"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,Or else you are that shrewd and knavish spriteCalled Robin Goodfellow."
"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,Or else you are that shrewd and knavish spriteCalled Robin Goodfellow."
There came a little bubble of laughter from Peggy, which seemed to remove all diffidence from Collingwood. "How are you, my friend Puck?" he said.
Peggy perched herself upon the head of the sofa. "Oh, Puck was an imp of mischief," she said.
"Well?" he asked.
The girl puffed her cigarette contentedly for a few seconds; then she bent towards him, swinging her little brown-shoed foot. "Tell me, Colling," she asked: "why weren't my boxes registered?"
"Well—of all the suspicious little demons I ever came across! Registered?"
"Yes, registered."
"Well, I suppose that fool of a porter at Charing Cross forgot to do it," Collingwood replied.
"It was a bit of luck, wasn't it?" Peggy said.
Collingwood seemed to be thinking of something else. He was gazing at the end of his cigarette and not looking at her at all. "Yes," he said in an absent-minded voice.
"I wonder——" Peggy went on; and then suddenly she stopped, and Collingwood looked up with a start.
"I wonder," Peggy continued, "what the Attwill will think?"
"Think?" he answered. "She can jolly well think what she likes."
"I don't much mind what she thinks," Peggy said; "but I'll bet she's put some rotten idea into Ellerdine's head. Colling, I don't like her—really I don't."
Although Peggy did not notice it, the man's voice became slightly strained. The lips assumed an appearance of somewhat exaggerated indifference, but there was a glint of watchfulness in the eyes.
"You don't like Lady Attwill?" he said.
"That's it," Peggy replied. "Where does she get her money from?"
Collingwood started slightly. The girl did not notice it. "I don't know," he said a little uneasily.
"Is that true, Colling?" Peggy asked, with mischief in her eyes.
"By the way, has she any?" Collingwood asked.
"Well, if she hasn't, how does she do it?"
"By her wits, my dear."
"Ellerdine doesn't go in for wits," Peggy remarked.
"Poor, dear Dicky! he is the diplomatic failure of the century."
"I suppose he is, but it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The Empire's loss is Attwill's gain."
Collingwood laughed. "Well," he said, "she's the only post he has been able to keep."
"I don't know that he can afford to keep anything. Can he be in love with her, do you think?"
Collingwood puffed slowly at his cigarette.
"My dear Peggy," he said, looking her up and down with a curious meditative gaze—"my dear Peggy, if a man loves a woman he doesn't leave a comfortable hotel to travel all night in a slow train with her. Ellerdine is as likely to spend his money on a home for lost cats as on the Attwill."
"She's a very attractive cat," Peggy said.
"He doesn't care two straws about her," Collingwood replied quite definitely.
"Then why did he come?"
"To please you—for no other reason."
"Anyway, I don't like her," Peggy said. "Do you? I believe you do, Colling."
Collingwood jumped up from the sofa. "Now, stop that, Peggy," he said.
The glint of mischief in Peggy's eyes glowed more strongly. "She's a very attractive woman," she said.
"Well, she's not the sort of woman who attracts me," Collingwood replied, sitting down again upon the couch and tapping impatiently with his foot upon the carpet. He seemed disturbed, uneasy, under the influence of some suppressed emotion.
Peggy stroked her nose with one little finger, and then she leant down towards Collingwood. "What sort of woman attracts you?" she said in a low voice.
Again the man jumped up, and a keen observer would have noticed that tiny beads of perspiration had come out upon his forehead like seed pearls.
"Peggy," he cried, "you are a tantalising little fiend!"
Peggy shook with laughter. She was absolutely happy. "I suppose I ought not to have said that," she bubbled.
"Why not?" he asked, and into his voice came something of deep yearning, and the note of passion restrained till now, broke through all reserves and all defences at last.
"Why not?" he said. Again his voice grew in emotional force and power. "Why not, Peggy? I love you when you are in this mood. I love you in all your moods, dear."
Peggy slid down from the end of the sofa and moved a little way towards the door of her bedroom. "What about that cigarette?" she asked, and there was a distinct note of nervousness in her voice.
She had provoked the beginnings of passion, and, having done so, womanlike, she was startled and afraid.
"Cigarette," he said. "Oh, I haven't finished it yet. But listen! Peggy darling, you must listen!"
She was really startled now. "Not to-night, Colling; you promised," she said. "Now, Colling, go—please go!"
"I can't go, Peggy; I love you so!" he answered.
"Please, Colling, don't talk like that!"
Now his voice became almost dogged, though it lost nothing of its power. "I can't help it," he said; "I love you!"
The girl clutched nervously at her tea-gown and shrank back nearer yet to the door.
"Don't talk of love," she said in a low voice.
He took three quick steps up to her, and again she shrank away, not this time into the sure defence of her bedroom, but towards the window.
"Don't talk of love?" he said, and his voice reverberated and rang with feeling. "Why not? It is in the air—the very night is charged with love. You cannot look out on a night like this and not think of love."
"Don't, Colling; you frighten me," she said.
"Oh, but why should my love frighten you, my Peggy? My darling, it is brightness, tenderness, and love that you want. I know how monotonous and dull your life must be. Good God! don't I know it? Am I not always thinking of it? Poor little Butterfly! What a flutter you make to be free, to warm your dainty wings in sunny places! Peggy, sweetheart, I want to show you the sunny places."
"Please go, Colling!" she said, and her flute-like voice was tremulous with fear. "Please go, Colling! It isn't fair. I am afraid. You see, I am so fond of you, and I am such alittleButterfly!"
He held out his hands towards her, palms upwards, with a curious foreign gesture which showed how greatly he was moved. "I can't go, Peggy," he said. "I want you so badly—want you for my own—to-night—to-morrow, all the nights and all the days. I have been very good. I have always done what you have told me. I have come and gone just exactly as the whim has struck you. Ah! you know how deeply, how dearly I love you!"
She moved past him with a sudden, gliding step, and placed the settee between them.
"I only know you are my friend, my very dear friend," she said.
"No! no! no!" he cried, coming after her.
"Yes—only that friend!"
