“My dearest wife,” it began. “At last this miserable separation comes to an end! I am here in London, on my way to you! Prepare to throw yourself into my arms. How much too long has our happiness been deferred!“I should have been with you before, dear Wilhelmina, but for more sordid considerations. I need money. I need money very badly. Send me, please, a thousand pounds to-morrow between three and four—or shall I come and fetch it, and you?“As you will.“Your devoted husband,“Jean.”
“My dearest wife,” it began. “At last this miserable separation comes to an end! I am here in London, on my way to you! Prepare to throw yourself into my arms. How much too long has our happiness been deferred!
“I should have been with you before, dear Wilhelmina, but for more sordid considerations. I need money. I need money very badly. Send me, please, a thousand pounds to-morrow between three and four—or shall I come and fetch it, and you?
“As you will.
“Your devoted husband,“Jean.”
He gave her back the letter gravely.
“What was your answer?” he asked.
“I sent nothing,” she declared. “I did not reply. But I am afraid—horribly afraid! He is a terrible man. If we were alone, he would kill me as you or I would a fly. If only they could have proved the things at the trial which were known to be true, he would never have seen the daylight again. But even the witnesses were terrified. They dared not give evidence against him.”
“Will you tell me,” Macheson asked, “how it all came about? Not unless you like,” he added, after a moment’s hesitation. “Not if it is painful to you.”
She sat down upon the couch, curling herself up at the further end of it, and building up the pillows at the further end to support her head. Against the soft green silk, her face was like the face of a tired child. Something seemed to have gone out of her. She was no longer playing a part—not even to him—not even to herself. There was nothing left of the woman of the world. It was the child who told him her story.
“You must listen,” she said, “and you may laugh at me if you like, but you must not be angry. My story is the story of a fool! Sit down, please—at the end of the couch if you don’t mind! I like to have you between me and the door.”
He obeyed her in silence, and she continued. She spoke like a child repeating her lesson. She held a crumpled-up lace handkerchief in her hand, and her eyes, large and intent, never left his.
“This is the story of a girl,” she said, “an orphanwho went abroad with a chaperon to travel in Europe and perfect her French. In Paris the chaperon fell ill, the girl hired a guide recommended by the hotel, to show her the sights.
“They saw all that the tourist sees, and the chaperon was still ill. The girl thought that she would like to see something of the Parisians themselves; she was tired of Cook’s English people and Americans. So she gave the guide money to buy himself clothes, and bade him take her to the restaurants and places where the world of Paris assembled. It was known at the hotel, perhaps through the servants, that the girl was rich. The guide heard it and told some one else. Between them they concocted a plot. The girl was to be the victim. She was only eighteen.
“One day they were lunching at the Café de Paris—the guide and the girl—when a young man entered. He was exceedingly handsome, and very wonderfully turned out after the fashion of the French dandy. The guide, as the young man passed, rose up and bowed respectfully. The young man nodded carelessly. Then he saw the girl, and he looked at her as no man had ever looked before. And the girl ought to have been angry, but wasn’t.
“She asked the guide who the young man was. He told her that it was the Duke of Languerois, head of one of the oldest families in France. His father and grandfather, and for a time he himself, had been in their service! The girl looked across at the young man with interest, and the young man returned her gaze. That was what he was there for.
“As they left the restaurant her guide fell behindfor a moment, and when she looked round she saw him talking to the young man. Of course she wanted to know what they had been saying, and with much apparent reluctance the guide told her. The young man had been inquiring about mademoiselle, where they spent their time, how he could meet them. Of course he had told nothing. But the young man was very persistent and very much in earnest! She encouraged the guide to talk about him, and she believed what she was told. He was rich, noble, adored in French society, and he was in love with mademoiselle. She was very soon given to understand this.
“For several days the young man was always in evidence. He was perfectly respectful, he never attempted to address her. It was all most cunningly planned. Then one evening, when she was driving with her guide through a narrow street, a man sprang suddenly upon the step of her carriage and snatched at her jewels. Another on the other side had passed his arm round the guide’s neck and almost throttled him, and a third was struggling with the coachman. It was one of those lightning-like attacks by Apaches, which were common enough then—at least it seemed like one. The girl screamed, and, of course, the young man, who had been following in another voiture, appeared. One of the thieves he threw on to the pavement, the others fled. And the young man was a hero! It was well arranged!”
Her voice broke for a moment, and Macheson moved uneasily upon the sofa. If he could he would have stopped her. He could guess as much of themiserable story as it was necessary for him to know! But she ignored his threatened interruption. She was determined, having kept her secret for so long, that he should know now the whole truth.
“After that, things moved rapidly. The girl was as near her own mistress as a child of her age could be. She was lonely and the young man proved a delightful companion. He had many attractive gifts, and he knew how to make use of them. All the time he made love to her. For a time she resisted, but she had very little chance. She was just at the age when all girls are more or less fools. In the end she consented to a secret marriage. Afterwards he was to take her to his family. But that time never came.
“They were married at eleven o’clock one morning, and went afterwards to a café for déjeûner. The young man that day was ill at ease and nervous. He kept looking about him as though he was afraid of being followed. He spoke vaguely of danger from the anger of his noble relations. They were scarcely seated at luncheon before a man came quietly into the place and whispered a few words in his ear. Whatever those few words were, the young man went suddenly pale and called for his hat and stick. He wrote an address on a piece of paper and gave it to the girl. He begged her to follow him in an hour—he would introduce her then to his friends. And he left her alone. The girl was troubled and uneasy. He had gone off without even paying for the luncheon. He had the air of a desperate man. She began to realize what she had done.
