"Serious accident to Miss Cynthia Farrow." Her eyes caught the headline of the paragraph as she idly turned the page; she gave a little start. Her hands clutched the paper convulsively.
She read the few lines eagerly:
"Miss Cynthia Farrow, the well-known actress, was the victim of a serious motor-car accident this afternoon. Returning from the theatre, the car in which Miss Farrow was riding came into collision with a car owned by Mr. C. E. Hoskins, the well-known airman. Miss Farrow was unfortunately thrown out, and is suffering from concussion and severe bruises. Miss Farrow has been appearing at the —— Theatre as . . . ."
Christine read no more. She did not care for the details of Cynthia Farrow's life; all she cared was that this paragraph settled for once and all her doubt about Jimmy. Of course, Jimmy could not be with her if she were ill and unconscious. She felt bitterly ashamed of her suspicion; her spirits went up like rockets; she threw the paper aside. The terrible load of care seemed lifted for a moment from her shoulders; she was asking Jimmy's pardon on her heart's knees for having ever dreamed that he would do such a thing after all his promises to her.
She opened the door and looked into the corridor. Downstairs she could hear a band playing in the lounge; it sounded inviting and cheery. She went down the stairs and found a seat in a palm-screened corner.
Jimmy had begged her to mix more with other people, and not stay in her room so much. If he came in now he would be pleased to see that she had done as he asked her, she thought with a little thrill.
She could look ahead now, and make plans for their future. She would consent to leaving London at once, and going somewhere where Cynthia Farrow's influence had never made itself felt. She would start all over again; she would be so tactful, so patient. She would win him over to her; make him love her more than he had ever loved Cynthia.
Her face glowed at the thought; her eyes shone like stars. She lost herself in happy introspection.
"Yes—rotten hard luck, isn't it?" said a voice somewhere behind her. "Just when she's on the crest of the wave, as you might say. Doubtful if she gets over it, so I hear."
Christine listened apathetically. She wondered who the voice was talking about; she half turned; trying to see the speaker, but the palms effectually screened him.
A second, less distinct voice made some remark, and the first speaker answered with a little laugh:
"Yes—dead keen, wasn't he, poor beggar; but he wasn't rich enough for her. A woman like that makes diamonds trumps every time, and not hearts, you know—eh? Poor old Jimmy—he always hated Mortlake like the devil. . . . She was in Mortlake's car when the smash occurred, you know . . . No, I don't much think she'll marry him. If she goes on at the rate she's going now, she'll be flying for higher game in a month or two. I know women of that stamp—had some myself, as you might say. . . . What—really! poor old chap! Thought he only got married the other day."
The second voice was more audible now:
"So he did; some little girl from the country, I hear. God alone knows why he did it. . . . Anyway, there can't be any affection in it, because I happen to know that Jimmy was sent for to-night. They said she asked for him as soon as she could speak. . . . Jimmy, mark you! not a bob in the world. . . ." The voice broke in a cynical laugh.
Jimmy! They were talking of Jimmy—and——
All the blood in her body seemed to concentrate suddenly in her heart, and then rush away from it, turning her faint and sick. The many lights in the big lounge seemed to twinkle and go out.
She pressed her feet hard to the floor; she shut her eyes.
After a moment she felt better; her brain began to work again stiffly.
So Jimmy was with Cynthia, after all. Jimmy had been sent for, andJimmy had gone.
This was the end of everything; this was the end of all her dreams of happiness of the future.
She sat there for a long, long time, unconscious of her surroundings; it was only when the band had stopped playing, and a sort of silence fell everywhere, that she moved stiffly and went back up the stairs to her own room.
She stood there by the bed for a moment, looking round her with dull eyes; the clock on the mantel-shelf pointed to nine.
Too late to go away to-night. Was it too late? A sudden memory leapt to her mind.
Jimmy and she had gone down to Upton House by a train later than this the day after her mother died. She tried to remember; it had been the nine-fifty from Euston, she was sure. She made a rapid calculation; she could catch that if she was quick—catch it if she hurried. She threw off her slippers; she began to collect a few things together in a handbag; her breath was coming fast—her heart was racing. She would never come back any more—never live with him again. She had lost her last shred of trust in him—she no longer loved him.
She was pinning on her hat with shaking fingers when someone tried the handle of the door—someone called her name softly.
"Christine . . ." It was Jimmy.
She stood quite still, hardly daring to breathe. She pressed her hands over her lips, as if afraid that he would hear the quick beating of her frightened heart.
"Christine . . ." He waited a moment, then she heard him saying something under his breath impatiently; another second, and he turned away to the sitting-room opposite.
She heard him moving about there for some time; she looked at the clock. Almost too late to go now; a fever of impatience consumed her.
If only he had not come back—if only she had gone sooner.
She turned out the light, and softly, an inch at a time, opened the door. There was a light burning in the sitting-room; there was a smell of cigarette smoke. Jimmy was still there.
She wondered if she could get away without him hearing her; she tiptoed back into the room, took up her bag from the bed, and crept again to the door.
The floor seemed to creak at every step. Half a dozen times she stopped, frightened; then suddenly the half-closed door of the sitting-room opposite opened, and Jimmy came out.
He was in evening-dress; he still wore a loose overcoat.
For a moment he stared at her blankly. The lights had been lowered a little in the corridor, and at first he was not sure if it was she. Then he strode across to her and caught her by the wrist in a not very gentle grip.
"Where are you going?" he asked roughly.
She cowered back from him against the wall; her face was white, but her eyes blazed at him in passionate defiance.
"I am going away. Let me go. I am never coming back any more."
He half led, half dragged her into the sitting-room; he put his back to the door, and stood looking at her, white-faced, silent.
The breath was tearing from his throat; he seemed afraid to trust himself to speak.
Presently:
"Why?" he asked hoarsely.
Christine was standing against the table, one trembling hand resting on it; she was afraid of him and of the white passion in his face, but she faced him bravely.
"I am never going to live with you any more. I—I wish I had never seen you."
