XVIII
ICE TO THE MOON
And yet an hour later, when the theatre was empty, the cheering and the speeches done, and the linotypes were pecking various people's impressions of a wonderful night into place, she was crying as though her heart would break. She was sitting in Lumsden's study in a big chintz-covered arm-chair. She had taken off her hat but not her cloak, and her hair fell in some disorder over tear-stained cheeks. The baronet sat on the edge of a table opposite her, his long shapely black legs stretched out before him. He had changed his coat for a silk dressing-jacket and was smoking a cigarette. In spite of his air of being at home, something in his face, harassed and unquiet, checked the inference that he was also at his ease. His thin hair was ruffled and his eyes were a little bloodshot. Quite frequently he reached across to a tray on which a syphon, a cut-glass bottle, and a long thin tumbler kept cheerful company.
"Don't you think you've cried about enough, Flash?" he suggested, presently.
She pressed a handkerchief, already wet through, against her eyes, but made no attempt to check the flow. There was something disquieting in this steady drain upon her emotions. It seemed to tell of a mortal wound to affection or self-respect.
"I t-told you I should. You should have let me go home."
"My dear child, it's natural you should cry after what you've been through. But there's a point where every one ought to stop. You'll make yourself ill."
"I shall never forgive myself—never, never!"
This was a point of view that the baronet had evidently tried to combat already, and unsuccessfully. He sighed, and took another drink.
"I'm bad—wicked—heartless and disgraced." She jumped up and began to button her coat.
"I must go—at once!" she cried. "Where did you put my hat?"
"Flash!"
She was so near him that without rising he could put out his hand and catch her arm. She looked at his face and sat down, weakly and as if fascinated. He held her so for a few moments, and then turned his eyes away.
"Don't be a little muff!" he said.
His words seemed to relieve a tension. She giggled hysterically.
"You're up here to-night," he went on deliberately, "because I made you come up, and because I wasn't going to have you go home, after eating nothing all day, to a house where every one's in bed, and cry yourself to sleep or lie awake starving and self-reproachful. You won't be so hard on yourself after eating and drinking something. Hello!"
There was a stir and tinkle of glass and china from the inner room. Bryan threw the door open.
"Bring it in here, Becket," he said.
Two servants entered, carrying a tray. Quickly as a conjuror the elder of the two cleared the low table, spread a fringed linen cloth and laid out supper. There was soup in brown silver-covered bowls, and something in a tureen with a white tongue of flame licking the bottom, and an epergne of fruit topped with a big pine and a phalanx of thin glasses. The footman put a pail on the ground full of cracked ice, out of which three long bottle-necks were sticking. He began to cut the cork of one of them loose.
"Anybody call while I was out, Becket?"
"Madame called about nine, Sir Bryan."
"Again?" he said, in a surprised voice.
"Yes, Sir Bryan."
"Did she leave any message?"
"She said you would probably hear from her to-night, Sir Bryan."
Lumsden looked at the clock and shrugged his shoulders.
"You needn't wait up, Becket," he said. "I'll telephone to the garage."
The outer door closed softly upon the two men. Neither of them had looked at her once.
"Now then," said Lumsden, expanding hospitably. "Sit where you are and I'll wait on you." He put a napkin over her knees, tilted the scalding bouillon into her soup-plate, and filled two glasses with the spumy wine. He emptied one himself and refilled it immediately.
"Aren'tyougoing to eat anything?" asked Fenella.
"Oh! I've had dinner. Besides, I'm a bit off my oats, Flash. Been worried lately." He gazed at the fire awhile, chewing one end of his moustache, but didn't enlarge upon the reason of his disquiet.
"Is that all you can eat?" he asked presently, seeing she put aside her plate. "You must have some Hide-and-Seek, then. You should have taken some first. It'll give you an appetite; and it'll give you a color besides. That's another of my worries. You're too pale, child. Have you always been so?"
"I suppose so."
"Oh! it's all right, then. Of course it's a divine color; but one doesn't want an artistic effect at the expense of health. Well, Flash, here's a toast: 'The New Life,' Miss Fenella Powys Barbour." He bowed profoundly and emptied his glass.
Fenella just sipped her own wine. A suspicion that had crossed her mind even in her own house, and again when Lumsden held her in the wings, but which, in her excitement, she had forgotten, returned upon her. Every time he filled and drained his glass fear clutched at her heart.
