IX
BEATEN AT THE POST
She was very gay and flippant during lunch, and while crossing the bay, and in the motor on the way to the great ducal house, where she was going, if not to sing for her supper, at least to dance for her dinner. She was very serious and a little dictatorial on the stage, but immediately after tea took the owner of the Chaste Goddess and so much else by the arm, and proceeded to drag him on a prolonged tour of inspection, through the stables, round the noble Italian gardens—at whose lichened fawns and satyrs she made faces, expressive of the utmost scorn and defiance, but which only succeeded in being charming, and the English garden—where the leaden shepherdesses were pronounced "ducks"; into the aviary to drive four macaws to frenzy with a long straw, and back by orchid houses and hothouses to the terrace again. She picked a good many flowers and ate a quantity of fruit.
It was while she was picking grapes in the vine house that Lumsden took heart and disburthened himself of a little of his recent chagrin.
"Flash! I'm going to scold you!"
"Oh, Bryan! what for? For culling all these grapes? I like 'cull,' it sounds less greedy than 'pick.' I cull, thou culleth—no,cullest—she culls."
"Flash! out of all the world what made you pick on those two Jezebels to speak to on the lawn?"
"What's the matter with them besides 'jezziness'?"
"You know well enough. They're not nice women."
"Really nice women don't have much to say to me? Have you noticed it, skipper?"
"They would if——Oh! stop eating all those grapes. You'll make yourself sick."
"If what, please?"
"If you'd only do the straight thing?"
"What do you mean? Go into a refuge?"
"Arefuge! What abominable twaddle you can talk when you like."
She laid a sticky finger over his mouth. "Tut-tut-tut! Come outside if you're going to scold. It's too fuzzy in here. You'll get a rush of brains to the head."
Outside, the garden was deserted. The centre of interest seemed to have shifted to the upper terrace. A large horny beetle was pursuing his homeward or outward way over the pounded shell of the walk. Fenella assisted him with the point of her parasol, and did not relax her good offices until he was in dazed safety upon the border. Then she looked up.
"Flash! why don't you marry me and have done with it?"
She punched six holes in the path before replying.
"What do you want to 'have done with?' Why can't we go on as we are a little longer?"
"Because it's—unnatural. There are other reasons, but that's enough."
"It isn't, if you don't let it worry you—Oh! what am I saying? Bryan, do you think we'd care as much for one another if—if I did as you say."
"Of course we should—more every day."
"Why didn't you keep getting fonder and fonder of those others, then?"
"I think that question most unseemly. You don't seem to realize I'm asking you to be my wife."
"M-m! It is hard to."
"Oh, don't be clever. Every one's clever. What are you waiting for?"
No answer.
"Shall I tell you?"
"If you think you know, dear."
"You're waiting until there's not one little bit left of the girl I fell in love with, the girl who tried to hide her bare arms under Perse's ruffle in the hall at Lulford, and who cried by the cot where my poor little urchin was dying. You've never forgiven me that cursed night in Mount Street."
"Dear! I've never mentioned it from that day to this."
"Well, it's behind everything you say. It's behind your eyes when they look at me. Can't you understand I wasn't myself."
"You were a little—eh? Weren't you, dear? Not much; just a gentlemanly glow."
"And it's your way of taking revenge for it. And a d——d cruel woman's way it is."
She laid her hand on his arm. "Bryan, don't worry me now. I've got a lot to go through to-night. It's harder than anybody thinks. There's some sense in what you say. But we can talk about it some other time.... Oh! look up there! What's happening?"
A big browny-red closed motor-car rolled along the upper terrace and stopped at the great doorway. In a moment servants—visitors seemed to run together, to range themselves in two lines, one on each side of the wide curved steps. Framed in the dark gothic arch, the Lord of Beverbrook appeared, noble, white of hair and moustache, with a serene and lofty humility in his bent head that was strangely impressive. The rest is Apotheosis. Before it we veil our dazzled eyes.
He had not gone to bed at two o'clock the next morning. He sat, completely dressed, smoking and looking out his bedroom window over the silvering terraces and park. The great gay house was abed: the night very still. Only to his left, above the low quadrangle of some stables or outhouses, could be seen a dim shaft of light. A murmur of voices, the sound of water running and splashing about a hose-pipe, seemed to come from that direction.
His thoughts were busy, but not directly with the girl whose interests and his own were by now tacitly associated. The night had been a new triumph for her—in a way the crown upon all the rest—but such triumphs by now were discounted in advance, felt almost to be in the order of nature. No. It was the telegram he was thinking of, the telegram that he had intercepted on the lawn at Cowes. He had not so much forgotten it till now as mentally pigeon-holed it for future consideration. This habit, acquired in business, he unconsciously followed in all the concerns of life.