Even her voice seemed to have changed; he realized it dully, and the knowledge added to his anger. She no longer spoke in the half-trembling childish way he remembered; there was something more grown-up and womanly about her.
"Don't be a little fool," he said roughly. "What is the matter? What have I done now? I'm sick to death of these scenes and heroics; for God's sake try and behave like a rational woman. Do you want the whole hotel to know that we've quarrelled?"
"They know already," she told him fiercely.
He came nearer to her.
"Take off your hat and coat, Christine, and don't be absurd. Why, we've only been married a little more than a week." His voice was quieter and more gentle. "What's the matter? Let's sit down and talk things over quietly. I've something to tell you. I wanted to see you to-night; I came to your door just now."
"I know—I heard you."
"Very well; what's it all about? What have I done to upset you like this?"
She shut her eyes for a moment. When he spoke to her so kindly it almost broke her heart; it brought back so vividly the boy sweetheart whom she had never really forgotten. And yet this Jimmy was not the Jimmy she had known in those happy days, This Jimmy only looked at her with the same eyes; in reality he was another man—a stranger whom she feared and almost hated.
He took her hand.
"Christine—are you ill?"
She opened her eyes; they were blazing.
The touch of his fingers on hers seemed to drive her mad.
"Yes," she said shrilly, "I am—ill because of you and your lies, and your hateful deception; ill because you've broken my heart and ruined my life. You swore to me that you'd never see Cynthia Farrow again. You swore to me that it was all over and done with; and now—now——"
"Yes—now," said Jimmy; his voice was hoarse and strained. "Yes—and now," he said again, as she did not answer.
She wrenched herself free.
"You've been with her this evening. You've left me alone here all these hours to be with her. I don't count at all in your life. I don't know why you married me, unless it was to—to pay her out. I wish I'd never seen you. I wish I'd died before I ever married you. I wish—oh, I wish I could die now," she ended in a broken whisper.
Jimmy had fallen back a step; he was no longer looking at her. There was a curious expression of shocked horror in his, eyes as they stared past his wife into the silent room.
Presently:
"She's dead," he said hoarsely. "Cynthia Farrow is dead."
"Dead!" Christine echoed Jimmy's hoarse word in a dull voice, not understanding. "Dead!" she said again blankly.
He moved away from the door; he dropped into a chair and hid his face in his hands.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Christine stared at Jimmy's bowed head with dull eyes.
She was trying to force her brain to work, but she could not; she was only conscious of a faint sort of curiosity as to whether Jimmy were lying to her; but somehow he did not look as if he were. She tried to speak to him, but no words would come.
Suddenly he raised his head; he was very pale. "Well?" he said defiantly.
His eyes were hard and full of hurt; hurt because of another woman, Christine told herself, in furious pain; hurt because the woman he had really and truly loved had gone out of his life for ever.
She tried to say that she was sorry, but the words seemed to choke her—she was not sorry; she was glad. She was passionately glad that the beautiful woman whom she had at first so ardently admired was now only a name between them.
"So you've no need to be jealous any more," said Jimmy Challoner, after a moment.
No need to be jealous! There was still the same need; death cannot take memory away with it. Christine felt as if the dead woman were more certainly between them now, keeping them apart, than ever before.
The silence fell again; then suddenly Christine moved to the door.
Jimmy caught her hand.
"Where are you going? Don't be a little fool. It's ever so late; you can't leave the hotel to-night."
"I am not going to stay here with you." She did not look at him; did not even faintly guess how much he was longing for a kind word, a little sympathy. He had had the worst shock of his inconsequent life when, in reply to that urgent summons, he had raced round to Cynthia Farrow's flat, and found that he was too late.
"She died ten minutes ago."
Only ten minutes! Jimmy had stared blankly at the face of the weeping maid, and then mechanically taken his watch from his pocket and looked at it. Only ten minutes! If he had not had to hang about for a taxi he would have been in time to have seen her.
Now he would never see her again; as yet he had had no time in which to analyse his feelings; he was numbed with the shock of it all; he listened like a man in a dream to the details they told him. It passed him by unmoved that she had been in Mortlake's car when the accident occurred; it had conveyed nothing to his mind when they told him that the only words she had spoken during her brief flash of consciousness had been to ask for him.
As he stood there in the familiar scented pink drawing-room, his thoughts had flown with odd incongruity to Christine.
She would be kind to him—she would be sorry for him; his whole heart and soul had been on fire to get back to her—to get away from the harrowing silence of the flat which had always been associated in his mind with fun and laughter, and the happiest days of his life.
A fur coat of Cynthia's lay across a chair-back; so many times he had helped her slip into it after her performance at the theatre was ended. He knew so well the faint scent that always clung to it; he shuddered and averted his eyes. She would never wear it again; she was dead! He wondered what would become of it—what would become of all her clothes, and her jewelry and her trinkets.
Suddenly, in the middle of more details, he had turned and rushed blindly away. It was not so much grief as a sort of horror at himself that drove him; he felt as if someone had forced him to look on a past folly—a folly of which he was now ashamed.
He had thought of Christine with a sort of passionate thankfulness and gratitude; and now there was nothing but dislike and contempt for him in her brown eyes. Somehow she seemed like a different woman to the one whom he had so lightly wooed and won such a little while ago. She looked older—wiser; the childishness of her face seemed to have hardened; it was no longer the little girl Christine who faced him in the silent room.
He broke out again urgently:
"Don't be absurd, Christine. I won't have it, I tell you, I forbid you to leave the hotel. After all, you're my wife—you must do as I wish." She seemed not to hear him; she stood with her eyes fixed straight in front of her.
"Please let me go."
"Where are you going? You're my wife—you'll have to stay with me." His hand was on the door handle now; he was looking down at her with haggard eyes in his white face.
"Let's begin all over again, Christine. I've been a rotter, I know; but if you'll have a little patience—it's not too late—we can patch things up, and—and I'll promise you——"
She cut him short.
"You are saying this because she is dead. If she were living you would not care what I did, or what became of me." Suddenly her voice changed wildly. "Oh, let me go—let mego!"