“She was preparing to depart when an Englishman, who had been lunching at the other end of the room, came over, and, with a word of apology, sat down by her side. He saw that she was young, and a fellow-countryman, and he told her very gravely that he was sure she could not be aware of the character of the man with whom she had been lunching. Her eyes grew wide open with horror. The man, he said, was the illegitimate son of a French nobleman, and his mother had been married to a guide—her guide! He had perhaps the worst character of any man in Paris. He had been tried for murder, imprisoned for forgery, and he was now suspected of being the leader of a band of desperate criminals who were dreaded all over Paris. This and other things he told her of the man whom she had just married. The girl listened as though turned to stone, with the piece of paper which he had given her crumpled up in her hands. Then the police came. They asked her questions. She pretended at first to know nothing. At last she addressed the commissionary. If she gave him the address where this young man could be found, he and all his friends, might she depart without mention being made of her, or her name appearing in any way? The commissionary agreed, and she gave him the piece of paper. The Englishman—it was Gilbert Deyes—took her back to her hotel, and the police captured Jean le Roi and the whole band of his associates. The girl returned to England that night. Jean le Roi was sentenced to six years’ penal servitude. His time was up last week.”
“What a diabolical plot!” Macheson exclaimed.“But the marriage! It could have been annulled, surely?”
“Perhaps,” she answered, “but I did not dare to face the publicity. I felt that I should never be able to look any one in the face again. I had given my name to the guide Johnson as Clara Hurd. I hoped that they might never find me.”
“They cannot do you any harm,” Macheson declared. “Let me go with you to the lawyers. They will see that you are not molested.”
She shook her head.
“It is not so easy,” she said. “The marriage was quite legal. To have it annulled I should have to enter a suit. The whole story would come out. I could never live in England afterwards.”
“But you don’t mean,” he protested, “to remain bound to this blackguard all your life!”
“How can I free myself,” she asked, “except by making myself the laughing-stock of the country?”
“Why did you send for me?” he asked bluntly.
“To ask for your advice—and to protect me,” she added, with a shiver. “It is not only money that Jean le Roi wants! It is vengeance because I betrayed him.”
“As for that, I won’t leave you except when you send me away,” he declared. “And my advice! If you want that, the right thing to me seems simple enough. Go at once to your lawyers. They will tell you the proper course. At the worst, the man could be bought off for the present.”
She raised her head.
“I will not give him one penny,” she declared. “I have always sworn that.”
“But I’m afraid if you won’t try to divorce him that he can claim some,” Macheson said.
“Then he must come and take it by force,” she declared.
There was silence between them. Then she rose to her feet and came and stood before him.
“I ought to have told you all this long ago,” she said simply. “To-day I felt that I must tell you without another hour’s delay. Now that you know, I am not so terrified. But you must promise to come and see me every day while that brute remains in London.”
“Yes! I promise that,” he answered, also rising to his feet.
They heard her maid moving about in the bedroom.
“Hortense is reminding me that I must dress for dinner,” she remarked with a faint smile. “One must dine, you know, even in the midst of tragedies.”
Macheson prepared to take his departure.
“I shall come to-morrow,” he said, “if you do not send for me before.”
Lady Peggy was fussing round the drawing-room, talking to all her guests at once.
“I haven’t the least idea who takes anybody in,” she declared. “James said he’d see to that, so you might just as well put your hand in a lucky-bag. And I’m not at all sure that you’ll get any dinner. I’ve got a newchef—drives up in a high dogcart with such a sweet little groom. He may be all right. Jules, the maître d’hôtel at Claridge’s, got him for me, and, Wilhelmina, sooner than come out like a ghost, I’d really take lessons in the use of the rouge-pot. My new maid’s a perfect treasure at it. No one can ever tell whether my colour’s natural or not. I don’t mind telling you people it generally isn’t. But anyhow, it isn’t daubed on like Lady Sydney’s—makes her look for all the world like one of ‘ces dames,’ doesn’t it? I’m sure I’d be afraid to be seen speaking to her if I were a man. Gilbert,” she broke off, addressing Deyes, who was just being ushered in, “how dare you come to dinner without being asked? I’m sure I have not asked you. Don’t say I did, now. You refused me eight times running, and I crossed you off my list.”
Deyes held out a card as he bowed over his hostess’s fingers.
“My dear lady,” he said, “here is the proof that I am not an intruder. I am down to take in our hostess of Thorpe!”
“You have bribed James,” she declared. “I hope it cost you a great deal of money. I will not believe that I asked you. However, since you are here, go and tell Wilhelmina some of your stories. I hate pale cheeks, and Wilhelmina blushes easily. No use looking at the clock, Duke. Dinner will be at least half an hour late, I’m sure. These foreignchefshave no idea of punctuality. What’s that? Dinner served! Two minutes before time. Well, we’re all here, aren’t we? I knew it would be either too early or too late. Duke, you will have to take me in. By the time we get there the soup will probably be cold. You’d better pray that we’re starting with caviare and oysters! Such a slow crowd, aren’t they—and such chatterboxes! I wish they’d move on a little faster and talk a little less. No! Only thirty. Nice sociable number, I call it, for a round table. I asked Victor Macheson, the man who’s so rude to us all every Thursday afternoon for a guinea a time—I don’t know why we pay it to be abused,—but he wouldn’t come. I met him before he developed, and I don’t think he liked me.”
“You got my telegram?” Deyes asked, as he unfolded his napkin.
Wilhelmina nodded.
“Yes!” she answered. “It was very good of you to warn me. I have had—a letter already. The campaign has begun.”
Deyes nodded.
