The God in the Car: A Novel
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Her glove lay in her lap, and he touched it lightly; the gesture speaking of their sudden new familiarity.
Her reproach was no less eloquent; she rebuked not the thing, but the rashness of it.
"Don't do that. They're looking," she found voice to whisper.
He withdrew his hand, and, taking off his hat, pushed the hair back from his forehead. Presently he looked at her with an almost comical air of perplexity; she was conscious of the glance, but she would not meet it. He pursed his lips to whistle.
"Don't," she whispered sharply. "Don't whistle." A whistle brought her husband to her mind.
The checked whistle rudely reflected his mingled feelings. He wished that he had been more on his guard – against her and against himself. There had been enough to put him on his guard; if he had been put on his guard, this thing need not have happened. He called the thing in his thoughts "inconvenient." He was marvellously awake to the inconvenience of it; it was that which came uppermost in his mind as he sat by Maggie Dennison. Yet, in spite of a phrase that sounded so cold and brutal, his reflections paid her no little compliment; for he called the revelation inconvenient all the more, and most of all, because he found it of immense interest, because it satisfied suddenly and to the full a sense of interest and expectation that had been upon him, because it seemed to make an immense change in his mind and to alter the conditions of his life. Had it not done all this, its inconvenience would have been much less – to him and save in so far as he grieved for her – nay, it would have been, in reality, nothing. It was inconvenient because it twisted his purposes, set him at jar with himself, and cut across the orderly lines he had laid down – and because, though it did all this, he was not grieved nor angry at it.
He rose to his feet. Mrs. Dennison looked up quickly.
"I shall go for my walk now," he said, and he added in answer to her silent question, "Oh, yes, alone. I've got a thing or two I want to think about."
Her eyes dropped as he spoke. He had smiled, and she, in spite of herself, had smiled in answer; but she could not look at him while she smiled. He stood there for an instant, smiling still; then he grew grave, and turned to walk away. Her sigh witnessed the relaxation of the strain. But, after one step, he faced her again, and said, as though the idea had just struck him,
"I say, when does Dennison come?"
"In a week," she answered.
For just a moment again, he stood still, thoughtfully looking at her. Then he lifted his hat, wheeled round, and walked briskly off towards the jetty at the far end of the expanse of grass. Adela Ferrars, twenty yards off, marked his going with a sigh of relief.
Mrs. Dennison sat where she was a little while longer. Her agitation was quickly passing, and there followed on it a feeling of calm. She seemed to have resigned charge of herself, to have given her conduct into another's keeping. She did not know what he would do; he had uttered no word of pleasure or pain, praise or blame; and that question at the last – about her husband – was ambiguous. Did he ask it, fearing Harry's arrival, or did he think the arrival of her husband would end an awkward position and set him free? Really, she did not know. She had done what she could – and what she could not help. He must do what he liked – only, knowing him, she did not think that she had set an end to their acquaintance. And that for the moment was enough.
"A woman, Bessie," she heard a voice behind her saying, "may be anything from a cosmic force to a clothes-peg."
"I don't know what a cosmic force is," said Lady Semingham.
"A cosmic force? Why – "
"But I don't want to know, Alfred. Why, Maggie, that's a new shade of brown on your shoes. Where do you get them?"
Mrs. Dennison gave her bootmaker's address, and Lady Semingham told her husband to remember it. She never remembered that he always forgot such things.
The arrival of the Seminghams seemed to break the spell which had held Mrs. Dennison apart from the group over against her. Adela strolled across, followed by Marjory, and the Baron on Marjory's arm. The whole party gathered in a cluster; but Marjory hung loosely on the outskirts of the circle, and seemed scarcely to belong to it.
The Baron seated himself in the place Willie Ruston had left empty. The rest stood talking for a minute or two, then Semingham put his hand in his pocket and drew out a folded sheet of tracing-paper.
"We're all Omofagites here, aren't we?" he said; "even you, Baron, now. Here's a plan Carlin has just sent me. It shows our territory."
Everybody crowded round to look as he unfolded it. Mrs. Dennison was first in undisguised eagerness; and Marjory came closer, slipping her arm through Adela Ferrars'.
"What does the blue mean?" asked Adela.