For a moment their glances met, and for the first time in his spoilt and pampered life Jimmy Challoner saw hatred looking at him through a woman's eyes. It drove the hot blood to his head; he was unnerved with the shock he had suffered that evening. For a moment he saw the world red; he lifted his clenched fist.
"Go, then—and a damned good riddance!"
"Jimmy!" Her scream of terror stayed his hand, and kept him from striking her. He staggered back, aghast at the thing he had so nearly done.
"Christine—Christine——" he stammered; but she had gone. The shutting and locking of her bedroom door was his only answer.
Sangster heard of Cynthia Farrow's death late that night.
He was walking up Fleet Street when he ran into a man he knew—a man whom Jimmy knew also; he stopped and caught him by his buttonhole.
"I say, have you heard—awful thing, isn't it?"
Sangster stared.
"Heard! Heard what?"
"About Cynthia Farrow. Had a frightful accident—in Mortlake's car."
Sangster's eyes woke to interest.
"Badly hurt?" he asked briefly.
"Dead!"
"My God!" There was a moment of tragic silence. "Dead!" said Sangster again. He could not believe it; his face was very pale. "Dead!" he said again. His thoughts flew to Jimmy Challoner. "Are you sure?" he asked urgently. "There's no mistake—you're quite sure?"
"Sure! Man alive, it's in all the papers! They've all got hold of a different story, of course; some say she never recovered consciousness, and others——" He lowered his voice. "I happen to know that she did," he added confidentially. "She sent for Challoner, and he was with her when she died."
"Challoner—Jimmy Challoner!" Sangster repeated his friend's name dully. The one shocked thought of his heart was "Christine."
"I always knew she really liked him," the other man went on complacently. "If he'd had Mortlake's money——" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
Sangster waited to hear no more; he went straight to Jimmy's hotel. It was late then—nearly eleven. The hall porter said in reply to his inquiry that Mr. and Mrs. Challoner had both been in all the evening, he thought, and were still in; he looked at Sangster's agitated face curiously.
"Was you wishing to see Mr. Challoner, sir?"
"No—oh, no. I only thought—you need not tell him that I called." He went away wretchedly; he wondered if Christine knew—and if so, what she must be thinking.
He never slept all night. He was on the 'phone to Jimmy long before breakfast; he was infinitely relieved to hear Jimmy's voice.
"Hallo—yes, I'm all right, thanks. Want to see me? Well——"
There was a pause here. Sangster waited in a fever of impatience.After a moment:
"I'll meet you for lunch, if you like. . . . No, can't before. . . .What do you say? Christine? Oh, yes—yes, thanks; she's very well."
There was another pause. "One o'clock, then."
Jimmy rang off.
Sangster felt easier as he sat down to his breakfast. Jimmy's voice had sounded fairly normal, if a little constrained; and it was not such a very long time till one o'clock, when he would hear all there was to hear.
He forced himself to work all the morning. He did not even glance at a paper; he knew they would be full of Cynthia Farrow's accident and tragic death; he dreaded lest there might be some inadvertent allusion made to Jimmy. He was still hoping that Christine would never know that Jimmy had been sent for; he rightly guessed that if she heard it would mean a long farewell to any hope of happiness in her married life.
Jealousy—bitter jealousy; that was what had been rending her heart, he knew. He stopped writing; he took up a pencil, and absently began scribbling on his blotter.
If Cynthia were out of the way, there was no reason why, in time, Jimmy and his wife should not be perfectly happy. He hoped with all his heart that they would be; he would have given a great deal to have seen Christine smiling and radiant once more, as she had been that night when they all had supper at Marino's.
He sighed heavily; he looked at the lines he had been so absently scribbling.
Christine—Christine—Christine. Nothing but her name. It stared up at him in all shapes and sizes from the blotter. Sangster flushed dully; he tore the sheet of paper free, and tossed it into the fire. What was he dreaming about? Where were his thoughts?
He had arranged to meet Jimmy at the same little restaurant where yesterday he had taken Christine to lunch. He was there a quarter of an hour before the appointed time.
When Jimmy arrived Sangster glanced at him anxiously. He was very pale; his eyes looked defiant; there was a hard fold to his lips.
"Hallo!" he said laconically; he sat down opposite to Sangster. "I don't want any lunch; you fire away."
He seemed to avoid Sangster's eyes; there was a little awkward silence.
"How's the wife?" Sangster asked nervously.
Jimmy laughed mirthlessly.
"She's left me; she says she'll never live with me again."
"Left you!"
"Yes. . . . Oh, don't look so scandalised, man! I saw her off from Euston myself; it was all outwardly quite a friendly arrangement. She's gone down to Upton House; she's going to have a friend of hers to stay with her for a time—a Miss Leighton——" He paused, and went on heavily: "Of course, you've heard about—about——"
"Yes——"
"Well—well, they sent for me. It was too late! She—she was dead when I got there; but Christine found out somehow—I don't know how. I give you my word of honour I meant to have told her; but—she wouldn't believe anything I said. . . . We—we had a row last night; I dare say it was my fault. I was upset, of course——"
"Of course."
"And this morning I tried to apologise. I asked her to overlook everything that had happened, and—and start again." Jimmy laughed dully. "I—well, I believe she hates the sight of me."
Jimmy caught his breath hard on the memory of the burning hatred that had looked at him from Christine's beautiful brown eyes.
"It's quite for the best—this arrangement. Don't think I'm blaming her—I'm not; perhaps if she'd been a little older—if she'd known a little more about the world—she'd have been more tolerant; I don't know. Anyway, she's gone." He raised his humiliated eyes to Sangster's distressed face.
"She will forgive you. She's hurt now, of course; but later on . . ."
Jimmy shook his head.
"She's made me promise to keep away from her for six months. I had no option—she thinks the worst of me, naturally. She thinks that I—I cared for—for Cynthia—right up to the end. . . . I didn't." He stopped, choking. "She's dead—don't let's talk about it," he added.