"Lover! Peggy," he said passionately. "I am a man—devoured by love of you. I have waited for you—longed for you—and now——" With a sudden movement he caught her in his arms, straining her to him wildly, showering kisses upon the shining coronet of her hair. "We're alone, Peggy," he cried, "just you and I!" and his voice rang with triumph. "We're alone! There are no others in the world—no others! You are mine, Peggy, mine at last!"
She struggled in his arms, her face pale as linen, her voice with a note of almost shrill alarm.
"Colling, I can't bear it—you will spoil everything. Do help me, Colling! I don't love you like that. I'm sorry if it hurts you. I'd rather die."
There was a note in her voice of such absolute sincerity, mingled with fear, that he opened his arms and let her flutter away.
The passion upon his face changed and melted into something else.
"My God!" he cried. "You would rather die——"
He stumbled rather than walked towards the sofa and sat down upon it, burying his face in his long lean hands, that trembled exceedingly.
"My God!" she heard him whisper to himself; "she would rather die!..."
Peggy had followed him, and she stood at the end of the sofa, aghast at what she had done. She began to speak slowly and nervously.
"Colling, don't do that. I really can't bear that you should think me unkind. I like you too well to let you do anything that would spoil our happiness. I am not unkind—really I am not. Have not I shown how fond of you I am? We have been such good friends!"
"Friends!" he said bitterly, without looking up from his hands.
His voice was so cold, so charged with misery and sudden realisation, that it cut the girl to the heart. She went round from the back of the sofa and knelt at his feet, stretching out her hand timidly, and touching the sleeve of his coat.
"Colling, dear, what else can we be?" she said.
He looked down at her, and for a moment his voice did not soften. There was a quiet, dogged misery in it.
"We have passed the merely friendship line," he said; "and you know that well enough, Peggy. That has been passed a long time. You would not have left London with me if we had only been friends and nothing more. Were we only friends when we used to sit up together night after night at Ellerdine's house? Do 'friends' speak to each other as we have spoken? Why, you have only to touch my hand to know that I burn with longing."
"Colling, you mustn't say such things!"
He jumped up roughly, leaving her kneeling upon the floor, and passed with rapid steps to the window.
"Friends!" he cried, and his voice had a razor edge to it. "Friends! It's not true! Do friends run the risks that we have run? For God's sake, here and now let us be honest with each other. Why, we haven't even tried to fool society! For Heaven's sake, Peggy, don't let's try to fool ourselves!"
Peggy rose slowly to her feet, trembling all over. "Colling! oh, Colling!" she said in a piteous voice, "surely people don't think we are——"
"People don't think! People are only too glad to think. You know well enough what is said about others——"
Her face grew paler still, her eyes were wide with fear and slowly dawning realisation. She clasped both hands to her breast, and the light shone upon the rubies set in the old Moorish bracelets that she was wearing.
"Oh!" she said.
He came up to her again.
"Peggy, you don't care, do you?"
"Don't care, Colling!" she gasped. "Tell me, do people think we are——"
"Think!—how can they help thinking it? Haven't we given them every reason?"
"No, no, no! Oh! I hate to think of that! We have only been very fond friends. Why should they think otherwise?"
There were tears of agony in her voice. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands.
"Oh! I suppose it is all my fault," she said brokenly—"all my fault. I don't think ungenerous things of others. I have been too trusting—too confiding. Why should people thing such things? I only wanted a good friend, a companion."
He still stood by her, looking at her keenly, and the bitterness in his voice did not die away. "Friends! Oh yes, I know! You wanted someone to pet you, to pamper you. What you wanted was someone to satisfy all your vanities—your yearning for devotion, for adulation, for sense of power. I know! You wanted all the joys and none of the risks. That sums up the whole thing in a nutshell. There are lots of women like you. They drive men mad—make drunkards, gamblers, swindlers of them. I have seen it often enough. I have seen men fall out and lose themselves among the army of crooks that throng the second-rate shows. But I won't let you drive me mad."
The bitterness in his voice was terrible. His words seemed to scourge her, to lash her like a whip. She stared at him in helpless amazement and misery. He had paused in his rapid torrent of speech, and as he saw her distress he seemed to be a little touched.
"Peggy!" he said, and once more the note of passion came into his voice, while the anger died out of it—"Peggy! I mean you to be mine. There will be a crash soon—that is certain. Admaston will take notice of what everybody is saying about us. He will come out of his political shell, wake up, do things, put an end to it at once and for ever!"
"Oh, my God! What have I done!" the girl cried.
"Done! What have you done to deserve your husband's neglect? Why, he doesn't even know that you exist. His heart beats by Act of Parliament. He'd a thousand times rather address a village meeting than spend an hour in your company. Are you to pass your youth in the company of——"
"Stop! stop!" she cried. "Say what you like about me—scold me if you like, but say nothing against him. You do not know my husband. We are neither of us fit to mention his name. He is a big man, and he loves me."
"But, Peggy, you won't say that you love him?" Collingwood said, with a curious note of perplexity in his voice. The situation, tragic as it was, got a little bit beyond him.
"Love him?" she answered. "I don't know. I have had no chance to love anyone the way you regard love."
Collingwood put his hands into his pockets, swung round upon his heels and swung back again. "I see," he said; "you mean you don't love Admaston, and won't love anybody else?"
"Oh, I don't know," Peggy replied; "but I certainly don't love anybody else. You think I am neglected. That is absurd. It was my father's wish that we should marry. George knew that I did not love him. He trusts me fully. There will be no crash."
He heard the note in her voice which told him that she was trying to persuade herself that her fears were groundless, and smiled rather grimly.
"There will be," he said. "You take my word for it. No man—not even Admaston—can standridiculefor long. Remember, I mean to win you. I shall marry no one if I don't marry you."
She tried to speak lightly.
"Colling, don't be so silly! You are one of the best matches in England. You will marry a beautiful girl who will lead society and make you a very proud and ambitious man. Don't shake your head—that's only because you want to be gallant. Heavens! how I would do things if I were a man! You, with all your talents and your money, ought to rise to any position."
"You are mad about position," he said impatiently.
"Yes," Peggy answered. "I like men who have some big purpose in life and who fight the world and win."
"Like George Admaston!" Collingwood answered, and now for the first time there came a glint of malicious and real ill-humour over his face. It came and passed in a second, but it had been there.
