Part 13

Banford lifted a pleading hand. There was a warning roll of drums, a preliminary lilt of violins, and the orchestra swung triumphantly into the “Biddy Waltz”--the waltz that all London had revolved to for three good months. The house sighed like a delighted child, and far up in the gallery an ecstatic voice called “Ah, there, lassie!” And another echoed “Come ahn, Biddy--Alf and me’s ’ere!”

And onto a stage that was black as night, with one great bound as though she had leapt through infinite space from a falling star into the small safe circle of the spotlight, came Biddy O’Rourke, straight on the tips of her silver toes, with laughter for a dark world in both her outstretched hands--and the piece of the world that faced her rose to its feet and shouted a welcome. All but one.

The Black Duke of Bolingham sat square in the centre in the first row of seats in the Liberty Music Hall as still as though he had been struck down by lightning, with the “Biddy Waltz” rising and falling about him unheeded, his eyes fixed incredulously on the Vision in the spotlight. The Vision had already fixed the eyes and turned the heads and broken the hearts of half the masculine population of London (the other half not having seen her!) but nothing that the duke had heard had prepared him for this.

Who could have told him that a music hall dancer called Biddy O’Rourke, late of Dublin, no taller than a child and seventeen years old to the day, could look like a fairy and an angel and an imp and a witch and a dream? Not Gaddy Banford, of a certainty--not Gaddy, who, in a burst of lyric enthusiasm, had confided to his duke that she was little and blonde and light on her feet. “Little”--you who were more fantastically minute than any elf, Biddy! Blonde--oh, sacrilege, to dismiss thus that foam and froth of curls cresting and bubbling about your gay head like champagne, with the same pure glitter of pale gold--that skin of pearl beneath which danced little flames of rose fire--those eyes, bluer than anything on earth--blue as the skies and seas and flowers that haunt our dreams. Light on your feet--oh, Biddy, you, who soared and floated and drifted like a feather in the wind, like a butterfly gone mad--like a flying leaf and a dancing star! Had he said that you had a nose tilted as a flower petal, and a mouth that tilted, too? Had he said that when you blew across the dark stage that you would be arrayed in silver brighter than foam and white more airy than clouds? Had he said that you would dance not only with those miraculous toes but with your curls and with your lashes and with your lips and with your heart? Had he said that you would come laughing, little Biddy?

High on the tips of those incredible toes she came--nearer and nearer, so swift and light and sure that it seemed to Bolingham’s dazzled eyes that it would take less than a breath to blow her over that barrier of light straight into his arms--straight into his heart--into his tired and lonely heart. He leaned forward, and the vision of gold and silver stared back at him, faltered, tilted forward on her toes, and flung down to him the airy music of her mirth.

“Oh, I couldn’t any more dance with you looking like that than I could grow feathers!” cried the Vision. “No, not if Saint Patrick himself were to bid me. Whatever in the whole world’s the matter?”

The audience stopped howling its delirious approval at their Biddy’s appearance in order to revel in their Biddy’s chaff. No one could chaff like Biddy--no one nearer than Cork, at any rate. It was better than seeing her dance to listen to her laugh, gentle as a lamb, and pert as a monkey, and gay as a Bank Holiday. Free as air, too; if any of those Johnnies in the stalls tried any of their nonsense, it was a fair treat to hear her give ’em what for! The audience stood on tiptoes and shoved and elbowed in riotous good humour in their efforts to locate her latest victim--that great black fellow with shoulders like a prize-fighter, likely. The great black fellow promptly gratified their fondest expectations by falling into the silver net of Biddy’s laughter and answering her back.

“Thanks,” he replied distinctly. “Nothing in the whole world’s the matter--now.”

“Whatever were you thinkin’ to make you scowl the big black ogre himself then?”

And the Black Duke replied as clearly as though he were addressing the lady in the hush of the rose garden at Gray Courts instead of in the presence of the largest and most hilarious audience in London.

“I was wondering how in God’s name I was going to get to you quickly enough to tell you what I was thinking before I burst with it.”

The transfixed Gaddy tottered where he stood, and the audience howled unqualified approval, even while they waited for her to pin him to the wall with her reply. But Biddy only came a step nearer, staring down at him with the strangest look of wonder and delight and enchanted mischief.

