CHAPTER V
Six years had passed; and Zero had got a new master, a somewhat dictatorial gentleman, but with genuine goodness of heart, aged five, bearing the same name as his father, Richard Staines, but never by any chance addressed by it. His father called him Dick. His mother called him by various fond and foolish appellations. He was known to the servants of the household as the Emperor. He had two sisters, whom he always spoke of collectively as "the children." He always spoke of Zero as "my dog."
Zero was rather an old dog now, but hale and hearty. In his own circle he was highly valued, but his formidable appearance still struck terror among strangers, willing though he was to make friends with them. The tradespeople, who had at first approached very delicately, had now grown used to him; but the tramp or hawker who entered the garden at Midway, and found Zero looking at him pensively, as a rule retired quickly to see if the road was still there. No further instance had occurred of Zero's mysterious powers, and in consequence they tended to become legendary. Richard Staines had now definitely adopted the theory of coincidence.
"Zero's a good old friend of mine, and I love him," he said; "but we must give up pretending he's a miracle." Jane's faith, however, remained unshaken.
And then, one summer evening, Dick came into the drawing-room with determination in his face.
"Mother," he said, "I want a stick or whip, please."
"Well, now," said Jane, "what for?"
"To beat my dog with. He's got to be punished."
"That's a pity, Dickywick. What's he been doing?"
"He won't let me go out into the road. Every time he caught hold of my coat and pulled me back. He's most frightfully strong, and he pulled me over once. He wants a lamming."
"I wonder if he would let me go out," said Jane. "Let's go and see, shall we?"
"Right-oh," said Dick, perfectly satisfied.
In the garden they found Zero cheerful and quite unrepentant. As a rule, he rushed to the gate in the hopes of being taken out for a run. But this evening, as Jane neared the gate, he became disquieted. He caught hold of her dress and tried to drag her back. He ran round and round her, whimpering. He flung himself in front of her feet.
"Now, you see," said Dick triumphantly.
"Yes, I see."
"Well, I shall go and fetch a stick."
"Oh, no. Zero does not want us to go out because he believes there's some danger on the road."
"O-o-oh! Do you really mean it?"
"Honest Injun."
"Then he's not a bad dog at all, and I told him he was. Come here, Zero." He patted the dog's head. "You're a good dog really. My mistake. Sorry. What are you laughing at, mother? That's what Tom always says. Now let's go and see the danger on the road."
"Well, it wouldn't be quite fair to Zero, after all the trouble he's taken. Besides, I want to see the rabbits at their games. They ought to be out just now."
"All right," said Dick. "You follow me, and I'll show you them. But you mustn't make the least sound. You must be very Red-Indian."
Dick's mother followed him obediently, and was very Red-Indian. The rabbits lived in a high bank just beyond the far end of the garden, and what the gardener had said about them before the wire-netting came could not be printed. Jane watched the rabbits, and conversed about them in the hoarse whisper enjoined by her son, but she was thinking principally about Zero.
Then Dick went to bed, and his father came back from the city. He went up at least one day a week, and came back full of aggressive virtue and likely to refer to himself as a man who earned his own living, thank Heaven.
At dinner Richard said: "By the way, I'd been meaning to speak of it—what's the matter with Zero?"
"Why?"
"He won't leave the gate. He was there when I drove in. I called him in, but he went back almost directly. I saw him through the window as I was dressing, and he was still there—lying quite still, with his eyes glued on the road."
And then Jane recounted the experience of Dick and herself.
"You may laugh, Richard, but something is going to happen, and Zero knows what it will be."
"Well," said Richard, "if anybody is proposing to burglarise us to-night, I don't envy him the preliminaries with Zero. But, of course, it may be nothing. All the same I've always said there ought to be a lodge at that gate."
But to this Jane was most firmly opposed. A new semi-artistic red-brick lodge would be out of keeping with Midway altogether. "And what are you going to do about Zero?"
"Oh, anything you like. What do you propose?"