"Yes," Peggy replied; "like George Admaston! He is a fighter, Colling. I think many women would love George. He is not the butterfly type—but——"
"But he has all the luck," Collingwood broke in fiercely. "I could do anything if you were with me. I must have something—or someone—to fight for. My nature must be baffled. There must be obstacles in the way for me. I have a wicked streak in me somewhere that turns red when I can't get what I want. Peggy, you must let Admaston get a divorce."
The words seemed to strike her dumb. All colour had left her face long since, but now almost all expression went from it also for a moment. It was as if she had been struck some paralysing blow.
He was watching her keenly, and as he noted the effect of his words a spasm of pain went through him, though he showed nothing of it in his face or manner. He loved her, he loved her dearly; there was no doubt about that. He hated to give her pain, yet he felt he was being cruel only to be kind. She must face the situation once and for all, and then perhaps everything might be right. The situation, serious as it was, was very largely of his own creation. Seeing no other way, he had deliberately endeavoured to compromise Mrs. Admaston. All his plans, all his ideas, had been directed to this end. He wanted to force her husband's hand and to marry Peggy after the divorce. He loved her wildly, madly, passionately. He would have been a perfect husband to her—there can be no doubt of that.
But his love was selfish. In order to win this woman for his own he was ready to subject her to all the indignities and all the shame of a process in the courts. In his overmastering desire, her reputation, her honour, mattered nothing to him. It was she that he wanted, and any means should be taken to achieve that end.
Men like Roderick Collingwood have few guiding principles in life, save only those of their own appetites. Of course, the public school and the university have given them a certain code. They must pay their gambling debts, they must do various other things of that sort; but as far as any conception of the morality and decency, which have made England what it is, is concerned, they are absolutely without it.
He nodded at Peggy, driving home the words.
"Divorce! Oh, you mustn't talk like that. You know how it hurts me," she said at last, when she had recovered a little. "Really, really, you are mistaken. I am quite satisfied with my life—only, sometimes when I am foolish I feel just a bit lonely and neglected."
He turned on her almost with a sneer. He was bitterly hurt and angry, and there is no doubt that, from his point of view, he had reason for complaint. She had led him on. She had flirted outrageously with him. She had deliberately done her best to be provocative. Her intentions, doubtless, were innocent enough as far as any dishonour to her husband entered into the question. But her love of adulation, her vanity, her desire of power, were all gratified by her conquest of him; while at the same time she still had a real and genuine friendship for a man who, with all his faults, was essentially charming, good-natured, and kind.
"Then you have deceived me!" he cried.
"Colling, don't say that. I never meant——"
"Never meant? Good heavens! I told you six months ago that I loved you, and ever since then you have let me go here and there with you, and I have told you of my love again and again."
"But you have always been so good. You have never been unkind to me before to-night."
"Good God! Unkind! Why, most men would have divorced their wives on far less evidence than we have furnished. And all the while you have accepted the position without a murmur. You don't know what you have done."
"Colling, what do you mean?"
"Mean?" he answered. "I mean that you have led me to believe that you didn't care what we did—what people said about us. Mean? I mean that the call of love is in the spring, Peggy, whispering to you and me. Mean? I mean that I am a man and you are a woman—our souls stand bare to one another—that I love you and that you love me."
He sprang at her and caught her up in his arms once more.
"I don't love you, Colling! Let me go!" she cried.
"I can't let you go! It is my hour! It is your fault as well as mine! Kiss me, Peggy! You have tortured me long enough! Kiss me!"
He held her tight, tight! His face blazed. There was a fury in his voice.
At that very moment when he stopped speaking and was gazing down at her, while she lay for a moment almost passive in his arms after her first fight and struggle, a loud, sharp, clear sound rang out in the room. It was the bell of the telephone upon the wall.
"Ellerdine!" Peggy said.
"Let him ring," Collingwood answered.
They stood there for another moment clasped together, and once more the insistent summons of the bell came.
"No, no," Peggy cried; "answer him, please!"
With an odd, instinctive gesture Collingwood put his arm right round her. Before he had been straining her to him passionately. Now there was something protective in his attitude.
And again the bell whirred.
At last with great reluctance Collingwood stepped up to the wall and caught up the receiver.
"Well, well!" he said. "Who is it? What! Ad——Admaston!"
A voice which was robbed of all ordinary qualities shivered out into the room.
"My husband!" said Peggy.
Collingwood made a warning gesture with his left hand, telling her to keep quiet.
"Yes," he said; "we took the wrong train. Yes, Collingwood. Yes, it is he speaking."
"Where is he?" came hissing to the ears of the man at the telephone. Again he motioned her to silence, giving a slight impatient tap with his foot upon the carpet.
"Oh yes. We have just finished supper. What? I can't hear you distinctly. You want to speak to Ellerdine? Hold the line a moment; I'll call him."
He put down the receiver upon the table and ran up to Peggy, who was shaking like a leaf in the wind.
"He wants to speak to you, too, I think," Collingwood said in a low, fierce whisper; "but perhaps you had better not."
"I can't," Peggy answered, swaying this way and that as if about to fall. He put out his arm and steadied her.
"All right, darling," he said; "it is all right!"
"Where is he? London?" she said.
"I didn't ask," he replied. "Wait a minute!"
He hurried to the telephone again. "Hello! Ellerdine has just gone out. Hello! Where are you speaking from? Damn! We're cut off. Hello! Hello!"
He listened for nearly half a minute, taut and strained as a greyhound on the leash; then he flung the receiver angrily upon the bracket.
"We're cut off," he repeated, looking at her almost stupidly, as if the situation was beyond him.
Collingwood said nothing for a little time. At last he spoke. "I didn't think of that," he said. "Can he have had us——"
"What? What?" she almost shrieked.
"Followed?"
He plunged his hands into the pockets of his dinner-jacket and bent his head, thinking deeply. Then he looked up at Peggy. "Peggy," he said at length, "rumour—he has been ridiculed into action—the crash has come."
The girl held out both hands towards him as if warding off a blow. "Go, go!" she cried; "please go! I sha'n't speak another word to you to-night. Go at once!"
"I can't leave you now, Peggy. I just worship you."
"I shall ring for my maid," she said, and moved towards the bell-push.
