A Moonlight Effect

by William J. Locke

 

The moon silvered the strip of bay that met the horizon and touched with mystery the fairy headland of Cape Matilou

 

A
MOONLIGHT
EFFECT
by
Wm. J. Locke

Author of "Simple Septimus" With illustrations by Cyrus Cuneo

I wish Philip were here to-night," sighed the girl.

"I'm sure you do, Winnie," said Mrs. Vanrennen.

"It's so utterly beautiful," said the girl, closing her eyes and drawing in a deep breath of the scented air. "He would enjoy it so much, poor fellow."

Mrs. Vanrennen glanced at her companion and smiled the wise, indulgent smile that only five-and-fifty can bestow on the sweet disingenuousness of youth.

"It would improve his health to get away from the fog and damp of London, wouldn't it?" she said, with a tender touch of mockery, knowing full well that the said Philip was as strong as a young dromedary.

"It would," sighed the girl. "I wish he were in Algiers."

"My dear," said Mrs. Vanrennen touching the girl's cheek, "if I had a Philip I too would want to have him by my side on such a night as this, instead of a stupid old woman."

Winnie drew the kind fingers from her cheek, and kissed them.

"You understand, don't you. dear Mrs. Vanrennen?"

"Yes," she said, with a little catch in her throat. "I do." And she too took in a deep breath of the warm scented air.

It was a spring night in Mustapha, one of the hills that dominate the town of Algiers, Algerian springs are the midsummers of paler climes. The moon, hanging in splendor just above the long line of the hotel, flooded the broad terrace and worked a magic of soft light and shadow in the enchanted garden beyond; it silvered the strip of bay that met the horizon, just viable above the trees, and touched with mystery the fairy headland of Cape Matifou. From the garden the perfumes of the south mounted into the hot still night; magnolia and heliotrope and rose mingled with the spicy smells of the eucalyptus trees that stood, like majestic beggars, wrapped in their rags of bark. The bougainvillea stretched a great dark stain on the dim white of the hotel, and below it the ground-floor lights showed the bizarre outline of Moorish arches. Vague faint sounds ascended from the far-off Arab town, and now and then was beard the distant whistle of a steamer in the harbor. Three men sitting some yards away talked in low, lazy voices. Otherwise the terrace was silent and deserted; the end of the season had come, and few guests remained in the hotel. It was a languorous, sensuous night. The velvet canopy of the stars seemed to droop amorously over the warm earth.

"My dear," said Mrs, Vanrennen, "marry Philip as soon as you can. Don't wait for better prospects. Don't give up the substance for the shadow, which is a very pale thing and cold comfort."

Said the girl: "You speak so sadly, Mrs. Vanrennen."

"I've had the shadow, dear."

"But you were married."

"Yes, I was married," said Mrs. Vanrennen. She had a remarkable voice, soft and low and and musical, a most sensitive instrument wherewith to express shades of feeling. The three little words had a cadence like a lament on the wood-wind. The girl slipped her hand into her companion's, and for a time there was silence. Presently Mrs. Vanrennen shivered, ever so slightly. The girl sprang to her feet.

"I'll go in and fetch you a wrap."

Mrs. Vanrennen murmured a word of thanks, but when the girl had already sped a few yards, she called to her, raising her voice:

"Winnie! The silk one on the dressing-table."

One of the men on the terrace started, looked keenly through the moonlight at the speaker, and rose. He was a tall, spare man, with a white mustache; his dinner-jacket hung as on a bony frame, but he held himself erect, and wore his Homburg hat jauntily cocked on one side. He walked past Mrs, Vanrennen to the end of the terrace, moved two or three paces so as to catch her face full in the moonlight, then with the air of a man who has made up his mind, marched up to her.

"What a beautiful night."

Mrs. Vanrennen acquiesced politely. "Yes; an enchanting night."

The man sat down in Winnie's chair.

"I'm sure of it! I've been wondering all the evening—but when you called out loud just now I was certain. There never was any one with a voice like yours. You're Molly Summers."

"And you? Good heavens!" She gazed into his face full-eyed, as if he had been a ghost. "Godfrey Deerhurst!"

"Yes," said he.

"I was thinking of you only five minutes ago." Her lips trembled, as she laughed. "Perhaps that was why I recognized you—otherwise—turn your face and let me see."

