At the furthermost end, like a giant golden eye winking6 sleepily through the dark, smouldered a fire of logs, and near this, in the luminous7 circle of its warmth, a man and woman were seated at a table lit by tall wax candles in branched candlesticks. With its twinkling points of light, and the fire’s red glow quivering across its shining surface, the table gleamed out like a jewel in a sombre setting—a vivid splash of light in the grey immensity of dusk-enfolded hall.
Dinner was evidently just over, for the candlelight shone softly on satin-skinned fruit, while wonderful gold-veined glass flecked the dark pool of polished mahogany with delicate lines and ripples9 of opalescent10 colour.
A silence had fallen on the two who had been dining. They had been gay enough together throughout the course of the meal, but, now that the servants had brought coffee and withdrawn12, it seemed as though the stillness—that queer, ghostly, memory-haunted stillness which lurks13 in the dim, disused recesses14 of a place—had crept out from the four corners of the hall and were stealing upon them, little by little, as the tide encroaches on the shore, till it had lapped them round in a curious atmosphere of oppression.
The woman acknowledged it by a restless twist of her slim shoulders. She was quite young—not more than twenty—and as she glanced half-enquiringly at the man seated opposite her there was sufficiency of likeness15 between the two to warrant the assumption that they were father and daughter.
In each there was the same intelligent, wide brow, the same straight nose with sensitively cut nostrils16—though a smaller and daintier affair in the feminine edition, and barred across the top by a little string of golden freckles—and, above all, the same determined17, pointed18 chin with the contradictory19 cleft20 in it that charmed away its obstinacy21.
But here the likeness ended. It was from someone other than the dark-browed man with his dreaming, poet’s eyes—which were neither purple nor grey, but a mixture of the two—that Jean Peterson had inherited her beech-leaf brown hair, tinged22 with warm red where the light glinted on it, and her vivid hazel eyes—eyes that were sometimes golden like the heart of a topaz and sometimes clear and still and brown like the waters of some quiet pool cradled among the rocks of a moorland stream.
They were like that now—clear and wide-open, with a certain pensive23, half-humorous questioning in them.
“Well?” she said, at last breaking the long silence. “What is it?”
The man looked across at her, smiling a little.
“Why should it be—anything?” he demanded.
She laughed amusedly.
“Oh, Glyn dear”—she never made use of the conventional address of “father.” Glyn Peterson would have disliked it intensely if she had—“Oh, Glyn dear, I haven’t been your daughter for the last twenty years without learning to divine when you are cudgelling your brains as to the prettiest method of introducing a disagreeable topic.”
Peterson grinned a little. He tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh one before replying.
“On this occasion,” he observed at last, slowly, “the topic is not necessarily a disagreeable one. Jean”—his quizzical glance raked her face suddenly—“how would you like to go to England?”
“To England?”
Her tone held the same incredulous excitement that anyone unexpectedly invited to week-end at El Dorado might be expected to evince.
“England! Glyn, do you really mean to take me there at last?”
“You’d like to go then?” A keen observer might have noticed a shade of relief pass over Peterson’s face.
“Like it? It’s the one thing above all others that I’ve longed for. It seems so ridiculous to be an Englishwoman and yet never once to have set foot in England.”
The man’s eyes clouded.
“You’re not—entirely—English,” he said in a low voice. Jean knew from what memory the quick correction sprang. Her mother, the beautiful opera singer who had been the one romance of Glyn Peterson’s life, had been of French extraction.
“I know,” she returned soberly. “Yet I think I’m mostly conscious of being English. I believe it’s just the very fact that I know Paris—Rome—Vienna—so well, and nothing at all about England, that makes me feel more absolutely English than anything else.”
A spark of amusement lit itself in Peterson’s eyes.
“How truly feminine!” he commented drily.
Jean nodded.
“I’m afraid it’s rather illogical of me.”
Her father blew a thin stream of smoke into the air.
“Thank God for it!” he replied lightly. “It’s the cussed contradictoriness24 of your sex that makes it so enchanting25. If women were logical they would be as obvious and boring as the average man.”
He relapsed into a dreaming silence. Jean broke it rather hesitatingly.