“Oh, whatever must you think of me, not knowing you at all?” she cried to him over the muted lilt of her waltz. “’Twas the lights in my eyes, maybe--or maybe the lights in yours. It’s the foolish creature I am anyway you put it. Would you be waiting for ten minutes?”

“No,” said His Grace firmly.

“Seven?”

“It’ll kill me,” said His Grace. “Where will you be?”

“There’s a wee door over beyond the red curtain,” said Biddy. “You go through that, and you’re in an alley as black as a pit, and you take three steps--no, with the legs you have you can do it in two with no trouble at all--and there’ll be another door with a fine big light over it, and I’ll be under the light. Don’t die.”

“No,” said His Grace. “I won’t.”

“Play it faster than that,” Biddy cried to her stupefied musicians, once more poised high on her silver toes. “Ah, it’s the poor, slow, thumb-fingered creatures you are, the lot of you! Play it fast as my Aunt Dasheen’s spotted kitten chasin’ its tail or I’ll dance holes in your drums for you--weren’t you after hearin’ that I have five minutes to do three great dances? It’s black-hearted fiends you are, with your dawdlin’ and your ditherin’. Ah, darlin’s, come on now--spin it faster than that for the poor dyin’ gentleman and the girl that’s goin’ to save him!”

And with a flash and a dip and a swirl she was off, and the Black Duke was off, too. Gaddy Banford put up a feeble clamour as his guest swept by him toward the aisle.

“Oh, but my dear fellow--no, but I say, wait a bit--she’s simply chaffing you, you know; she’ll never in the world be there for a minute----”

“Hand over my stick, will you?” inquired the duke affably. “You’ve no earthly use for two. And don’t come trotting along after me, either. She’s not expecting _you_, you know--rather not.” He swung buoyantly off toward the red curtain, bestowing a benign nod on the now deliriously diverted audience.

“Take a chair along, matey!” “Want a mornin’ paper? Come in ’andy to pass away the time!” “Fetch ’im ’is tea at nine, Bertie--’e’ll need it bad.” “Don’t you wait for her no more than twenty-four hours, ole dear--promise us that, now----”

“Bolingham, I say----” panted the unfortunate Gaddy. “I say, someone must have tipped her off, you know!”

“Tipped her off?”

“Told her who you were, you know?”

The duke laughed aloud and Gaddy Banford, who had never heard him do this, jumped badly.

“D’you know what I’ve been wondering, Gaddy? I’ve been wondering how the deuce I was going to own up to her--a duke’s such a damn potty thing, when you come down to it. Why the devil didn’t someone make me Emperor of Russia?”

He brushed aside the red curtain, grinned once more into Banford’s stunned countenance, and passed with one great stride through the door into the black alley. The door swung to behind him, and he stood leaning against it for a minute, savouring the wonder and the magic that he had fallen heir to. There was a drift of music in the alley--the sky was powdered thick with stars--the air was sweet as flowers against his face. He drew a deep breath, and turned his head; and there she stood beneath the light, with a black scarf over her golden head and a black cloak over her silver dress--and it took him two strides to reach her, as she had said. She had one hand to her heart and was breathing quickly in little light gasps, as though she had come running.

“Were you waitin’ long?” she asked. “I never stopped at all to change a stitch and dear knows ’twas a sin how I cheated on that last one--no more than a flout and a spin, and not that maybe; only I was afraid for my soul you’d be gone. Was it long you waited?”

“Forty-two years,” said His Grace. “Forty-two years and three days.”

He watched the rose flood up to her lashes at that, but the joyous eyes never swerved from his.

“Ah, well,” she murmured, “I waited seventeen my own self, and I not half the size of you--no higher than your pocket, if you come to look. I can’t think at all what you’ve been doing with yourself all that time.”

“Don’t think--ever,” he said. “I’ve done nothing worth a moment’s thought but miss you.”

“Have you missed me then, truly?” she whispered. “Oh, it’s from farther than Cork I’d come to hear you say that; I’d come from Heaven itself, may the Saints there forgive me. Say it again, quick!”

“I’ve missed you since the day I drew breath,” he told her, and his voice shook. “Every day that I’ve lived has been black and bare and cold without you--blackest because I never knew I’d find you. Biddy, is it true? Things don’t happen like this, do they? No one out of a dream ever had such hair--no one out of a fairy tale such eyes! Biddy, would you laugh like that if it were a dream?”