"I'm afraid thirty years' soldiering has battered it out of all recognition."

Yet he twirled his mustache with a certain complacency and drew himself up as if he hoped she would repudiate the suggestion. She felt this instinctively.

"I know you're sixty, but you don't look it. I am fifty-five, and do look it."

He protested gallantly. "Your voice is as young and fresh as when—good God! how it all comes back—whew! Thirty years ago and I've not seen you since—yes, your voice is unchanged, and your eyes are as bright—and your hands are as delicate. You used to have a tiny scar on the middle joint of the ring finger of your left hand."

She laughed happily and held out her hand in the moonlight. "I have it still—but you can't see it here. Fancy your remembering."

"Do you think there's anything about Molly Summers that I've forgotten? Gad! I shall never forget the day I came upon you in the cherry orchard—all pale sunlight and white blossom—you in your white dress and your face the most delicate blossom of all. And as I drew near you shook the trees, and the blossoms fell about you like snow. Do you remember?"

"Of course I do," she said in a whisper. Does a woman ever forget the delicious terror when for the first time a man's strong arm grips her and his lips crush hers? "But it has never occurred to me," she added simply. "that you gave a passing thought to the cherry blossoms."

She herself had seen nothing in the sun-filled universe but the radiant young Phoebus Apollo himself who had come gloriously triumphant to meet her. This, however, she did not confess, even after the lapse of thirty years.

She gazed into his face full-eyed, as if he hod been a ghost

Winifred tripped up the terrace with the gauze scarf. Mrs. Vanrennen took it with a word of thanks, but lay it on her lap instead of putting it round her shoulders. The old soldier rose courteously. Mrs. Vanrennen stumbled over the introduction.

"Winnie, this is an old friend of mine—Colonel—?" she paused uncertain.

"General."

"General Deerhurst."

He raised his hat. "I am afraid I have stolen your chair."

"Oh, please sit down," said the girl. "I must go in now."

"And shut yourself up from this beautiful night?"

"I can see it all from my window. In fact better, for I have a lovely view over the bay. And I must do some writing. Are you staying in the hotel?" she asked politely.

He explained that he had arrived late, after the dinner hour, from Biskra, whence he had been accompanied by his two friends. They were starting for England at some unearthly hour of the morning by the North German Lloyd steamer.

"You're not going to-morrow?" cried Mrs. Vanrennen quickly.

Then her cheeks flamed and she knew that she was blushing like a girl and was glad of the kind moonlight.

"Oh, no," he said. "Only the other fellows. I'm here for a few days Then I'll get home by Marseilles. I have a return ticket that way."

"So have we," said Mrs. Vanrennen.

One of the General's two friends rose and looked at his watch and the other rose also. The General excused himself and joined them. Mrs. Vanrennen turned to her young friend and asked if her hair was tidy.

"Isn't it strange—to meet here for the first time tor thirty years?"

"For thirty years?" echoed the girl, to whom such a retrospect was the dark backward and abysm of time. "But how did you manage lo recognize each other?"

The older woman looked up very pathetically at the young face.

"We haven't changed so very much, you know, dear," she faltered.

The men's voices were heard proclaiming the necessity of retiring early in view of (he absurd hour of departure, al which they railed like elderly Britons who consider respect for their physical comfort to be one of the chief ordinances of the Almighty. The General gleefully boasted of the good night's rest in front of him, and crowed over his companions. Then there were leave-takings. The two men went into the hotel and General Deerhurst rejoined the ladies. Winnie presently bade him good night and, stooping, kissed Mrs. Vanrennen.

"Give my love to Philip," said the latter, "and tell him how sorry we are for him."

The girl laughed and sped away sylph-like in the moonlight. The General followed her with his eyes till she had disappeared and then sank into the chair by Mrs. Vanrennen's side.

"Amazingly pretty girl. Charming figure. At first I thought it was your daughter."

"I have no children," she said with a sigh. "Winnie Graves is just a young friend who is accompanying a lonely woman on her travels."

"Are you—lonely?" he asked with a significant pause.

"My husband died ten years ago," she replied.

"I've never married," said he shortly.

There was a spell of silence. The announcement came to the woman both as a reproach biting her heart with sudden remorse, and as a purely feminine, unregenerate joy. A man pays a woman a far higher compliment by remaining a bachelor for her sake than by merely marrying her. There is something heroic about the one, whereas the heroism of the other soon wears thin.