"Native settlements."
"Oh! And all that brown? – it's mostly brown."
"Brown," answered Semingham, with a slight smile, "means unexplored country."
"I should have made it all brown," said Adela, and the Baron gave an appreciative chuckle.
"And what are these little red crosses?" asked Mrs. Dennison, laying the tip of her finger on one.
"Eh? What, those? Oh, let me see. Here, just hold it while I look at Carlin's letter. He explains it all," and Lord Semingham began to fumble in his breast-pocket.
"Dear me," said Bessie Semingham, in a tone of delicate pleasure, "they look like tombstones."
"Hush, hush, my dear lady," cried the old Baron; "what a bad omen!"
"Tombstones," echoed Maggie Dennison thoughtfully. "So they do – just like tombstones."
A pause fell on the group. Adela broke it.
"Well, Director, have you found your directions?" she asked briskly.
"It was a momentary lapse of memory," said Semingham with dignity. "Those – er – little – "
"No, not tombstones," interrupted the Baron earnestly.
"Little – er – signposts are, of course, the forts belonging to the Company. What else should they be?"
"Oh, forts," murmured everybody.
"They are," continued Lord Semingham apologetically, "in the nature of a prophecy at present, as I understand."
"A very bad prophecy, according to Bessie," said Mrs. Dennison.
"I hope," said the Baron, shaking his head, "that the official name is more correct than Lady Semingham's."
"So do I," said Marjory; and added, before she could think not to add, and with unlucky haste, "my brother's going out, you know."
Mrs. Dennison looked at her. Then she crossed over to her, saying to Adela,
"You never let me have a word with my own guest, except at breakfast and bedtime. Come and walk up and down with me, Marjory."
Marjory obeyed; the group began to scatter.
"But didn't they look like tombstones, Baron?" said Bessie Semingham again, as she sat down and made room for the old man beside her. When she had an idea she liked it very much. He began to be voluble in his reproof of her gloomy fancies; but she merely laughed in glee at her ingenuity.
Adela, by a gesture, brought Semingham to her side and walked a few paces off with him.
"Will you go with me to the post-office?" she said abruptly.
"By all means," he answered, feeling for his glass.
"Oh, you needn't get your glass to spy at me with."
"Dear, dear, you use one yourself!"
"I'll tell you myself why I'm going. You're going to send a telegram."
"Am I?"
"Yes; to invite someone to stay with you. Lord Semingham, when you find a woman relies on a man – on one man only – in trouble, what do you think?"
She asked the question in a level voice, looking straight before her.
"That she's fond of him."
"And does he – the man – think the same?"
"Generally. I think most men would. They're seldom backward to think it, you know."
"Then," she said steadily, "you must think, and he must think, what you like. I can't help it. I want you to wire and ask a man to come and stay with you."
He turned to her in surprise.
"Tom Loring," she said, and the moment the name left her lips Semingham hastily turned his glance away.
"Awkward – with the other fellow here," he ventured to suggest.
"Mr. Ruston doesn't choose your guests."
"But Mrs. – "
"Oh, fancy talking of awkwardness now! He used to influence her once, you know. Perhaps he might still. Do let us try," and her voice trembled in earnestness.
"We'll try. Will he come? He's very angry with her."
And Adela answered, still looking straight in front of her,
"I'm going to send him a wire, too."
"I'm very glad to hear it," said Lord Semingham.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAST BARRIERS
Willie Ruston rested his elbows on the jetty-wall and gazed across the harbour entrance. He had come there to think; and deliberate thinking was a rare thing for him to set his head to. His brain dealt generally – even with great matters, as all brains deal with small – in rapid half-unconscious beats; the process coalescing so closely with the decision as to be merged before it could be recognised. But about this matter he meant to think; and the first result of his determination was (as it often is in such a case) that nothing at all relevant would stay by him. There was a man fishing near, and he watched the float; he looked long at the big hotel at Puys, which faced him a mile away, and idly wondered whether it were full; he followed the egress of a fishing boat with strict attention. Then, in impatience, he turned round and sat down on the stone bench and let his eyes see nothing but the flags of the pavement. Even then he hardly thought; but after a time he became vaguely occupied with Maggie Dennison, his mind playing to and fro over her voice, her tricks of manner, her very gait, and at last settling more or less resolutely on the strange revelation of herself which she had gradually made and had consummated that day. It changed his feelings towards her; but it did not change them to contempt. He had his ideas, but he did not make ideal figures out of humanity; and humanity could go very far wrong and sink very deep in its lower possibilities without shocking him. Nor did he understand her, nor realise how great a struggle had brought what he saw to birth. It seemed to him a thing not unnatural, even in her, who was in much unlike most other women. There are dominions that are not to be resisted, and we do not think people weak simply because they are under our own influence. His surprise was reserved for the counter-influence which he felt, and strove not to acknowledge; his contempt for the disturbance into which he himself was thrown. At that he was half-displeased, puzzled, and alarmed; yet that, too, had its delight.