"What a rummy little face you made then, Flash. You won't do that when you're ten years older. No, no! Thank God for the juice of the grape. It's killed more men than bullets, but it's better to be full of it than full of bullets. 'Ah! eh!' as Joe would say. Don't jump!—'tother cork's just going."
"Bryan, don't drink any more. It—it isn't fair to me."
"Oh, oh! So that's the secret? That's why we're such a tongue-tied little lady: that's why we've lost our appetite? My dear kiddie, you surely don't think a bottle more or less makes any difference to an old war-horse like myself. But I love you for hating it. It's a low taste for a girl. I get fits of loathing myself; sometimes even the smell suggests dyed hair. There, then!" He thrust the open bottle back into the melting ice. "Now, turn to vinegar!... But I'll tell you a secret, Flash. Half the work of the world is done by men who aren't quite sober after nine o'clock. Just cosy, y' know. And the best paid half, too. I could give you names that would surprise you. It's a rummy world."
He meditated awhile on the strangeness of the world against which he had so little cause of complaint, shook his head, and, probably from force of habit, mixed himself a whiskey and soda.
"What was I saying when we were interrupted? Oh, yes; I remember. I'll tell you while I'm cutting up one of these little brown birds. Why—just this, Flash. You're unhappy because you're confusing reasons with motives. One can have all sorts of reasons, good and bad mixed, but it's the motive that counts. Take yourself to-night. Why did you come and dance? Well, Joe in tears is an affecting sight: that's one. Then you don't like to see work and worry wasted: that's another. And I think you're a helpful little baby. That makes three good 'uns. Suppose in with all these there was a bit of vanity mixed, a little half-formed wish to show 'em a trick or two and a very pretty shape...."
He stopped suddenly and threw down the knife and fork he had been plying. "I say, Flash, don't you think you and I ought to know where we stand?"
"Where we stand?" Her mouth went suddenly dry.
"Yes"—nervously but stubbornly—"where you and I stand. It's the proper time for it. There's a new life beginning for you to-night, Flash. I don't want to exaggerate it; I've seen too many of these things end in smoke, and the time's gone by for any Lola Montes. The world wants things just as bad, but it wants to pay less for 'em. But you're good for three or four years, and that looks a long way ahead to me. Flash, what do you think of me? I mean, personally. Bryan Lumsden—the human animal?"
"How can I tell? I don't know you well enough."
"That's the sort of answer that tries to gain time and only loses it. I'm playingbona fide, Flash: don't you play Punchinello. You're woman enough to know the most important thing about me."
"Important for you, perhaps."
"Yes, my clever girl, and for you, too. You can't play the lone hand forever. All life's a conspiracy against it. When fate throws two people like you and me together, it doesn't let them go under an explanation, at least. Let's have ours."
She covered her eyes. "Not to-night, Bryan; not to-night. Think what I've been through."
"Yes, to-night, coz. Don't look scared. You ain't going to hear anything you shouldn't. I'll begin at the beginning.... Nine or ten months ago, you know, I was at La Palèze. I'd been asked to put money in, and I went for a look. God knows why I stayed on. We didn't have much to do in the evenings except talk scandal, and I admit there was a good deal talked about a French artist and his pretty model, who were staying together in the town. You've heard, perhaps, how common that arrangement is all along the coast. But this time they said the model was English, and even before I saw you I felt sorry for you. It's a kind of national pride, I suppose. We ain't angels ourselves, but we don't like to think of our own women that way, abroad. My bedroom window looked right out along the beach, and when I was dressing for dinner I used often to see you coming back along the sands. Do you remember it?"
Fenella was leaning forward now, intense interest on her face, her lips parted, and her eyes half closed.
"I know—I know," she broke in. "We used to go to Sables and have tea in a little windy, boardy place that he said reminded him of America. It was about half-past seven or seven when we used to come back, wasn't it? And the hotel windows seemed to be all on fire, and the village all low and gray and sad, and, however quick we walked, the streak from the sun over the water kept up and dazzled us. And I used to stop and grub for shells and funny things, and when I looked up he'd be miles ahead, and I had to run—run—oh! I'm sorry for interrupting." She looked at Lumsden and all the glow died out. "Go on, Bryan."
His mouth twitched and his face grew dark.
