I knew, in fact, no whit more than the whole world knew,
namely, that a year after Sir Ernest Rorke’s death the engagement of
his widow to the new baronet, Sir Archibald Rorke, was made public,
and that within a fortnight of the date fixed for the wedding it was
laconically announced that the marriage would not take place. When,
on seeing that, I rang Archie up on the telephone, I was told that
he had already left London, and he wrote to me a few days later from
Lincote--the place in Hampshire, which he had inherited from his
cousin--saying that he had nothing to tell me about the breaking off
of his engagement beyond the fact that it was true. The whole--he had
written a word and carefully erased it--episode was now an excised leaf
from his life. He was proposing to stay down at Lincote alone for a
month or so, and would then turn on to the new page. Lady Rorke, so I heard, had also left London immediately and passed
the summer in Italy. Then she took a furnished house in Torquay, where
she lived for the remainder of the year which intervened between
the breaking off of her engagement and her death. She cut herself
completely off from all her friends--and no woman, surely, ever
commanded a larger host of them--saw nobody, seldom went outside her
house and garden, and observed the same unbroken silence as did Archie
about what had happened. And now, with all her youth and charm and
beauty, she had gone down dumb into the Great Silence. With the prospect of seeing Archie that evening it was no wonder that
the thought of Lady Rorke ran all day in my head like a tune heard
long ago which now recalled itself to my mind in scattered staves of
melody. Meetings and talks with her, phrase by phrase, reconstructed
themselves, and as these memories grew definite and complete I found
that, even as before, when I was actually experiencing them, there
lurked underneath the gay rhythms and joyousness something _macabre_
and mysterious. To-day that was accentuated, whereas before when I
listened for it, trying to isolate it from the rest and so perhaps
dispel it, it was always overscored by some triumphant crescendo: her
presence diverted eye and ear alike. Yet such a simile halts; perhaps,
still in simile, I shall more accurately define this underlying
“something” by saying that her presence was like some gorgeous
rose-bush, full of flowers, and sun, and sweetness; then, even as one
admired and applauded and inhaled, one saw that among its buds and
blossoms there emerged the spikes of some other plant, bitter and
poisonous, but growing from the same soil as the rose, and intertwined
with it. But immediately a fresh glory met your eye, a fresh fragrance
enchanted you. As I rummaged among my memories of her, certain scenes which
significantly illustrated this curiously vivid impression stirred and
made themselves manifest to me, and now they were not broken in upon
by her presence. One such occurred on the first evening that I ever
met her, which was in the summer before the death of her husband. The
moment that she entered the room where we were waiting before dinner
for her arrival, the stale, sultry air of a June evening grew fresh
and effervescent; never have I come across so radiant and infectious a
vitality. She was tall and big, with the splendour of the Juno-type,
and though she was then close on thirty, the iridescence of girlhood
was still hers. Without effort she Pied-pipered a rather stodgy party
to dance to her flutings, she caused everyone to become silly and
pleased and full of laughter. At her bidding we indulged in ridiculous
games, dumb-crambo, and what not, and after that the carpet was rolled
up and we capered to the strains of a gramophone. And then the incident
occurred. I was standing with her, for a breath of air, on the balcony outside
the drawing-room windows which faced the park. She had just made a
great curtsey to a slip of the moon that rose above the trees and had
borrowed a shilling of me in order to turn it. “No, I can’t swear that I believe in moon-luck,” she said, “but after
all it does no harm, and, in case it’s true, you can’t afford to make
an enemy of her. Ah, what’s that?”

A thrush, attracted by the lights inside, had flown between us, dashed
itself against the window, and now lay fluttering on the ground at our
feet. Instantly she was all pity and tenderness. She picked up the
bird, examined it, and found that its wing was broken. “Ah, poor thing!” she said. “Look, its wing-bone is snapped; the end
protrudes. And how terrified it is! What are we to do?”

It was clear that the kindest thing to do would be to put the bird
out of its pain, but when I suggested that, she took a step back from
me, and covered it with her other hand. Her eyes gleamed, her mouth
smiled, and I saw the tip of her tongue swiftly pass over her lips as
if licking them. “No, that would be a terrible thing to do,” she said. “I shall take it
home with me ever so carefully, and watch over it. I am afraid it is
badly hurt. But it may live.”

Suddenly--perhaps it was that swift licking of her lips that suggested
the thought to me--I felt instinctively that she was not so much
pitiful as pleased. She stood there with eyes fixed on it, as it feebly
struggled in her hands. And then her face clouded; over its brightness there came a look of
displeasure, of annoyance. “I’m afraid it is dying,” she said. “Its poor frightened eyes are
closing.”

The bird fluttered once more, then its legs stretched themselves
stiffly out, and it lay still. She tossed it out of her hands on to the
paved balcony, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “What a fuss over a bird,” she said. “It was silly of it to fly
against the glass. But I have too soft a heart; I cannot bear that the
poor creatures should die. Let us go in and have one more romp. Oh,
here is your shilling; I hope it will have brought me good luck. And
then I must get home. My husband--do you know him?--always sits up till
I get back, and he will scold me for being so late!”

There, then, was my first meeting with her, and there, too, were the
spikes of the poisonous plant pushing up among the magnificence of her
roses. And yet, so I thought to myself then, and so I think to myself
now, I perhaps was utterly wrong about it all, in thus attributing to
her a secret glee of which she was wholly incapable. So, with a certain
effort I wiped the impression I had received off my mind, determining
to consider myself quite mistaken. But, involuntarily, my mind as if
to justify itself in having delineated such a picture, proceeded to
delineate another. Very shortly after that first meeting I received from her a charming
note, asking me to dine with her on a date not far distant. I
telephoned a delighted acceptance, for, indeed, I wanted then, even
as I did this morning, to convince myself that I was wholly in error
concerning my interpretation of that incident concerning the thrush.