Sangster had hardly touched his lunch; he sat smoking fast and furiously.
"Six months is a long time," he said at last.
"Yes—it's only a polite way of saying she never wants to see me again; and I don't blame her."
"That's absurd; she's too fond of you."
Jimmy hunched his shoulders.
"That's what I tried to flatter myself; but I know better now. She—she wouldn't even shake hands with me when I said 'good-bye' to her at Euston." There was a little silence. The thoughts of both men flew to Christine as she had been when she first came to London; so happy—so radiantly happy.
And Jimmy could look farther back still; could see her as she had been in the old days at Upton House when she had been his first love. Jimmy gave a great sigh.
"What a damnable hash-up, eh?" he said.
"It'll all come right—I'm certain it will."
Jimmy looked at him affectionately.
"Dear old optimist!" He struck a match and lit the cigarette which had been hanging listlessly between his lips. "I suppose—if you'd run down and have a look at her now and then," he said awkwardly. "She likes you—and you could let me know if she's all right."
"If you don't think she would consider it an intrusion."
"I am sure she wouldn't; and you'll like Upton House." Jimmy's voice was dreamily reminiscent. "It's to be sold later on, you know; but for the present Christine will live there. . . . It would be a real kindness if you would run down now and then, old chap."
"I will, of course, if you're sure——"
"I'm quite sure. Christine likes you."
"Very well."
Sangster kept his eyes downbent; somehow he could not meet Jimmy's just then.
"And you—what are you going to do?" he asked presently.
"I shall go back to my old rooms for a time, and take Costin with me; he'll be pleased, anyway, with the new arrangement. It was really funny the way he tried to congratulate me when I told him I was going to be married——" He broke off, remembering that afternoon, and the way Cynthia had come into the room as they were talking.
He would never see her again; never meet the seductive pleading of her eyes any more; never hear her laughing voice calling to him, "Jimmy dear."
The thought was intolerable. He moved restlessly in his chair; the sweat broke out on his forehead.
"My God! it seems impossible that she's dead," he said hoarsely.
Sangster did not look up.
There was a long pause.
"She was in Mortlake's car, you know," said Jimmy again, disjointedly.
Sangster nodded.
"He'll be shockingly cut-up," said Jimmy again. "I hated the chap; but he was really fond of her."
"Yes." Jimmy's cigarette had gone out again, and he relit it absently.
"Christine will never believe that it hasn't broken my heart," he said in a queer voice.
No answer.
"You won't believe it either?" he said.
The eyes of the two men met; Jimmy flushed scarlet.
"It's the truth," he said. "I think, ever since I knew that she—that she had tried to get rid of me——" He stopped painfully. "It makes me wonder if I ever—ever really, you know."
"We all make mistakes—bad mistakes," said Sangster kindly.
Jimmy smiled a little.
"You old philosopher . . . I don't believe you've ever cared a hang for a woman in all your life."
"Oh, yes I have." Sangster's eyes were staring past Jimmy, down the little room.
"Really?" Jimmy was faintly incredulous. "Who was she—wouldn't she have you?"
"I never asked her, and she is married now—to another man."
"A decent fellow?"
There was a little silence, then:
"I think he'll turn out all right," said Sangster quietly. "I hope so."
Christine had learned a great deal since her marriage. As she stood on the platform at Euston that morning with Jimmy Challoner she felt old enough to be the grandmother of the girl who had looked up at him with such glad recognition less than a month ago in the theatre.
Old enough, and sad enough.
She could not bear to look at him now. It cut her to the heart to see the listless droop of his shoulders and the haggard lines of his face. It was not for her—his sorrow; that was the thought she kept steadily before her eyes; it was not because he had offended and hurt her past forgiveness; but because Cynthia Farrow was now only a name and a memory.
The train was late in starting. Jimmy stood on the platform trying to make conversation; he had bought a pile of magazines and a box of chocolates which lay disregarded beside Christine on the seat; he had ordered luncheon for her, although she protested again and again that she should not eat anything.
He racked his brains to think if there were any other little service he could do for her. He was full of remorse and shame as he stood there.
She had been so fond of him—she had meant to be so happy; and now she was glad to be leaving him.
The guard blew his whistle. Jimmy turned hastily, the blood rushing to his white face.
"If you ever want me, Christine——" She seemed not to be listening, and he broke off, only to stumble on again: "Try and forgive me—try not to think too hardly of me." She looked at him then; her beautiful eyes were hard and unyielding.
The train had begun to move slowly from the platform. Jimmy was on the footboard; he spoke to her urgently.
"Say you forgive me, Christine. If you'll just shake hands——"
She drew back, as if she found him distasteful.
The train was gathering speed. A porter made a grab at Jimmy.
"Stand back, sir."
Jimmy obeyed mechanically. Christine would not have cared had he been killed, he told himself savagely.
But for his pig-headed foolishness, he and Christine might have been going down to Upton House together; but for the past——
"Damn the past!" said Jimmy Challoner as he turned on his heel and walked away.
* * * * * *
But the past was very real to Christine as she sat there alone in a corner of the first-class carriage into which Jimmy had put her, and stared before her with dull eyes at a row of photographs advertising seaside places.
This was the end of all her dreams of happiness. She and Jimmy were separated; it seemed impossible that they had ever really been married—that she was really his wife and he her husband.
She dragged off her glove, and looked at her wedding ring; she had never taken it off since the moment in that dingy London church when Jimmy had slipped it on.
And yet it was such an empty symbol. He had never loved her; he had married her because some other woman, whom he did love, was beyond his reach.
She did not cry; she seemed to have shed all the tears in her heart. She just sat there motionless as the train raced her back to the old house and the old familiar scenes, where she had been happy—many years ago—with Jimmy Challoner.
He had wired to Gladys Leighton; Gladys would be there at the station to meet her. She wondered what she would say to her.
She thought of the uncle who had journeyed to London with such reluctance to give her away; he would tell her that it served her right, she was sure. Even on her wedding day he had trotted out the old maxim of marrying in haste.