"Tell me what you have been doing all your life?" she said at last.

He waved a deprecating hand.

"What's there to tell? I've been in India most of the time. Looking back, it doesn't seem long. I've seen no end of people die and their children get married and produce babies. I've also developed gout and a taste for Roman antiquities."

"You never thought of marrying?" she asked timidly.

"At first I plunged into my profession. Then I suppose my profession plunged into me. I got into fixed bachelor ways—and now—well— May I smoke?"

He received her permission, selected a cigar from his case and fumbled in his pockets. Then he murmured a petulant, "Confound it!"

"What's the matter?" she asked, with a smile, falling into intimacy with happy unconsciousness.

"That scoundrel of a man of mine," said he, gravely angered, "has forgotten to put in my cigar-cutter."

He found a penknife, however, and having performed the necessary operation, lit his cigar and smoked tranquilly. The fragrance mingled with the hundred sweet odors of the night.

They talked for a while of common things—the stages of his career—his work on the northwest frontier—her unexciting travels during and since her married life—the interest of this town of Algiers, where East and West are so subtly interfused yet so sharply divided—the beauty of Mustapha Supérieur, its thousand roses and its acanthus leaves. He told her also that he had an appointment at ten the next morning with the Governor of Algiers, an old friend, who was motoring him over to the Tombeau de la Chrétienne, the supposed burial place of Cleopatra, and to Tipasa, whose Roman remains he had never seen. The excursion would last the whole day. Mrs. Vanrennen felt an odd little pang of disappointment,

"We shall meet in the evening, I hope," she murmured,

"Of course. I shall look forward to it all day long. I'm sorry now," said he, "that I've pledged myself to go at all. But who could have foretold our meeting?"

"It's very, very strange," she said, dreamily.

The General puffed at his cigar for a few moments; then he said, bending over to her:

"Molly, you know you treated me damned badly."

"I suppose I did," she said, with. a sigh. "But I treated myself worse—much worse. Men can't understand these things."

The picture rose before her of the poor little rectory bedroom—of the corner of the scantily equipped dressing-table where she sat one awful night in her bed gown, and wrote her last letter to him; her hair was falling about her fingers as she wrote, and smudged the tears and ink that wet the paper, and she was too numb with misery to care. A tear of self-pity now fell, at the memory.

"Why didn't you wait for me, Molly?"

"I told you in my letter. It's a poor tragic old story. You can read it from beginning to end in 'Auld Robin Gray.' It's literally true—every incident—all of it."

"Then you did think of the poor devil in India?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I did think of you."

"Much?"

"Very much."

She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the mild stars, smiling to herself. How was he to know the agony of longing, the torture of revolt—all the horrors and despairs of a woman? Thank God it was over and done with, buried in the long ago. Her bosom rose and fell with a sigh of relief.

"Yes. I thought of you very much," she repeated.

"I often wondered whether you were having a bad time. I suppose you did."

"Don't let us talk of it now," she said. "Let us look on it as an evil dream. It is so simple to have you here with me—although you did drop on me from the moon. With a little imagination one might forget that the thirty years have gone by."

"'Pon my soul!" said he, "one might—and if one looks at you, it requires hardly any imagination at all. At first it was strange, devilish strange to see you—but now—you don't seem to have altered at all. By George, what glorious brown hair you had!"

It was with tremulous pride that she told him it was still brown and long, that there was scarcely a white hair in it.

"I wish I could say the same of mine," he laughed. "But I've kept it all. Look."

He took off his hat with a curious young eagerness and showed a shapely grizzled head. She bent forward and peered at it in the moonlight.

"Oh—Godfrey!" she cried.

"What?"

"You part it in just the same way as you used to. And there are the same little curls over the temples."

"You remember that, Molly?"

It was her turn to ask him whether he thought she could ever forget.

The moon shone full on them and the stars hung lower in the breathless scented air, as if envelop them. The man of sixty edged his chair near hers and the woman of fifty-five put her hand in his. They were quite alone on the terrace. The lights on the ground floor of the hotel had been put out. Just a dim gleam appeared far off from the vestibule, and on the second floor immediately above it, a window, Winifred's, was illuminated. Otherwise the whole dim white stretch lay in dark and silence. Not a sound from garden or from road beyond or from town below broke the stillness.