"No, don't do that. Don't be cruel, Peggy!" he said, in a voice instinct with agonised pleading. "Don't be cruel, Peggy! No, no! Don't ring!"
"I shall," she said firmly, and stretched out her hand.
"Peggy, trust me. I love you better than anything in the world—better than myself. For you I will sacrifice wealth, honour."
"Honour!" she cried.
"I'll do anything to win you. Everything I have done has been to win you—to have you for my own. You know it is true. Peggy, before God, I believed that you loved me too. Don't judge me harshly—oh, don't do that!"
Peggy put out her hand and pressed the bell-push.
"I must be alone," she said in a dull, muffled voice.
He saw that it was useless, that he had failed, that the plans of months had all miscarried, that everything was over for him as far as she was concerned. Undisciplined as his nature was, baffled and disowned as he felt, he nevertheless showed himself rather fine in that moment. He made an almost superhuman effort at self-control—and succeeded.
"All right, Peggy dear," he said. "Don't be afraid. Everything will come right. Good night." With one last lingering look at her he left the room, closing the door which led into his own.
Peggy sank down upon the sofa almost over-mastered by her rising hysteria, limp and half unconscious.
She lay there breathing hurriedly, and with her eyes closed, when the corridor door opened and Pauline came rapidly into the room.
"Madame!" she cried.
Peggy gave one great sob of relief.
"Pauline!—you have not gone to bed?"
"No, madame! I was so anxious about you I could not sleep."
"Oh, my head is bursting!" the girl cried; "there is a pain like the thrust of a sword in my head."
"Poor darling!" Pauline said, her voice guttural with excitement, her trembling hands passing over the young girl's form with loving, frightened caresses. "Poor darling! There is something altogether wrong. Just now, when I came down, I saw a man standing at your door listening."
"At that door?"
"Yes. Twice I have seen him to-day. He was at Boulogne; I saw him looking at your boxes. Then just after supper he came in—when I was speaking to the waiter."
"Then we have been followed," Peggy answered, breaking down utterly. "Pauline, I feel that something dreadful is going to happen. Stay with me—don't go back to your room. Soothe me, Pauline, as you used to when I was little and afraid of the dark."
It was about nine o'clock the next morning. The heat of the night before had given place to that incomparable freshness which spring mornings have in Paris.
The windows of Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room were open, and a delightfully scented air, from the lilac blossoms and all the flowers of the gardens in the Tuileries, flooded and floated into the room.
Rooms have an aspect of this or that emotion according to the hour in which the events of the soul have taken place within them.
There are some rooms which always have the same mood. When one goes into them one doesn't impose one's mood, one's fancy, or one's ideas upon the place, but is dominated by one lasting personality—of furniture, of aspect, of generalmise en scène.
It would be impossible, for example, to have a merry breakfast-party in the hangman's ante-room to the gallows; and one has known rooms in hotels which one enters gladly, unconscious of the pervading gloom which seems to cling to floor and ceiling and rises up like a spectre into the heart and brain after a few minutes' sojourn there.
The sitting-room in the Hôtel des Tuileries, which had been the theatre of such tragic emotions on the last spring midnight, was now ordinary and comfortable enough.
The chairs and settees were all in their proper places. The carpet had been brushed, and its dull blues, greys, and brick-dust reds were all essentially artistic.
And they had brought new flowers there also. The bowls and vases were filled with fresh purple and white lilac. The silver candlesticks had been polished—there were no drippings of wax upon them any more. Tall white candles, fresh, virginal, and unfired, filled all the candlesticks.
In the middle of all this freshness two people were—a man and a woman.
One, Lord Ellerdine, was very tall and lean. He was dressed in a suit of very immaculate grey flannel—not the greyish-green which the ordinary person who wears flannels imagines to be the right thing, but the real grey-grey which costs a good deal of money; if the tailors in Sackville Street and Waterloo Place, from whom we suffer, are to be believed.
Lord Ellerdine's hair—and he hadn't much of it—was what he himself would have described as "the same old dust-colour." He wore a stiff double collar with blue lines upon it, a tie of China silk, and a big black pearl, stuck right down at the bottom, so that it only peeped out from the opening of his waistcoat now and again.
Lord Ellerdine had red eyes—that is to say, that there was a sort of red glint in them. The brows which overhung them were straight and dark, and contradicted with an odd grotesquerie the flickering attempt to really be at home and happy with the world. The face itself was rather tanned and brown, lean in contour and suggesting the explorer and the travelled man; and all this was oddly contradicted by an engaging little button of a mouth, which twitched and lisped and was always rather more jolly than the occasion warranted.
By the side of Lord Ellerdine—or rather standing in the middle of the room and looking down upon him, for he had thrown himself upon the sofa—was a tall, slim, and gracious woman, perfectly dressed in a travelling coat and skirt of tweed. She looked round her rather fretfully.
Her face was radiant—there is no other word for it. Although she had been travelling all night, she appeared to be as fresh as paint—and that exactly describes her.
The complexion was perfect. It had that creamymorbidezzaone sees in a furled magnolia bud. Two straight, decisive lips seemed like a "band of scarlet upon a tower of ivory." Lady Attwill's eyes were sapphire-blue and suspicious, but entirely charming. She was, in short, a thoroughly handsome woman, and the sunlight struck curious radiances from the little pearls she wore in the shell-like lobes of her ears.
"Tell madame, will you, Pauline?" she said.
"I'll tell madame that you have arrived," the maid said with a little bow. She crossed the room, knocked, opened the door leading into Mrs. Admaston's bedroom, and disappeared.
Almost immediately Lady Attwill's face changed from its quiet calm and became vivid.
"Cheer up, Dicky!" she said to Lord Ellerdine; "you've been in many a worse fix than this."
The diplomatist looked at her for a moment, his whole silly—but somehow distinguished—face covered with a sort of desperate cheerfulness.
"Worse!" he said. "I should say so. I don't mind gettin' into a 'fix,' as you call it."
"Then what in the world are you grumbling about?" Lady Attwill asked.
"Why, how am I going to getoutof it? Any fool can get into a fix—any time. It's gettin' out—what? That's the bally riddle, Alice—gettin' out of it. What?"
Lady Attwill went up to him and dug him confidentially in the shoulder with one pretty gloved thumb.
