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He sat longer than he meant. It was past ten when he went upstairs. Mrs. Cormack had gone, and his wife was in an armchair by the open window. He came in softly and surprised her with her head thrown back on the cushions and a smile on her lips. And the letter was in her hands. Hearing his step when he was close by her, she sat up, letting the note fall to the ground.
"What a time you've been! Berthe's gone. Were you asleep?"
"No. I was thinking; Maggie, I wish I could come to Dieppe with you."
"Ah, I wish you could," said she graciously. "But you're left in charge of Omofaga."
She spoke as though in that charge lay consolation more than enough.
"I believe you care – I mean you think more about Omofaga than about – "
"Anything in the world?" she asked, in playful mockery.
"Than about me," he went on stubbornly.
"Than about your coming to Dieppe, you mean?"
"I mean, than about me," he repeated.
She looked at him wonderingly.
"My dear man," said she, taking his hand, "what's the matter?"
"You do wish I could come?"
"Must I say?" smiled Mrs. Dennison. "For shame, Harry! You might be on your honeymoon."
He moved away, and flung himself into a chair.
"I don't think it's fair of Ruston," he broke out, "to run away and leave it all to me."
"Why, you told him you could do it perfectly! I heard you say so."
"How could I say anything else, when – when – "
"And originally you were both to be away! After all, you're not stopping because of Omofaga, but because Sir George has got the gout."
Harry Dennison, convicted of folly, had no answer, though he was hurt that he should be convicted out of his wife's mouth. He shuffled his feet about and began to whistle dolefully.
Mrs. Dennison looked at him with smothered impatience. Their little boy behaved like that when he was in a naughty mood – when he wanted the moon, or something of that kind, and thought mother and nurse cruel because it didn't come. Mrs. Dennison forgot that mother and nurse were fate to her little boy, or she might have sympathised with his naughty moods a little better.
She rose now and walked slowly over to her husband. She had a hand on his chair, and was about to speak, when he stopped his whistling and jerked out abruptly,
"What did he mean about the kingdom?"
Mrs. Dennison's hand slid away and fell by her side. Harry caught her look of cold anger. He leapt to his feet.
"Maggie, I'm a fool," he cried. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Sit down here."
He made her sit, and half-crouched, half-knelt beside her.
"Maggie," he went on, "are you angry? Damn the joke! I don't want to know. Are you sorry I'm not coming?"
"What a baby you are, Harry! Oh, yes, awfully sorry."
He knew so well what he wanted to say: he wanted to tell her that she was everything to him, that to be out of her heart was death: that to feel her slipping away was a torture: he wanted to woo and win her over again – win her more truly than he had even in those triumphant days when she gave herself to him. He wanted to show her that he understood her – that he was not a fool – that he was man enough for her! Yes, that she need not turn to Ruston or anybody else. Oh, yes, he could understand her, really he could.
Not a word of it would come. He dared not begin: he feared that he would look – that she would find him – more silly still, if he began to say that sort of thing. She was smiling satirically now – indulgently but satirically, and the emphasis of her purposely childish "awfully" betrayed her estimation of his question. She did not understand the mood. She was accustomed to his admiration – worship would hardly be too strong a word. But the implied demand for a response to it seemed strange to her. Her air bore in upon him the utter difference between his thoughts of her and the way she thought about him. Always dimly felt, it had never pressed on him like this before.
"Really, I'm very sorry, dear," she said, just a little more seriously. "But it's only a fortnight. We're not separating for ever," and her smile broke out again.
With a queer feeling of hopelessness, he rose to his feet. No, he couldn't make her feel it. He had suffered in the same way over his speeches; he couldn't make people feel them either. She didn't understand. It was no use. He began to whistle again, staring out of the open window.
"I shall go to bed, Harry. I'm tired. I've been seeing that the maid's packed what I wanted, and it's harder work than packing oneself."
"Give me a kiss, Meg," he said, turning round.
She did not do that, but she accepted his kiss, and he, turning away abruptly, shaped his lips to resume his tune. But now the tune wouldn't come. His wife left him alone. The tune came when she was there. Now it wouldn't. Ah, but the words would. He muttered them inaudibly to himself as he stood looking out of the window. They sounded as though they must touch any woman's heart. With an oath he threw himself on to the sofa, trying now to banish the haunting words – the words that would not come at his call, and came, in belated uselessness, to mock him now. He lay still; and they ran through his head. At last they ceased; but, before he could thank God for that, a strange sense of desolation came over him. He looked round the empty, silent room, that seemed larger now than in its busy daylight hours. The house was all still; there might have been one lying dead in it. It might have been the house of a man who had lost his wife.