"I don't know what to say. Whatever is going to happen, apparently Zero thinks he can tackle it by himself. Still, you might have your revolver somewhere handy to-night."
"I will," said Richard.
Zero remained at his post until the dawn, and then came a black speck on the white road. Zero stood up and growled. The skin on his back moved.
Down the road came the lean, black retriever, snapping aimlessly, foam dropping from his jaws. Zero sprang at him and was thrown down and bitten. At his second spring he got hold and kept it. The two dogs rolled off the road, and into the ditch.
At breakfast, next morning, Richard was innocuously humorous on the subject of revolvers, burglars, and clairvoyant bulldogs. He was interrupted by a servant, who announced that Mr Hammond wished to speak to him for a moment.
"Right," said Richard. "Where is he?"
"He is just outside, sir," said the man. "Mr Hammond would not come in."
Hammond was a neighbour of Richard's, a robust and heavily built man. As a rule he was a cheerful sportsman, but this morning his countenance was troubled. His clothes were covered with dust, and he looked generally dishevelled.
"Hallo, Jim," said Richard cheerily. "How goes it? You look as if you'd been out all night."
"I have," said Hammond grimly. "So have several other men."
"Why? What's up?"
"Outbreak of rabies at Barker's farm. He shot one of the dogs, but the other got away. There must have been some damned mismanagement. A lot of us have been out trying to find the brute all night."
"But, by Jove, this is most awfully serious. Can't I help? I'm ready to start now if you like."
"Thanks, but I found the dog five minutes ago—dead in a ditch not twenty yards from your gate. He's there still."
"Who shot him?"
"Nobody. That's the trouble. He had been killed by another dog, as you'll see when you look at his windpipe. The chances are the other dog got bitten or scratched, and he'll carry on the infection. It's the other dog we've got to hunt."
"Could it be—" Richard paused.
"I'm afraid so," said Hammond. "Not many dogs would tackle a mad retriever, but your bulldog would. And it was close to your gate that the retriever was killed."
"If you'll wait half a minute, I'll see where Zero is."
But the dog was not to be found. Nobody had seen him that morning. In truth, Richard had not expected to find him. He left word that if the dog came back he was to be shut up in an empty stable. And then he and Hammond went out together.
"You've got a revolver, I suppose," said Richard.
"I don't hunt mad dogs without one. This is most awfully hard lines on you, Richard. He was a ripping good dog, Zero was."
"He was. It's Dick I'm thinking about. The dog was a great pal of his."
They found young Barker watching by the dead retriever. He explained gloomily that he had sent a boy for a cart. The body would be taken back and buried in lime. "And even then, sir, we've not got the dog that killed him."
"We're just going to get him," said Richard quietly.
They walked on in silence for a mile and then at a turn of the road they saw Zero, apparently asleep in the sunlight in the white dust.
"I ought to do this," said Richard, "but I wish you would."
"Right, old chap. It'll be over in a moment, and he'll be dead before he knows he's hurt. Look the other way."
"Richard turned round and waited, as it seemed to him, for a long time, waiting for the shot. Suddenly he heard Hammond's voice behind him.
"No need to shoot. The poor beggar's dead—been run over by a motor-car, I should say. It's a lucky accident."
"I wonder," said Richard.
"Wonder what?"
"Wonder if it was really an accident."
WHEN I WAS KING
I was in a part of the country where it is a good deal safer to kill a child than to take a pheasant. There are more people to look after the pheasants. I have always felt as if a man who could get his bird without a gun and cook it without a kitchen had a kind of right to the bird. An empty stomach is an argument too. Well, I got my bird, and then Bates got me. He is a big man and can use his hands. But all the same I am ready for him, man to man, at any time. He had three to help him that time, and that was why I had to stand up and look penitent while old White-whiskers talked nonsense before he sent me to prison.