“You’ve never suggested taking me to England before.”
His face darkened suddenly. It was an extraordinarily26 expressive27 face—expressive as a child’s, reflecting every shade of his constant changes of mood.
“There’s no sense of adventure about England,” he said shortly. “It’s a dull corner of the world—bristling with the proprieties28.”
Jean realised how very completely, from his own point of view, he had answered her. Romance, beauty, the sheer delight of utter freedom from the conventions were as the breath of his nostrils to Glyn Peterson.
Born to the purple, as it were, of an old English county family, he had stifled29 in the conventional atmosphere of his upbringing. There had been moments of wild rebellion, bitter outbursts against the established order of things, but these had been sedulously30 checked and discouraged by his father, a man of iron will, who took himself and his position intensely seriously.
Ultimately, Glyn had come to accept with more or less philosophy the fact of his heirship31 to old estates and old traditions, with their inevitable32 responsibilities and claims, and he was just preparing to fulfill33 his parents’ wishes by marrying, suitably and conventionally, when Jacqueline Mavory, the beautiful half-French opera singer, had flashed into his horizon.
In a moment the world was transformed. Artist soul called to artist soul; the romantic vein8 in the man, so long checked and thwarted34, suddenly asserted itself irresistibly35, and the very day before that appointed for his wedding, he and Jacqueline ran away together in search of happiness.
And they had found it. The “County” had been shocked; Glyn’s father, unbending descendant of the old Scottish Covenanters, his whole creed36 outraged37, had broken under the blow; but the runaway38 lovers had found what they sought.
At Beirnfels, a beautiful old schloss on the eastern border of Austria, remote from the world and surrounded by forest-clad hills, Glyn Peterson and Jacqueline had lived a romantically happy existence, roaming the world whenever the wander-fever seized them, but always returning to Schloss Beirnfels, where Peterson had contrived39 a background of almost exotic richness for the adored woman who had flung her career to the winds in order to become his wife.
The birth of Jean, two years after their marriage, had been frankly40 regarded by both of them as an inconvenience. It interrupted their idyll. They were so essentially41 lovers that no third—not even a third born of love’s consummation—could be other than superfluous42.
They had proceeded to shift the new responsibility with characteristic lightheartedness. A small army of nursemaids and governesses was engaged, and later, when Jean was old enough, she was despatched to one of the best Continental43 schools, whilst her parents continued their customary happy-go-lucky existence uninterruptedly. During the holidays she shared their wanderings, and Egypt and the southern coast of Europe became familiar places to her.
At the age of seventeen, Jean came home to live at Beirnfels, thenceforward regarding her unpractical parents with a species of kindly44 tolerance45 and amusement. The three of them had lived quite happily together, though Jean had remained always the odd man out; but she had accepted the fact with a certain humorous philosophy which robbed it of half its sting.
Then, two years later, Jacqueline had developed rapid consumption, and though Glyn hurried her away to Montavan, in the Swiss Alps, there had been no combating the disease, and the romance of a great love had closed down suddenly into the grey shadows of death.
Peterson had been like a man demented. For a time he had disappeared, and no one ever knew, either then or later, how he had first faced the grim tragedy which had overtaken him.
Jean had patiently awaited his return to Beirnfels. When at last he came, he told her that it was the most beautiful thing which could have happened—that Jacqueline should, have died in the zenith of their love.
“We never knew the downward swing of the pendulum,” he explained. “And when we meet again it will be as young lovers who have never grown tired. I shall always remember Jacqueline as still perfectly46 beautiful—never insulted by old age. And when she thinks of me—well, I’m still a ‘personable’ fellow, as they say——”
“My dear Glyn, you’re still a boy! You’ve never grown up,” Jean made answer. To her he seemed a sort of Peter Pan among men.
She had been amazed—although in a sense relieved—to find how swiftly he had rallied. It seemed almost as though his intense loathing47 of the onset48 of old age and decay, of that slow cooling of passion and gradual decline of faculties49 which age inevitably50 brings, had served to reconcile him to the loss of the woman he had worshipped whilst yet there had been no dimming of her physical perfection, no blunting of the fine edge of their love.