"What rot it is!" he muttered, in the rude dialect of self-communion, which sums up a bewildering conflict in a word of slang.
He was afraid of himself – and his exclamation betrayed the fear. Men of strong will are not all will; the strong will has other strong things to fight, and the strong head has mighty rebels to hold down. That he felt; but his fear of himself had its limits. He was not the man – as he saw very well at this moment, and recognised with an odd mixture of pride and humiliation – to give up his life to a passion. Had that been the issue clearly and definitely set before him he would not have sat doubtful on the jetty. He understood what of nobility lay in such a temperament, and his humiliation was because it made no part of him; but the pride overmastered, and at last he was glad to say to himself that there was no danger of his losing all for love. Indeed, was he in love? In love in the grand sense people talked and wrote about so much? Well, there were other senses, and there were many degrees. The question he weighed, or rather the struggle which he was undergoing, was between resisting or yielding before a temptation to take into his life something which should not absorb it, but yet in a measure alter it, which allured him all the more enticingly because, judging as he best could, he could see no price which must be paid for it – well, except one. And, as the one came into his mind, it made him pause, and he mused on it, looking at it in all lights. Sometimes he put the price as an act of wrong which would stain him – for, apart from other, maybe greater, maybe more fanciful obstacles, Harry Dennison held him for a friend – sometimes as an act of weakness which would leave him vulnerable. And, after these attempted reasonings, he would fall again to thinking of Maggie Dennison, her voice, her manner, and the revelation of herself; and in these picturings the reasoning died away.
There are a few deliberate sinners, a few by whom "Evil, be thou my Good" is calmly uttered as a dedication and a sacrament, but most men do not make up their minds to be sinners or determine in cool resolve to do acts of the sort that lurked behind Willie Ruston's picturings. They only fail to make up their minds not to do them. Ruston, in a fury of impatience, swept all his musings from him – it led to nothing. It left him where he was. He was vexing himself needlessly; he told himself that he could not decide what he ought to do. In truth, he did not choose to decide what it was that he chose to do. And with the thoughts that he drove away went the depression they had carried with them. He was confident again in himself, his destiny, his career; and in its fancied greatness, the turmoil he had suffered sank to its small proportions. He returned to his old standpoint, and to the old medley of pride and shame it gave him; he might be of supreme importance to Maggie Dennison, but she was only of some importance to him. He could live without her. But, at present, he regarded her loss as a thing not necessary to undergo.
It was late in the day that he met young Sir Walter, who ran to him, open-mouthed with news. Walter was afraid that the news would be unpalatable, and could not understand such want of tact in Semingham. To ask Tom Loring while Ruston was there argued a bluntness of perception strange to young Sir Walter. But, be the news good or bad, he had only to report; and report it he did straightway to his chief. Willie Ruston smiled, and said that, if Loring did not mind meeting him, he did not mind meeting Loring; indeed, he would welcome the opportunity of proving to that unbeliever that there was water somewhere within a hundred miles of Fort Imperial (which Tom in one of those articles had sturdily denied). Then he flirted away a stone with his stick and asked if anyone had yet told Mrs. Dennison. And, Sir Walter thinking not, he said,
"Oh, well, I'm going there. I'll tell her."
"She'll know why he's coming," said Walter, nodding his head wisely.
"Will she? Do you know?" asked Ruston with a smile – young Sir Walter's wisdom was always sure of that tribute from him.