"Well, I spoke to you at last. I hope you remember that as vividly. It didn't seem a great sin against propriety under the circumstances. You'd gone before I found out who you were. If I had known, it might have made a difference. Because I knew your father, Flash. I used to spend my holidays at Lulford, often. Coffers was always let to some rich cockney or other, and we used to live on the rent in Pimlico. He taught me how to throw a fly. Then he dropped out. I heard he married some one—who didn't—you know——"
"He married a farmer's daughter for love," said Fenella, proudly, but inexactly.
"It doesn't matter. When I got back from New York just before Christmas, Joe came to see me, full of news. He told me you had gone to him asking for an engagement and that you were to spend Christmas at Lulford. He wanted money. I wouldn't promise till I'd seen you. You know what happened then, don't you, Flash?"
"I know some of it."
"I'll tell you the rest. When I came into the library, I won't say I lost my heart. I'm not a man to be bowled over by the first piece of plaintive prettiness with a white neck and a turned-down collar that comes his way. I've seen pretty nearly every pose, and that's the one I mistrust most. Besides, I already had La Palèze against you."
"It wasn't such a secret as you think. Other people had it against me too."
"Yes. But with the unimportant difference that I got the credit of the walks to Sables in the sunset and all the rest of the idyll."
"Which you never took the trouble to deny."
"Frankly, I never did, coz."
"Why not, please?"
"Ah! there you touch a kink in my nature that I can't explain."
"You saw that we were left alone. You must have noticed the women cut me. Do you know that my own cousin spied on me at night and accused me of wearing clothes and jewelry you'd bought for me?"
"Flash—don't scold! I didn't know all this; and if I had, it wouldn't have upset me. It seemed more my business than any one else's what had happened to you before."
"You! you!Why is my reputation your affair?"
Instead of answering, he knelt down on the bearskin hearth-rug, and leaned forward until their eyes were on a level.
"Look at me, Flash—straight! That's a good girl. Now, tell me this. I've met Ingram once. If I were to know everything as, say, for argument's sake, God knows it, is there any reason I shouldn't like to meet him again?"
"You'll—never—know."
Of all the answers she could have made him, it was probably the one for which he was least prepared. He jumped to his feet and stood, baffled, pulling at his moustache and looking down on the floor. Then he threw up his head.
"So be it," he said. "I'll take that risk with the others. Flash, will you have me?"
She curled her lip.
"Oh! quite respectably. A man with his shirt outside his coat shall say those few words first that mean so much."
"No, Bryan. I won't."
"Don't be a little donkey, Flash. You don't realize what you're throwing away. You don't know what a man like me is prepared to do, once he's hard hit. Don't believe all the tales you hear. My heart's been burgled, but it's never been raided before. Youarethe first, in a way. I'll be gentle—I'll be respectful—I'll be as like the men in the novels girls read as I can. I know my faults. Haven't I been holding myself in all the time? It's not as if I wanted you to give up anything. You can live your own life, till you've tired of it. I ain't"—he laughed shortly—"jealous of the public. And as for the man you won't tell me about, you see I'm putting him out of the question. He's gone, anyhow. And oh, Flash! I'll make your life a fairy tale come true. Think of the dresses you'll have. I'll never be tired of seeing you in new ones. And the travelling! We'll go all over the earth. If you've got those new ideas, I'll settle money on you in a lump. Then you won't feel bad asking me for it. I'll leave everything to your own generosity. Could I say fairer? Could I offer more? Oh, why don't you say something? How can you sit there and listen to me, talking like some rotten old drysalting coronation knight?"
He knelt down on the hearth-rug again, unlocked her fingers, and took them into his own—gently and with a sort of frightened respect for the repulsion in her averted face. His own was flushed and ignobly eager. His agitated breath, tainted with liquor and tobacco, seemed to penetrate her fine dry hair to the scalp. Within, I suppose, was ferment and chaos—blind, confident passion waiting impatiently on a tenderness, felt indeed, but which seemed to perish on his lips in one bald unconvincing speech after another, whose unworthiness he felt as he uttered them. Somewhere inside the animal tegument that his life had thickened and indurated he was groping for his starved, mislaid soul.
"Flash, why don't you speak? Haven't I eaten enough dirt yet? What pleasure can there be in watching a human being grovel? Why don't you say 'Yes'?"
"No—no—no!" she cried, passionately, stamping her foot. "Bryan, don't touch me! I won't have you touch me! I've got a temper. Oh, can't you see I'm not the sort of woman that gives herself twice."