CHAPTER XI
AGAINST HIS COMING
"The great Napoleon once observed – "
"Don't quote from 'Anecdotes, New and Old,'" interrupted Adela unkindly.
"That when his death was announced," pursued Lord Semingham, who thought it good for Adela to take no notice of such interruptions, "everybody would say Ouf. I say 'Ouf' now," and he stretched his arms luxuriously to their full length. "There's room here," he added, explaining the gesture.
"Well, who's dead?" asked Adela, choosing to be exasperatingly literal.
"Nobody's dead; but a lot of people – and things – are a long way off."
"That's not so satisfactorily final," said Adela.
"No, but it serves for the time. Did you see me on my bicycle this morning?"
"What, going round here?" and Adela waved her hand circularly, as though embracing the broad path that runs round the grass by the sea at Dieppe.
"Yes – just behind a charming Parisienne in a pair of – behind a charming Parisienne in an appropriate costume."
"Bessie must get one," said Adela.
"Good heavens!"
"I mean a bicycle."
"Oh, certainly, if she likes; but she'd as soon mount Salisbury Spire."
"How did you learn?"
"I really beg your pardon," said Semingham, "but the fact is – Ruston taught me."
"Let's change the subject," said Adela, smiling.
"A charming child, this Marjory Valentine," observed Semingham. "She's too good for young Evan. I'm very glad she wouldn't have him."
"I'm not."
"You're always sorry other girls don't marry. Heaven knows why."
"Well, I'm sorry she didn't take Evan."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you."
"Not – not the forbidden topic?"
"I half believe so."
"But she's here with Maggie Dennison."
"Well, everybody doesn't chatter as you do," said Adela incisively.
"I don't believe it. She – Hallo! here she is!"
Marjory Valentine came along, bending her slim figure a little, the better to resist a fresh breeze that blew her skirts out behind her, and threatened to carry off her broad-brimmed hat. She had been bathing; the water was warm, and her cheeks glowed with a fine colour. As she came up, both Adela and Lord Semingham put on their eyeglasses.
"An uncommon pretty girl," observed the latter.
"Isn't it glorious?" cried Marjory, yet several yards away. "Walter will enjoy the bathing tremendously."
"When's he coming?"
"Saturday," answered Marjory. "Where is Lady Semingham?"
"Dressing," said Semingham solemnly. "Costume number one, off at 11.30. Costume number two, on at 12. Costume number two, off at 3.30. Costume – "
"After all, she's your wife," said Adela, in tones of grave reproach.
"But for that, I shouldn't have a word to say against it. Women are very queer reasoners."
Marjory sat down next to Adela.
"Women do waste a lot of time on dress, don't they?" she asked, in a meditative tone; "and a lot of thought, too!"
"Hallo!" exclaimed Lord Semingham.
"I mean, thought they might give to really important things. You can't imagine George Eliot – "
"What about Queen Elizabeth?" interrupted Semingham.
"She was a horrible woman," said Adela.
"Phryne attached no importance to it," added Semingham.
"Oh, I forgot! Tell me about her," cried Marjory.
"A strong-minded woman, Miss Marjory."
"He's talking nonsense, Marjory."
"I supplied a historical instance in Miss Valentine's favour."
"I shall look her up," said Marjory, at which Lord Semingham smiled in quiet amusement. He was a man who saw his joke a long way off, and could wait patiently for it.
"Yes, do," he said, lighting a cigarette.
Adela had grown grave, and was watching the girl's face. It was a pretty face, and not a silly one; and Marjory's blue eyes gazed out to sea, as though she were looking at something a great way off. Adela, with a frown of impatience, turned to her other neighbour. She would not be troubled with aspirations there. In fact, she was still annoyed with her young friend on Evan Haselden's account. But it was no use turning to Lord Semingham. His eyes were more than half-closed, and he was beating time gently to the Casino band, audible in the distance. Adela sighed. At last Marjory broke the silence.
"When Mr. Ruston comes," she began, "I shall ask him whether – "
The sentence was not finished.
"When who comes?" cried Adela; and Semingham opened his eyes and stilled his foot-pats.
"Mr. Ruston."