The pair, alone in the moonlight, talked in whispers like lovers, held by the witchery of the southern night. A deep languorous happiness swelled at the woman's heart. Now and again the white mustache brushed her finger-tips and a thrill ran through her body. The years fell away from her, and she became twenty-five again.

"Till now," said the General, "I've never realized how lonely I've been."

"Poor Godfrey," she said with a comforting squeeze of his fingers.

"But we've found each other again, Molly. It's wonderful, isn't it?"

"God is good. I never dreamed I should have this great happiness."

"I have dreamed of it often," the General declared. And then, in a lyrical outburst of self-delusion he vowed that never a day had passed but that he had thought of her and longed for her, that he had never given a passing fancy to another woman, that in the staring, blinding heats of the remorseless plains he had cooled his brain and soothed his heart with the picture of her among the cherry blossoms. And she, in her gentle woman's way, and in her soft musical voice into which lost dove notes crept insensibly, sang antistrophe in the moonlight pastoral. So they said many old, foolish, tender things, and they drew closer and closer together until her cheek rested on his shoulder as it had done in the days when their hearts were young.

A slight sound caused her to start, and they saw the hall porter appear at the end of the terrace, pause for a second as he looked at them, and then disappear into the vestibule. They laughed in the happy confusion of guilty boy and girl discovered.

"We must go in, I suppose," she said regretfully.

The General took out his watch. "God bless my soul, it's past midnight. How the time has flown."

She took his arm and they walked slowly down the terrace. The faintest of all possible breezes sprang up and a breath of all the odors of the pale garden came full into their faces. He bent his head and kissed her on the lips.

"Till to-morrow evening," he said at the lift door.

"Till to-morrow evening. Good night."

The General returned to the terrace and walked up and down while he smoked a cigarette. Then he retired to his room on the first floor. As he straightened his body after bending down to insert the key in the lock, he clapped his hand to his back.

"That confounded lumbago!" he muttered. "Serves me right for sitting out in the moonshine."

 

Mrs. Vanrennen mechanically turned the electric switch as she entered her bedroom, but the sudden glare disconcerting her, she undressed by the moonlight and went to bed. Soon finding sleep impossible, she rose, put on a woolen wrapper and sat down in the armchair by the open window. Below her lay the terrace and the garden checkered with shadow and pale light in which gleamed duskily the oranges and the palms and the feathery pepper trees and the great geraniums and the gray roses and the mild grotesque cacti; and beyond these loomed the black mass of trees descending the slope, and over them she could see the strip of plain, and then the great sweep of the silver bay, with Cape Matifou on the east hugging it like a long tender arm. Beyond the Cape, just discernible against the sky, was the infinitely faint silver tracery of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains. The whole earth lay Endymion to the moon; and the perfumes of the night rose through the warm air. Happy tears welled into the woman's eyes. Love reigned eternally. God was good.

The years fell sway from her, and she became twenty-five again

Only a few hours before she had been content to satisfy her elderly woman's sentimental cravings in a girl's sweet romance. Winifred and Philip worshiped her as the dearest creature on earth because she smoothed paths that were rough, and played fairy godmother in defiance of an unsympathetic world. In their innocent young hearts they thought it all pure altruism; and she herself, delicate-minded and generous, had never realized till now how personal had been her interest. She laughed to herself—for life had become one beautiful mellow laugh—and thought how poor and cold she must have been to seek warmth from the glow cast by the love of a boy and girl. Only a few hours ago she had been this chilly soul, and now, by such a miracle as had never happened beneath the moon since water was turned to wine, she was living in the deep rich splendor of her own romance.

She peered into the glass

She sat for a long, long time motionless by the window, in complete surrender of mind and body to the spell. The kiss still quivered on her lips; the tender words lingered in her ears. If death came, she could die happy, having tasted the sweetest that life could give, Her dream was inchoate; all that reached her intelligence was a pervading sense of happiness. The marble clock on the mantel-piece striking two aroused her. She started and shiveringly realized that the night had grown cold. She rose, intending to go to bed, but as she passed in front of the great gilt mirror, she caught a sight of herself, a pale ghost in the dim light. It was a shock, startling her from dreamland into the gray real world. She peered into the glass, but could not see. Then she sat, undecided, on the edge of the bed. Should she be brave and turn on the light and look at herself, or should she put chilling fancies from her and go to sleep in the dear warmth of her happiness? She felt five-and-twenty. Godfrey had said she had not changed. In his eyes she was five-and-twenty still. He had kissed her as if she had been five-and-twenty. What did it matter?