“Chosen your weapons yet?” he asked.
“I haven’t much choice, have I?” she answered, a little bitterly. “I fight, of course.”
Deyes was carefully scanning the menu through his horn-rimmed eyeglass.
“Becassine à la Broche,” he murmured. “I must remember that.”
Then he turned in his chair and looked at Wilhelmina.
“You are worrying,” he declared abruptly.
She shrugged her shoulders, alabaster white, rising from the unrelieved black of her velvet gown.
“My maid’s fault,” she added. “I ought to have worn white. Of course I’m worrying. I don’t care about carrying the signs of it about with me though. I think I shall have to adopt Peggy’s advice, and go to the rouge-pot.”
“Perhaps,” he said deliberately, “it will not be necessary.”
She looked up at him quickly. His words sounded encouraging.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that a way may be found to induce a certain gentleman to return to his native country and stay there,” Deyes said smoothly. “After dinner we are going to have some talk. Please oblige me now by abandoning the discussion and eating something. Ah! that champagne will do you good.”
Her neighbour on the other side addressed her, and Wilhelmina was conscious of a sudden lighteningof the load upon her heart. Like every one else, she had confidence in this tall, self-contained man whose life was somewhat of a mystery even to his friends, and who had about him that suggestion of power which reticence nearly always brings. He was going to help her. She pushed all those miserable thoughts away from her. She became herself again.
“Let no one imagine,” Lady Peggy said, carefully knocking the end of a cigarette upon the table, “that I am going to try to catch the eyes of all you women, and go sailing away with my nose in the air to look at engravings in the drawing-room. You can just get up and go when you like, any or all of you. There are bridge tables laid out for you in the library, music and a hopping girl—I don’t call it dancing—in the drawing-room, a pool in the billiard-room, or flirtation in the winter-garden. Coffee and liqueurs will follow you wherever you go. Take your choice, good people. For myself, the Duke is telling me stories of Cairo. J’y suis, j’y reste. I’m only thankful no one else can hear them!”
The party at the great round table dispersed slowly by two and threes. Wilhelmina and Deyes strolled into the winter-garden. Deyes lit a cigarette and stood with his hands behind him. Wilhelmina was leaning against the back of a chair. She was too excited to sit down.
“Please!” she begged.
Deyes threw his cigarette away. His face seemed to harden and soften at the same time. His mouth was suddenly firm, but his eyes glowed. All the boredom was gone from his manner and expression.
“Wilhelmina,” he said, “I have wanted to marry you ever since I saw you in the Café de Paris with that atrocious blackguard who has caused you so much suffering. You may remember that I have hinted as much to you before!”
She was startled—visibly disturbed.
“You know very well,” she said, “that you are speaking of impossible things!”
“Things that were impossible, Wilhelmina,” he said. “Suppose I take Jean le Roi off your hands? Suppose I promise to send him back to his own country like a rat to his hole? Suppose I promise that your marriage shall be annulled without a line in the newspapers, without a single vestige of publicity?”
“You cannot do it,” she murmured eagerly.
“You want your freedom, then?” he asked.
“Yes! I want my freedom,” she answered. “I have a right to it, haven’t I?”
“And I,” he said slowly, “want you!”
There was a short pause. Through the palms came the faint wailing of a violin, the crash of pianoforte chords, the clear soft notes of a singer. Wilhelmina felt her eyes fill with tears. She was overwrought, and there were new things, things that were strange to her, in the worn, lined face of the man who was bending towards her.
“Wilhelmina,” he said softly, “life, our life, does its best to strangle the emotions. One feels that one does best with a pulse which has forgotten how to quicken, and a heart which beats to the will of its owner. But the most hardened of us come to griefsometimes. I am afraid that I have come—very much to grief!”
“I am sorry,” she said quietly.
He drew away and his face became like marble.
“You mean—that it isn’t any use?” he asked hoarsely.
She looked at him, and he did not press for words.
“Is it—the missioner?” he asked.
Her head sank a little lower, but still she did not answer. Gilbert Deyes drew himself upright. He remembered the cigarette which had burnt itself out between his fingers, and he carefully re-lit it.
“I am now,” he said, blowing a cloud of blue smoke into the heart of a yellow rose, “confronted by a somewhat hackneyed, but always interesting problem. Do I care for you enough—or too little—or too much—to continue your friend, when my aid will probably ensure the loss of you for ever! It is not a problem to be hurried over, this!”
“There is no need for haste,” she answered. “I know you, Gilbert, better than you know yourself. I am very sure that you will help me—if you can.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You are a good deal surer of me than I am of myself,” he answered. “Why should I give you up to a boy who hasn’t learnt yet the first lesson of life?”
“What is it?” she asked. “I am not clear that I have graduated.”
“You can see it blazoned over the portals as you pass through the gates,” he answered, “‘Abandon all enthusiasm, ye who enter here.’ The pathways of life are heaped with the corpses of those who willnot understand. Do you think that this boy will fare better than the rest, with his preaching and lectures and East End work? It’s sheer impertinence! Man, the individual, is only a pawn in the game of life. Why should he imagine that he can alter the things that are?”
“Even the striving to alter them,” she said, “may tend towards betterment.”
“A platitude,” he declared—“and hopeless!”
She raised her eyes to his.
“Anyhow,” she said softly, “I care for him.”
He bowed low.
“Incomprehensible,” he murmured. “Take your freedom and marry this young man if you must. But I warn you that you will be miserable. Apples and green figs don’t grow on the same tree.”
He drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Jean le Roi,” he said, “was married to Annette Hurier, in the town of Châlons, two years before he posed before you as the Duke of Languerois. You will find Annette’s address in there. It took me a year to trace this out—a wasted year! Bah! you women are all disappointments. We will go and play bridge.”
Lady Peggy stared at Wilhelmina when they entered the library a few minutes later.
“What on earth have you been doing to her, Gilbert?” she demanded. “She’s a changed woman!”
“Making love to her!” Deyes answered.
Lady Peggy laughed.
“If I believed you,” she declared, “I’d give up this rubber and go and lose myself amongst thepalms with you. Come and cut in—you too, Wilhelmina.”
But Wilhelmina excused herself. She drove homewards with a soft smile upon her lips, and the dead weight lifted from her heart.
It was a round table, too, at which Macheson dined that night, but with a different company. For they were all men who sat there, men with earnest faces and thoughtful eyes. The graces of evening dress and society talk they knew nothing of. They were the friends of Macheson’s college days, the men who had sworn amongst themselves that, however they might live, they would devote the greater part of their life to their fellow-creatures.
They were smoking pipes, and a great bowl of tobacco was on the table. Few of them took wine, but Macheson and Holderness were drinking whisky. Holderness, their senior, was usually the one who started their informal talk.
“My work’s been easy enough all the time,” he remarked, leaning forward. “There were no end of labour-papers, but all being run either for the trades’ unions, or some special industrial branch. I started a labour magazine—Macheson found the money, of course—and I’m paying my way now. I don’t know whether the thing does any good. At any rate it’s an effort! I’ve been hearing about your colony, Franklin. I shall want an article on it presently.”
A tall, thin young man removed his pipe from his mouth.
“You shall have it as soon as I can find time,” he answered. “We’re going strong, but really there’s very little credit due to me. It was Macheson’s money and Macheson’s idea. We’ve got an entire village now near Llandirog, and the whole population come from the prisons. Macheson and I used to attend the police-courts ourselves, hear all the cases, and form our own conclusions as to the prisoners. If we thought there was any hope for them, we made a note, met them when they came out, and offered them a job, on probation—in our village. We have to leave it to the chaplains now—I can’t spare time to be always in London. We’ve two woollen mills, a saw-mill, and a bakery, besides all the shops, and nearly a thousand acres of well-farmed land. At first the people round were terribly shy of us, but that’s all over now. Why, we have less trouble with the police in our village than any for miles around. We’re paying our way, too.”
“You’ve done thundering well, Franklin,” Macheson declared. “I remember what a rough time you had at first. Uphill work, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what makes it such a relief to have pulled through,” Franklin declared, re-lighting his pipe. “I shouldn’t like to say how much I had to draw from Macheson before we turned the corner. Glad to say we’ve paid a bit back now, though. Tell us about your idea, Holroyd. They tell me it’s working well in some of the large cities.”
“It’s simple enough,” Holroyd answered, smiling. “It was just the application of common sense to the laws of charity. Nearly every one’s charitable by instinct—only sometimes it’s so difficult for a busy man to know exactly when and how to give. I started in one of the big cities, looking up prosperous middle-class families. I’d try to induce them, instead of just writing cheques for institutions and making things for bazaars, to take a personal interest in a family of about the same size as their own who were in a bad way. When they promised, all I had to do was to find the poor family and bring them together, and it was astonishing how much the one could do for the other without undue effort. There were the clothes, of course, and old housekeeping things, odd bits of furniture, food from the kitchen, a job for one of the boys in the garden, a day’s work for one of the girls in the house. I tell you I have lists of hundreds of poor families, who feel now that they have some one to fall back upon, and the richer half of the combination take a tremendous interest in their foster-family, as some of them call it. Sometimes there is trouble, but the world is governed by majorities, and in the majority of cases the thing has turned out excellently.”
“There’s the essence of charity in the idea—the personal note,” Macheson remarked. “How’s the Canadian farm going, Finlayson?”
“We’re paying our way,” Finlayson answered, “and you should see our boys. They come out thin and white—all skin and bones. You wouldn’t recognize one of them in six months! They’re good workers, too. We’ve nine hundred altogether in theNorth-West, and we want more. I’m hoping to take a hundred back with me.”
“It’s a grand country,” Macheson said. “I’m glad it’s part of the Empire, Finlayson, or I should grudge you those boys. We can’t spare too many. Hinton, your work speaks for itself.”
Hinton, the only one in clerical dress, smiled a little wearily.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wish it would speak a little louder. East End work is all the same. One feels ashamed of preaching religion to a starving people.”
Macheson nodded his sympathy.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “It drove me from the East to the West. We should preach at the one and feed the other!... Of course, I personally have always been handicapped. I haven’t been able to subscribe to any of the established churches. But I do believe in the laws of retribution, whether you call them human or Divine. One’s moral delinquencies pay one out just as bodily excesses do. Always one’s debts are to be paid, and it’s a terrible burden the drones must carry. After all, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s heaps of sound moral teaching to be drummed into our fellow-creatures without the necessity of being orthodox!”
“You speak lightly of your own work, Macheson,” Franklin said, “but there is one thing we must none of us forget. Our schools, our farms, our colonies, all our attempts, indeed, owe their very being to your openpurse——”
Macheson held out his hand.
“Franklin,” he said, “I want to tell you something which I think none of you know. I want to tell you where most of my money came from, and you’ll understand then why I’ve been so anxious to get rid of it—or a part of it—in this way. Did you ever hear of Ferguson Davis, the money-lender? Yes, I can see by your faces you did. Well, he was my mother’s brother, and he died without a will when I was a child, and the whole lot came to me!”
“A million and a quarter,” some one murmured.
