Daphne

“ Came the yellow-tressed Far-darter—came the god whose feet are fire,
On his lips the name of Daphne, in his eyes a great desire;
Fond, full lips of lord and lover, sad because of suit denied;
Clear, grey eyes made keen by passion, panting, pained, unsatisfied. ”

“ Over the shallow tufa basin of the great fountain on the hill Daphne stood gazing into the water. She had sought the deep shadow of the ilex trees, for the afternoon was warm, an almost angry summer heat having followed yesterday's coolness. Her yellow gown gleamed like light against the dull brown of the stone and the dark moss-touched trunks of the trees. Whether she was looking at the tufts of fern and of grass that grew in the wet basin, or whether she was studying her own beauty reflected there, no one could tell, not even Apollo, who had been watching her for some time. ”

“ IT WAS easy for Daphne, the daring, the trusted leader, to evade her comrades that afternoon. She told them nothing that was not true. “I could not get the things this morning,” she said. “I must try again now. You all sit on the terrace and do embroidery in open blamelessness. Your dauntless leader has the interests of the bandits at heart.”
“I do love you,” said Doris. “I love you extra when you talk like a book.”
It was not to Daphne the least of the day’s experiences to have learned that there was at least one other person in the world who could “talk like a book.” ”

“ WHEN Daphne looks back at that summer it seems to her that the sun always shone. She sees always the glare of the glazed shop-fronts, the dry pavement that scorched one’s feet, the fruit and flowers and barrows wheeled by hoarse-voiced, anxious-looking people, who sold everything very cheaply. ”

“ No, Daphne! the young man is not a fairy prince who has seen you from afar and has taken this romantic means of offering you his hand, heart, and sceptre. Listen, he is telling you who he is. Listen, never mind if your ears are crimson, he can’t possibly know what reddened them. He may think they are always crimson. ”

“ Assunta shrugged her shoulders.
"Young men?" inquired Daphne.
The peasant woman looked sharply at her, then smiled.
"I saw one man yesterday," said Daphne, her forehead puckered painfully in what Assunta mistook for a look of fear. Her carefully prepared phrases could get no nearer the problem she wished solved.
"Ma che! agnellina mia, my little lamb!" cried the peasant woman, grasping Daphne's hand in order to kiss her fingers, "you are safe, safe with us. No Americans nor English shall dare to look at the Signorina in the presence of Giacomo and me." ”

“ Good-by—I'll never forget that you came back."
"I am not going," said Daphne sternly. "Not if you beg me. Not if you are a devil out of hell. Because you need me. And no matter how many wicked things you have done, there can't be anything as wicked as going away when some one needs you. How do we get the cushions?"
"Oh, my wise Dryad!" His voice broke on laughter, but Daphne saw that his lashes were suddenly bright with tears. "Stay, then—why, even I cannot harm you. ”

“ I could not return to witness the innocent happiness of Daphne, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in trying to soothe the agitation of Daphne's mother; listening to her tirades against her suddenly masterful son, hearing her protestations of faith in the rectitude of Jack Marston, alternating with her outbursts of anger and grief at his hitherto unsuspected villainy.
"Hugh will see him when he arrives, will confront him with the story," I told her. "I don't suppose he can utterly deny, but he can palliate. There will be nothing told to Daphne which she can't forgive. ”

“ Daphne shuddered and put down her fork.
The Russian smiled—that childlike, confiding smile of his.
“La, la, my child,” he said, “that is nothing. I am like that on all my body. But I am here alive, and living to work. And I drink to you,” he raised an empty glass, “and to your friend the amiable Henry. But it is he who has the genius, is it not? It is he who has the heart and the spirit—the touch sure, the hand fine.”
“I don’t know,” said Daphne, and suddenly felt again on her hand the last touch of Henry’s. “I haven’t seen any of his pictures. Is he really a great artist?” ”