Christine smiled faintly as she thought of him; after all, she need not see much of him—he did not live near Upton House. When the restaurant attendant came to tell her that lunch was ready, she followed him obediently. Jimmy had tipped him half-a-crown to make sure that Christine went to the dining-car. She even enjoyed her meal. A man sitting at the same table with her looked at her curiously from time to time; he was rather a good-looking man. Once when she dropped her gloves he stooped and picked them up for her; later on he pulled up the window because he saw her shiver a little. "These trains are well warmed as a rule," he said.
Christine looked at him timidly.
She liked his face; something about his eyes made her think of Jimmy.
"Are you travelling far?" he asked presently.
She told him—only to Osterway.
He smiled suddenly.
"I am going there, too. Do you happen to know a place called UptonHouse?"
Christine flushed.
"It's my home," she said. "I live there."
"What a coincidence. I heard it was in the market—I am going down with a view to purchase."
Her face saddened.
"Yes—it is to be sold. My mother died last month. . . . Everything is to be sold."
"You are sorry to have to part with it?" he asked her sympathetically.
"Yes." Tears rose to her eyes, and she brushed them, ashamedly away. "I've lived there all my life," she told him. "All my happiest days have been spent there." She was thinking of Jimmy, and the days when he rode old Judas barebacked round the paddock.
The stranger was looking at Christine interestedly; he glanced down at her left hand, from which she had removed the glove; he was surprised to see that she wore a wedding ring.
Surely she could not be married—that child! He looked again at the mourning she wore; perhaps her husband was dead. He forgot for the moment that she had just told him of the death of her mother.
He questioned her interestedly about Osterway. What sort of a place was it? Were the people round about sociable? He liked plenty of friends, he said.
Christine answered eagerly that everyone was very nice. To hear her talk one would have imagined that Osterway was a little heaven on earth. The last few weeks, with their excitement and disillusionment, had made the past seem all the more roseate by contrast. She told this man that she would rather live in Osterway than anywhere else; that she only wished she were sufficiently well off to keep Upton House.
When the train ran into the station he asked diffidently if he might be allowed to drive her home.
"My car is down here," he explained. "I sent it on with my man. I am staying in the village for a few days. . . . Upton House is some way from the station, I believe?"
"Two miles. . . . I should like to drive home with you," she told him shyly. "Only I am meeting a friend here."
"Perhaps your friend will drive with us, too," he said.
Christine thought it a most excellent arrangement. She looked eagerly up and down the platform for Gladys Leighton, but there was no sign of her.
"Perhaps she never got my telegram," she said in perplexity. She asked the stationmaster if there had been a lady waiting for the train; but he had seen nobody.
The man with whom she had travelled down from London stood patiently beside her.
"Shall we drive on?" he suggested. "We may meet your friend on the road."
They went out to the big car; there was a smart man in livery to drive them. Christine and her companion sat together in the back seat. They drove slowly the first half-mile, but there was no sign of Gladys anywhere. Christine felt depressed. She had counted on Gladys; she had been so sure that she would not fail her; she began to wonder if Jimmy had sent that wire; she hated herself for the thought, but her whole belief and idea of him had got hopelessly inverted during the past days.
They seemed to reach Upton House very quickly.
"You are evidently expected," her companion said; "judging by the look of the house."
The front door stood open; the wide gate to the drive was fastened back. As the car stopped the housekeeper came to the door; she looked interestedly at Christine, and with faint amazement at her companion. For the first time Christine felt embarrassed: she wondered if perhaps she had been foolish to accept this man's offer of an escort. When they were inside the house she turned to him timidly.
"Will you tell me your name? It—it seems so funny not to know your name. Mine is Christine Wyatt—Challoner, I mean," she added with a flush of embarrassment.
"My name is Kettering—Alfred Kettering." He smiled down at her. "The name Challoner is very familiar to me," he said. "My greatest friend is a man named Challoner."
Christine caught her breath.
"Not—Jimmy?" she asked.
"No—Horace. He has a young brother named Jimmy, though—a disrespectful young scamp, who always called Horace 'the Great Horatio.' You don't happen to know them, I suppose?"
Christine had flushed scarlet.
"He is my husband," she said in a whisper.
"Your—husband!" Kettering stared at her with amazed eyes, then suddenly he held our his hand. "That makes us quite old friends, then, doesn't it?" he said with change of voice. "I have known Horace Challoner all my life; as a matter of fact, I was with him all last summer in Australia. I have been home myself only a few weeks."
Christine did not know what to say. She knew that this man must be wondering where Jimmy was; that it was more than probable that he would write to the Great Horatio and inform him of their chance meeting, and of anything else which he might discover about her mistaken marriage.
"I don't think Horace knows that his brother is married, does he?" the man said again, Christine raised her eyes.
"We've only been married ten days," she said tremulously.
"Is that so? Then I am not too late to offer you my most sincere congratulations, and to wish you every happiness." He took her hand in a kindly grip.
Christine tried to thank him, but somehow she seemed to have lost her voice. She moved on across the hall into the dining-room, where there was a cheery fire burning and tea laid.
"You will have some tea with me," she said. "And then afterwards I will show you over the house—if you really want to see it?" She looked up at him wistfully. "I should like you to have it, I think," she told him hesitatingly. "If it has got to be sold, I should like to know that somebody—nice—has bought it."
"Thank you." He stood back to the fire, watching her as she poured out the tea.
Married—this child! It seemed so absurd. She looked about seventeen.
Suddenly:
"And where is Jimmy?" he asked her abruptly. "I wonder if he would remember me! Hardly, I expect; it's a great many years since we met."
Christine had been expecting the question; she kept her face averted as she answered:
"Jimmy is in London; he saw me off this morning. He—he isn't able to come down just yet."
There was a little silence.
"I see," said Kettering. Only ten days married, and not able to come down. Jimmy had never done an hour's work in his life, so far as Kettering could remember. He knew quite well that he was living on an allowance from his brother; it seemed a curious sort of situation altogether.
