The mysterious Mr. Quin · OmniClassics

and a third lad, a Shadow Lad--and he's the lad that grieves me.'_" The song went on. At the end, Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorous approval. "Mrs. Denman is right. Your voice is charming. Not, perhaps, very fully trained, but delightfully natural, and with that unstudied quality of youth in it." "That's right," agreed John Denman. "You go ahead, Molly, and don't be downed by stage fright. We'd better be getting over to the Roscheimers' now." The party separated to don cloaks. It was a glorious night and they proposed to walk over, the house being only a few hundred yards down the road. Mr. Satterthwaite found himself by his friend. "It's an odd thing," he said, "but that song made me think of you. A _third lad--a Shadow Lad_--there's mystery there, and wherever there's mystery I--well, think of you." "Am I so mysterious?" smiled Mr. Quin. Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorously. "Yes, indeed. Do you know, until tonight, I had no idea that you were a professional dancer." "Really?" said Mr. Quin. "Listen," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He hummed the love motif from the _Walküre_. "That is what has been ringing in my head all through dinner as I looked at those two." "Which two?" "Prince Oranoff and Mrs. Denman. Don't you see the difference in her tonight? It's as though--as though a shutter had suddenly been opened and you see the glow within." "Yes," said Mr. Quin. "Perhaps so." "The same old drama," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "I am right, am I not? Those two belong together. They are of the same world, think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams. One sees how it has come about. Ten years ago Denman must have been very good-looking, young, dashing, a figure of romance. And he saved her life. All quite natural. But now--what is he, after all? A good fellow--prosperous, successful--but--well, mediocre. Good honest English stuff--very much like that Hepplewhite furniture upstairs. As English--and as ordinary--as that pretty English girl with her fresh, untrained voice. Oh! you may smile, Mr. Quin, but you cannot deny what I am saying." "I deny nothing. In what you see you are always right. And yet--" "Yet what?" Mr. Quin leaned forward. His dark, melancholy eyes searched those of Mr. Satterthwaite. "Have you learned so little of life?" he breathed. He left Mr. Satterthwaite vaguely disquieted, such a prey to meditation that he found the others had started without him, owing to his delay in selecting a scarf for his neck. He went out by the garden, and through the same door as in the afternoon. The lane was bathed in moonlight, and even as he stood in the doorway, he saw a couple enlaced in each other's arms. For a moment he thought-- And then he saw. _John Denman and Molly Stanwell._ Denman's voice came to him, hoarse and anguished. "I can't live without you. What are we to do?" Mr. Satterthwaite turned to go back the way he had come, but a hand stayed him. Someone else stood in the doorway beside him, someone else whose eyes had also seen. Mr. Satterthwaite had only to catch one glimpse of her face to know how wildly astray all his conclusions had been. Her anguished hand held him there until those other two had passed up the lane and disappeared from sight. He heard himself speaking to her, saying foolish little things meant to be comforting, and ludicrously inadequate to the agony he had divined. She only spoke once. "Please," she said, "don't leave me." He found that oddly touching. He was, then, of use to someone. And he went on saying those things that meant nothing at all, but which were, somehow, better than silence. They went that way to the Roscheimers'. Now and then her hand tightened on his shoulder, and he understood that she was glad of his company. She only took it away when they finally came to their destination. She stood very erect, her head held high. "Now," she said, "I shall dance! Do not be afraid for me, my friend. I shall dance." She left him abruptly. He was seized upon by Lady Roscheimer, much bediamonded and very full of lamentations. By her he was passed on to Claude Wickam. "Ruined! Completely ruined. The sort of thing that always happens to me. All these country bumpkins think they can dance. I was never even consulted--" His voice went on--went on interminably. He had found a sympathetic listener, a man who _knew_. He gave himself up to an orgy of self-pity. It only ended when the first strains of music began. Mr. Satterthwaite came out of his dream. He was alert once more, the critic. Wickam was an unutterable ass, but he could write music--delicate gossamer stuff, intangible as a fairy web--yet with nothing of the pretty-pretty about it. The scenery was good. Lady Roscheimer never spared expense when aiding her protégées. A glade of Arcady with lighting effects that gave it the proper atmosphere of unreality. Two figures dancing as they had danced through time immemorial. A slender Harlequin flashing spangles in the moonlight with magic wand and masked face, a white Columbine pirouetting like some immortal dream-- Mr. Satterthwaite sat up. He had lived through this before. Yes, surely-- Now his body was far away from Lady Roscheimer's drawing room. It was in a Berlin museum gazing at a statuette of an immortal Columbine. Harlequin and Columbine danced on. The wide world was theirs to dance in. Moonlight--and a human figure. Pierrot wandering through the wood, singing to the moon. Pierrot who has seen Columbine and knows no rest. The immortal two vanish, but Columbine looks back. She has heard the song of a human heart. Pierrot wandering on through the wood--darkness--his voice dies away in the distance-- The village green--dancing of village girls--pierrots and pierrettes. Molly as Pierrette. No