“More,” Macheson answered. “I was at Oxford when I understood exactly the whole business, and it seemed like nothing but a curse to me. Then I talked to the dear old professor, and he showed me the way. I can honestly say that not one penny of that money has ever been spent, directly or indirectly, upon myself. I believe that if the old man could come to life and read my bank-book he’d have a worse fit than the one which carried him off. I appointed myself the trustee of his fortune, and it’s spread pretty well all over the world. I’ve never refused to stand at the back of any reasonable scheme for the betterment of our fellow-creatures. There have been a few failures perhaps, but many successes. The Davis buildings are mine—in trust, of course. They’ve done well. I’ve a larger scheme on hand now on the same lines. And in spite of it all the money grows! I can’t get rid of it. The old man chose his investments well, and many of our purely philanthropic schemes are beginning to pay their way. It isn’t that I care a fig about the money, but you musttry to make these things self-supporting, or you injure the character of those who benefit by them. Now I’ve told you all the truth, but don’t let it go out of this room. You can consider yourselves fellow-trustees with me, if you like. Show me an honest way to use money for the real benefit of the world’s unfortunates, and it’s yours as much as mine.”
“It’s magnificent,” Franklin murmured.
“It’s justice,” Macheson answered. “The money was wrung from the poor, and it goes back to them. Perhaps it’s a saner distribution, for it’s the improvident and shiftless of the world who go to the money-lender.”
There was a knock at the door. The hall-porter of the club in which they were holding their informal meeting entered and addressed Macheson.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but there is a young man here who wants to see you at once. He would not give his name, but he says that his business is urgent.”
“Where is he?” Macheson asked.
“In the smaller strangers’ room, sir.”
Macheson excused himself, and, crossing the hall, entered the barely furnished apartment, on the left of the entrance. A young man was walking up and down with fierce, restless movements. He was pale, untidily dressed, and in his eyes there was a curious look of terror, as though all the time he saw beyond the walls of the room things which kept him breathless with fear. Macheson, pausing for a moment on the threshold, failed on the instant to recognize him. Then he closed the door and advanced into the room.
“Hurd!” he exclaimed. “What do you want? What is the matter?”
“Matter enough,” Hurd declared wildly. “I have been a fool and a blackguard. Those two got round me—the old man and his cursed step-son! I must have been mad!”
“What have you done?” Macheson asked sharply.
“She treated me badly,” Hurd continued, “made a fool of me before you, and turned me away from Thorpe. I wanted to cry quits with her, and those two got hold of me. Jean le Roi is her husband. She refused to see him—to hear from him. Letty Foulton is there, and I have been allowed to visit her. I knew the back way in, and I took Jean le Roi there—an hour ago—and he is waiting in her room until she comes home!”
“Good God!” Macheson murmured. “You unspeakable blackguard!”
He glanced at the clock. It was past midnight.
“What time was she expected home?” he demanded.
“Soon after eleven! She was only dining out. He—he swore that he only wanted to talk to her, to threaten her with exposure. She deserved that! But he is a madman. When I left him I was afraid. He carries a knife always, and he kept on saying that she was his wife. I left him there waiting—and when I wanted him to promise that there should be no violence, he laughed at me. He is hidden in her room. I thought that it was only money he wanted—but—but——”
Macheson flung him on one side. He caught up his hat and rushed out of the club.
Hortense smiled softly to herself as she laid down the ivory-backed brushes. What did it mean, she wondered, when her mistress went out with tired eyes and pallid cheeks, and came home with the colour of a rose and eyes like stars, humming an old French love-song, and her feet moving all the time to some unheard music? It was years since she had seen her like this! Hortense knew the signs and was well pleased. At last, then, the household was to be properly established. A woman as beautiful as her mistress without a lover was to Hortense an incomprehensible thing.
“You can go now, Hortense,” her mistress ordered. “I will have my coffee half an hour earlier to-morrow morning.”
“Very good, madame,” the girl answered. “There is nothing else to-night, then?”
“Nothing, thank you,” Wilhelmina answered. “You had better go to bed now. I have been keeping you up rather late the last few evenings. We must both turn over a new leaf.”
Hortense departed, smiling to herself. It was always like this—when it came. One thought ofothers and one wanted to be alone. She, too, hummed a few bars of that love-song as she climbed the stairs to her room.
Wilhelmina rose from her chair and stood for a moment looking at herself in the long, oval looking-glass. Hortense had chosen for her a French dressing-jacket, with the palest of light blue ribbons drawn through the lace. Wilhelmina looked at herself and smiled. Was it the light, the colouring, or was she really still so good to look at? Her hair, falling over her shoulders, was long and silky, the lines seemed to have been smoothed out of her face—she was like herself when she had been a girl! She followed the slender lines of her figure, down past the lace of her petticoat to her feet, still encased in her evening slippers with diamond buckles, and she laughed softly to herself. What was she yet but a girl? Fate had cheated her of some of the years, but she was barely twenty-five. How wonderful to be young still and feel one’s blood flow to music like this! Her thoughts ran riot. Her mouth trembled and a deeper colour stained her cheeks. Then she heard a voice behind her, a living voice in her room. And as swiftly as those other mysterious thoughts had stolen into her heart, came the chill of a deadly, indescribable fear.
“Charming! Ravishing! It is almost worth the six years of waiting, dear wife!”
She began to tremble. She could not have called out or framed any intelligible sentence to save her life. It was like a nightmare. The horror was there, without the power of movement or speech.