He took his tea from Christine's hands. He noticed that they trembled a little, as if she were very nervous, he tried to put her at her ease; he spoke no more of Jimmy.
"I wonder what has happened to your friend?" he said cheerily. "I dare say she will turn up here directly."
"I hope she will." Christine glanced towards the window; it was rapidly getting dusk. "I hope she will," she said again apprehensively. "I should hate having to stay here by myself." She shivered a little as she spoke. She turned to him suddenly.
"Are you—married?" she asked interestedly.
He laughed.
"No. . . . Why do you ask?"
"I was only wondering. I hope you don't think it rude of me to have asked you. I was only thinking that—if you were married and had any children, this is such a lovely house for them. When we were all little we used to have such fine times. There is a beautiful garden and a great big room that runs nearly the length of the house upstairs, which we used to have for a nursery."
"You had brothers and sisters, then?"
"No—but Jimmy was always here; and Gladys—Gladys is the friend I am expecting—she is like my own sister, really!"
"I see." His eyes watched her with an odd sort of tenderness in them."And so you have known Jimmy a great many years?" he asked.
"All my life."
"Then you know his brother as well?"
"I have met him—yes; but I dare say he has forgotten all about me."
"He will be very pleased with Jimmy's choice of a wife," he answered her quickly. "He always had and idea that Jimmy would bring home a golden-haired lady from behind the footlights, I think," he added laughingly.
He broke off suddenly at sight of the pain in little Christine's face.There was an awkward silence. Christine herself broke it.
"Shall we go and look over the house before it gets quite dark?"
She had taken off her coat and furs; she moved to the door.
Kettering followed silently. He was fully conscious that in some way he had blundered by his laughing reference to a "golden-haired lady of the footlights"; he felt instinctively that there was something wrong with this little girl and her marriage—that she was not happy.
He tried to remember what sort of a fellow Jimmy had been in the old days; but his memory of him was vague. He knew that Horace had often complained bitterly of Jimmy's extravagance—knew that there had often been angry scenes between the two Challoners; but he could not recall having heard of anything actually to Jimmy's discredit.
And, anyway, surely no man on earth could ever treat this little girl badly, even supposing—even supposing——
"It's not such a very big house," Christine was saying, and he woke from his reverie to answer her. "But it's very pretty, don't you think?" She opened a door on the left. "This used to be our nursery," she told him. They stood together on the threshold; the room was long and low-ceilinged, with a window at each end.
A big rocking-horse covered over with a dust-sheet stood in one corner; there was a doll's house and a big toy box together in another. The whole room was painfully silent and tidy, as if it had long since forgotten what it meant to have children playing there—as if even the echoes of pattering feet and shrill voices had deserted it.
Kettering glanced down at Christine. Her little face was very sad; she was looking at the big rocking-horse, and there were tears in her eyes.
She and Jimmy had so often ridden its impossible back together; this deserted room was full of Jimmy and her mother—to her sad heart it was peopled with ghost faces, and whispering voices that would never come any more.
Kettering turned away.
"Shall we see the rest of the house?" he asked. He hated that look of sadness in her face; he was surprised because he felt such a longing to comfort her.
But they had no time to see the rest of the house, for at that moment someone called, "Christine—Christine," from the hall below, and Christine clasped her hands delightedly.
"That is Gladys. Oh, I am so glad—so glad."
She forgot all about Kettering; she ran away from him, and down the stairs in childish delight. He followed slowly. He reached the hall just in time to see her fling herself into the arms of a tall girl standing there; just in time to hear smothered ejaculations.
"You poor darling!" and "Oh, Gladys!" and the sound of many kisses.
He stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Over Christine's head, his eyes met those of the elder girl. She smiled.
"Christine . . . you didn't tell me you had visitors."
Christine looked up, all smiles now and apologies, as she said:
"Oh, I am so sorry—I forgot." She introduced them. "Mr. Kettering—Miss Leighton. . . . Mr. Kettering has been looking over the house; I hope he will buy it," she added childishly.
"It's a shame it has got to be sold," said Gladys bluntly. There was something very taking about her, in spite of red hair and an indifferent complexion; she had honest blue eyes and a pleasant voice. She looked at Kettering a great deal as she spoke; perhaps she noticed how often his eyes rested on Christine. When presently they went out into the garden, she walked between them; she kept an arm about Christine's little figure.
"I missed the train," she explained. "I got your husband's wire,Christine. Oh, yes, I got it all right, and I rushed to pack the veryminute; but the cab was slow, and I just missed the train. However,I'm here all right."
She looked at Kettering.
"Do you live near here?" she asked him.
"No; but I am hoping to soon," he said; and again she wondered if it were only her imagination that his eyes turned once more to Christine.
When they got back to the house he bade them "good-bye." The big car was still waiting in the drive; its headlights were lit now, and they shone through the darkness like watchful eyes.
"Who is he, anyway?" Gladys asked Christine bluntly, when Kettering had driven off. Christine shook her head.
"I don't know; he came down in the train with me, and we had lunch at the same table, and he spoke. He was coming down here to look at our house, and so—well, we came up together."
"What do you think Jimmy would say?"
"Jimmy!" There was such depths of bitterness in Christine's voice that the elder girl stared.
"Jimmy! He wouldn't care what I did, or what became of me. I—I—I'm never going to live with him any more."
Gladys opened her mouth to say something, and closed it again.
She had guessed that there had been something behind that urgent wire from Jimmy, but she wisely asked no questions. They went back into the house together.
"You'll have to know in the end, so I may as well tell you now," Christine said hopelessly. She sat down on the rug by the fire, a forlorn little figure enough in her black frock.
She told the whole story from beginning to end. She blamed nobody; she just spoke as if the whole thing had been a muddle which nobody could have foreseen or averted.
Gladys listened silently. She was a very sensible girl; she seldom gave an impulsive judgment on any subject; but now——
"Jimmy wants his neck wrung," she said vehemently.
Christine looked up with startled eyes.
"Oh, how can you say such a thing!"