“ What have you done?”
“I don’t know,” said Daphne, hopelessly.
“When I do naughtiness,” observed Doris, with pride, “I always know.”
“There’s no mistake about your naughtiness, is there, my cabbage?” said Daphne, as the seventy-three rattled and rustled, rose and filed out. “Now for it. Wish me luck, Columbine, or rather pray to St. Nicholas. He’s the one who looks after naughty children. My doom is fixed—all is indeed over. Farewell. I’ll come out to the terrace as soon as I’ve caught it.” ”

“ She was wandering with a face like that of a sky across which thin clouds scud, in the grass about Hermes' grave. In her hand was the letter of yesterday, and in her eyes the memory of the days before.
"It is all too late," said Daphne, who had learned to talk aloud in this world where no one understood. "The Greeks were right in thinking that our lives are ruled by mocking fate. I wonder what angry goddess cast forgetfulness upon my mind, so that I forgot to tell Apollo what this letter says." ”

“ He thought that he had never seen so beautiful a creature or one so much to be desired, but whenever Daphne caught a glimpse of this strange, strong youth, she was frightened and was at once off and away. Now, though, he was determined to pursue Daphne and catch her. He dropped his lyre and ran after her, but she eluded him, running more swiftly than the wind.
"Stay, daughter of Peneus," he called. "Do not fly from me as a dove flies from a hawk. I am no rude peasant, but one of the gods and I know all things, present or future. ”

“ Bertuccio was sleeping on his flat rock; San Pietro lay down for a brief, ascetic slumber. The lovers sat side by side, with the mystery of beauty about them: the purple and gold of nearness and distance; bright color of green grass near, sombre tint of cypress and stone pine afar.
"I shall never really know whether you are a god or not," said Daphne dreamily.
"A very proper attitude for a woman to have toward her husband," he answered with a smile. "I must try hard to live up to the character. ”

“ Assunta muttered to herself as she lighted her way with her candle down the long hall.
"Molto intelligente, la Signorina! Only here three days, and already understands all."
"You don't need speech here," said Daphne, pulling aside the curtains of her tapestried bed a little later. "The Italians can infer all you mean from a single smile."
Down the road a peasant was merrily beating his donkey to the measure of the tune on his lips. Listening, and turning over many questions in her mind, Daphne fell asleep. ”

“ A masterly system of scouts, fleet and bare of foot, posted on commanding positions between the smallest dormitory and the mistresses’ salon, rendered the adventure so safe as to be hardly now an adventure at all.
But this last night of her school life Daphne meant to mark indelibly. It was to be something which should keep her memory green forever, so that to generation after generation of awed, admiring schoolgirls the tale should forever be whispered—and the name of Daphne, “une folle Anglaise capable de tout, mais bonne enfant,” should live always in the legends told at twilight. ”

“ On her next visit to the Pavilion the Court Godmother heard Daphne's version of the meeting with Giroflé. "I take an interest in the young man," she said. "Indeed I got him his place here. He seems to have behaved very creditably—for a mere gardener. Though I dare say you think him beneath your notice."
"After he had saved my life!" said Daphne indignantly. "As if I could—whoever he was! But, as you take an interest in him, Court Godmother, you must know as well as I do that he isn't really a gardener at all."
"Oh, indeed," said the Fairy suspiciously. ”

“ Daphne gave her hand, at long arm’s length.
“Promise me,” he said, “that since I’m not to play at fairy princesses with you, no one else shall. For a year. Promise me that. I’ve no earthly right to ask it of you. And that’s why you’ll give me what I ask. You will, won’t you, my little-girl-princess?”
“No one else will ever want to,” said Daphne, because she could think of nothing else to say. ”

“ I only want the assurance of your happiness. That kind of love sets life to music.”
“I am,” said Daphne, “very happy.”
“Yes. It radiates from you. I feel it as one feels the beautiful light-heat of a gipsy’s wood fire in a sunlit meadow. But I am afraid for you. When two people are made for each other, like you and he——”
“Well?” Daphne asked, breathless.
“One dreads that one of them may stay forever in Great Portland Street, and the other in the Mile End Road. Don’t resist if East and West seem to draw together.”
“Mr. Seddon,” said Daphne determinedly, “do you talk like this to everyone?” ”

