III

The day after Mrs. Leland’s call upon his mother, John Sherman, returning home after his not very lengthy day in the office, saw Margaret coming towards him. She had a lawn-tennis racket under her arm, and was walking slowly on the shady side of the road. She was a pretty girl with quite irregular features, who though not really more than pretty, had so much manner, so much of an air, that every one called her a beauty: a trefoil with the fragrance of a rose.

‘Mr. Sherman,’ she cried, coming smiling to meet him, ‘I have been ill, but could not stand the house any longer. I am going to the Square to play tennis. Will you come with me?’

‘I am a bad player,’ he said.

‘Of course you are,’ she answered; ‘but you are the only person under a hundred to be found this afternoon. How dull life is!’ she continued, with a sigh. ‘You heard how ill I have been? What do you do all day?’

‘I sit at a desk, sometimes writing, and sometimes, when I get lazy, looking up at the flies. There are fourteen on the plaster of the ceiling over my head. They died two winters ago. I sometimes think to have them brushed off, but they have been there so long now I hardly like to.’

‘Ah! you like them,’ she said, ‘because you are accustomed to them. In most cases there is not much more to be said for our family affections, I think.’

‘In a room close at hand,’ he went on, ‘there is, you know, Uncle Michael, who never speaks.’

‘Precisely. You have an uncle who never speaks; I have a mother who never is silent. She went to see Mrs. Sherman the other day. What did she say to her?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Really! What a dull thing existence is!’—this with a great sigh. ‘When the Fates are weaving our web of life some mischievous goblin always runs off with the dye-pot. Everything is dull and grey. Am I looking a little pale? I have been so very ill.’

‘A little bit pale, perhaps,’ he said, doubtfully.

The Square gate brought them to a stop. It was locked, but she had the key. The lock was stiff, but turned easily for John Sherman.

‘How strong you are,’ she said.

It was an iridescent evening of spring. The leaves of the bushes had still their faint green. As Margaret darted about at the tennis, a red feather in her cap seemed to rejoice with its wearer. Everything was at once gay and tranquil. The whole world had that unreal air it assumes at beautiful moments, as though it might vanish at a touch like an iridescent soap-bubble.

After a little Margaret said she was tired, and, sitting on a garden-seat among the bushes, began telling him the plots of novels lately read by her. Suddenly she cried: ‘The novel-writers were all serious people like you. They are so hard on people like me. They always make us come to a bad end. They say we are always acting, acting, acting; and what else do you serious people do? You act before the world. I think, do you know, we act before ourselves. All the old foolish kings and queens in history were like us. They laughed and beckoned and went to the block for no very good purpose. I daresay the headsmen were like you.’

‘We would never cut off so pretty a head.’

‘Oh, yes, you would—you would cut off mine to-morrow.’ All this she said vehemently, piercing him with her bright eyes. ‘You would cut off my head to-morrow,’ she repeated, almost fiercely; ‘I tell you you would.’

Her departure was always unexpected, her moods changed with so much rapidity. ‘Look!’ she said, pointing where the clock on St. Peter’s church showed above the bushes. ‘Five minutes to five. In five minutes my mother’s tea-hour. It is like growing old. I go to gossip. Good-bye.’

The red feather shone for a moment among the bushes and was gone.