CHAPTER XVIII
“I’mcomin’ home with you,” Larrupper announced, stepping after her into the Heron brougham. His face was quite colourless, and he did not look at her. “Old Grange is followin’ behind with the car, but there’s somethin’ I want to say to you, an’ it won’t improve with keepin’. Then I’m goin’ back for a chin-chin with Blackburn.”
“You’re not to say anything to Billy!” Verity exclaimed angrily. “Leave him to Mr. Grant. You’ll only make things worse.”
“That’s just what I want to make ’em!” Larry responded grimly. “I mean to make ’em so bad that there’ll be no dancin’ except on crutches for the next six months. It’s no use arguin’, my dear girl. This is a man’s job, so you may as well stop worryin’.”
“Oh, but don’t you understand——?” Verity began piteously, and stopped, for she had seen his face by a passing lamp, and she was afraid. They drove back to Heron in silence.
Mrs. Cantacute was already upstairs when they got in, and they went up together to tell her how things had gone. She worshipped every hair ofLarry’s head, and he spent many an hour with her, cheering her after his own peculiar fashion.
Oh, it had been a complete success! they informed her, carefully leaving awkward details to be broken later. A crowded house and a most appreciative audience. Everything, in fact, that could be desired.
“And how did my favourite song go?” gentle Mrs. Cantacute inquired eagerly. “You know the one I mean, don’t you?—the song with the pretty refrain—‘Honey.’”
Verity coloured to the roots of her hair under her paint, for Larrupper was looking at her mercilessly across the bed.
“Oh, it was the song of the evenin’!” he answered easily and with effusion. “Went like steam an’ took like influenza. Everybody in the place goin’ away hummin’ it, even carpin’ old Savaury an’ his pampered darlin’ of a coachman. I mustn’t stop, though, dear old sweetheart. Grange is outside, waitin’, an’ he’ll be hungry after all that yowlin’.”
“Send him in for something,” Mrs. Cantacute begged, as he stooped to kiss her. “And mind you get what you want yourself, Lionel. You know you are at home here, don’t you?”
“Thank you, old dear!” Larry answered gently, without looking at her; but when he was downstairs again, he refused Verity’s hospitality brusquely.
“I don’t want anythin’ in that line,” he said rather roughly, “and old Grange can go on starvin’ a bit longer, for a change! I told you I’d somethin’to say to you, but I don’t fancy talkin’ to a painted marionette, so suppose you go away an’ wash your face!”
“I’m not in a mood for being ‘talked to,’” she replied, flushing indignantly under his disapproving gaze, “and if you can’t be even moderately polite, you had better go away and let me get off to bed, for I’m simply dead tired.”
“You’ll have to keep awake, anyhow, till I’m through,” he said doggedly. “But I want to talk to the girl I’m used to seein’, an’ not to a music-hall turn. You’d better do what I say, or there’ll be all the more time goin’ beggin’ for Billy.”
When she had gone, he remained beside the dying fire, alternately staring moodily at the flickering coal and addressing himself gloomily in the overmantel. Deborah had been right, he told himself, miserably. The crisis in their light love-making had come at last, and neither he nor Verity knew how to meet it. Would the bond between them really bear the strain? Or would to-morrow see the beginning of a new and empty life, separated from the old, happy, laughing one for ever?
She came back presently without her cap, her little face faintly flushed, her shining hair brushed in smooth waves from its Madonna-like parting.
“Now what is it?” she asked peremptorily, anything but Madonna-like in demeanour. “You seem in a shockingly bad temper, and I can’t think why. After all, Billy-boy is no concern of yours in anyway, and you’ve got to promise me before you go that you’ll leave him alone.”
“It’s every decent man’s concern when a low cad’s insultin’ a lady,” Larrupper answered stubbornly. “I ought never to have allowed you to have anythin’ to do with him, but you’re always so set on havin’ your own way, there’s no movin’ you. Well, you can have any way you find pleasin’ when I’m through with Billy.”
“No, no, Larrupper—please!” she begged, growing alarmed before his steady grimness. “It’s true I ought never to have asked him, but I thought he would keep straight for me—indeed I did! He’s never failed me before. There seems to have been a sort of fate in it. Oh, I know I did wrong in not leaving him alone, but you won’t improve matters by going for him or—or hammering him. He’ll only turn nasty, and never look at any of us again. That’s the way to send him to the dogs for life.”