It was easily comprehensible that to two such temperamental, joy-loving beings as Glyn and Jacqueline, England, with her neutral-tinted skies and strictness of convention, had made little appeal, and Jean could with difficulty harmonise the suddenly projected visit to England with her knowledge of her father’s idiosyncrasies.
It was just possible of course, since all which had meant happiness to him lay buried in a little mountain cemetery51 in Switzerland, that it no longer mattered to Peterson where he sojourned. One place might be as good—or as bad—as another.
Rather diffidently Jean voiced her doubts, recalling him from the reverie into which he had fallen.
“I go to England?” he exclaimed. “God forbid! No, you would go without me.”
“Without you?”
Peterson sprang up and began pacing restlessly to and fro.
“Yes, without me. I’m going away. I—I can’t stay here any longer. I’ve tried, Jean, for your sake”—he looked across at her with a kind of appeal in his eyes—“but I can’t stand it. I must move on—get away somewhere by myself. Beirnfels—without her——”
He broke off abruptly52 and stood still, staring down into the heart of the fire. Then he added in a wrung53 voice:
“It will be a year ago... to-morrow.”
Jean was silent. Never before had he let her see the raw wound in his soul. Latterly she had divined a growing restlessness in him, sensed the return of the wander-fever which sometimes obsessed54 him, but she had not realised that it was pain—sheer, intolerable pain—which was this time driving him forth55 from the place that had held his happiness.
He had appeared so little changed after Jacqueline’s death, so much the wayward, essentially lovable and unpractical creature of former times, still able to find supreme56 delight in a sunset, or an exquisite57 picture, or a wild ride across the purple hills, that Jean had sometimes marvelled58, how easily he seemed able to forget.
And, after all, he had not forgotten—had never been able to forget!
The gay, debonair59 side which he had shown the world—that same rather selfish, beauty-loving, charming personality she had always known—had been only a shell, a husk hiding a hurt that had never healed—that never would find healing in this world.
Jean felt herself submerged beneath a wave of self-reproach that she could have thus crudely accepted Glyn’s attitude at its face value. But it was useless to give expression to her penitence60. She could find no words which might not wound, and while she was still dully trying to readjust her mind to this new aspect of things, her father’s voice broke across her thoughts—smooth, polished, with just its usual inflection of whimsical amusement, rather as though the world were a good sort of joke in which he found himself constrained61 to take part.
“I’ve made the most paternal62 arrangements for your welfare in my absence, Jean. I want to discuss them with you. You see, I couldn’t take you with me—I don’t know in the least where I’m going or where I shall fetch up. That’s the charm of it”—his face kindling63. “And it wouldn’t be right or proper for me to drag a young woman of your age—and attractions—half over the world with me.”
By which Jean, not in the least deceived by his air of conscious rectitude, comprehended that he didn’t want to be bothered with her. He was bidding for freedom, untrammelled by any petticoats.
“So I’ve written to my old pal11, Lady Anne Brennan,” pursued Peterson, “asking if you may stay with her for a little. You would have a delightful64 time. She was quite the most charming woman I knew in England.”
“That must be rather more than twenty years ago,” observed Jean drily. “She may have altered a good deal.”
Peterson frowned. He hated to have objections raised to any plan that particularly appealed to him.
“Rubbish! Why should she change? Anne was not the sort of woman to change.”
Jean was perfectly aware that her father hadn’t the least wish to “discuss” his proposals with her, as he had said. What he really wanted was to tell her about them and for her to approve and endorse65 them with enthusiasm—which is more or less what a man usually wants when he suggests discussing plans with his womankind.
So, recognising that he had all his arrangements cut and dried, Jean philosophically66 accepted the fact and prepared to fall in with them.
“And has Lady Anne signified her readiness to take me in for an indefinite period?” she enquired67.
“I haven’t had her answer yet. But I have no doubt at all what form it will take. It will be a splendid opportunity for you, altogether. You know, Jean”—pictorially—“you ought really to see the ‘stately homes of England.’ Why, they’re—they’re your birthright!”