"Look here, Dicky," she said; "now, did I ever fail you?"
"Oh no, no. You've always been pretty good."
"Now, haven't I got you out of many a scrape?"
Lord Ellerdine seemed to think—that is to say, call upon the resources of a somewhat attenuated memory. "Yes," he replied; "not so confounded many—only two; and—yes—well, of course, that other one was rather awkward."
He chuckled to himself. "But, after all, this is different," he continued. "I am not in this one, exactly. No more are you. It's Peggy's fix. And we don'tquiteknow how she's got into it. I don't like the look of it."
Lady Attwill listened to him with an aspect of particular attention. But if the man had been able to realise it he would have seen the flash of contempt which came and went over her face. He did not, however, and she replied in her ordinary tones:
"Look of it! It's merely a frolic—nothing serious. Collingwood is not the man to run risks. He believes in the simple life."
"Does he, by Jove!" Lord Ellerdine said. "He's not so simple as that, Alice."
"He is not so simple as to get into a complication with Admaston," she answered. "He's no fool—you take my word for it."
Lord Ellerdine grinned his fatuous little grin.
"Seems I have to take your word for everything," he said.
"All right, Dicky," she answered; "just you leave all the thinking to me."
"You don't give me time to think," he answered. "I know I am deuced slow at it. But tell me this. How did Peggy and Collingwood get to my place last autumn before ten o'clock in the morning? Tell me that—what?"
"They motored through the night, of course."
"They jolly well didn't," replied his lordship.
"But Colling told us he did," said Lady Attwill.
"I knew he did. But they didn't."
Lady Attwill had been glancing over theMatinof that day, which had been laid upon the breakfast table. At these words of her companion's she put down the paper rather hurriedly and looked up.
"Dicky," she said, "I believe you know something."
"I know I do."
"What is it, then?"
"Bad breakdown at Selby overnight. They came on to my place in a hired motor next morning. I heard all about it from the man who drove them down from Selby."
Lady Attwill was very genuinely interested, or achieved a fair assumption of interest. "Dicky!" she cried.
Lord Ellerdine nodded his thin head vigorously. "It's a fact," he replied triumphantly. "The fellow is now my second chauffeur. So you see I can find out things if I have time enough. Alice, I don't like this fix Peggy's in. Staying at Selby with Collingwood all night was bad enough, but——"
"Good gracious!" Lady Attwill answered, "can't a woman stay at the same hotel with a man she knows without scandal?"
"Scandal!" Lord Ellerdine replied. "Damn the scandal! It's what folks think. It's who you are. Lots of women wouldn't mind staying at the same hotel I was staying at, and nobody would dream that there was anything wrong—you wouldn't, Alice. But Peggy and Collingwoodmakepeople suspect them."
Lady Attwill went up to Lord Ellerdine and pinched his arm playfully. "You silly old Dicky," she said, "you've been listening to a lot of stupid twaddle at your clubs."
"Well," he answered, "they know pretty well what's going on."
"Yes, I supposetheydo," she said. "Talk about women and their gossip! Why, Dicky, they're not in it with your smoke-room gang."
At that moment Pauline entered from Mrs. Admaston's bedroom. There was a hardly veiled hostility in her face as she spoke, though her manner was civil enough. "Madame will see Lady Attwill," she said.
Lady Attwill swept across the room, flashing a somewhat curious glance at the old maidservant as she passed her, and entered the bedroom.
Lord Ellerdine had strolled up to the fireplace. "Tell Peggy I am waiting," he called out.
"All right," Lady Attwill said. "You amuse yourself for a few minutes."
Lord Ellerdine began to hum a little tune; then he noticed Pauline, who was arranging some violets upon a side table. "Morning, Pauline," he said. "How's madame?"
"She has a headache," the maid replied; "just a little nervous. Is your lordship well?"
"No, I am not well, Pauline, I am sorry to say. I feel very groggy. I have been all night in a confounded slow train."
Pauline said nothing, but left the room just as the third door opened and Collingwood came briskly into the room.
He was wearing a lounge suit of dark blue. The air of poise and easy carriage which was so marked a part of his personality was very much in evidence now. There was a quiet spring in his step, a brisk and cheery purpose in his movements, and he seemed singularly alert anddébonnaire; perfectly dressed, a very proper man to look at, but somehow or other without a suggestion of foppishness, which Lord Ellerdine always managed to convey. His face was calm and composed, but a close observer would have noticed that there were dark rings under the eyes and that the face was slightly paler than its wont.
"Oh, there you are!" Lord Ellerdine said.
"Hello, Ellerdine!" Collingwood replied. "Bright and early as usual?"
"Early, yes," said the other; "but not so deuced bright, old chap."
"When did you get here?"
"About five o'clock."
"Had breakfast?"
"No," said Lord Ellerdine. "I had a bath, a shave, a change, and a brandy-and-soda."
Collingwood went up to the window and sat looking idly down into the Rue de Rivoli.
"Refreshing, but not very filling," he said. "Staying here?"
"No," Lord Ellerdine replied; "they would not let us in. It's race-week, you know. They are packed out. The place is full of big bookies and racing fellows. We had to go to the St. Denis. A nice fix you've got us all in, Collingwood!"
Collingwood turned away from the window.
"Fix? I've got you in? How do you mean?"
Lord Ellerdine struggled to find words in which to express his meaning.
"I'm blowed if I know—quite. Anyway, we're in it."
"I don't understand," Collingwood answered.
"Oh, come on!" replied Lord Ellerdine. "Chuck that business, Colling! I know your beastly way of putting a fellow off, but you can't leave me out of this."
Collingwood lit a cigarette very deliberately. "Leave you out?" he said.
"Wish to heavens you could!" was the rejoinder.
Collingwood perched himself on the end of the sofa, swinging his legs. "Look here, what's up?"
"Are we at St. Moritz?" Lord Ellerdine asked.
"No," Collingwood answered coolly.
"Are we in Switzerland?"
"No."
"Well, where are we?"
"I make a good guess," Collingwood said, "that we are in Paris."
Lord Ellerdine flushed up and began to get angry.
"Well, there you are!" he said. "Damn it, there you are! And you have got the sublime cheek to ask me what's up."