“I would that,” she remarked with decision. “It’s a fine dream and a grand fairy tale and the truest truth you ever heard in your life. I knew ’twas you even when you were scowlin’, but those lights were in my eyes, so I couldn’t be sure till you smiled.”

“Biddy, how did you know?”

She pushed the scarf back from those golden bubbles with a gay gesture of impatience.

“Well, why wouldn’t I know? That’s a queer way to talk to a bright girl! Didn’t my own Aunt Dasheen, she that was all the family I had till I ran off and took London for one, tell me that I’d be the grandest dancer that ever leapt, and marry the finest gentleman that ever walked, as big as a giant and black as a devil and handsome as a king? And she ought to know, surely, what with reading in tea and clear water as quick as you and me in the Good Book. It was the wicked, cunning old thing she was, God rest her soul.”

“Is she dead?”

“She is that,” replied Aunt Dasheen’s niece cheerfully. “Or I’d never be here to tell it. She kept tight hold of me as if I were a bit of gold, for all that she sorrowed and sang how I was more trouble to her than any monkey from Egypt. If Tim Murphy and his brothers hadn’t been coming to show the Londoners how to juggle glass balls and brought me along to hold the things, I’d be in the wee room tending the fire and the kitten this minute, instead of standing under a light in a silver dress with my heart in my hands.”

“I wish I could thank her,” said the duke.

“It’s little enough you have to thank her for,” replied his Biddy blithely. “She was crosser than most and cooler than any, God help her. ’Twas that spotted kitten she loved; if she hadn’t seen the bit about me in the tea, she’d have dropped me straight out of the window. But there was my grand gentleman and the rest of it to give her patience. ‘Wed at seventeen, dead at----’” She caught back the words as deftly as Tim Murphy’s glass balls, with a triumphant shake of her curls. “‘Death to your dancing,’ she’d keep saying. You could thank her for that, maybe--or perhaps ’twas because I danced you stopped scowling, and you’ll not want me to leave off?”

“Biddy, it’s true then--you’re only seventeen?” His voice was touched with a strange pain and wonder.

“Hear him, now--only, indeed! I’m seventeen the day.”

“And I past forty-two!”

“Are you no more than that?” she asked softly. “However in all the world could you get so great and grand and fine in that little while?”

“Oh,” he cried. “Does laughter take the sting from all that’s ugly? Laugh again then; there’s worse still. Lord help us, darling--I’m a duke!”

“Is that all?” she inquired regretfully. “I’d have thought a king at the least. Well, come, there’s no helping it--’tis not all of us get our deserts in this wicked world.”

“Biddy,” he begged. “Laugh at this, too, will you? Try, try, dear, before it hurts us. I have three sons, Biddy. I’ve been married before.”

She put her other hand to her heart at that, but she kept her lips curved.

“It’s small wonder,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you have been? I’m the shameless one to say it, but if I’d been ten girls instead of one, it’s ten times you’d have been married.”

He put his arms about her then, and something broke in his heart--something cold and hard and bitter. He wanted to tell her that, but he could find no words, because he was only a duke, and not a very articulate one at that. But the small shining creature in his arms had words enough for two.

“Were you thinking of wedding again, maybe?”

“Oh, Biddy,” he cried, “let’s hurry!”

“If you’re asking _me_,” she said, “I’d say we were hurrying fast and free. I can hear the air whistlin’ in my ears, I can that. Was she a fine lady, darling?”

“Who?” he asked--and remembered--and forgot her for all time. “Oh, she was a very fine lady, and good, and gentle, too. She died long ago.”

“Did she, poor thing?” whispered the future Duchess of Bolingham softly, the cloud in the blue, blue eyes gone for ever. “And me no good at all. I wonder at you! Are they little young things, your sons?”

“The smallest’s big enough to put you in his pocket,” he said. “Biddy, let’s hurry. I know an Archbishop that we could have fix it to-night--I know two, if it comes to that. One of ’em was my godfather.”

“Well, you could know six, and ’twould be all the good it would do you,” commented his Biddy serenely. “I know one old priest, and his name’s Father Leary, and ’twill be a bitter grief to him, but he may do it, since he’s one of the Saints themselves and terrible fond of a bad girl. Archbishop, indeed!”