I can talk the common talk, and I can talk like a gentleman by birth and education, which is what I happen to be. To Bates I gave the common talk—and very common some of it was. Just for a whim, to amuse myself, I gave the magistrate the other kind, knowing very well the sort of thing it would make him say.
"It is deplorable," said old White-whiskers, "that an evidently well-educated man like yourself, possessed of some abilities, and in a position to get your living by honest work, should take to this crime of poaching. The fact that you used violence towards the keeper makes the case all the worse. Men like you are a curse to the country."
Well, I have tried honest work. I have been a classical tutor. I have been an actor. I have been a bookmaker's clerk. But I like to go my own way at my own time. And that does not conduce to regular employment. My great-grandmother, I was always told, was a gipsy woman, and it may be that I have thrown back to her. I cannot say. I do know that I must go my own way at my own time, and that my own way is mostly out in the open, and that I do not love bricks and mortar.
It is not often that I stay for long in one place, and I had stayed too long in that village. There was a reason, of course, and if you guess that the reason was a woman, you need not trouble to guess again. I had a room at Mrs Crewe's cottage and paid my rent for it regularly. I had done very well with plovers' eggs earlier in the season, and had not spent all my money yet. It was a mistake to stop so long, because the keepers began to study me a little. They began to watch where I went and to ask themselves why. I had been marked by them long before I met Bates in the wood that night. They put me in prison, and it did not do me any good. It made me angry. I was a nice, well-conducted prisoner though, for the people who had to look after me had no responsibility in the matter. They did not make the laws, they were merely getting a living. I was principally angry with myself, because I had allowed another man to beat me. I made up my mind as soon as I got out of prison to take to the road again. I thought it would be better for my health if I could smell the air of a different county. It is a solemn fact that prison is not good for your health or strength. When I came out I was not the man that I had been.
And then I found out something which changed my mind. While I was in prison, Bates went after my girl and made love to her. That settled it. I had got to finish with Bates before I could go on.
I went to Mrs Crewe's cottage by night. When a man who has been in prison walks about in a small village in the daytime, remarks are likely to be made. If remarks were made, I was likely to take notice of them, and I did not want to get into trouble again. I made up my mind that Bates should be my next trouble. So, as I say, I went to Mrs Crewe by night, to do the fair thing by her. I told her that I must find a different room, if I had a room at all; for if old White-whiskers found that she was keeping the convicted poacher on, she would lose her cottage. "So, Mrs Crewe," I said, "I have come to say good-bye to you and Elsie."
Elsie is Mrs Crewe's little girl—a pretty kid of ten, but with bad health. It was not a good cottage for a sick child, and the food was not good enough for her, and the doctor was not good enough. He charged Mrs Crewe nothing—I'll say that for him—but it was as much as he was worth. Mrs Crewe's other daughter, Lizzie, was eight years older and in service in London.
Mrs Crewe heard all I had to say, but it made no effect upon her. She said that she had always paid her rent and conducted herself respectably, and that old White-whiskers dared not put her out, and that if he did put her out she would get somebody to write to the London newspapers about it. She had a great belief in the London newspapers. She said, moreover, that she took people as she found them, and that I had always treated her and Elsie well. That was true enough. If Elsie did not get that last pheasant, she had had others.
Mrs Crewe wanted, too, the money she would get from me for the room, and said so. She would take no money that she had not earned. She was that kind. She worked pretty hard too—sold the vegetables out of her bit of garden, did charing work whenever she could get it, and made a little out of her fowls. She said, too, that Elsie had not been so well, and had asked for me.
"Very well, Mrs Crewe," I said. "But there is one thing I have to tell you. I have been in prison, as you know, and something is going to happen which will put me back there again, and this time I shall not come out alive."
She said that she knew what I meant. Bates had not done the fair thing—that was acknowledged in the village. Still, I could do no good by getting violent again, and it was just as well that I should stop with her and let her talk me into a better frame of mind. I laughed. She was a good woman, but no amount of talk would have stopped me. And then I said I would sleep that night at her cottage.