She thrust him away and jumped up, pushing the arm-chair back on its smooth casters. He rose, too, and picked a hair or two carefully from his broad-clothed knees.
"I see," he said, gloomily and comprehensively. "It's a lesson not to judge by faces. Yours has given me the sell of my life—but it's what I've always maintained. The first man—the first man, however great a hound he may be. You never catch him up."
"Think what you like of me," she cried indignantly, "but don't dare suppose evil of him. You can't even imagine him. He's as far above me and you, Bryan, as the stars are above the ground. You've met him, you say. How could you look in his eyes and not be ashamed of all your horrid, wicked knowledge? Oh!" she went on in a softer voice, "I don't despise you, Bryan—truth and honor, I don't. I like you as a friend. I've heard things about you; but I feel that if I was a man and had your chances I mightn't be much better. That's honest, isn't it? You and I are much about the same. We're fond of the world and pleasure and all the good things money buys. What you offer dazzles me in a way—'specially the clothes. Perhaps if I hadn't known him first—but oh, Bryan, Ican't—I can't come down after that! You don't know how hard I fought for him. I found him at his work and I tempted him away. I made myself pretty for him. I made all the advances. I'm full of tricks, really. There's things even I couldn't tell. But they don't mean the same to him, Bryan, as they would to us clay people. I don't know what they do mean. I thought I might have in time. Because he was always kind. He saw through me, I think, but my feelings never got hurt. I think I was just a little bird that had come to drink out of his hand, and he wouldn't frighten it away."
"It's a pity Mrs. Hepworth isn't alive," sneered Lumsden. "You and she might compare notes."
"Is she dead?" said Fenella, in a still lower voice. "Poor thing; that's it, then. She was ill and suffering and told him. He couldn't resist those sorts of things—Paul couldn't."
"He must have been an amusing companion."
"Not amusing, Bryan, but, oh! something so much deeper. Don't think I loved a muff. My darling is as strong and brave as he's good. I felt sosafewith him. You don't know the terror a girl can feel of a man she isn't sure of. It's like a nightmare where you can't run away. I'd have gone tramping with Paul. I'd have slept under a hedge if he'd had me in his arms. Now, don't you see how impossible it is? I'm tired, Bryan, Imustgo home. Will you 'phone for a cab?"
The dogged silence in which he listened to her, sitting on the edge of the table, his hands thrust into his pockets and his head hanging down, should have warned her. Now, when he lifted it and showed his face, she measured the full extent of her folly in trusting herself to him. He walked deliberately across the room and locked the outer door. With an open laugh at her terrified face, he slipped the key into his pocket and stood before her, his hands clutching the lapels of his smoking jacket.
"Now then," he said, and took a deep breath. "You've had your advantage and you've used it as a woman always does—mercilessly and foolishly. It's my turn now."
She faced him bravely. "I know what you mean," she said without flinching, and without raising her voice. "Don't go mad, Bryan! If you destroy me, you destroy yourself."
"I'll take the risk," he answered. "I see you looking at the windows. You're quite right. They ain't locked. You can throw one open now and squeal. I shan't stop you. There's a bobby on point just round the square. Tellhimyour story. But, before you do, just look at the clock, and think how you'll come out of the show-up yourself. Time passes quickly in the kind of chat we've been having. I think, under the circumstances, there's discredit enough for us both. You won't? That's sensible. Now listen to me."
He stopped for a moment as though his mouth were dry, filled a glass from the syphon and gulped it down. She watched his face with a sort of disgusted fascination—the bloodshot, frowning eyes, the dilated nostrils, and the twitching mouth.
"You say you've the same flesh and blood as myself, Flash. Perhaps you can imagine, then, how it feels when you've chucked your heart at the feet of the only woman in the world, and she's danced on it and kicked it back to you. Pretty bad, I assure you. There's nothing like a little real life to chase away the dreams you've been filling your head with."
She would have fainted if he had kept his eyes upon her; but he turned aside to drink again, and when he looked up it was into the muzzle of a little steel revolver. He didn't flinch or start—only kept quite still and whistled softly under his breath.
"I'll shoot!" she said. "I swear I'll shoot, Bryan, if you don't unlock the door and let me out. It's his present. He told me I'd want it. It was under my pillow all the time at Lulford. I've had it in my coat pocket every time I went out with you. Will you let me go?"