But she rose, nevertheless, with determination, turned the switch and confronted the mirror. In it she saw a woman of fifty-five.

She closed the window and drew the curtains, so as to shut out the moonlight, and came back to the glass. She stared calmly at herself for a long time. Then she went to bed and lay awake in the darkness, thinking, thinking. The glamor of the night had gone. The day would bring disillusion. For one perfect moonlit hour she had found her lost youth and had been desirable in a man's eyes. To-morrow he would see her as the old woman that she was. For one perfect moonlit hour they had been lovers who had kissed with young hearts and young lips. To-morrow they would meet as old folks in the piteousness of their gray hairs and shriveled bodies faded cheeks, and the magic would be gone, and not all the strivings of their souls could ever bring back a touch of it. For one perfect moonlit hour the warm scented air of Paradise had enfolded them. To-morrow— Then all the woman's instinct rose imperiously. There must be no to-morrow.

Her last letter to him

The dawn crept into the room, and with it sounds of tramping men were heard in far-off corridors. A while later there was the scrunch of gravel beneath her window and the sound of wheels. She recognized the hotel omnibus, taking General Deerhurst's friends to the North German Lloyd steamer.

"If only he were going with them, how it would simplify matters," she thought. Then she reflected that after last night's happenings, even if he planned to accompany them, he would not have gone.

There must be no to-morrow, no disillusion, no fading of the splendor of her sacred hour into the light of common day. So much was certain. But how should the inevitable morrow be frustrated? Suddenly she remembered General Deerhurst's appointment with the Governor of Algiers at ten o'clock and the day's excursion to Tipasa. Fate was kind.

When dawn had broadened into daylight, she went into the adjoining room where Winifred Graves lay a-sleep, the window flung wide open. She paused before waking the girl and gazed at her, with a queer little clutch at the heart. This, in verity, was youth, fairer in the pitiless morning glare than in the softening glamor of the moonlight. Happy youth which need fear no Philip on the morrow!

Presently the girl woke, conscious of the strange presence.

"Oh, Mrs. Vanrennen!"

"Forgive me for waking you, dear, but I've not slept all night. I wanted to know whether you would mind our starting for England to-day?"

"To-day! Why what has happened?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Vanrennen. "I have a sudden craving for home. I am too old to knock about in hotels. You won't think it horrid of me to cut short your holiday like this, will you? I'll try to make it up to you, dear, if I can," she added penitently. "I'll ask Philip to come and spend a few days with us at Bournemouth."

The girl sprang up in bed and threw her arms round Mrs. Vanrennen's neck and kissed her.

"Oh, you dear!" she cried. "I'll begin to pack at once."

Mrs. Vanrennen went back to her own room, greatly relieved at the settlement of her plans. General Deerhurst would be gone for the day by ten o'clock. Meanwhile Winifred and herself could take the midday boat to Marseilles. When he returned in the evening he would find her letter explaining all.

This letter she sat down now to write, in her bed gown and with her hair about her shoulders, just as she had written to him thirty years ago. But this time there were no tears for the hair to smudge. It was the letter of a woman who had entered for an unexpected hour the gates of Eden, it was the letter of a sweet-souled lady. She was sure that he would understand. It he did not—for after all the masculine intelligence is uncertain in its comprehension of subtle things—if he did not, it was for him to follow, an ardent and irresistible lover, on her track. Her conscience allowed her this loophole.

She spent the morning in her room, busily packing, and only went down-stairs when it was time to start. So far she had avoided meeting him.

"Will you give this letter to General Deerhurst?" she said to the hall porter.

"General Deerhurst has gone, madame."

"I know. But he will be back this evening."

"Pardon, madame," said the hall porter. "He started this morning with the other two gentlemen by the North German Lloyd steamer. And justement he left a letter for you."

He searched in his pigeonholes and handed her the letter. She took it mechanically and walked in a dream to one of the little quiet bays in the lounge. She stared at it for a while as it lay unopened in her lap. Then she tore it, unread, into tiny pieces and threw them into the waste-paper basket.