The Eye of Love (25 page)

Harry might have been armoured in moonshine. Even this last, sharpest arrow glanced off his moonshine armour. It might have been shot from Cupid's bow—with a message of hope tied to the shaft.

“If I earn my bread there, why not some other place? Bath, or Cheltenham?” suggested Harry Gibson resourcefully. “In both places we have connections. Start up a small branch, no need to tell Miranda—”

At this point Mr Joyce took his head in his hands and felt it gently all over, as though feeling for a crack in his skull.

“First you try to jilt my daughter,” he recapitulated, “then you ask me to set you up in business. One of us is mad.”

“It wouldn't be
my
business,” pointed out Harry. “I'd be on salary.”

Mr Joyce came up from his attitude of prayer with a grim smile.

“Put that out of your head, Harry boy. It was a good idea, but put it out of your head. Say toodle-oo to it.”

“Righty-ho,” said Harry Gibson. “But you won't make me change my mind.”

Unexpectedly—

“You must be hungry,” said Mr Joyce. “I'll get you some cold beef.”

6

He took his time about it. Crossing the hall to the dining-room, cutting a nice plateful—trimming it up with some bits of green stuff—Mr Joyce didn't hurry. He needed a respite. This was not, however, the chief motive of his butler-work, as neither was it solicitude for Harry's stomach. He had come to the conclusion that his best ally, in bringing Harry to his senses, was now the mere clockwork passage of time.

Whatever folly a man swears at night, by the cold light of day is not uncommonly foresworn; moreover the situation Harry Gibson faced in the morning was simply, in Mr Joyce's opinion, unfaceable. So Harry, he believed, would find. In cold blood (and by daylight) he would find it utterly beyond him to throw overboard livelihood and honour, gratitude and filial affection, also make fresh arrangements about his laundry. (Mr Joyce ticked off this last point quite without cynicism. He simply and gratefully recognised how deflating to a fit of heroics such material pinpricks could be.) The essential, Mr Joyce now considered, was to get through the night without any irretrievable
act
performed—without Harry rushing off, for example, back to Paddington. Thus it was something to have salvaged ten minutes; also in furtherance of this aim Mr Joyce was prepared to go on talking to Harry Gibson, or listening to Harry Gibson, until morning.

“‘Came the dawn,'” thought Mr Joyce, with a long, yet not hopeless sigh; and provisioned himself also.

“There is more I have remembered about Hilda,” announced Mr Joyce, returning in an evidently nostalgic mood. “Her hair—”

It wasn't that Harry wouldn't listen. Harry's gratitude and affection were by no means dead, on the contrary, and to show this he would have listened willingly. The interruption came from without, when the door opened on Miranda. Both Mr Joyce and Mr Gibson had forgotten that the door was now unlocked.

“Dadda!” exclaimed Miranda. “Harry! Dadda, why ever don't you come to bed? What ever are you
doing?
” demanded Miranda Joyce.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

1

As Mr Joyce had remarked in another context, it was a miracle she hadn't appeared sooner. For hours she had lain with her door ajar, listening for him to come upstairs: planning to slip down herself for a delicious midnight interview with Harry. (Or if not entirely delicious, at any rate exciting.) All she heard was Mr Joyce cross the hall to the dining-room, and return to the study, and it was now almost one o'clock. It was a miracle indeed that her impatience and curiosity had been so long bridled.

“Whatever are you
doing?
” demanded Miranda.

On the face of it, though this by no means placated her, Mr Joyce and Mr Gibson were having a midnight snack. Their plates and glasses at once caught her eye. But they had no air of enjoyment, their dishevelment—for Mr Joyce too by this time had loosed his collar; Harry had taken off his waistcoat—their dishevelment appeared as no genial unbuttoning, but rather the effect of some desperate passage. They looked as though they'd been
through
something; and Miranda, who immediately thought she knew what, prepared with pleasure to join in and calm them both down.

Graceful, feminine and becoming is the rôle of peacemaker.

“Go back to bed!” said Mr Joyce.

They were the first words he had spoken; nor had Harry spoken. Miranda looked from one to the other of them understandingly, and sat down. She was wearing a negligée that strictly belonged to her trousseau, pale blue velvet; its long wide skirts dropped in graceful folds, beneath which the toe of a pale blue mule peeped provocatively forth. Miranda naturally couldn't see it from Harry's viewpoint, but she felt there was to be a deliciousness about the interview after all.