“Let’s find him, then, and tell him. I’ll----”

“We’ll not, then. He’s a poor old man that needs his sleep, and we’re two mad things that should know better. See the stars, darlin’; they’re the cool little things. We must do nothing in haste, except leave this door, maybe. The whole lot of them will be out on us like a lot of ravening wolves any minute. Wherever can we go?”

“We can go and get married,” said the Duke of Bolingham, who was a simple and determined individual. “I’ll get----”

“You might get a hansom----” Biddy danced in rapture on the tips of her toes. “You might get that one there, and we could ride a hundred miles or so, and watch how cool the stars are. I never was long enough in one in my life to get over feeling sad that soon it would stop, an’ I’d have to be off and out. Would you get one--would you?”

The duke raised his hand to the hansom, and it crawled toward them dubiously. The small dancing creature on the pavement looked frankly incredible, both to the horse and the driver, but the large black one looked as though it knew its mind. The two of them got in quickly, and the small one tilted back her shining head against the great one’s shoulder, sighing rapturously, while the black cloak fell open, and her skirts frothed about her in a manner scandalous to behold.

“Where to?” inquired the cabby with severity.

“Oh, what matter at all where to?” cried the incredible small one. “A hundred miles or so any way at all, just so we can see those stars go out; they’re that cool and calm it’s an aggravation.”

“Drive straight ahead--a hundred miles,” said the great one in so terrifying a tone that the cabby gave one sharp pant and started on his pilgrimage. Roaring drunk or plain barmy, the large occupant of the cab was all too plainly one to be humoured.

“Would a hundred miles bring us to dawn?” inquired the smaller lunatic. “Oh, I’d rather a dawn than a parade any day there is, though sleeping’s a grand thing, too.”

“_When will you marry me?_” demanded the duke.

“We must be that wise and cool we’ll put the stars to shame,” she said dreamily. “How many days would there be in a year? I’ve no head for figures at all.”

“A year?” protested the stricken duke fiercely. “Three hundred and sixty-five days? You couldn’t--you couldn’t----”

Biddy raised her hand to the silver laces above her heart with the strangest little look of wonder.

“Three hundred and sixty-five?” she whispered. “No more than that? No more than that--for sure?”

“No more?” he cried. “Why, it’s a lifetime--it’s eternity----”

“Ah, and so it is,” said his Biddy. “Well, then, let’s be wise as the stars--and wait till morning. Father Leary, he’s an old man, and he wakes at dawn; ’tis himself that says so. He’ll marry us then if I have to do penance for the rest of my days. Three hundred and sixty-five, you say? You’re right--oh, you’re right. ’Tis a lifetime!”

And so at dawn Biddy O’Rourke became the Duchess of Bolingham, and the greatest scandal of the century broke over a waking city. Things like that don’t happen, you say--no, things like that don’t happen, except in real life or in fairy tales. But if you had asked the duke or his duchess, they could have told you that this was real life--and a fairy tale.

They drove down to Gray Courts behind a pair of bright bays called Castor and Pollux that same day, in a high trap of black and scarlet, with fawn-coloured cushions. The duke drove, and the duchess sat perched beside him in a great red postillion’s coat from Redfern with a ruby ring as big as the Pope’s on her finger and a hat no larger than a poppy tilted over one eye. It had a little red feather in it that wagged violently every time the bays lifted a foot, and Her Grace’s tongue wagged more violently than the feather.

“Is it a castle you live in, darlin’?”

“It’ll be a castle once you’re in it. Who ever heard of a Princess that didn’t live in a castle?”

“Is it terrible big and black and grand, like you?”

“Terrible--you couldn’t tell us apart.”

“Do your great sons live there all by themselves?”

“Oh, rather not. They live there with two tutors and a trainer and an old nurse and four aunts, besides all the hounds and horses and grooms and jockeys and farriers that they can wedge into the stables.”

“The Saints keep us!” invoked Biddy with heartfelt piety. “Was it four aunts you said?”

“Oh, God forgive me, I clean forgot ’em!” The duke’s cry was quite as heartfelt, but it lacked piety. “No, I swear that’s the truth. I sent a messenger down this morning with a letter for Noll, but not one of the lot of them entered my head--Biddy, Biddy, if I’d remembered, I’d have taken you somewhere else.”

“Ah, well, it can’t be helped, darlin’. It’s glad news and golden that I’ve driven the thought of four grand ladies clear out of your head, and it’s small fault of yours that so much as a whisper of the word aunt makes the soles of my feet grow cold and the hairs of my head rise up on end. If you’d known my father’s sister Dasheen you’d never wonder! Maybe the four of these are nice old bodies?”