"No," he said. "Less than ever now."
Her hand wavered—steadied—tightened convulsively. Next moment he had gripped her wrist. With a little cry of pain she let the revolver go. It fell on the thick carpet almost as noiselessly as on grass. He picked it up and examined it before he put it in his hip-pocket.
"By gad!" he exclaimed half under his breath. "She really pulled the trigger. Why didn't he tell you to push the safety catch up first?"
She had fallen back in the arm-chair, quite beaten and crying.
"Have mercy on me, Bryan!"
"Oh, yes! I'll have mercy. I'm going into the library to collect my own thoughts. I'll leave you here for a quarter of an hour. You can do a lot of thinking in that time. All I've offered you stands. If you make up your mind quicker than you expected, just knock at the door or call me."
He opened the door of the inner room, looked at her for a few moments, checked a sudden movement either of ruth or passion, and closed it behind him. She heard him drag a chair along the floor and sit down.
Left alone, she looked quickly round her for a means of escape. The windows were not bolted. She opened one, trembling at the slight noise it made, and looked out. The street was twenty feet below her. Empty asphalt stretched left and right, scalloped by the street lamps into white semi-circles of incandescent light, whose dim edges touched one another. There was a triangular open space across the road to her left. Some hotel or club opened upon it. As she watched, one of the glass leaves of the door swung open, and two men in evening dress came out. They parted at the bottom of the steps with some light talk that ended in a coarse unrestrained laugh. One took a cab, the other went swinging along and still shaking with laughter, in the opposite direction. Call for help!—tell her story!—to a world like this!
She closed the window and looked round her with that despairing glance that leaves no corner unscanned. Suddenly her eyes were arrested in their search. At the farthest end of the room, just beyond the light of a shaded reading lamp, they caught the familiar ebony and silver of a telephone apparatus. The nurse was not to leave them till to-morrow, and she was sleeping in Miss Rigby's old room. They had decided to give up their telephone, but there was a month or so of the old lease still to run. She tiptoed across the room, lifted the receiver from its bracket and put it to her ear. Silence for a long, long while. Then the metallic sound of feet approaching along a zinc-covered floor.
"Number please?"
She tried to keep her voice low and steady.
"3087 Paddington."
"I can't hear you."
She ventured to speak a little louder, glancing over her shoulder as she did so, and the man repeated the number. After what seemed an eternity she heard a piping, sleepy little voice with a Scotch accent. Thank God! It was nurse.
"Who are you?"
She had not answered when the receiver buzzed in her ear, nearly deafening her. Another voice, louder, more urgent, broke in.
"Are you Mayfair? Is this Sir Bryan Lumsden's?"
"Oh! please go away," pleaded poor Fenella, "you're interrupting a call."
"Iwon'tgo away. We're Hampstead. Is this Lumsden's? It's urgent. It's life or death. Tell him——"
She listened for a moment, then dropped the receiver with a scream. Bryan burst into the room, haggard, his tie hanging loose.
"What's the matter? Are you hurt?"
"Oh, Bryan! There's some one on the telephone for you. They say your son——I don't understand. It's something awful."
Lumsden caught the oscillating receiver and clapped it to his ear. This is what she heard:
"What!Both?My God!The boy's alive? Have you got——? What does he say? Yes! At once!At—once!"
He turned so quickly that Fenella, who was standing by his shoulder, was nearly thrown over. She had to catch his arm to keep her balance.
"Is it bad news?"
"Yes, yes! Oh the devil!—the devil!"
"You'll want the car, won't you?"
"Yes. Do you know how to call it? Put the peg in the hole marked 'Garage!' Say: 'At once—dressed or not.' I can drive."
He tried the outer door, cursed at finding it locked, then remembering, took the key from his pocket and flung it open. He shouted. It seemed scarcely a minute before the passage was full of servants, half dressed, the women with their hair loose, and the men fastening their braces—hardly two before the car was at the door, filling the quiet street with the throb of its great pulse.
"Call a cab and get home quick," he said, as he twisted a white muffler round his throat. "You'll find the number of a cab-rank in that red book. Have you got money for your fare?"
"Can't I go with you, Bryan? Can't I help?"
Even in his distress he had time for a moment of surprised admiration.
"Oh, Flash!" he groaned, "there's no one like you. Come on, then, and be in at the finish!"