Collingwood smiled. "Now, don't get ratty, Dicky," he said. "It's all right. Only a trifling contretemps. We got on the wrong train—by mistake."
Lord Ellerdine began to stroll up and down the room. He tried to be judicial in his manner. "Now, are you telling me that for a fact or for a joke?" he asked.
"Fact—absolute fact. We were kept until the last moment paying duty on Peggy's cigarettes, and had to rush for the train——"
He had been going to say something further, but Lord Ellerdine interrupted him. "I saw you," he said.
Here Collingwood cut in suddenly: "Yes, getting into the train that was on the move."
"Yes," Lord Ellerdine said, "the Paris express. You jumped Peggy on and sprang after her, dragging her maid with you. A clever bit of work, my friend."
Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Well, where were you?" he replied.
"In the other train—the right one. With Alice. It was a rotten thing for you to do."
"What, leave you with Alice?"
Lord Ellerdine shook his head impatiently. "No, no," he said irritably; "to leave us in the lurch like that."
"But I telegraphed to you to Chalons that we had got on the wrong train."
"Yes, you wired to Chalons right enough, but that didn't make it true. I would not have gone if Alice had not persuaded me that the train was running in two parts, and that you would be sure to join us at Chalons."
"Well, it's all right now," Collingwood replied, still preserving the perfectsang-froidwith which he had listened to all the other's remarks. "It's all right now, so don't let's say any more about it."
"All right now, by Jove!" Ellerdine replied. "Is it? Suppose Admaston hears about it—what?"
"Of course," Collingwood said, "if you think it is absolutely necessary, we'll invent some yarn that will satisfy him."
"I do think it necessary. Butyou'llhave to do it. I never could invent—never. No good at it. Confound you, Colling, leaving us...."
Collingwood's manner changed from coolness to something more intimate. "Now, look here, Dicky," he said persuasively. "I didn't think you'd cut up rough about it. I thought Alice possibly might, but not you."
"Oh, she doesn't mind," Ellerdine answered. "She never believes that people get on the wrong train, or have motor accidents so that they can have a night off."
Collingwood put his feet down to the floor and threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace. "Now, look here," he said; "do you mean that you think that I——" He hesitated for a moment.
"No, I don't," Lord Ellerdine answered; "but what will Admaston think? He is sure to hear of it. I'll bet you a fiver it's known in London to-night. There is always someone on the spot to notice things that go wrong, and this is so suspicious—so damned suspicious, mind you. Why,Idon't like the look of it—mind, the look of it—myself."
"Then we must set your conscience at rest, that's all," Collingwood replied.
"How?"
"Well, we must all have a proper, coherent, connected yarn to tell. That's quite simple."
Ellerdine shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think it will work," he said. "You can't get four people to tell the same yarn without variation. There's sure to be one let it down just where it ought to be kept up."
"If it were a long, complicated yarn, perhaps," said Collingwood; "but I don't mean that at all. Just a plain, unvarnished tale."
"Unvarnished!" the peer replied. "Well, it'll take a deuce of a lot of paint to make this one look all right."
"Not a bit of it," Collingwood replied. "Easy as anything."
Lord Ellerdine went to the fireplace once more and stood with his back to the flames. "Right ho," he said; "go ahead."
"Here you are, then," Collingwood began. "We all got on the wrong train."
"But we didn't."
"Damn it!" Collingwood said, "of course we didn't; but we'll say we did."
Lord Ellerdine began to check the points upon the fingers of one hand, as if anxious to commit them to memory even at this early stage. "Am I to say we did?" he asked.
"We will all say we did," Collingwood replied.
"I shall never be able to," Lord Ellerdine remarked hopelessly.
"Confound it, Dicky! Are you the George Washington of the lot?"
The peer shook his head more vigorously. That imputation, at anyrate, he was anxious to avoid. "No, no," he said quickly; "it's not the truth that bothers me. It's getting the blooming fib to sound all right."
Collingwood repeated his instruction as if he were teaching a lesson to a child, speaking slowly and impressively. "'We all got on the wrong train.' There's nothing difficult about saying that."
Lord Ellerdine repeated the sentence in exactly the same voice.
"'We all got on the wrong train.'"
"Bravo, Dicky!" said Collingwood. "Now then, don't relax your attention, old chap. The next is that we all stayed the night at this hotel."
The index finger of Lord Ellerdine's right hand moved from the thumb to the first finger of his left. He appeared to have got it all right, when suddenly a doubt seemed to enter the vacant spaces of his mind.
"What, here?" he asked.
"Yes, here; at this hotel."
"Oh! Come, old chap! Doesn't that look like a bally lie? Now think it over for yourself. Listen. 'We all stayed the night at this hotel.'"
Collingwood was a patient man, and he listened without any betrayal of what he really felt in dealing with this pleasant fool.
"Well," he said, "what's wrong with it?"
"Oh! it lacks something," was the reply; and though the speaker did not amplify his statement, his voice was full of doubt and hesitation.
"Oh, rot!" Collingwood answered. "It's only wrong because we didn't stay here. If you can say, 'We all got on the wrong train,' surely to goodness you can say that we all stayed the night at this hotel?"
"Yes," Ellerdine answered slowly. "I suppose it ought to be easy enough."
"No wonder you chucked diplomacy," Collingwood said.
"Oh! I didn't mind a fib or two for international reasons."
"I see," Collingwood rejoined. "Your conscience begins to prick you only when fibs are told for domestic purposes."
"Well, you see, you run much greater risks of being found out. It's awful to be found out in anordinarylie—people make such afussof other people's lies."
"Do you mean to tell me that national lies are never found out?"
"Well, you see," Ellerdine replied—the discussion was getting a little bit beyond him, and again he struggled to find words,—"you see, national lies are not about persons." Then he shook his head. "I'm damned bad at it, Collingwood," he said in a final sort of voice. "I can't rely on my memory. I suppose there's no other way out of it?"
"My dear chap, none whatever," Collingwood said.
"'We all got on the wrong train,'" Ellerdine repeated to himself slowly in a sing-song voice; and then, looking up brightly, "Does seem easy, doesn't it?"
"Top hole," said Collingwood.
Thus encouraged, Lord Ellerdine began to repeat the second half of his lesson. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel.' There's something wrong with that."