“ Daphne was trusted by everyone—by her comrades, by the servants, by the mistresses, by Madame.
Her adventures were always too well arranged for detection to be possible, and her passionate energy was of the kind that makes days elastic and stretches them till they include all one’s duties as well as one’s pleasures. Her lessons were always done, and well done. ”

“ The key that Marie Thibault’s brother had got made from a wax impression of the key that blinked in the sun on the wall of the portress’s lodge lay in Daphne’s deep under-pocket. And her heart was glad every time she felt its secret weight jog her knee.
Madame’s surveillance was strict; she thought that she knew everything in her girls’ lives. And, indeed, she did know most things till Daphne came to her kingdom—Daphne, whose father was a bookworm, whose grandfather was an explorer, whose great-grandfather was a lieutenant at Trafalgar. ”

“ Daphne, formerly pale, thin, and an object for anxiety, was now as radiant as a pink-tipped daisy, and pronounced by the specialist to be absolutely fit and sound. She spent most of her time out of doors, gardening and looking after her colony of fowls, and, though she might not be doing definite war work, felt that she was helping her country by the production of food-stuffs. Daphne had suddenly grown very pretty. Avelyn, who often looked at her critically, decided that point emphatically. ”

“ You will want to live on Olympus, and you really ought, if you are going to wear gowns woven of my sunbeams like the one you had on yesterday. How shall I convince you that Rome must do part of the time? You will want me to make you immortal: that always happens when a maiden marries a god."
"I think you have done that already," said Daphne. ”

“ Daphne was, without question, by far the most beautiful woman of her time, and excited a most violent and extreme passion in some of the wisest and most celebrated Athenians, before the events occurred which I am about to record. And I do not think it at all incredible that a man, driven by the madness of his love for her, should be induced to sacrifice everything he held most dear. ”

“ Then she took her hands away and blinked at the sunshine and smiled and said she believed she must have been asleep. But the lip that smiled trembled too.
Then he could not bear it any more, and he said:
“Dear Daphne, dear little girl, don’t be unhappy all by yourself. Tell your friend that loves you,” and then wished he had bitten his tongue out before he had said it, for now she would be angry with him, and everything would be over. ”

“ Cautiously above the top of the hill appeared a girl's head. She saw what she was looking for: the dreaded man was sitting on the stump of a felled birch tree, gazing down the valley, his cheeks resting on his hands. Daphne, stealing behind a giant ilex, studied him. He wore something that looked like a golf suit of brownish shade; a soft felt hat drooped over his face. The girl peered out from her hiding place cautiously, holding her skirts together to make herself slim and small. It was a choice of evils. On this side of the hill was a man; on that, the whole wide world, pathless. ”

“ As drowning men are said, in the moment before death, to see all their lives spread out like a scroll before their eyes, so now Daphne. Catching at the heart that seemed to have shrunk till it was too small for the empty space about it, came old dreams, old memories—the school life, the happy hopes of this new life in London—thoughts of Doris, of Cousin Jane, even of Aunt Emily’s fancy work, and Uncle Harold’s sal volatile. ”

“ He thanked her, when she had finished, and he watched her, with her background of misty blue distance, sitting where the shadow of the ilexes brought out the color of her scarlet lips and deep gray eyes.
"Daphne," he said presently, "you have told me much about this man, but you have not told me that you love him. You do not speak of him as a woman speaks of the man who makes her world for her. You defend him, you explain him, you plead his cause, and it must be that you are pleading it with yourself, for I have brought no charge, that you must defend him to me. Do you love him?" ”

“ CHAPTER V. Daphnè hardly slept all night in her chamber. She was disturbed by many thoughts, and became alarmed at the step she had taken. At earliest dawn she threw open her window. The first sun-rays, reflected on a thousand dewdrops on the trees; the chirping of the birds, which already began their matin song; the joyous voice of the cock, which crowed in a most satisfactory and majestic manner in the paddock of her hostess; all these sights and sounds, to which she was so little accustomed, restored her serenity of mind once more. ”