Who was making himself this beggar's advocate in London. Who was "Prentice." Curse him! whoever he was. Few though the words had been, they contained a hint of some previous understanding or rendezvous. Who were the conspirators that wanted to drag a girl away from the light and laughter that was her due, (influences so desirable from every point of view) into the chill shadow of a hospital death-bed. He had long ceased to be jealous of Ingram, as of a man whom the world that was his friend had taken in hand and beaten handsomely, but there is no hatred so merciless and lawless as that with which contempt is mingled. The suppression of the telegram never struck him as dishonor, although he was not a cruel or a treacherous man. He counted it a fair counter-stroke to what he esteemed a blow in the dark, a stab from behind. Letter by letter and word for word the hateful thing was printed on his brain, but who does not know the instinct of return to a message in which substance and significance are so inversely proportioned? To have read nine times is no reason for not reading a tenth. The screed has not changed, but the mood may have; and, with the new mood, who knows what fresh meaning may not leap at us.
He got up, opened the wardrobe, and felt in the pockets of his blue coat. It was not in either of them. He considered awhile. Had he packed it, with the letters, into his dispatch case? If so, it had gone aboard to his secretary, which didn't matter much. But—no. He distinctly remembered feeling it in his pocket during the crossing to the mainland. Plainly gone, then. But where?
He took the coat off the rack and looked at it as though he would read its history since dinner. His own man was not with him, but he had stopped at Beverbrook before and knew the valeting was a little overdone. R—— was so natty himself. He had flung it on the bed when he dressed. Whoever did the room had taken it to be brushed or pressed, and the telegram had fallen out of the pocket. How could he be sure? Oh! he knew. There had been a tiny smear of white paint under the left cuff. If the coat had been taken away——He took it to the light. The white smudge was gone.
He was not pleased at the accident, but decided to dismiss the matter for the night. The faculty to do so, and to fall asleep on some pleasant thought, was part of his life's sound régime. He began to think of her again. How prettily she had carried off her success. He recalled the little bob-curtsey in the Presence, so in character after the hoydenish dance—the gleam of sub-audacity that accompanied it, which every charming woman knows she can permit herself in company, however august, where her charm is likely to be felt. But who would have done it so gracefully? He had stood aloof (it seemed more decent to), but he remembered how long she had been kept in the circle, and how every one had laughed from time to time. Her competence, her amazing competence—that was what he was never done marvelling at. Nothing seemed to scare her, nothing to dazzle her. What a genius there can be in school nicknames! And then, that chin and jaw of turned ivory, and the hair, dark and fragrant as a West India night, and the diamond twinkling in the little fleshy ear.
Suddenly he stood quite still, with his hair-brushes in his hand, listening intently. Some one was scratching stealthily on the upper panel of his bedroom door. Remember the hour—the stillness—the man's old experience, and of what his imagination was full. His heart seemed to miss two or three beats, and to resume its function thickly and heavily in his throat. The last traces of anger and dissatisfaction died away. Women had called Bryan Lumsden's face beautiful before. They might have called it so now again.
He walked to the door and opened it softly. It was she; but dressed, with her hat and veil, and with the telegram in her hand.
"Bryan!—Bryan!" she said under her breath, and then stopped. Her agitation was so great that she could not go on. He drew her gently into his room and closed the door.
"You must be careful, Flash," he said gravely. "This isn't an ordinary visit like Lulford, you know. It won't do to have any scandal here."
"Bryan, can I speak to you a minute?"
"Go on."
"You know what you asked me this afternoon?"
"Yes."
"I will, I will, Iwill; any time you like."
He looked at the telegram and his face hardened.
"If——?"
"Yes. If you get me to London to-night."
"Flash! it's absurd. Think of the hour! Can't you wait till morning?"
"No. I shall go mad."
"But even if the station is open, it will take hours to get a special."
"You have your car."
"Yes; but every one's in bed, and the garage probably locked up. Be reasonable."
"Oh, no they're not," she said eagerly. "I can hear them from my window. They have lamps and they're washing the cars with a hose."
"What has happened?"
She handed him the telegram quite simply. "I found this on my table. It's been opened. I don't understand——"
He read it through again and folded it quite small and evenly.
"Where's your room? You can't wait here."
"At the other end of the corridor—Oh, Bryan! God bless you!"
"S-sh!How will I know it? It won't do to make a mistake."
"Can't I hang a stocking over the knob?"
He looked at her askance a moment, then put on his jacket and walked away into the darkness. After what must have seemed more, and was probably less, than half an hour, he tapped softly at her door. He was wearing the big coat she knew so well. He had wrapped her in it more than once.
"I've arranged it," he said, in a low voice, strangely gentle. "Follow me, and walk quietly."