I did, and nearly all night I heard that kid crying.
"What is the matter with Elsie?" I said.
Mrs Crewe told me. Lizzie had got permission to have Elsie up to London in the following week to see the King go past. Now the doctor had forbidden it. He was right too. She seemed to me to be pretty bad, and in the evening she was light-headed. I asked Mrs Crewe what she had done.
"Told her that as she can't go to London to see the King, I have written to Buckingham Palace to ask the King to come and see her. Anything to keep her quiet. Funny the way her mind is set on seeing the King."
"And why don't you write?" I asked. "If he knew, and if he could come, I believe he would."
"Aye," she said, "and so do I. But he might never see the letter, and kings have a deal to do, they tell me."
That day I tramped into Helmston to buy something that I wanted for Mr Bates, and as I walked into Helmston I could not get the thoughts of that kid out of my mind. Then a funny sort of idea struck me. I had been an actor, as I have already said, and I am pretty good at make-up. I bought a few other things in Helmston besides the revolver.
When I got back I told Mrs Crewe my idea, and at first she was opposed to it. She said that Elsie would be certain to recognise my face and voice, in spite of my disguise, and that if she found out she had been deceived, she would never forgive her.
"No," I said, "she will not recognise me. You yourself will not recognise me. I may not look very much like the King, but I shall not look in the least like myself. However, you yourself shall see first. If you think it is all right, as soon as it is dusk you shall go and tell her that the King has come."
I went to my room and spent about half an hour on that make-up. I think the result was pretty good, seeing that I had not got all the materials that I wanted to work with. I called Mrs Crewe up and she was astounded. She said now that it was perfectly safe, that nobody on earth could have recognised me.
"Very well," I said. "You must wait until ten minutes after the down-train is in. Elsie knows the trains and can hear them from where she is lying. You must tell her that the King does not wear his crown and his gorgeous robes when he is travelling, but only a black coat, just like the doctor."
When I was an actor I was never afflicted with nervousness; but as I heard Mrs Crewe in the next room tell Elsie exactly what I had told her to say, I shivered with fear. Suppose, after all, the child should find me out!
Elsie slept in a small bed in her mother's room. As I entered she tried to raise herself a little, and said in her best voice—the one that she used in church on Sunday—"I am so sorry that I cannot get up to make a curtsy to you. And ought I to call you 'Your Majesty' or just 'King'?"
"The correct etiquette," I said, "is for children to call me 'King'. I am very glad to have been able to come down to see you, Elsie. It was only by the merest chance that I could get away."
I gave her my whitened hand with the flash rings on it. She put her lips to it. "That will be something to tell the other girls," she said.
His Majesty inquired who the other girls were. He was told that Elsie had not been seeing much of them lately, because she had been ill; but she would be well and strong again very soon now—her mother had told her so. The other girls were very nice girls. Sarah Miggs had made a daisy-chain and sent it to her, and it was twice as long as the bed.
All this time Mrs Crewe had, by my direction, remained standing. She adopted a most respectful attitude, and curtsied whenever I looked at her. I now heard from her an ominous sniffling. If the silly woman began to blubber, there was a chance that the thing would be given away.
"Mrs Crewe," I said, with dignity, "you have our permission to retire."
She backed out of the room, and presently we heard her very busy in the kitchen, making an almost unnecessary noise with pots and pans. But perhaps that was intended to cover other sounds.
Elsie now demanded information about the interior of Buckingham Palace. I invented splendours, and she listened with rapture; she said it sounded more like Heaven than anything else. She put a plain question to me as to the value of the enormous diamond on my finger. She found that it had cost even more than she supposed, and she was interested in hearing the history of it. The diamond had once been the eye of an idol in India.
Presently she said, with distress: "Oh dear me, King, I do wish you could stop. There is such a lot more I want to ask you. But you will only just have time to catch the nine-thirteen, and that's the last up-train to-night."
"It is of no consequence," I said. "I had arranged to return to-night by motor-car."
