholly under control.

“You say that, dear—you can't alter facts. You know what I am, I've never made any secret of it. My people are shop-keeping folk—quite honest and decent, but not even cultured—God knows where I got my love of line and color from. But that wasn't a barrier then. I knew it meant years of work and waiting, but we were both young. I didn't know, Margaret. Monkhouse was just a name. When I saw it in the papers this morning it conveyed nothing to me—Brian Monkhouse—he was just your father. The paper said nothing of all this—this house.”

“Don't, Geoff—please—for pity's sake—” She stopped and then went on quietly and with a passion of sincerity that lifted her from her girlishness to the heights of a woman's dignity. “I meant to deceive you. You were the only friend I ever cared for. I could not lose you. I knew how you would feel and I considered it all—from every point of view. And I hid the barrier from you because it was an artificial one. I told myself that if ever the time came when it should threaten our happiness I would break it down—as I break it now.”

He tried to free himself from her hands. The everyday world about them was forgotten. A look of age and suffering had crept into his face.

“You can't—it isn't possible—you're such a child—you don't understand—”

“I understand myself,” she retorted impetuously. “I've been in prison and now I'm going to be free. I choose you before everything and it's like choosing happiness in preference to loneliness and sorrow. Won't you wait for me, Geoffrey? Won't you think of me as a poor girl for whom you must build a home and win fame? Do you care for your pride more than for me?”

They looked into each other's eyes, plumbing the suddenly revealed depths of feeling that had lain hidden so long beneath the give-and-take of their comradeship. Then, oblivious to passers-by, to the insolently staring windows of the great house, he lifted her hand and kissed it.

“I shan't care for any other woman,” he stammered. “And I'd work and wait for you all my life—even if I could never win you.”

Then, without a word, without even lifting his shabby hat, he turned on his heel and strode away from her. For, after all, he was very young.

And she stood there and watched him till his tall, slender figure vanished, and even after that she waited, fighting for breath to face her world without a tremor.

“If only someone would come now,” she said under her breath, “someone who cared for my mother—or just anyone whom I belonged to—someone who—who would help—”

And it was then, for the first time, that her thoughts turned to her father.