“I shan't,” said Miranda—half-woman, half-child! “
I
know what's been going on. Dadda, you've been scolding poor Harry. Haven't I told you there's nothing to worry about?”

“It was what I told you,” said Mr Joyce. “I was wrong. Please go back to bed.”

Miranda swung a pretty toe.

“Not till you've made it up. Poor Harry! If
I
've forgiven him, that's all that matters. Dadda, you must make it up.”

Mr Joyce looked at her helplessly. He almost looked at Harry, for help; but obviously this wouldn't do. In the course of a whole evening that had been one long difficult situation, this was the second peak—the first being when he surprised Miss Diver in Harry's arms. There was literally nothing he could think of to say that mightn't precipitate a crisis—except “Go to bed,” and Miranda wouldn't. With horror he heard Harry clear his throat.

“He can't forgive me,” stated Harry Gibson. “You wouldn't want him to.”

Miranda smiled her understanding smile.

“But of course I do, darling! When
I
have!”

“You won't either,” said Harry Gibson.

“But I tell you I have!” insisted Miranda—now with a trifle of impatience. “Oh, Harry, didn't you confess to me yourself?”

“Yes, but I've got to confess again,” said Harry.

There was a doggedness about him which even at that moment stirred Mr Joyce's admiration. “The bull-dog breed!” thought Mr Joyce admiringly. But that doggedness was hurrying them all to disaster, and in alarm he made haste to interpose.

“Wait till morning,” interposed Mr Joyce swiftly. “Something so important, wait till morning!”

“I can't,” said Harry. “Miranda's got to know now.”

“I ask it as a personal favour! I beg you! Harry boy,” said Mr Joyce earnestly, “if you have any fondness for me at all, if you feel I have behaved at all well to you, oblige me in this last thing I ask. Remember I have troubles too, and oblige me.”

It was a moving appeal. Harry was moved. Mr Joyce, seeing him waver, without the least concern for his own dignity, caught him by the sleeve and pulled at it.

“Haven't we been friends, Harry boy?” pleaded Mr Joyce. “Haven't we been real pals? Can't you do me one small kindness? Wait till morning, Harry; wait till morning!”

Harry Gibson wavered. He might have given way. But Miranda had been too long out of the conversation for her liking, and felt it time to reassume control.

“Dadda, Harry!” she cried gaily. “What a fuss! Whatever Harry wants to tell I want to hear! Did you kiss her good-bye, Harry, after all? If you did, I'm not jealous! How could I be,” laughed Miranda, “of such a scarecrow?”

As Mr Joyce subsequently remarked, in one of his new slangy phrases, that tore it.

2

For a moment, Harry didn't comprehend; then the blood rushed up to his face, and all his love, and his fury, burst forth in one outraged cry.

“How dare you!” roared Harry Gibson. “Not jealous! What else but jealousy is that lie?”

Miranda instantly jumped up. If he was furious, so now was she.

“What lie? Calling that creature a scarecrow?” She laughed again, but on a very different note. “Let me tell you, Dadda called her far worse! A skeleton, a bag-of-bones—”

“Miranda, for God's sake!” implored Mr Joyce.

“—a kiss of death!” finished Miranda recklessly. “And I say so too!”

“Keep your tongue off her!” shouted Harry Gibson. “Now
I
'll tell
you
something!”

“Stop!” shouted Mr Joyce. “He's mad!” he added rapidly, to Miranda. “Don't listen to him! Go to bed! Leave it to me!”

“I'm going to marry her,” said Harry Gibson, suddenly calm. “Now you know.”

There followed an abrupt silence, sudden, and as generally disconcerting, as Harry's new demeanour. The air of the study seemed to quiver with it: for a moment, it seemed, as in a heat-haze, the outlines of solid objects swam. Then Miranda looked at her parent. She had every reason for disbelief, but what she saw in his face shook her.

“I told you, he's mad,” said Mr Joyce. “Leave him alone, let it pass.”

Miranda frowned uncertainly.

“What he said, Dadda … of course is nonsense. How could he marry anyone, without—?”