"Shall I see it?"
"No," I said, "because by that time you will be asleep. It would not be a good thing for you to keep awake much longer. And if I tell you to go to sleep, then of course you must do it, because I am the King."
"Of course," she echoed. "Because you are the King."
But I could tell her all about the motor. It was really more like a house than a car. It had three rooms in it, and all the walls and ceilings were covered with a pattern of lilies made in silver and gold. The stalks and the leaves were silver and the flowers were gold. One of the rooms in the car was like a bedroom, and in one of the other rooms there was a cupboard which was entirely filled with glass jars of sweets. Elsie named several kinds; they were all there.
She held my hand as she talked, and she was still holding it as she fell asleep. The room was almost dark now, though outside it was a light night. Then quite suddenly she sat up in bed and flung wide her arms.
"God save the King!" she cried.
In a moment she was asleep again, and I slipped from the room. I was a king no longer. She slept well that night.
Old White-whiskers had his points after all. He took it into his head to have a look into his cottages himself, and in consequence a highly respectable firm lost a highly lucrative job. When Elsie and her mother get back from the seaside—White-whiskers is paying for them—they will find their cottage in decent repair.
And this morning I take the road again, never to return. Of course Mrs Crewe thinks that it is her wise counsel which has kept me out of the hands of the hangman; but that is not so.
I have not seen Bates again, and I have planned not to see him again, lest at the sight of him I should forget a decision to which I came when that kid of Mrs Crewe's sat up in bed and called upon God to save the King.
THE SATYR
Myra Larose was a good governess, capable, and highly certificated.
At Salston Hill School they rewarded her services with forty pounds per annum, and board and lodging during term-time. She had often been fortunate enough to secure private pupils for the holidays, and she knew a stationer who bought hand-painted Christmas cards. At the end of four years' work she had thirty-five pounds saved and in the Post Office. And then Aunt Jane, the last of her relatives, died, and left her a fine two hundred and fifty. This meant another ten pounds per annum.
Things were not so bad, but they did not, of course, justify the very mad idea that came into her pretty head—a head that, so far, had proved itself sane and practical.
The girls of the school considered that Miss Larose was strict but just, and that she had nice eyes. The principal, Mrs Dewlop, when prostrate from the horrible Davenant scandal, had declared that she would never think highly of any human being again; but she did think highly of Myra, even to the extent of considering the possibility of an increase of salary. Myra's fellow-teachers thought her sensible, and chaffed her mildly at times about her economies and her accumulation of wealth. No one would have supposed her capable of anything wild and extravagant.
Possibly a book that she had been reading put the idea into her head. Then there was the accident that nearly all her clothes were new simultaneously. Her eyes fell on the advertisement which showed her the advantages of hiring a petrol landaulet by the day in London. Thoughts of the theatre swam into her head. She loved the theatre, and had not been in one for years. She might lunch at the Ritz. She might deny herself nothing—for one day. Grey routine and miserable economies suddenly found her insurgent. Yes, she would have one great day—one day during which she would live at the rate of two thousand a year.
So, on one splendid morning, at the station of her northern suburb, she had occasion to be severe with the booking-clerk. ("I said first return—not third. You should pay more attention.") She bought a sixpenny periodical to read on the way up, and when she reached King's Cross she deliberately left the valuable magazine in the carriage behind her. That struck the high, reckless note. How often had she nursed a halfpenny paper through the whole of a traffic-distracted day that she might read the feuilleton at night!
"Taxi, miss?" suggested the porter when he had ascertained that she had no luggage.
"I think not," said Myra. "I believe my car's waiting for me." She felt that she had said it perfectly—without obvious pleasure, and without that air of intense languor that is always accepted on the stage as indicative of aristocracy, and never seen elsewhere.
She could tell the porter how to recognise the car—information supplied to her by the company from whom she had hired it—and the porter brought it up for her. Her first thought was that it looked splendid. Her second thought was that beyond a doubt she had recognised the face of the liveried driver.