"Because it's true." Gladys looked very angry. "He's behaved in a rotten way; men always do, it seems to me. He married you to spite this—this other woman, whoever she was! and then—even then he didn't try to make it up to you, or be ordinarily decent and do his best, did he?"
"He didn't love me, you see; and so——" Christine defended him.
"He'll never love anyone in the wide world except himself," Gladys declared disgustedly. "I remember years ago, when we were all kiddies together, how selfish he was, and how you always gave in to him. Christine"—she stretched out her hand impulsively to the younger girl—"do you love him very much?" she asked.
Christine put her head down on her arms.
"Oh, I did—I did," she said, ashamedly. "Sometimes I wonder if—if he hadn't been quite so—so sure of me! if—if he would have cared just a little bit more. He must have known all along that I wanted him; and so——" She broke off desolately.
The two girls sat silent for a moment.
"And now—what's he going to do now?" Gladys demanded.
Christine sighed.
"I told him I didn't want to see him. I told him I didn't want him to come down here for six months—and he promised. . . . He isn't to come or even to write unless—unless I ask him to."
"And then—what happens then?"
Christine began to cry.
"Oh, I don't know—I don't know," she sobbed. "I am so miserable—I wish I were dead."
Gladys laid a hand on her bowed head.
"You're so young, Christine," she said sadly. "Somehow I don't believe you'll ever grow up." She had not got the heart to tell her that she thought this six months separation could do no good at all—that it would only tend to widen the breach already between them.
She was a pretty good judge of character; she knew quite well what sort of a man Jimmy Challoner was. And six months—well, six months was a long time.
"Mr. Kettering knows Jimmy's brother," Christine said presently, drying her eyes. "So I suppose if he comes to live anywhere near here, he will know what—what is the matter with—with me and Jimmy, and he'll write and tell Horace."
"And then Jimmy will get his allowance stopped, and serve him right," said Gladys bluntly.
Christine cried out in dismay:
"Oh, but that would be dreadful! What would he do?"
"Work, like other men, of course."
But Christine would not listen.
"I shall ask Mr. Kettering not to tell Horace—if I ever see him again," she said agitatedly.
Gladys laughed dryly.
"Oh, you'll see him again right enough," she said laconically.
It took Jimmy a whole week to realise that Christine meant what she said when she asked him not to write to her, or go near her. At first he had been so sure that in a day or two at most she would be sorry, and want to see him; somehow he could not believe that the little unselfish girl he had known all his life could so determinedly make up her mind and stick to it.
He grumbled and growled to Sangster every time they met.
"I was a fool to let her go. The law is on my side; I could have insisted that she stayed with me." He looked at his friend. "I could have insisted, I say!" he repeated.
Sangster raised his eyes.
"I'm not denying it; but it's much wiser as it is. Leave her alone, and things will work out their own salvation."
"She'll forget all about me, and then what will happen?" Jimmy demanded. "A nice thing—a very nice thing that would be."
"No doubt she thinks that is what you wish her to do."
Jimmy called him a fool; he threw a half-smoked cigarette into the fire, and sat watching it burn with a scowl on his face.
The last week had seemed endless. He had kept away from the club; the men in the club always knew everything—he had learned that by previous experience; he had no desire for the shower of chaff which he knew would greet his appearance there.
Married a week—and now Christine had gone! It made his soul writhe to think of it. It had hurt enough to be jilted; but this—well, this struck at his pride even more deeply.
"I thought you promised me to go down to Upton House and see how things were," he growled at Sangster. "You haven't been, have you? I suppose you don't mean to go either?"
"My dear chap——"
"Oh, don't 'dear chap' me," Jimmy struck in irritably. "Go if you mean to go. . . . After all, if anything happens to Christine, it's my responsibility——"
"Then you should go yourself."
"I promised I wouldn't—unless she asked me to. If you were anything of a sport——"
In the end Sangster consented to go. He was not anxious to undertake the journey, much as he wanted to see Christine again. At the end of the second week he went off early one morning without telling Jimmy of his intentions, and was back in town late the same night. Jimmy was waiting for him in the rooms in the unfashionable part of Bloomsbury. It struck Sangster for the first time that Jimmy was beginning to look old; his face was drawn—his eyes looked worried. He turned on his friend with a sort of rage when he entered.
"Why couldn't you have told me where you were going. Here I've been waiting about all day, wondering where you were and what was up."
"I've been to see your wife—and there's nothing up."
"You mean you didn't see her?"
"Oh, yes, I did."
"Well—well!" Jimmy's voice sounded as if his nerves were worn to rags; he could hardly keep still.
"She seemed very cheerful," said Sangster slowly. He spoke with care, as if he were choosing his words. "Miss Leighton was with her; and we all had tea together."
"At Upton House?"
"Yes."
Jimmy's eyes were gleaming.
"How does the old place look?" he asked eagerly. "Gad! don't I wish I'd got enough money to buy it myself. You've no idea what a ripping fine time we used to have there years ago."
"I'm sure you did; but—well, as a matter of fact, I believe the house is sold."
"Sold!"
"Yes; a man named Kettering—a friend of your brother's, I believe—is negotiating for it, at any rate. Whether the purchase is really completed or not, I——"
"Kettering!" Jimmy's voice sounded angry. "Kettering—that stuck-up ass!" he said savagely.
Sangster laughed.
"I shouldn't have described him as stuck-up at all," he said calmly."He struck me as being an extremely nice sort of fellow."
"Was he there, then?"
"Yes—he's staying somewhere in the neighbourhood temporarily, I believe, from what I heard; at any rate, he seemed very friendly with—with your wife and Miss Leighton."
Jimmy began pacing the room.
"I remember him well," he said darkly, after a moment. "Big chap with a brown moustache—pots of money." He walked the length of the room again. "Christine ought not to encourage him," he burst out presently. "What on earth must people think, as I'm not there."
"I don't see any harm," Sangster began mildly.
Jimmy rounded on him:
"You—you wouldn't see harm in anything; but Christine's a very attractive little thing, and——" He broke off, flushing dully. "Anyway, I won't have it," he added snappily.