"Is he coming after all? I thought, now that Dennison – "
"Oh, yes – he's coming with Walter. Didn't you know?"
"Is he coming to-day?"
"I suppose so. Aren't you glad?"
"Of course," from Adela, and "Oh, uncommonly," from Lord Semingham, seemed at first sight answers satisfactory enough; but Marjory's inquiring gaze rested on their faces.
"Come for a stroll," said Adela abruptly, and passing her arm through Marjory's, she made her rise. Semingham, having gasped out his conventional reply, sat like a man of stone, but Adela, for all that it was needless, whispered imperatively, "Stay where you are."
"Well, Marjory," she went on, as they began to walk, "I don't know that I am glad after all."
"I believe you don't like him."
"I believe I don't," said Adela slowly. It was a point she had not yet quite decided.
"I didn't use to."
"But you do now?"
"Yes."
Adela hated the pregnant brevity of this affirmative.
"Mamma doesn't," laughed Marjory. "She's so angry with him carrying off Walter. As if it wasn't a grand thing for Walter! So she's quite turned round about him."
"He's not staying in – with you, I suppose?"
"Oh, no. Though I don't see why he shouldn't. Conventions are so stupid, aren't they? Mrs. Dennison's there," and Marjory looked up with an appeal to calm reason as personified in Adela.
At another time, nineteen's view of twenty-nine – Marjory's conception of Maggie Dennison as a sufficing chaperon – would have amused Adela. But she was past amusement. Her patience snapped, as it were, in two. She turned almost fiercely on her companion, forgetting all prudence in her irritation.
"For heaven's sake, child, what do you mean? Do you think he's coming to see you?"
Marjory drew her arm out from Adela's, and retreated a step from her.
"Adela! I never thought – " She did not end, conscious, perhaps, that her flushed face gave her words the lie. Adela swept on.
"You! He's not coming to see you. I don't believe he's coming to see anyone – no, not even Maggie – I mean no one, at all."
The girl's look marked the fatal slip.
"Oh!" she gasped, just audibly.
"I don't believe he cares that for any of us – for anyone alive. Marjory, I didn't mean what I said about Maggie, I didn't indeed. Don't look like that. Oh, what a stupid girl you are!" and she ended with a half-hysterical laugh.
For some moments they stood facing one another, saying nothing. The meaning of Adela's words was sinking into Marjory's mind.
"Let's walk on. People will wonder," said she at last; and she enlaced Adela's arm again. After another long pause, during which her face expressed the turmoil of her thoughts, she whispered,
"Adela, is that why Mr. Loring went away?"
"I don't know why he went away."
"You think me a child, so you say you don't mean it now. You do mean it, you know. You wouldn't say a thing like that for nothing. Tell me what you do mean, Adela." It was almost an order. Adela suddenly realised that she had struck down to a force and a character. "Tell me exactly what you mean," insisted Marjory; "you ought to tell me, Adela."
Adela found herself obeying.
"I don't know about him; but I'm afraid of her," she stammered, as if confessing a shameful deed of her own. A moment later she broke into entreaty. "Go away, dear. Don't get mixed up in it. Don't have anything to do with him."
"Do you go away when your friends are in trouble or in danger?"
Adela felt suddenly small – then wise – then small because her wisdom was of a small kind. Yet she gave it utterance.
"But, Marjory, think of – think of yourself. If you – ."
"I know what you're going to say. If I care for him? I don't. I hardly know him. But, if I did, I might – I might be of some use. And are you going to leave her all alone? I thought you were her friend. Are you just going to look on? Though you think – what you think!"
Adela caught hold of the girl's hands. There was a choking in her throat, and she could say nothing.
"But if he sees?" she murmured, when she found speech.
"He won't see. There's nothing to see. I shan't show it. Adela, I shall stay. Why do you think what – what you think?"
People might wonder, if they would – perhaps they did – when Adela drew Marjory towards her, and kissed her lips.
"I couldn't, my dear," she said, "but, if you can, for heaven's sake do. I may be wrong, but – I'm uneasy."
Marjory's lips quivered, but she held her head proudly up; then she sobbed a short quick-stifled sob, and then smiled.
"I daresay it's not a bit true," she said.
Adela pressed her hand again, saying,
"I'm an emotional old creature."
"Why did Mr. Loring go away?" demanded Marjory.
"I don't know. He thought it – "
"Best? Well, he was wrong."
Adela could not hear Tom attacked.