She gave the porter a shilling, and sent him away. (Her usual tips for porters had varied from nothing to twopence, with a preference for the former.) Then she turned to the driver, a young man, with a handsome, clean-shaven face and dark, rebellious eyes.
"I know you," she said. "You are Mr Davenant."
"Quite true, Miss Larose. But that need make no difference. You have bought my services for the day, you know. You will find me just as attentive and respectful as any other servant. Where to, miss?"
"No, no. I want to talk to you. I must. Oh, it's too awful that you should have come down to this. Mrs Dewlop must have been vindictive indeed."
"She was certainly angry." He smiled reminiscently—he had a charming smile. "She had every right to be."
"Look here," she said impulsively, "what is to prevent you from lunching with me?"
"Your plans for the day—this car—and, for the matter of that, my clothes."
"I have no appointments, and no fixed plans. I was going to amuse myself just anyhow. I shall like this far better. Oh, can't you arrange it for me?"
"I should like it, too, and I can arrange it all very easily if you don't mind waiting half an hour."
"Of course I'll wait—wait here, if you like."
"You would find the National Gallery more interesting, and I can take you there in a few minutes."
"Yes, that's better. Thanks awfully. This is splendid."
At the National Gallery she looked at certain pictures with appreciative intelligence. Then she sat down and half-closed her eyes, and saw a picture from the gallery of her memory.
It was the big classroom at Salston Hill School. At one end of the room Myra Larose took the elementary class in drawing. At the other end, much older girls took the lesson in advanced drawing from a master who was, as the prospectus stated, an exhibitor at the Royal Academy. His name was Hilary Davenant, and in the bills he was charged extra. The older girls were ten in number, and were provided with easels, charcoal, and stumps. They formed the circumference of a circle of which the centre was a life-size cast with a blackboard adjacent.
Myra watched as she saw Davenant going from one drawing-board to another, and noted the waning of patience and the growth of irritation. He went to the blackboard and addressed the entire class on the anatomy of the hand, illustrating his remarks by rapid drawings on the blackboard. They were admirable drawings in their way—swift, right, certain, slick. And suddenly he flung the chalk to the floor and spake with his tongue. He also used gesture—a foreign and reprehensible practice.
"You poor, silly idiots! Not one of you will ever do it, except perhaps Miss Stenson. And if you did, it wouldn't be the real thing." He checked himself, and went on in a nice, suave schoolmaster's voice. "I was joking, of course. As I said, this cast presents considerable difficulties to some of you. But you must face your difficulties and overcome them. You must not let yourselves be discouraged." And so on.
Dora Stenson, aged sixteen, blushed and put her hand over her eyes. The other pupils smiled in a weak, wan way. They had been told that it was a joke, and they believed everything they were told, and did their best. At the other end of the room Myra Larose developed a good deal of interest in Hilary Davenant.
An incident which occurred two days later formed another picture in the memory-gallery. Myra, with other assistants, had been summoned with every circumstance of solemnity to the principal's private study.
"I have to inform you, ladies," said Mrs Dewlop, "that owing to circumstances which have come to my knowledge, I have been compelled to dismiss Mr H. Davenant at a moment's notice." She readjusted her pince-nez, and her refined face squirmed. "Mr Davenant is not a man: he is a satyr. I have sufficiently indicated the nature of his offence, which he admitted; and I do not care to dwell upon the subject further. This has been a great shock to me. One can only hope in time to live it down. That," she added tragically, "is all."
It had happened six months before, and at the time had filled Myra with curiosity and also with a touch of horror. Was it wise of her to make appointments with a man who had been so described? Had not her feeling of compassion for an old colleague—one, moreover, whom she had found sympathetic—carried her too far? This was not at all the kind of thing she had come out to do. But—well, she had done it. And if the satyr added punctuality to his other vices, he would be waiting outside for her.
