"You have, if I may say so, done us the greatest service."
Madame and Sir John Toppys were together in the Owner's Room of theHumming Top, and all had been told.
"It was not intended," replied Madame Gilbert sadly. "I have been frank with you. All the interest and all the wealth of Toppys for their numberless generations would not have induced me to raise my hand against Willatopy. In some ways he was more worthy than the best of you. I was bringing him to England to put him in his place, and yet I am glad that Fate interposed. White blood drags down more than it uplifts. Willatopy in his own island, before the fatal knowledge of his succession reached him, was a simple, gallant, charming boy. Would to God that so he could have remained. But those very qualities, which made him so admirable as a savage youth, dragged him into the pit of degeneracy. He grabbed white vices with both hands, and sloughed off his native virtues. He was losing his soul very fast, lamentably fast. I killed him that I might save what was left."
"You speak as if you need not have fired—to kill," said Toppys slowly.
"At the end I had no choice," replied Madame."But I feel now, and have felt many times since the tragedy of theHumming Top, that he would never have leaped upon me had I spoken. My power over him was great. Until recently he had honoured me as a goddess. With my eyes upon his he could not have struck. And yet I waited for his attack to be delivered. I waited while he felt the point of the dagger, and tested the fittings on his hand. I might have spoken in the old friendly tone, which always moved him—and yet I did not. For it suddenly was revealed to me that here was the solution of his troubled destiny. Now that Willatopy, the dear boy of Tops Island, was no more, his successor, Lord Topsham, were better dead before far worse disasters than death, a clean, quick death, overtook him. So I waited for him to spring—it was a terrible moment, and I cannot speak of it now without a creeping of the flesh—I waited for him to spring that I might shoot. I am not a praying woman," added she, "but there was a prayer in my heart when I sped the bullet through his. I never loved the boy more honestly than in that instant when I deliberately slew him."
They turned to leave the room.
"I shall be sorry to give up my temporary ownership of theHumming Top," said Madame. "I agree with Alexander that she is a bonnie wee beastie."
"Will you not keep her?" asked Toppys calmly.
Madame shook her head. "A yacht, especially a steam yacht of a thousand tons, is too sharp-edged a gift for my poor hands to receive. She must cost twenty thousand a year to run, and I cannot spend a tithe of that amount upon my travels."
"I did not mean that you should maintain her," said Toppys.
Madame smiled wickedly. "Sir John Toppys, in my day I have been offered many gifts by the undiscerning. Jewellery, of course. Perfectly appointed flats and houses, of course. One refuses calmly from habit I have never yet had a fully maintained thousand-ton yacht laid at my feet, yet it costs me little to refuse. Madame Gilbert, Sir John Toppys, is not for sale, and she is slightly disappointed that one whom she thought her friend should have offered to purchase her."
"You misunderstand me again," said Sir John Toppys, "I suspect wilfully. I did not offer theHumming Topas your purchase price. I wished to hint, somewhat crudely I fear, that I am a widower, and that——"
He paused. Madame looked at him curiously. It was almost unbelievable, yet plain to see, that the Baronet of Wigan was tongue-tied with genuine emotion. She softened towards him, and her mantle of cynicism fell.
"Et puis?" she murmured with encouragement.
"My wife has long since been dead. My two sons have fought through the war, and happily are unhurt. My line is safe. One son is already married; the other hopes soon to be married. I have no daughter to be an embarrassment to a stepmother. There is no reason, therefore, in my domestic circumstances why Madame Gilbert should refuse to share my home—and my yacht."
"No reason," observed Madame reflectively. "No reason, and every inducement, except the will of Madame Gilbert."
"Is what I ask impossible?"
"Quite. Even if I personally desired to accept your offer, it would be impossible. You are what you are, because my hand opened the way. I cannot share in succession the hereditary honours of Willatopy."
"Is that your only reason?" he asked, his eyes brightening. They were the steel blue Toppys eyes, the eyes of Willatopy.
"No," said she, and told him of her vagabond life. Once she had loved and married, but for the future was resolved to remain free. She had played with the hearts of men too long to submit to mastery.
"I understand," said he, when her tale was told. "Not even theHumming Top, not even the overflowing disgusting wealth of a War Profiteer, can persuade you to take a husband in earnest. And yet when I look at you, especially now when you so obdurately dismiss me, I shall dearly love to pour my ill-gotten riches into your bonny lap."
"So would the Chief Engineer Ewing," quoth Madame, smiling.
She moved towards the door, but Toppys had not yet done with her. "Is there anything that I can do or offer which will shake your unhappy resolution?"
"Women," observed Madame contemplatively, "are selfish toads. Their one unchanging purpose from the cradle to the coffin is to grab as much as they can from men, and to give as little as they can in return. I have grabbed more than most because I am more agreeable to look upon than are most. We are vampires. I am true to the purposeof my sex, Sir John Toppys. I have snatched at all I could get from you, and have refused to give anything in return. I have even asked you to forgo your share in Alexander's boodle, and you have consented. You are a better man than I am a woman. You are well rid of me, even as an associate."
"I shall not claim the Barony of Topsham," said he. "My son, when his day shall dawn, may succeed if he will—it is his lawful right. But I shall go to my grave as Sir John Toppys. Your hand has given me the Barony, but my hand, no less resolute than yours, refuses the gift."
"You are right," said she thoughtfully. "You with your yacht and I with my automatic have slain Willatopy, and we cannot either of us accept the price of blood. I am glad that you will never sit in the poor lad's place."
She held out both her hands to him, and Toppys—as he had done months before on the deck of theHumming Top—Toppys stooped down and kissed her fingers.
"There is blood upon them," she whispered.
"And yet I can kiss them," murmured he. "Were it not that your harsh will forbids, I would go on kissing them all my life."