dancer--Anna Denman was right there--but a fresh tuneful voice as she sings her song, "Pierrette Dancing on the Green." A good tune--Mr. Satterthwaite nodded approval. Wickam wasn't above writing a tune when there was need for it. The majority of the village girls made him shudder, but he realized that Lady Roscheimer was determinedly philanthropical. They press Pierrot to join the dance. He refuses. With white face he wanders on--the eternal lover seeking his ideal. Evening falls. Harlequin and Columbine, invisible, dance in and out of the unconscious throng. The place is deserted, only Pierrot, weary, falls asleep on a grassy bank. Harlequin and Columbine dance round him. He wakes and sees Columbine. He woos her in vain, pleads, beseeches-- She stands uncertain. Harlequin beckons to her to begone. But she sees him no longer. She is listening to Pierrot, to his song of love outpoured once more. She falls into his arms, and the curtain comes down. The second act is Pierrot's cottage. Columbine sits on his hearth. She is pale, weary. She listens--for what? Pierrot sings to her--woos her back to thoughts of him once more. The evening darkens. Thunder is heard. Columbine puts aside her spinning-wheel. She is eager, stirred. She listens no longer to Pierrot. It is her own music that is in the air, the music of Harlequin and Columbine. She is awake. She remembers. A crash of thunder! Harlequin stands in the doorway. Pierrot cannot see him, but Columbine springs up with a glad laugh. Children come running, but she pushes them aside. With another crash of thunder the walls fall, and Columbine dances out into the wild night with Harlequin. Darkness, and through it the tune that Pierrette has sung. Light comes slowly. The cottage once more. Pierrot and Pierrette, grown old and gray, sit in front of the fire in two armchairs. The music is happy, but subdued. Pierrette nods in her chair. Through the window comes a shaft of moonlight, and with it the motif of Pierrot's long-forgotten song. He stirs in his chair. Faint music--fairy music--Harlequin and Columbine outside. The door swings open and Columbine dances in. She leans over the sleeping Pierrot, kisses him on the lips. Crash! A peal of thunder. She is outside again. In the center of the stage is the lighted window and through it are seen the two figures of Harlequin and Columbine dancing slowly away, growing fainter and fainter.... A log falls. Pierrette jumps up angrily, rushes across to the window, and pulls the blind. So it ends, on a sudden discord. Mr. Satterthwaite sat very still among the applause and vociferations. At last he got up and made his way outside. He came upon Molly Stanwell, flushed and eager, receiving compliments. He saw John Denman, pushing and elbowing his way through the throng, his eyes alight with a new flame. Molly came toward him, but, almost unconsciously, he put her aside. It was not her he was seeking. "My wife? Where is she?" "I think she went out in the garden." It was, however, Mr. Satterthwaite who found her, sitting on a stone seat under a cypress tree. When he came up to her, he did an odd thing. He knelt down and raised her hand to his lips. "Ah!" she said. "You think I danced well?" "You danced--as you always danced, Madame Kharsanova." She drew in her breath sharply. "So--you have guessed." "There is only one Kharsanova. No one could see you dance and forget. But why--why?" "What else was possible?" "You mean?" She had spoken very simply. She was just as simple now. "Oh! but you understand. You are of the world. A great dancer--she can have lovers, yes--but a husband, that is different. And he--he did not want the other. He wanted me to belong to him as--as Kharsanova could never have belonged." "I see," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "I see. So you gave it up?" She nodded. "You must have loved him very much," said Mr. Satterthwaite gently. "To make such a sacrifice?" She laughed. "Not quite that. To make it so light-heartedly." "Ah! yes--perhaps--you are right." "And now?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite. Her face grew grave. "Now?" She paused, then raised her voice and spoke into the shadows. "Is that you, Sergius Ivanovitch?" Prince Oranoff came out into the moonlight. He took her hand and smiled at Mr. Satterthwaite without self-consciousness. "Ten years ago I mourned the death of Anna Kharsanova," he said simply. "She was to me as my other self. Today I have found her again. We shall part no more." "At the end of the lane in ten minutes," said Anna. "I shall not fail you." Oranoff nodded and went off again. The dancer turned to Mr. Satterthwaite. A smile played about her lips. "Well--you are not satisfied, my friend?" "Do you know," said Mr. Satterthwaite abruptly, "that your husband is looking for you?" He saw the tremor that passed over her face, but her voice was steady enough. "Yes," she said gravely. "That may well be." "I saw his eyes. They--" He stopped abruptly. She was still calm. "Yes, perhaps. For an hour. An hour's magic, born of past memories, of music, of moonlight. That is all." "Then there is nothing that I can say?" He felt old, dispirited. "For ten years I have lived with the man I love," said Anna Kharsanova. "Now I am going to the man who for ten years has loved me." Mr. Satterthwaite said nothing. He had no arguments left. Besides, it really seemed the simplest solution. Only-- Only, somehow, it was not the solution he wanted. He felt her hand on his shoulder. "I know, my friend, I know. But there is no third way. Always one looks for one thing--the lover, the perfect, the eternal lover. It is the music of Harlequin one hears. No lover ever satisfies one, for all lovers are mortal. And Harlequin is only a myth, an invisible presence--unless--" "Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Yes?" "Unless--his name is--Death!"