She paused; almost pathetically, the words refused to be uttered. But Harry Gibson had no compunction. He had heard his Spanish rose called a scarecrow, and a bag-of-bones, and a skeleton and a kiss of death.

“Jilting you,” he supplied baldly. “That's right: I'm jilting you.”

Miranda turned. There was no love in her eyes. There was still incredulity—but of a new sort. She had seen Miss Diver twice, and once no doubt at her smartest …

“For
that
thing?”

“For the lady whose name is Miss Diver,” returned Harry dangerously. “Yes.”

Miranda drew a long, hissing breath. Her face was very white, but set, not tremulous.

“Dadda's right: you
are
mad,” she said contemptuously. She was bearing herself, in the circumstances, with considerable courage. She still didn't hazard any more criticism of Miss Diver's person. “Is that what you were fighting about, Dadda?”

Mr Joyce nodded miserably. He was feeling extraordinarily tired, and he didn't like the look in Miranda's eye.

“He wanted to horse-whip me,” offered Harry—who still retained some sparks of loyalty.

“I think he can do better than that—can't you, Dadda?”

Mr Joyce sighed.

“If necessary, daughter. But why talk about it? In the morning, it will all be different,” said Mr Joyce pleadingly. By this time he didn't know exactly who it was he pled with—he didn't want his daughter to be jilted, he didn't want to ruin his friend; he didn't want to
lose
his friend. “In the morning, you keep out of the way,” said Mr Joyce earnestly, “and I'll try again.”

Undoubtedly he was very tired; but undoubtedly it was the worst thing he could have said. He was so tired, he repeated it.

“Just
you
keep out of the way—” repeated Mr Joyce; and precipitated a crisis indeed, as Miranda lost her temper.

3

She had lost it once, and recovered it; now she lost it irretrievably. She spoke the irretrievable words.

“Keep out of the way,
I
keep out of the way?” cried Miranda furiously. “Why? Because when he sees me Harry feels sick? You think I want to see
him?
Because I don't screech and scream you think
I
'm not disgusted? Let me tell you, Dadda, now I know what tastes he has, it is I who break off our engagement, not Harry! If he was the last man in the world—”

Quite definitely, Mr Joyce was now pleading with Miranda.

“Stop!” cried Mr Joyce. “Wait!” (All night, it seemed to him, he had been battering with those two words at ears as deaf as adders'.) “Think, Miranda, for God's sake think! You are just giving Harry an out! Remember the wedding, all the preparations! How will you look, not getting married, after all this? What will your friends say?”

But Miranda was struggling with her engagement-ring, forcing it over her knuckle, obviously preparing to hurl it in Harry's face. Mr Joyce shot out a hand and fielded it just in time. “Give it back to him!” cried Miranda—quite forgetting, the passionate girl, who had paid for it. “
I
don't want it! Let him give it to
her
, how snappy it will look on her skinny finger!” Mr Joyce slipped his two hundred pounds'-worth into a pocket and gamely worried on.

“What about the wedding-presents, all to be returned? Mrs Grandjean's beautiful dinner-service—”

“I don't want it!” cried Miranda again. She was ready to fling back diamonds, what were dinner-services to her? “And as for what people say—” Here indeed she hesitated, as her father had known, it was the crux; but her temper carried her over it, “They will say I have shown spirit!” cried Miranda defiantly. “
My
friends didn't think so much of Harry, I can tell you! They thought he was an old stick-in-the-mud, and that I was throwing myself away!”

She shot Harry one last disdainful look, and swept from the room.

4

The peace was beautiful.

It had been Miranda's aim to make peace; at least she left peace behind her.

Several minutes passed before either man spoke. They were both exhausted; also the peace was too beautiful to spoil. Harry Gibson sank back on the sofa, Mr Joyce in his big leather chair. It was so obviously the moment for a pipe, both got out their pipes. Mr Joyce's was still raw, but as though in sympathy with the moment it drew better than ever before.

“You're getting the hang of it,” said Harry Gibson.

“I have that new tobacco you said,” explained Mr Joyce.

Casting his mind back over the recent to-and-fro, he thought Harry hadn't realised the provenance of the worst slanders on his beloved, and was glad. He was sorry for them now himself.