He moved his position and came within the rangeof her terrified vision. Hurd’s twenty pounds and a little more added to it had done wonders. He wore correct evening clothes, correctly worn. Except for his good looks—the good looks of a devil—he would have attracted notice nowhere. He leaned against the couch, and though his lips curled into a sneer, there was a flame in his eyes, a horrible admiration.
She tried to pray.
“You are overcome,” he murmured softly. “Ah! Why not? Six years since our happiness was snatched from us, chérie! Ah! but it was cruel! You have thought of me, I trust! You have pitied me! Ah! how often I have lain awake at night in my cell, fondly imagining some such reunion—as this.”
She forced herself to speak through lips suddenly pale. What strange words they sounded, frozen things, scarcely audible! Yet the effort hurt her.
“I will give you—the money,” she said. “More, if you will!”
“Ah!” he said reflectively, “the money! I had forgotten that. It was not kind of you to run away and hide, little woman! It was not kind of you to send me nothing when I was in prison! Oh! I suffered, I can tell you! There is a good deal to be made up for! Pet, if you had not reminded me, just now these things seem so little. Dear little wife, you are enchanting. Almost you turn my head.”
He came slowly towards her. She threw up her hands.
“Wait!” she begged, “oh, wait! Listen! I am in your power. I admit it. I will make terms. I will sign anything. What is it that you want?You shall be rich, but you must go away. You must leave me now!”
He looked at her steadily and it seemed to her that his eyes were on fire with evil things.
“Little wife,” he said, with a shade of mockery in his lowered tone. “I cannot do that. Consider how you were snatched from my arms! Consider the cruelty of it. As for the money—bah! I have come to claim my own. Don’t you understand, you bewitching little fool? It is you I want! The money can wait! I cannot!”
He came nearer still and she shrank, like a terrified dumb thing, against her magnificent dressing-table, with its load of priceless trinkets. She tried to call out, but her voice seemed gone, and he only laughed as he laid his hand over her mouth and drew her gently towards him. With a sudden unnatural strength she wrested herself from his arms.
“Oh! listen to me, listen to me for one moment first,” she begged frantically. “It’s true that I married you, but it was all a plot—and I was a child! You shall have your share of my money! Leave me alone and I swear it! You shall be rich! You can go back to Paris and be an adventurer no longer. You shall spend your own money. You can live your own life!”
Even then her brain moved quickly. She dared not speak of Annette, for fear of making him desperate. It was his cupidity to which she appealed.
“I am no wife of yours,” she moaned. “You shall have more money than you ever had before in your life. But don’t make me kill myself! For I shall, if you touch me!”
He was so close to her now that his hot breath scorched her cheek.
“Is it that another has taken my place?” he asked.
“Yes!—no! that is, there is some one whom I love,” she cried. “Listen! You know what you can do with money in Paris. Anything! Everything!”
He was so close to her now that the words died away upon her lips.
“Little wife,” he whispered, “don’t you understand—that I am a man, and that it is you I want?”
Again she tried to scream, but his hand covered her mouth. His arm was suddenly around her. Then he started back with an oath and looked towards the door of her bedroom.
“Who is in that room?” he asked quickly.
“My maid,” she lied.
He took a quick step across the room. The door was flung open and Macheson entered. Wilhelmina fainted, but forced herself back into consciousness with a sheer effort of will. Sobbing and laughing at the same time, she tried to drag herself towards the bell, but Jean le Roi stood in the way. Jean le Roi was calm but wicked.
“What are you doing in my wife’s bedroom?” he asked.
“I am here to see you out of the house,” Macheson answered, with one breathless glance around the room. “Will you come quietly?”
“Out of my own house?” Jean le Roi said softly. “Out of my wife’s room? Who are you?”
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“Never mind,” Macheson answered. “Her friend!Let that be enough. And let me tell you this. If I had come too late I would have wrung your neck.”
Jean le Roi sprang at him like a cat, his legs off the ground, one arm around the other’s neck, and something gleaming in his right hand. Nothing but Macheson’s superb strength saved him. He risked being throttled, and caught Jean le Roi’s right arm in such a grip that he swung him half round the room. The bone snapped, and the knife fell from the nerveless fingers. But Macheson let go a second too soon. Jean le Roi had all the courage and the insensibility to pain of a brute animal. He stretched out his foot, and with a trick of his old days, tripped Macheson so that he fell heavily. Jean le Roi bent over him on his knees, breathing heavily, and with murder in his eyes. Macheson scarcely breathed! He lay perfectly still. Jean le Roi staggered to his feet and turned towards Wilhelmina.
“You see, madame,” he said, seizing her by the wrist, “how I shall deal with your lovers if there are any more of them. No use tugging at that bell. I saw to that before you came! I’m used to fighting for what I want, and I think I’ve won you!”
He caught her into his arms, but suddenly released her with a low animal cry. He knew that this was the end, for he was pinioned from behind, a child in the mighty grip which held him powerless. “You are a little too hasty, my friend,” Macheson remarked. “I was afraid I might not be so quick as you on my feet, so I rested for a moment. But no man has ever escaped from this grip till I chose to let him go. Now,” he added, turning to Wilhelmina,“the way is clear. Will you go outside and rouse the servants? Don’t come back.”
“You are—quite safe?” she faltered.
“Absolutely,” he answered. “I could hold him with one hand.”
Jean le Roi lifted his head. His brain was working swiftly.
“Listen!” he exclaimed. “It is finished! I am beaten! I, Jean le Roi, admit defeat. Why call in servants? The affair is better finished between ourselves.”
Wilhelmina paused. In that first great rush of relief, she had not stopped to think that with Jean le Roi a prisoner, and herself as prosecutrix, the whole miserable story must be published. He continued.