He was there. He had changed his car as well as his clothes. He did not look poor. He looked as if he owned that car and a good deal of the rest of the earth.
"I hope you don't mind," he said. "I thought this open car might be useful. If you would be kind enough to take the seat beside me we could talk as we go. I thought, as it was such a ripping morning, you might like to drive into the country somewhere for lunch. But that must be just as you like, of course."
"It is exactly what I like. Let's see. We've got lots of time before lunch. You shall choose where we go."
"If you don't mind lunching a little late, we might do Brighton."
"Yes, we lunch at Brighton," she said decisively. The spirit of adventure was hot within her. She had meant the day to be rather exciting. It was more than fulfilling expectations.
As they crawled through the traffic she asked him how he had persuaded his firm to let her have the open car instead of the other. She was told that it was the policy of his people to oblige a customer in every possible way, and that they had made no trouble. Then she spoke of things she had seen at the National Gallery, and found him just as enthusiastic about art as she had done once in the old days at the school, when chance gave them a few minutes' talk together. But it was not till they sat at lunch in a good little hotel overlooking the sea that they became confidential.
"I gather," he said, "that you knew that Mrs Dewlop sacked me."
"She told all of us."
"Did she say why?"
"Not exactly. She said that you were a satyr. I—I didn't believe that."
"Well, I'll tell you exactly what I did. I kissed Dora Stenson."
This was a blow. "I don't think I want to hear about it," said Myra coldly.
"It's all very well," said Davenant mournfully, "but I'd had very little experience as a teacher. What do you do yourself when a girl begins to cry?"
"If she's quite a child, I try to comfort her. If it's one of the older girls, I tell her that I dislike hysteria, and that she had better go away until she has recovered. But it rarely happens with the older girls. What made Dora Stenson cry?"
"All my own fault—the whole thing. You know the beauties I had to teach. Dora was the only one that had any gift. As for the rest, you might as well have tried to teach blind pigs to draw. What was the consequence? I gave Dora most of the teaching, and I was harder on her than I was on the others. I judged her by a different standard, and I drove her as hard as I could. Well, one day, at the end of the hour, she brought me up some bad work. She'd taken no trouble. It was rotten. All the same, if any of the others had shown me anything nearly as good, I should have been more than satisfied. As it was Dora, I lost my wool and told her what I thought. Classes were dismissed. You went out. I was left alone in the room. Back came Dora to pick up some truck she'd left behind, and she was crying—crying like anything. Well, I couldn't stand it. I'd never meant to be a brute, and there was that girl—very pretty she is, too—crying like anything. I began to talk to her, and, before I knew where I was, I had kissed her. I'm making a clean breast of the whole thing—I kissed her two or three times."
Miss Myra Larose, who had not wanted to hear about it, had listened with breathless interest, and now put in a shrewd question.
"And did Dora kiss you?"
"As I was saying, where I was wrong was in—"
"All right, I know. If she had not kissed you, you would have said so. But, seeing that she did kiss you, why on earth did she complain to Mrs Dewlop?"
"She never did. She wrote a letter to a girl friend of hers, and left it lying about. Mrs Dewlop read it. Now, what do you think?"
Myra considered a moment. "I think," she said deliberately, "that Dora was a braggart, and that Mrs Dewlop was a sneak, and—er—not very wise, and that you——"
"Do you also think me a satyr?"
"Of course not. You were all wrong, but you were just a baby."
He gave a sigh of relief.
"It makes me angry," said Myra impulsively. "What right had that woman to ruin you, and turn you into a cab-driver?"