"It's only your sense of the scrupulous," Collingwood replied. "Only say it often enough. Say it thirty or forty times; then it will sound all right."
At this moment the door opened and Lady Attwill came in. She looked quickly at Collingwood and he at her.
"Good morning," he said. "Well, how is Peggy?"
"She has a bad headache," Lady Attwill replied. "She's coming in in a minute or two. I have had a warm quarter of an hour, I can tell you, though I am sure I don't know whatIhave done...."
If the woman was acting she was acting supremely, for there seemed genuine disgust in her voice.
"Is she much cut up?" Lord Ellerdine asked.
"I should think she is! She's dreadfully cut up! I don't know what we are to do," Lady Attwill said.
Lord Ellerdine suddenly became important; his little mouth smiled brightly. He was the bearer of good news. "Oh, that's all settled," he said, rubbing his hands briskly together. "I and Collingwood have arranged it all."
"Arranged what?" Lady Attwill asked.
"Well, do you see, we all——"
The bright expression faded from the ex-diplomatist's face. "Tell her, Collingwood," he said. "My head won't work. I've forgotten everything already."
"You've never given Dicky anything to think about?" Lady Attwill said in mock alarm.
"Not much," Collingwood answered.
Ellerdine flushed up angrily. "Not much!" he cried. "He gets on the wrong train. He leaves us standing at the post like a couple of sublime martyrs. Goes off to Paris and leaves us kicking our confounded heels at Chalons. We come here after them—find the hotel full of bookies—travel all night in a beastly slow train—no sleep, no food, no Switzerland. Not much to think about! I shall have an attack of brain fever after this affair."
Lady Attwill went up to the enraged gentleman. "Poor Dicky!" she said soothingly. "He's had a bad night. Dicky is no good unless he gets his proper sleep. Now sit down, there's a good boy, and let's talk it over properly."
She led him to a chair with a radiant smile, and then turned to Collingwood. "Now tell me, what is it that you have arranged?" As she said this she felt in the side pocket of his coat and drew out his cigarette case. Opening it, she gave him one and took one for herself, struck a match and lit it.
"Well," Collingwood answered, leaning over the back of the sofa on which his friend had seated herself. "A short, straight tale—simple, to the point, and easy to tell."
"The truth?" Lady Attwill asked.
"The truth! Never! Who's going to tell Admaston the truth?" Lord Ellerdine burst out.
"How'sheto know?" Lady Attwill said.
"Know!" Ellerdine retorted. "I'll bet Collingwood a fiver allLondonknows to-night."
He looked anxiously at the other man, unable to understand how he could take things so easily, absolutely unconscious of anything underlying this unfortunate occurrence, absolutely unsuspicious of the sinister forces at work around him.
"Oh, bosh!" Collingwood answered. "Anyway, we can say we all got on the wrong train."
"'That we all got on the wrong train,'" came with parrot-like precision from the diplomatist.
"But we didn't," Lady Attwill said, looking from one to the other.
Lord Ellerdine jumped up from his chair, his face radiant with triumph. "There you are!" he said to Collingwood. "Just what I told you!"
Lady Attwill became alive to the situation. "Oh, I see," she said; "that is the short, straight, simple tale. I see. 'We all got on the wrong train.'"
"You see, Dicky!" Collingwood said with a smile. "See how quickly Alice picks it up."
"Oh, she's used to it," said Ellerdine. "She picks up things very quickly. But tell her the sequel—that's the water-jump for me."
"Come on; let's have a look at it," said Lady Attwill.
Collingwood seemed vastly amused. He assumed the air of a comedian. His hands fluttered before him in pantomime. His handsome face became droll and merry.
"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said.
Lord Ellerdine nodded with an anxious look in his eyes towards Lady Attwill. "Now try that," he said.
"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" said Lady Attwill with perfect naturalness and ease.
"There you are!" said Collingwood.
The middle-aged fool in the arm-chair was quite interested and pleased. He saw nothing of the grimness which underlay this gay, light-hearted chatter, in this gay and brilliant room. The other two, man and woman, were playing their parts most skilfully—not so much to deceive Ellerdine, but to trick themselves into the belief that they were not engaged in a very dirty, ugly business.
It's an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless perfectly true, that people who are able to infuse a sinister and tragic moment with mocking gaiety certainly provide for themselves an anodyne to the pain and fear it would otherwise bring them.
No doubt that is why the devil is generally represented as smirking or leering.
The door opened and the Scotch-French waiter with a large tray entered, followed by another also carrying a tray, but whose swarthy features and thick purple lips proclaimed him no hybrid, but a true son of the Côte d'Azur.
Lord Ellerdine jumped up. "Food!" he said. "I am starving."
Lady Attwill rose also. "Poor Dicky must always have his food," she said. "I always think he never seems quite human till he has had his breakfast. When we were down at his place together——"
Collingwood nudged her with a warning look. "Piano!" he said.
"What about?" she whispered, with a rather sardonic grin. "I don't want to play."
"The waiter, I mean," Collingwood replied.
"Bien!" she answered, seating herself in front of the cafetière and pouring out the hot brown coffee.
Lord Ellerdine had also sat down. He looked at his as yet empty plate and drummed with his fingers upon the table-cloth. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said in a perfectly audible voice.
"Oui, monsieur," said Jacques of Ecclefechan suddenly.
Ellerdine started and looked up, his face expressing great surprise. "Get away," he said. "I wasn't speaking to you."
Collingwood frowned. His nerves, now, didn't seem quite under the same control as they had been before. "Laissez les autres choses, garçon. Nous nous servirons."
"Bien, monsieur," said the waiter, with an ugly and furtive smile upon his face, which nobody noticed, as he left the room.
"Come on, Alice. Where's my coffee?" said Lord Ellerdine.
"There you are," she answered. "Coffee, Colling?"
Collingwood nodded. "What is there?" he asked.
Lady Attwill lifted the covers. "Omelette, bacon, sole, mushrooms."
"Sole for me."
"Bacon and mushrooms, Alice," Ellerdine remarked, quite himself again at the thought of breakfast.
"You have no idea how I buck up after a cup of coffee," he continued; "but, upon my soul, I feel like a fried flounder this morning. I don't think I shall ever be in a hotter place than that confounded train from Chalons."