“Give me money,” he said, “only a half of what you offered me just now, and you shall have your freedom.”
Wilhelmina smiled. Something of the joy of a few hours ago came faintly back to her.
“I have already that,” she answered. “I learnt the truth to-night.”
Jean le Roi shrugged his shoulders. The game was up then! What an evening of disasters!
“Let me go,” he said. “I ask no more.”
Wilhelmina and Macheson exchanged glances. She vanished into her room for a moment, and reappeared in a long wrapper.
“Come with me softly,” she said, “and I will let you out.”
So they three went on tiptoe down the broad stairs. Macheson and Wilhelmina exchanged nowords. Yet they both felt that the future was different for them.
“You can give Mr. Macheson your address,” Wilhelmina said, as they stood at the front door. “I will send you something to help you make a fresh start.”
But Jean le Roi laughed.
“I play only for the great stakes,” he murmured, with a swagger, “and when I lose—I lose.”
So he vanished into the darkness, and Macheson and Wilhelmina remained with clasped hands.
“To-morrow,” he whispered, stooping and kissing her fingers.
“To-morrow,” she repeated. “Thank God you came to-night!”
She was too weary, too happy to ask for explanations, and he offered none. All the time, as he crossed the Square and turned towards his house, those words rang in his ears—To-morrow!
Deyes caught a vision of blue in the window, and crossed the lawn. Lady Peggy leaned over the low sill. Between them was only a fragrant border of hyacinths.
“You know that our host and hostess have deserted us?” she asked.
He nodded.
“They have gone over to this wonderful Convalescent Home that Macheson is building in the hills,” he remarked. “I am not sure that I consider it good manners to leave us to entertain one another.”
“I am not sure,” she said, “that it is proper. Wilhelmina should have considered that we are her only guests.”
She sat down in the window-sill and leaned back against the corner. She had slept well, and she was not afraid of the sunshine—blue, too, was her most becoming colour. He looked at her admiringly.
“You are really looking very well this morning,” he said.
“Thank you,” she answered. “I was expecting that.”
“I wonder,” he said, “how you others discover the secret of eternal youth. You and Macheson and Wilhelmina all look younger than you did last year. I seem to be getting older all by myself.”
She looked at him critically. There were certainly more lines about his face and the suspicion of crow’s-feet about his tired eyes.
“Age,” she said, “is simply a matter of volition. You wear yourself out fretting for the impossible!”
“One has one’s desires,” he murmured.
“But you should learn,” she said, “to let your desires be governed by your reason. It is a foolish thing to want what you may not have.”
“You think that it is like that with me?” he asked.
“All the world knows,” she answered, “that you are in love with Wilhelmina!”
“One must be in love with someone,” he remarked.
“Naturally! But why choose a woman who is head and ears in love with some one else?”
“It cannot last,” he answered, “she has married him.”
Lady Peggy reached out for a cushion and placed it behind her head.
“That certainly would seem hopeful in the case of an ordinary woman—myself, for instance,” she said. “But Wilhelmina is not an ordinary woman. She always would do things differently from other people. I don’t want to make you more unhappy than you are, but I honestly believe that Wilhelmina is going to set a new fashion. She is going to try and re-establish the life domestic amongst the upper classes.”
“She always was such a reformer,” he sighed.
Lady Peggy nodded sympathetically.
“Of course, one can’t tell how it may turn out,” she continued, “but at present they seem to have turned life into a sort of Garden of Eden, and do you know I can’t help fancying that there isn’t the slightest chance for the serpent. Wilhelmina is so fearfully obstinate.”
“The thing will cloy!” he declared.
“I fancy not,” she answered. “You see, they don’t live on sugar-plums. Victor Macheson is by way of being a masterful person, and Wilhelmina is only just beginning to realize the fascination of being ruled. Frankly, Gilbert, I don’t think there’s the slightest chance for you!”
He sighed.
“I am afraid you are right,” he said regretfully. “I began to realize it last night, when we went into the library unexpectedly, and Wilhelmina blushed. No self-respecting woman ought to blush when she is discovered being kissed by her own husband.”
“Wilhelmina,” Lady Peggy said, stretching out her hand for one of Deyes’ cigarettes, “may live to astonish us yet, but of one thing I am convinced. She will never even realize the other sex except through her own husband. I am afraid she will grow narrow—I should hate to write as her epitaph that she was an affectionate wife and devoted mother—but I am perfectly certain that that is what it will come to.”
“In that case,” Deyes remarked gloomily, “I may as well go away.”
“No! I shouldn’t do that,” Lady Peggy said. “I should try to alter my point of view.”
“Direct me, please,” he begged.
“I should try,” she continued, “to put a bridle upon my desires and take up the reins. You could lead them in a more suitable direction.”
“For instance?”
“There is myself,” she declared.
He laughed quietly.
“You!” he repeated. “Why, you are the most incorrigible flirt in Christendom. You would no more tie yourself up with one man than enter a nunnery.”
She sighed.
“I have always been misunderstood,” she declared, looking at him pathetically out of her delightful eyes. “What you call my flirtations have been simply my attempts, more or less clumsy, to gain a husband. I have been most unlucky. No one ever proposes to me!”
He laughed derisively.
“Your victims have been too loquacious,” he replied. “How about Gayton, who went to Africa because you offered to be his friend, and Horris—he came to my rooms to tell me all about it the day you refused him, and Sammy Palliser—you treated him shockingly!”
“I had forgotten them,” she admitted. “They were nice men, too, all of them, but they all made the same mistake. I remember now they did propose to me. That, of course, was fatal.”
“I scarcely see——” he began.
She patted him gently on the arm.