“And maybe they’re not!” remarked the duke. “Gad, but I’d give a thousand pound to have them hear you calling them nice old bodies. Clarissa, now----”

He gave such a shout of laughter that the off bay swerved and Biddy had to clutch at his sleeve to keep from falling.

“Are they just young aunts then?” she inquired hopefully.

The duke let the bays fend for themselves while he kissed the ridiculous hand and the dancing feather and both of the small corners of her smile.

“Beautiful, wait till you see them! They’re not aunts at all, Heaven help us--they’re sisters! One of their noses would make four of yours, and every last one of them is more like Queen Elizabeth in her prime than any one going around England these days. They have fine bones and high heads and eyes like ripe hearts of icicles and tongues like serpents’ tails dipped in vinegar.”

“Have they now!” remarked Her Grace pensively. “Well, ’twill not be dull at Gray Courts, I can tell that from here. Was Elizabeth the cross heathen that snipped the head off the pretty light one home from France?”

“I wish I’d had your history teacher,” said the duke with emphasis. “I spent years on end learning less about the ladies that you’ve put in a dozen words. I shouldn’t wonder if cross heathens described the lot as well as anything else. I was a cross heathen myself till half-past nine last night.”

“Never say it!” cried his Biddy. “You’ve a heart of gold and a tongue of silver, and I’m the girl that knows. ’Tis likely they’ll love me no better than the cross one loved the pretty one, then?”

“’Tis likely they’ll love you less,” prophesied the duke accurately, “since they can’t snip off your head!”

Biddy’s laughter was a flight of silver birds.

“Then since it’s sorrow we’re goin’ to,” she begged, “let’s go easy. Make the horses step soft and slow, darlin’; ’tis the prettiest evening in all the world, and I’m that high up I can see clear over the great green hedges into the wee green gardens. I doubt if it’ll smell any better in Heaven!”

“I doubt if it’ll smell half as sweet,” he said. “If we go slow we’ll miss our dinner.”

“Ah, let’s miss our dinner!” she begged. “Did we not eat all those little fat quail and those great fat peaches for our lunch? I’d rather sup on the lights that’ll be coming out behind the window-panes while we pass, and the stars that’ll slip through the sky while we’re not looking, and the smell of gilly-flowers and lavender warm against the walls. Maybe if we go slow, we might have a slip of new moon for dessert--maybe if we go slower than that, the horses will know what it’s all about, and let you hold one of my hands.”

And so the horses did, and so he did, and it was long past dinner when the duke and his duchess drove through the gates of Gray Courts, and swept proudly up the long alley with its great beech trees to the door where grooms and butlers and housekeepers and maids and men enough to start a republic came running sedately to greet them. The duke stood them off with a gesture and held out both his hands to help his duchess down from her throne, and she laid her finger-tips in his and reached the threshold high on her toes.

“This,” said the duke with a pride that made his former arrogance seem humility, “is Her Grace.”

He swung her through the carved doors before the most skillful of them could do more than gape or sketch a curtsey--in the great stone hall with the flagged floor and the two fireplaces built by giants to burn oak trees she looked smaller than a child and brighter than a candle. She stood smiling as warmly at the cold and hollow suits of armour, with their chilled gleam of steel and gold and silver and the jaded plumes drooping in their helmets, as though they were her brothers, and the dun-coloured hound lying with his nose on his paws blinked twice, and rose slowly, in his huge grace, and strolled to where she stood gleaming, thrusting his great head beneath her hand.

“Oh, the wonder he is!” she cried. “What will I call him?”

“His name’s Merlin,” the duke told her, and he put his arm about her in full sight of the stunned household. “He knows a witch as well as the one he was named for. Layton, where are my sisters?”

“Their Ladyships have retired to their rooms, Your Grace.”

“Good!” replied His Grace distinctly. “Where are my sons?”

“Their Lordships drove over late this afternoon for a dinner and theatricals at the Marquis of Dene’s, Your Grace.”

“Better!” said His Grace. “Then shall we go to our room, Biddy? We’ve not eaten; send some claret and fruit and cold fowl--what else, Biddy?”

“Some little cakes stuffed full with raisins, if there’re any about,” suggested Her Grace hopefully.