"Yes, you will, Dicky," Lady Attwill remarked, taking a piece of toast from the rack.
"Oh yes, you will, Dicky," Collingwood echoed; "don't make any mistake about that."
"After all," Lady Attwill went on, "it wasn't so bad. You worried; that was what made you hot."
"You don't know anything about it. You slept like a log all the way," Ellerdine said.
"Easy conscience," answered the lady, beginning her breakfast with great satisfaction.
"You didn't get on the wrong train," said Ellerdine meaningly.
Collingwood put down his fish-fork. The long strain to which his nerves had been subjected, the irritation which he had so well suppressed until now, had its way with him and burst out.
"Oh, damn it!" he said, "you two make me tired. Do shut up about the wrong train. Let's have our breakfast in peace."
Lord Ellerdine busied himself with his mushrooms. "I wish I had a hide as thick as yours, Colling, old man," he said. "You do take things smoothly. Look at him, Alice—eating away as if he was on his honeymoon!"
Collingwood glared at hisvis-à-vis. "Honeymoon!" he said.
"He doesn't care a fig about getting us into this mess. What excellent bacon they have here!" Lord Ellerdine went on.
Again Collingwood got the better of his rising temper. "Oh, you'll be all right, Dicky," he said, "when we get to St. Moritz to-morrow."
"We're not going," Lady Attwill said shortly.
Collingwood started. "We are," he said.
"Wrong, my boy," said Lady Attwill again. "Peggy is going back."
"Back! Back where?"
"To London."
"She doesn't mean it?" Collingwood said, putting down his fork and looking straight at Lady Attwill.
She nodded at him, and he knew that what she said was true.
"There you are!" piped out in Lord Ellerdine's voice. "I knew it; I felt it in my bones all the time I was in that beastly train. Peggy's got the hump. You have spoilt the whole show, Colling. I can't eat any more."
He pushed his chair away from the table with a perplexed and angry face, and began to walk up and down the room.
"Hang it!" Collingwood said, "is this the first time that anyone got on the wrong train?"
"No, it is not," Ellerdine answered shortly. "But it is the first time it has happened toPeggy. Anybody butPeggy."
"It seems to me," Collingwood said, "that we are making a lot of unnecessary fuss."
"Yes; let's drop it," came from Lady Attwill.
"Alice," Lord Ellerdine persisted, "don't you agree with me?"
She sighed, but it was necessary to preserve appearances. "Well, Dicky," she said, "Peggy has not shown a tenacious desire to observe the strict letter of every propriety. I know that there has been nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing but little frisks and frolics now and then—quite all right actually—looking perhaps worse than they were—nothing else. But, after all, it is not what you do; the trouble of it is what other folks say you do."
The persistent moralist was not to be put off. "The married woman," he said, in a voice as near to a pulpit manner as he could get, "cannot afford to have anyone say a word. Look at Alice. Before Attwill kicked the bucket she lived in a glass case. Didn't you, Alice?"
Collingwood chuckled: not merrily at all, but with a rather nasty cynicism—a snigger, in fact.
"Look here, Dicky," he said, "if you don't stop your sickening habit of preaching left-handed morality at me I'll give you up. I can't stand it. I amnotmoral—don't know the first thing about it—never met anybody who did. Man is not moral; environment makes it impossible. You're not moral, Dicky, although you may think you are. And as for society, it is absolutely unmoral."
"I say! I say! I say! Listen to our future Home Secretary!" said Lord Ellerdine.
"No fear," Collingwood answered. "I leave that field to Admaston and the other cackling crew of humbugs."
Lady Attwill laughed amusedly, and Ellerdine was about to say something else, when the door opened and Peggy entered.
She was very simply but very expensively dressed in an exquisite walking-dress of a colour which was neither grey nor amethyst, but a cunning blend of both. At her breast she wore a little sprig of white lilac. There was a sudden silence as she entered, a silence almost as if the three people were conspirators.
Peggy walked briskly up to the table, nodding and smiling. "Well, you're a nice lot," she said. "Why didn't you tell me breakfast was ready? I have been dying for a cup of coffee. Anything good in the food line? Something smells good. What is it? Mushrooms—just the very thing! I like mushrooms. Remind one of early risings and misty mornings. How are you, Dicky? Alice, give me some coffee, there's a dear. Hello, Colling! any news?"
Her chatter was more general than addressed to any particular person, and she didn't seem to require any answer to her questions. At anyrate, nobody made any answer, and there was an uncomfortable silence as Peggy began her breakfast.
"You're a jolly lot," she said after a minute or so. "What's up with you all? These mushrooms are nice. Dicky, pass the toast. What? I thought you said something, Alice."
Lady Attwill shook her head. "No," she answered in a rather strained voice.
There was another silence. Suddenly Peggy put down her knife and fork with a little clatter and rose from her chair. "This room is horribly stuffy," she said, going to the window. "There, that's better. Oh! what a lovely morning! Dear old Paris! how I do love it!"
She seemed restless and unable to remain long in one position, and soon she had fluttered back to the breakfast-table.
"Alice," she said, "please pour me out another cup of coffee.—Well, Dicky, I put my foot into it nicely last night, didn't I?"
"Yes, you jolly well did," Lord Ellerdine answered shortly.
"I knew what you wanted to talk about, Dicky," she said.
Collingwood interposed. "Peggy, don't go on like that. I have explained it to Dicky."
"Were you quite the one to explain?" she asked.
"Well," Collingwood replied, "it was my fault I rushed you into the train."
Lord Ellerdine started. Something already beginning to be familiar had penetrated his consciousness. "We all got on the wrong train," he said.
"Oh! All?" Peggy asked.
"Yes," said the diplomatist—"yes—no—that's what we're going to say."
"To whom?" asked Peggy.
"Well—well—to—well, to anyone who wants to know."
"Who should want to know?" Peggy asked.
"Oh, no one, Peggy," said Lady Attwill; "but it's best to be prepared, you know."
"But I don't know. Why should I know? Be prepared for what?"
"Nothing, dear, absolutely nothing. Only, some chatty fool might ask."
"Ask what?"
"Well—awkward questions."
"About getting on the wrong train?"