"I don't see how you're going to stop it, unless——"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you go down there." Sangster spoke deliberately now. In spite of his calm assertion that there was no harm in Kettering's visit to Upton House, his anxious eyes had noticed the indefinable something in Kettering's manner towards Christine that had struck Gladys Leighton that first evening. Sangster knew men well, and he knew, without any plainer signs or telling, that it was not the house itself that took Kettering there so often, but the little mistress of the house, with her sweet eyes and her pathetic little smile.
He got up and laid a hand on Jimmy's shoulder as he spoke.
"Why not go down yourself?" he said casually.
Jimmy swore.
"I said I wouldn't. . . . I'm not going to be the first to give in.It was her doing—she sent me away. If she wants me she can say so."
"She has her pride, too, you know,"
Jimmy swore again. He was feeling very ill and upset; he was firmly convinced that he was the most ill-used beggar in the whole of London. Remorse was gnawing hard at his heart, though he was trying to believe that it was entirely another emotion. He had not slept properly for nights; his head ached, and his nerves were jumpy.
"I'll not go till she sends for me," he said again obstinately.
Sangster made no comment.
He did not see Jimmy again for some days, though he heard of him once or twice from a mutual acquaintance.
"Challoner's going to the devil, I should think," so the mutual acquaintance informed him bluntly. "What's the matter with the chap? Hasn't anybody got any influence over him? He's drinking hard and gambling his soul away."
Sangster said "Rubbish!" with a confidence he was far from feeling.
He did not really believe it; he knew Jimmy was a bit reckless and inclined to behave wildly when things did not entirely go to his taste, but he considered this a gross exaggeration of the truth; he made a mental note to look Jimmy up the following day.
But it was the very same night that Costin, Jimmy Challoner's man, presented himself at the rooms in the unfashionable part of Bloomsbury and asked anxiously for Mr. Sangster.
Sangster heard his voice in the narrow passage outside and recognised it. He left his supper—a very meagre supper of bread and cheese, as funds were low that week—and went to the door.
"Do you want me, Costin?"
The man looked relieved.
"Yes, sir—if you please, sir. It's Mr. Challoner, I'm afraid he's very ill, but he won't let me send for a doctor, so I just slipped out and came round to you, sir."
* * * * * *
Sangster found Jimmy Challoner huddled up in an arm-chair by a roasting fire. His face looked red and feverish, his eyes had a sort of unnatural glazed look, but he was sufficiently well to be able to swear when he saw his friend.
"Costin fetched you, of course. Interfering old idiot! He thinks I'm ill, but it's all bally rot! I've got a chill, that's all. What the deuce do you want?"
Sangster answered good-temperedly that he didn't want anything in particular; privately he agreed with Costin that it was more than an ordinary chill that had drawn Jimmy's face and made such hollows beneath his eyes. He stood with his back to the fire looking down at him dubiously.
"What have you been up to?" he asked.
"Up to!" Jimmy echoed the phrase pettishly. "I haven't been up to anything. You talk as if I were a blessed brat. One must do something to amuse oneself. I'm fed-up—sick to death of this infernal life. It's just a question of killing time from hour to hour. I loathe getting up in the morning, I hate going to bed at night, I'm sick to death of the club and the fools you meet there. I wish to God I could end it once and for all."
"Humph! Sounds as if you want a tonic," said Sangster in his most matter-of-fact way. He recognised a touch of hysteria in Jimmy's voice, and in spite of everything he felt sorry for him.
"Give me a drink," said Jimmy presently. "That idiot, Costin, has kept everything locked up all day. I'm as dry as blazes. Give me a drink, there's a good chap."
Sangster filled a glass with soda water and brought it over to where Jimmy sat huddled up in the big chair. He looked a pitiable enough object—he wanted shaving, and he had not troubled to put on his collar; his feet were thrust into an old pair of bedroom slippers. He sipped the soda and pushed it away angrily.
"I don't want that damned muck," he said savagely.
"I know you don't, but it's all you're going to have. Look here, Jimmy, don't be an ass! You're ill, old chap, or you will be if you go on like this. Take my advice and hop off to bed, you'll feel a heap better between the sheets. Can I do anything for you—anything——"
"Yes," said Jimmy sullenly. "You can—leave me to myself."
He held his hands to the fire and shivered; Sangster looked at him silently for a moment, then he shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the door. He was out on the landing when Jimmy called his name.
"Well?"
"Where the deuce are you going?" Jimmy demanded irritably. "Nice sort of pal, you are, to go off and leave a chap when he's sick."
Sangster did not make the obvious reply; he came back, shutting the door behind him. Jimmy was leaning back in his chair now; his face was nearly as red as the dressing-gown he wore, but he shivered violently from time to time. There was a little silence, then he opened his eyes and smiled rather apologetically.
"Sorry to be so dull. I haven't slept for a week."
It would have been nearer the truth to say that he had hardly closed his eyes since the night of Cynthia Farrow's death, but he knew that if he said that Sangster would at once bark up the wrong tree, and conclude that he was fretting for her—breaking his heart for her, whereas he was doing nothing of the kind.
It was Christine, and not Cynthia, who was on his mind day and night, night and day; Christine for whose sake he reproached himself so bitterly and could get no rest. She was so young—such a child.
Every day he found himself remembering some new little incident about her; every day some little jewel from the past slipped out of the mists of forgetfulness and looked at him with sad eyes as if to ask:
"Have you forgotten me? Don't you remember——"
He could not help thinking of Christine's mother too; he had been fond of her—she had mothered him so much in the old days; he wondered if she knew how he had repaid all her kindness; what sort of a hash he had made of life for poor little Christine.
"You'd better cut off to bed," Sangster said again bluntly.
He lit a cigarette and puffed a cloud of smoke into the air; he was really disturbed about Jimmy. The repeated advice seemed to annoy Jimmy; he frowned and rose to his feet; he caught his breath with a sort of gasp of pain. Sangster turned quickly.