"If you'd seen Adela Ferrars, you'd know too. She tries to make believe it's nothing, but she's – oh, she's – "
"Well?"
"She's all of a flutter," laughed Walter.
"You've got to the bottom of that," said Ruston in a tone of conviction.
"Still, I think it's inconsiderate of Loring; he must know that Mrs. Dennison will find it rather awkward. But, of course, if a fellow's in love, he won't think of that."
"I suppose not," said Willie Ruston, smiling again at this fine scorn.
Then, with a sudden impulse, struck perhaps with an envy of what he laughed at, he put his arm through his young friend's, and exclaimed, with a friendly confidential pressure of the hand,
"I say, Val, I wish the devil we were in Omofaga, don't you?"
"Rather!" came full and rich from his companion's lips.
"With a few thousand miles between us and everything – and everybody!"
Young Sir Walter's eyes sparkled.
"Off in three months now," he reminded his leader exultingly.
It could not be. The Fates will not help in such a fashion, it is not their business to cut the noose a man ties round his neck – happy is he if they do not draw it tight. With a sigh, Willie Ruston dropped his companion's arm, and left him with no other farewell than a careless nod. Of Tom Loring's coming he thought little. It might be that Sir Walter had seen most of its meaning, and that Semingham was acting as a benevolent match-maker – a character strange for him, and amusing to see played – but, no doubt, there was a little more. Probably Tom had some idea of turning him from his path, of combating his influence, of disputing his power. Well, Tom had tried that once, and had failed; he would fail again. Maggie Dennison had not hesitated to resent such interference; she had at once (Ruston expressed it to himself) put Tom in his right place. Tom would be no more to her at Dieppe than in London – nay, he would be less, for any power unbroken friendship and habit might have had then would be gone by now. Thus, though he saw the other meaning, he made light of it, and it was as a bit of gossip concerning Adela Ferrars, not as tidings which might affect herself, that he told Mrs. Dennison of Tom's impending arrival.
On her the announcement had a very different effect. For her the whole significance lay in what Ruston ignored, and none in what had caught his fancy. He was amazed to see the rush of colour to her cheeks.
"Tom Loring coming here!" she cried in something like horror.
Again, and with a laugh, Ruston pointed out the motive of his coming, as young Sir Walter had interpreted it; but he added, as though in concession, and with another laugh,
"Perhaps he wants to keep his eye on me, too. He doesn't trust me further than he can see me, you know."
Without looking at him or seeming to listen to his words, she asked, in low, indignant tones,
"How dare he come?"
Willie Ruston opened his eyes. He did not understand so much emotion spent on such a trifle. Say it was bad taste in Loring to come, or an impertinence! Well, it was not a tragedy at all events. He was almost angry with her for giving importance to it; and the importance she gave set him wondering. But before he could translate his feeling into words, she turned to him, leaning across the table that stood between them, and clasping her hands.
"I can't bear to have him here now," she murmured.
"What harm will he do? You needn't see anything of him," rejoined Ruston, more astonished at each new proof of disquietude in her.
But Tom Loring was not to be so lightly dismissed from her mind; and she did not seem to heed when Ruston added, with a laugh,
"You got rid of him once, didn't you? I should think you could again."
"Ah, then! That was different."
He looked at her curiously. She was agitated, but there seemed to be more than agitation. As he read it, it was fear; and discerning it, he spoke in growing surprise and rising irritation.
"You look as if you were afraid of him."
"Afraid of him?" she broke out. "Yes, I am afraid of him."
"Of Loring?" he exclaimed in sheer wonder. "Why, in heaven's name? Loring's not – "
He was going to say "your husband," but stopped himself.
"I can't face him," she whispered. "Oh, you know! Why do you torment me? Or don't you know? Oh, how strange you are!"
And now there was fear in her eyes when she looked at Ruston.
He sat still a moment, and then in slow tones he said,
"I don't see what concern your affairs are of Loring's, or mine either, by God!"
At the last word his voice rose a little, and his lips shut tight as it left them.
"Oh, it's easy for you," she said, half in anger at him, half in scorn of herself. "You don't know what he is – what he was – to me."
"What was Loring to you?" he asked in sharp, imperious tones – tones that made her hurriedly cry,
"No, no; not that, not that. How could you think that of me?"