“My dear Gilbert,” she said, “haven’t I always said that I never intend to marry any one who proposes to me? When I have quite made up my mind, I am going to do the proposing myself!”
“Whether it is Leap Year or not?” he asked.
“Decidedly!” she answered. “Men can always shuffle out of a Leap Year declaration. My man won’t be able to escape. I can promise you that.”
“Does he—exist then?” Deyes asked.
She laughed softly.
“He’s existed for a good many years more than I have,” she answered. “I wasn’t thinking of marrying a baby.”
“Ah! Does he know?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” she said thoughtfully. “He ought to, but he’s such a stupid person.”
It was then that Gilbert Deyes received the shock of his life. He discovered quite suddenly that her eyes were full of tears. For the first time for many years he nearly lost his head.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, dropping his voice and astonished to find that it was not quite so steady as usual, “he has been waiting!”
“I am afraid not,” she answered, looking down for a moment at the buckle in her waistband.
He looked round.
“If only he were here now,” he said. “Could one conceive a more favourable opportunity? An April morning, sunshine, flowers, everything in the air to make him forget that he is an old fogey and doesn’tdeserve——”
She lifted her eyes to his, now deliciously wet. Her brows were delicately uplifted.
“I couldn’t do it,” she murmured, “unless he were in the same room.”
Deyes stepped over the hyacinths and vaulted through the window.
Wilhelmina selected a freshly cut tree-stump, carefully brushed away the sawdust, and sat down. Macheson chose another and lighted a cigarette. Eventually they decided that they were too far away, and selected a tree-trunk where there was room for both. Wilhelmina unrolled a plan, and glancing now and then at the forest of scaffold poles to their left, proceeded to try to realize the incomplete building. Macheson watched her with a smile.
“Victor,” she exclaimed, “you are not to laugh at me! Remember this is my first attempt at doing anything—worth doing, and, of course, I’m keen about it. Are you sure we shall have enough bedrooms?”
“Enough for a start, at any rate,” he answered. “We can always add to it.”
She looked once more at that forest of poles, at the slowly rising walls, through whose empty windows one could see pictures of the valley below.
“One can build——” she murmured, “one can build always. But think, Victor, what a lot of time I wasted before I knew you. I might have done so much.”
He smiled reassuringly.
“There is plenty of time,” he declared. “Better to start late and build on a sure foundation, you know. A good many of my houses had to comedown as fast as they went up. Do you remember, for instance, how I wanted to convert all your villagers by storm?”
She smiled.
“Still—I’m glad you came to try,” she said softly. “That horrid foreman is watching us, Victor. I am going to look the other way.”
“He has gone now,” Macheson said, slipping his arm around her waist. “Dear, do you know I don’t think that one person can build very well alone. It’s a cold sort of building when it’s finished—the life built by a lonely man. I like the look of our palace better, Wilhelmina.”
“I should like to know where my part comes in?” she asked.
“Every room,” he answered, “will need adorning, and the lamps—one person alone can never keep them alight, and we don’t want them to go out, Wilhelmina. Do you remember the old German, who said that beautiful thoughts were the finest pictures to hang upon your walls? Think of next spring, when we shall hear the children from that miserable town running about in the woods, picking primroses—do you see how yellow they are against the green moss?”
Wilhelmina rose.
“I must really go and pick some,” she said. “What about your pheasants, Victor?”
He laughed.
“I’ll find plenty of sport, never fear,” he answered, “without keeping the kiddies shut out. Why, the country belongs to them! It’s their birthright, not ours.”
They walked through the plantation side by side. The ground was still soft with the winter’s rains, but everywhere the sunlight came sweeping in, up the glade and across the many stretching arms of tender blossoming green. The ground was starred with primroses, and in every sheltered nook were violets. A soft west wind blew in their faces as they emerged into the country lane. Below them was the valley, hung with a faint blue mist; all around them the song of birds, the growing sounds of the stirring season. Stephen Hurd came cantering by, and stopped for a moment to speak about some matter connected with the estates.
“My love to Letty,” Wilhelmina said graciously, as he rode off. Then she turned to Macheson.
“Stephen Hurd is a little corner in your house,” she remarked.
“In our house,” he protested. “I should never have considered him if he had not worked out his own salvation. If he had reached me ten minuteslater——”
She gripped his arm.
“Don’t,” she begged.
He laughed.
“Don’t ever brood over grisly impossibilities,” he said. “The man never breathed who could have kept you from me. Across the hills home, or are your shoes too thin?”
He swung open the gate, and they passed through, only to descend the other side, along the broad green walk strewn with grey rocks and bordered with gorse bushes, aglow with yellow blossom. They skirted the fir plantation, received the respectfulgreetings of Mrs. Green at the gamekeeper’s cottage, and, crossing the lower range of hills, approached the house by the back avenue. And Wilhelmina laughed softly as they passed along the green lane, for her thoughts travelled back to one wild night when, with upraised skirts and flying, trembling footsteps, she had sped along into a new world. She clung to her husband’s arm.
“I came this way, dear, when I set out that night—to kiss you.”
He stooped down and kissed her full on the lips.
“A nice state you flung me into,” he remarked.
“It was rather an exciting evening,” she said demurely.
They walked straight into the morning-room, which was indiscreet, and Wilhelmina screamed.
“Peggy,” she cried, “Peggy, you bad girl!”
The two women went off together, of course, to talk about it, and Deyes and Macheson, like Englishmen all the world over, muttered something barely comprehensible, and then looked at one another awkwardly.
“Care for a game of billiards?” Macheson suggested.
“Right oh!” Deyes answered, in immense relief.
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.