"Maggie turned him out," she said – which account of the matter was, perhaps, just a little one-sided, though containing a part of the truth. Marjory meditated on it for a moment, Adela still covertly looking at her. The discovery was very strange. Half-an-hour ago she had smiled because the girl hinted a longing after something beyond frocks, and had laughed at her simple acceptance of Semingham's joke. Now she found herself turning to her, looking to her for help in the trouble that had puzzled her. In her admiration of the girl's courage, she forgot to wonder at her intuition, her grasp of evil possibilities, the knowledge of Maggie Dennison that her resolve implied. Adda watched her, as, their farewell said, she walked, first quickly, then very slowly, towards the villa which Mrs. Dennison had hired, on the cliff-side, near the old Castle. Then, with a last sigh, she put up her parasol and sauntered back to the Hôtel de Rome. Costume number two would be on by now, and Bessie Semingham ready for luncheon.
Marjory, finally sunk into the slow gait that means either idleness or deep thought, made her way up to the villa. With every step she drew nearer, the burden she had taken up seemed heavier. It was not sorrow for the dawning dream that the storm-cloud had eclipsed that she really thought of. But the task loomed large in its true difficulty, as her first enthusiasm spent itself. If Adela were right, what could she do? If Adela were wrong, what unpardonable offence she might give. Ah, was Adela right? Strange and new as the idea was, there was an unquestioning conviction in her manner that Marjory could hardly resist. Save under the stress of a conviction, speech on such a matter would have been an impossible crime. And Marjory remembered, with a sinking heart, Maggie Dennison's smile of happy triumph when she read out the lines in which Ruston told of his coming. Yes, it was, or it might be, true. But where lay her power to help?
Coming round the elbow of the rising path, she caught sight of Maggie Dennison sitting in the garden. Mrs. Dennison wore white; her pale, clear-cut profile was towards Marjory; she rested her chin on her hand, and her elbow on her knee, and she was looking on the ground. Softly Marjory drew near. An unopened letter from Harry lay on a little table; the children had begun their mid-day meal in the room, whose open window was but a few feet behind; Mrs. Dennison's thoughts were far away. Marjory stopped short. A stronger buffet of fear, a more overwhelming sense of helplessness, smote her. She understood better why Adela had been driven to do nothing – to look on. She smiled for an instant; the idea put itself so whimsically; but she thought that, had Mrs. Dennison been walking over a precipice, it would need all one's courage to interfere with her. She would think it such an impertinence. And Ruston? Marjory saw, all in a minute, his cheerful scorn, his unshaken determination, his rapid dismissal of one more obstacle. She drew in her breath in a long inspiration, and Mrs. Dennison raised her eyes and smiled.
"I believe I felt you there," she said, smiling. "At least, I began to think of you."
Marjory sat near her hostess.
"Did you meet anyone?" asked Mrs. Dennison.
"Adela Ferrars and Lord Semingham."
"Well, had they anything to say?"
"No – I don't think so," she answered slowly.
"What should they have to say in this place? The children have begun. Aren't you hungry?"
"Not very."
"Well, I am," and Mrs. Dennison arose. "I forgot it, but I am."
"They didn't know Mr. Ruston was coming."
"Didn't they?" smiled Mrs. Dennison. "And has Adela forgiven you? Oh, you know, the poor boy is a friend of hers, as he is of mine."
"We didn't talk about it."
"And you don't want to? Very well, we won't. See, here's a long letter – it's very heavy, at least – from Harry. I must read it afterwards."
"Perhaps it's to say he can come sooner."
"I expect not," said Mrs. Dennison, and she opened the letter. "No; a fortnight hence at the soonest," she announced, after reading a few lines.
Marjory was both looking and listening closely, but she detected neither disappointment nor relief.
"He's seen Tom Loring! Oh, and Tom sends me his best remembrances. Poor Tom! Marjory, does Adela talk about Mr. Loring?"
"She mentioned him once."
"She thinks it was all my fault," laughed Mrs. Dennison. "A woman always thinks it's a woman's fault; at least, that's our natural tendency, though we're being taught to overcome it. Marjory, you look dull! It will be livelier for you when your brother and Mr. Ruston come."