"What then?" came curt and crisp from him, her reproach falling unheeded.
"Oh, I wish – I wish you could understand just a little! Do you think it's all nothing to me? Do you think I don't mind?"
"I don't know what it is to you," he said doggedly. "I know it's nothing to Loring."
"I don't believe," she went on, "that he's coming because of Adela at all."
And as she spoke, she met his eyes for a moment, and then shrank from them.
"Come, shall we speak plainly?" he asked with evident impatience.
"Ah, you will, I know," she wailed, with a smile and a despairing gesture. She loved and dreaded him for it. "Not too plainly, Willie!"
His mouth relaxed.
"Why do you worry about the fellow?" he asked.
"Well, I'll speak plainly, too," she cried. "He's not a fool; and he's an honest man. That's why I don't want him here;" and enduring only till she had flung out the truth, she buried her face in her hands.
"I've had enough of him," said Willie Ruston, frowning. "He's always got in my way; first about the Company – and now – "
He broke off, pushing his chair back, and rising to his feet. He walked to the window of the little sitting-room where they were; the sun was setting over the sea, and early dusk gathering. It was still, save for the sound of the waves.
"Is there nobody at home?" he asked, with his back towards her.
"No. Marjory and the children have gone down to the Rome to have tea with Bessie Semingham."
He waited a moment longer, looking out, then he came back and stood facing her. She was leaning her head on her hand. At last she spoke in a low voice.
"He's Harry's friend," she said, "and he used to be mine; and he trusted me."
Willie Ruston threw his head back with a little sharp jerk.
"Oh, well, I didn't come to talk about Tom Loring," he said. "If you value his opinion so very much, why, you must keep it; that's all," and he moved towards where his hat was lying. "But I'm afraid I can't share my friends with him."
"Oh, I know you won't share anything with anybody," said Maggie Dennison, her voice trembling between a sob and a laugh.
He turned instantly. His face lighted up, and the sun, casting its last rays on her eyes, made them answer with borrowed brilliance.
"I won't share you with Loring, anyhow," he cried, walking close up to her, and resting his hand on the table.
She laid hers gently on it.
"Don't go to Omofaga, Willie," she said.
For a moment he sheerly stared at her; then he burst into a merry unrestrained peal of laughter. Next he lifted her hand and kissed it.
"You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said he, his mouth quivering with amusement.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide for a moment.
"Well, what's the matter? What have I done wrong now?"
She rose and walked up and down the room.
"I wish I'd never seen you," she said from the far end of it.
"I wish I'd never seen – Tom Loring."
"Ah, that's the only thing!" she cried. "I may live or I may die, or I may – do anything you like; but I mustn't have another friend! I mustn't give a thought to what anybody else thinks of me!"
"You mustn't balance me against Tom Loring," he answered between his teeth, all signs of his merriment gone now.
For a moment – not long, but seeming very long – there was silence in the room; and, while the brief stillness reigned, she fought a last battle against him, calling loyalty and friendship to her aid, praying their alliance against the overbearing demand he made on her – against his roughness, his blindness to all she suffered for him. But the strife was short. Lifting her hands above her head, and bringing them down through the air as with a blow, she cried,
"My God, I balance nothing against you!"
Her reward – her only reward – seemed on the instant to be hers. Willie Ruston was transformed; his sullenness was gone; his eyes were alight with triumph; the smile she loved was on his lips, and he had forgotten those troubled, useless, mazy musings on the jetty. He took a quick step towards her, holding out both his hands. She clasped them.
"Nothing?" he asked in a low tone. "Nothing, Maggie?"
She bowed her head for answer; it was the attitude of surrender, of helplessness, and of trust, and it appealed to the softer feeling in him which her resistance had smothered. He was strongly moved, and his face was pale as he drew her to him and kissed her lips; but all he said was,
"Then the deuce take Tom Loring!"
It seemed to her enough. The light devil-may-care words surely covered a pledge from him to her – something in return from him to her. At last, surely he was hers, and her wishes his law. It was her moment; she would ask of him now the uttermost wish of her heart – the wish that had displaced all else – the passionate wish not to lose him – not, as it were, to be emptied of him.