“An’ the best place for him!” Larry added heartily. “It’s no use bullyin’ me. This is man’s work, as I told you before. An’ I’m not starvin’ old Grange for the pleasure of talkin’ about Blackburn. There’s somethin’ else. That parson was makin’ love to you!”
Verity crimsoned for the third time, slowly and painfully. She had never before known a moment’s embarrassment with Larrupper, but to-night he seemed like a stranger, with his black brows drawn together, and his gloomy eyes searching hers. Therewas something menacing about the set of his heavy shoulders and the droop of his bullet head.
“Yes,” she admitted in a low tone. “He—asked me to marry him. It doesn’t seem fair to tell you, but I think you know, without it. You needn’t be jealous,” she finished quickly, following an hysterical impulse to say the most hopelessly wrong thing possible.
“Jealous?” Larry’s dark face flushed violently. “Jealous of old Grant? Did you think I came bargin’ in at this time of night just to tell you I was jealous? Then you’re wrong. I came to ask you a straight question, an’ if you can give me a straight answer without any shilly-shallyin’—and the right one, mind you!—I’ll make a night of it with old Grange over the ’84 port. But if you can’t—if youcan’t——!” A dog-like anticipation of trouble came into his dark eyes as he looked at her, and his hand shook on the mantelpiece, for everything hung on that question, and he was afraid both of the answer and of himself.
“It’s just this!” he said heavily. “A man doesn’t go askin’ girls to marry him without thinkin’ about it a bit beforehand, especially when he’s tuckered out like an Aunt Sally an’ a bit of Barnum mixed. Old Grant isn’t the sort, either, to be plungin’ into proposals without so much as a twinge of warnin’. He must have been goin’ that way for weeks, poor old chap, an’ gettin’ worked up for the jumpin’-off. NowI’m askin’ you—did you know he was fallin’ in love with you, or did you not?”
“Yes, I knew,” Verity answered, quietly but without hesitation, as he paused for breath. “It isn’t difficult to know a thing like that, Larry, whether one wants to or not.”
“No, I suppose it’s generally shoutin’,” he agreed moodily. “I’d have seen it myself if I’d gone to the trouble of lookin’. But there’s somethin’ more. A girl can’t help a man carin’ for her, but she can play fair, all the same. Did you do right by old Grant, my dear—or did you lend him a hand to makin’ a fool of himself, leadin’ him on with your smiles an’ your pretty little ways? Did you play fair by the parson, old girl—that’s what I’m wantin’ to know?”
She said nothing, this time, only turned her head away from him, and slid a hand over her eyes, while he stood beside her, breathing heavily, doggedly demanding the truth he hated but had already guessed.
“Oh, darlin’, can’t you lie to me!” she heard him say under his breath, passionately beseeching, and she shook her head without turning, knowing there was no need of words. He uttered a curious sound, half-sob, half-exclamation, and after that there was a long pause. Then she felt him leave her and move across to the door.
“I must be gettin’ off,” he said easily and cheerfully.“Old Grange will be freezin’, I’m afraid, an’ he’ll not get the ’84, after all, dear old thing! Hope you won’t be too dog-tired in the mornin’.”
She straightened herself then, and swung round, looking at him with miserable eyes.
“I always knew this was bound to happen,” she said. “I knew a day would come when you would see me as I am, and not just as you chose to see me. You’ve always made an idol of me, though I’ve tried hard enough, in all conscience, to undeceive you! I’m not a goddess to be worshipped or a baby to be petted and soothed. I’m simply a woman chock-full of faults, and if you’d shown me you knew it and didn’t mind, you could have had me long since. Now—I’ll never be your idol again. It’s true that I knew Mr. Grant cared—true that I encouraged him. I won’t lie to you. I was jealous of his influence in the village, and I knew that if he fell in love with me he’d have to lay down his arms. So I led him on. Do you hear, Larry? Take that home, and get it deep down into your soul.I led him on!”
Larrupper winced sharply and unmistakably, but he smiled quite pleasantly.
“What’s the use of worryin’?” he replied, falling back upon his usual formula. “We’ll all be feelin’ better, to-morrow, an’ we’ll swim along somehow without smashin’ one another, you’ll see! You’ll not think me rude to be goin’, will you? I’m sure I can hear old Grange weepin’ outside.”
He opened the door; then paused again.
“There’s just one other thing, if you don’t mind my mentionin’ it? You told old Grant that you were goin’ to marry Lionel Lyndesay. Well, it isn’t true about Lionel, whatever it may once have been about Larry. Larry’s wantin’ you with every little bit of him, but Lionel isn’t goin’ to take the risk!”