Jean reflected humorously that this point of view had only occurred to him now that it chanced to coincide so admirably with his own wishes. Hitherto the “stately homes of England” had been relegated68 to a quite unimportant position in the background and Jean’s attention focussed more directly upon the unpleasing vagaries69 of the British climate.
“I should like to go to England,” was all she said. Peterson smiled at her radiantly—the smile of a child who has got its own way with much less difficulty than it had anticipated.
“You shall go,” he promised her. “You’ll adore Staple70. It’s quite a typical old English manor—lawns and terraces all complete, even down to the last detail of a yew71 hedge.”
“Staple? Is that the Brennans’ place?”
“God bless my soul, no! The Tormarins acquired it when they came pushing over to England with the Conqueror72, I imagine. Anne married twice, you know. Her first husband, Tormarin, led her a dog’s life, and after his death she married Claude Brennan—son of a junior branch of the Brennans. Now she is a widow for the second time.”
“And are there any children?”
“Two sons. The elder is the son of the first marriage and is the owner of Staple, of course. The younger one is the child of the second marriage. I believe that since Brennan’s death they all three live very comfortably together at Staple—at least, they did ten years ago when I last heard from Anne. That was not long after Brennan died.”
Jean wrinkled her brows.
“Rather a confusing household to be suddenly pitchforked into,” she commented.
“But not dull!” submitted Peterson triumphantly73. “And dullness is, after all, the biggest bugbear of existence.”
As if suddenly stabbed by the palpable pose of his own remark, the light died out of his face and he looked round the great dim ball with a restless, eager glance, as though trying to impress the picture of it on his memory.
“Beirnfels—my ‘House of Dreams-Come-True,’” he muttered to himself.
He had named it thus in those first glowing days when love had transfigured the grim old border castle, turning it into a place of magic visions and consummated74 hopes. The whimsical name took its origin from a little song which Jacqueline had been wont75 to sing to him, her glorious voice investing the simple words with a passionate76 belief and triumph.
It’s a strange road leads to the House of Dreams,
To the House of Dreams-Come-True,
Its hills are steep and its valleys deep,
And salt with tears the Wayfarers77 weep,
The Wayfarers—I and you.
But there’s sure a way to the House of Dreams,
To the House of Dreams-Come-True.
We shall find it yet, ere the sun has set.
If we fare straight on, come fine, come wet,
Wayfarers—I and you.
Peterson’s eyes rested curiously78 on his daughter’s face. There was something mystic, almost visionary, in their quiet, absent gaze.
“One day, Jean,” he said, “when you meet the only man who matters, Beirnfels shall be yours—the house where your dreams shall come true. It’s a house of ghosts now—a dead house. But some day you and the man you love will make it live again.”
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1
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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sable
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| n.黑貂；adj.黑色的 | |
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density
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| n.密集，密度，浓度 | |
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fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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opalescent
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| adj.乳色的，乳白的 | |
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pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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lurks
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| n.潜在，潜伏；（lurk的复数形式）vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的第三人称单数形式） | |
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recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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contradictoriness
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| 矛盾性 | |
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enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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proprieties
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| n.礼仪，礼节；礼貌( propriety的名词复数 )；规矩；正当；合适 | |
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stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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sedulously
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| ad.孜孜不倦地 | |
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heirship
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| n.继承权 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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fulfill
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| vt.履行，实现，完成；满足，使满意 | |
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thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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runaway
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| n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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40
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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42
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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45
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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47
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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48
onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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49
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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50
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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51
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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52
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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53
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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54
obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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55
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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56
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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57
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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58
marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
debonair
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| adj.殷勤的，快乐的 | |
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60
penitence
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| n.忏悔，赎罪；悔过 | |
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constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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65
endorse
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| vt.(支票、汇票等)背书，背署；批注；同意 | |
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66
philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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67
enquired
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| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
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68
relegated
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| v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类 | |
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69
vagaries
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| n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况 | |
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70
staple
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| n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类 | |
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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72
conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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73
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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74
consummated
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| v.使结束( consummate的过去式和过去分词 )；使完美；完婚；（婚礼后的）圆房 | |
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75
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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wayfarers
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| n.旅人，（尤指）徒步旅行者( wayfarer的名词复数 ) | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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