The hardest thing about great resolves and lofty moods is their intermixture with everyday life. The intervals, the "waits," the mass of irrelevant trivialities that life inartistically mingles with its drama, flinging down pell-mell a heap of great and small – these cool courage and make discernment distrust itself. Mrs. Dennison seemed so quiet, so placid, so completely the affectionate but not anxious wife, the kind hostess, and even the human gossip, that Marjory wanted to rub her eyes, wondering if all her heroics were nonsense – a girl's romance gone wrong. There was nothing to be done but eat and drink, and talk and lounge in the sun – there was no hint of a drama, no call for a rescue, no place for a sacrifice. And Marjory had been all aglow to begin. Her face grew dull and her eyelids half-dropped as she leant her head on the back of her chair.
"Déjeuner!" cried Mrs. Dennison merrily. "And this afternoon we're all going to gamble at petits chevaux, and if we win we're going to buy more Omofagas. There's a picture of a speculator's family!"
"Mr. Dennison's not a speculator, is he?"
"Oh, it depends on what you mean. Anyhow, I am;" and Mrs. Dennison, waving her letter in the air and singing softly, almost danced in her merry walk to the house. Then, crying her last words, "Be quick!" from the door, she disappeared.
A moment later she was laughing and chattering to her children. Marjory heard her burlesque complaints over the utter disappearance of an omelette she had set her heart upon.
That afternoon they all played at petits chevaux, and the only one to win was Madge. But Madge utterly refused to invest her gains in Omofagas. She assigned no reasons, slating that her mother did not like her to declare the feeling which influenced her, and Mrs. Dennison laughed again. But Adela Ferrars would not look towards Marjory, but kept her eyes on an old gentleman who had been playing also, and playing with good fortune. He had looked round curiously when, in the course of the chaff, they had mentioned Omofaga, and Adela detected in him the wish to look again. She wondered who he was, scrutinising his faded blue eyes and the wrinkles of weariness on his brow. Willie Ruston could have told her. It was Baron von Geltschmidt of Frankfort.
CHAPTER XII
IT CAN WAIT
In all things evil and good, to the world, and – a thing quite rare – to himself, Willie Ruston was an unaffected man. Success, the evidence of power and the earnest of more power, gave him his greatest pleasure, and he received it with his greatest and most open satisfaction. It did not surprise him, but it elated him, and his habit was to conceal neither the presence of elation nor the absence of surprise. That irony in the old sense, which means the well-bred though hardly sincere depreciation of a man's own qualities and achievements, was not his. When he had done anything, he liked to dine with his friends and talk it over. He had been sharing the Carlins' unfashionable six o'clock meal at Hampstead this evening, and had taken the train to Baker Street, and was now sauntering home with a cigar. He had talked the whole thing over with them. Carlin had said that no one could have managed the affair so well as he had, and Mrs. Carlin had not once referred to that lost tabula in naufragio, the coal business. Yes, his attack on London had been a success. He had known nothing of London, save that its denizens were human beings, and that knowledge, whether in business or society, had been enough. His great scheme was floated; a few months more would see him in Omofaga; there was money to last for a long time to come; and he had been cordially received and even made a lion of in the drawing-rooms. They would look for his name in the papers ("and find it, by Jove," he interpolated). Men in high places would think of him when there was a job to be "put through;" and women, famous in regions inaccessible to the vulgar, would recollect their talks with Mr. Ruston. Decidedly they were human beings, and therefore, raw as he was (he just knew that he had come to them a little raw), he had succeeded.
Yet they were, some of them, strange folk. There were complications in them which he found it necessary to reconnoitre. They said a great many things which they did not think, and, en revanche, would often only hint what they did. And – But here he yawned, and, finding his cigar out, relit it. He was not in the mood for analysing his acquaintance. He let his fancy play more lightly. It was evening, and work was done. He liked London evenings. He had liked bandying repartees with Adela Ferrars (though she had been too much for him if she could have kept her temper); he liked talking to Marjory Valentine and seeing her occupied with his ideas. Most of all, he liked trying to catch Maggie Dennison's thought as it flashed out for a moment, and fled to shelter again. He had laughed again and again over the talk that Tom Loring had interrupted – and not less because of the interruption. There was little malice in him, and he bore no grudge against Tom. Even his anger at the Omofaga articles had been chiefly for public purposes and public consumption. It was always somebody's "game" to spoil his game, and one must not quarrel with men for playing their own hands. Tom amused him, and had amused him, especially by his behaviour over that talk. No doubt the position had looked a strange one. Tom had been so shocked. Poor Tom, it must be very serious to be so easily shocked. Mr. Ruston was not easily shocked.