"I must explain further. It is true that she refused me any kind of a character, and that my teaching career was closed. But I am not exactly a cab-driver. When I was turned out I had to give up the idea of making a living by art. I could no longer teach, and modern pictures sell seldom and badly. But I had another string to my bow. I understand motors, and I had had plenty of driving experience. An uncle of mine is in the motor business to some considerable extent. Amongst other things, he is a director and principal share-holder in the company from which you hired your car. He has often asked me to join him, and now I did so. He is a thorough sort of man, and he insisted that I should go through every side. I've washed cars; for three months I was an ordinary mechanic; I've been in the office; the last few weeks I've been driving these privately let cars, and picking up some interesting information as to the amount of tips that the drivers get. Next week I shall be a manager. Well, now, I saw your order when it came in. I remembered you very well—very well, indeed. I determined to drive you myself—to be your good servant, if that was all that was possible, but to be as much more as you would let me be."
As the car purred smoothly through the dusk in the direction of the northern suburb where Myra had her inexpensive lodging, Davenant said: "Then you will give notice that you leave at the end of next term, darling?"
And she said: "Yes, dearest."
THE CHOICE
Mrs Halward, a good and earnest lady, was angry with her married brother, Harry Elton, and took an early opportunity of telling him so. Elton was a big man, and so quiet as to be almost gloomy.
"What are you angry for?" he asked.
"You know perfectly well. It's shameful. It's scandalous. I can't think how you can do it. You've only been married six years, and Grace is such a dear."
"Yes," said Elton, "I'm very fond of Grace."
"I was under the impression," said his sister, "that you were very fond of Rosamond Fayre. It has been sufficiently obvious lately."
"Yes," said Elton slowly, "I'm extremely fond of Rosamond."
"Don't talk like a fool. A man can't be in love with two women at the same time."
"If he can't, why accuse me of it? Has Grace complained to you?"
"Of course not. Have you been married to her for six years without discovering that she has a certain amount of pride?"
"Because, you see, if she has not complained to you, I don't see how it becomes your business at all. I am sure it is not a thing you would understand. You mean well, of course; but interference is futile. A man neither loves nor ceases to love because he is told it is expected of him, and that the conventions require it. You women who try to direct the love-affairs of others always remind me of a certain king who forbade the tide to come in."
"I have done my duty," said his sister stoutly. "You are going to bring disgrace on the family. I shall certainly speak to Grace about it."
"Do, if you wish. I warn you that Grace is not so patient as I am. If you succeed you will make mischief. You will precipitate things. That's curious, you know—the third party who interferes with the relations between a man and a woman can never do any good, but is able to do a deal of harm."
Mrs Halward was not convinced. If her sister-in-law had been at home at the time she would probably have spoken to her then. She could only repeat that she had done her duty, and leave with dignity.
Mrs Fayre was extremely poor. Her husband held a position in China, vaguely understood to be mercantile, and sent her one hundred pounds a year. In addition to this she had a private income of seven hundred; but eight hundred a year is extreme poverty when most of your friends and acquaintances approximate to eight thousand a year. She lived in a small flat in South Kensington, and made a business of pathos. At one time, Mrs Halward had been enchanted with her, and it was at her house that Rosamond and Harry Elton first met.
Harry Elton walked up and down the library, and tried to think things out. He thought Rosamond beautiful. He liked the tone of her voice. He liked her to be with him. Once or twice he had nearly kissed her, but he never had kissed her, and he had never told her he loved her. There were times when he had been on the verge of it, but had been checked by the thought that he could not do Grace any wrong—not only because it would hurt her, but because it would hurt himself. What was the use of laying down stupid rules, that a man could not love two women at once? But the rule had been laid down, and it was almost universally accepted. If a man did love two women, it was certain that each of the women would feel herself wronged.
He had never wanted to face the situation at all. He had been quite willing to let things drift. His wife was not jealous. He saw Rosamond Fayre frequently, and without any secrecy. He had interested himself in her painting—which was abominable—and had tried to get her work. Sometimes they lunched or dined at a restaurant alone together. Sometimes he took her to the theatre. But he had never realised that he had given the thing away, and that the cats—among whom he included his sister—had marked him down. Now that he did face the situation, he did not in the least know what to do. He thought of leaving Grace and of running away with Rosamond, and the thought was intolerable. He thought of giving up Rosamond by degrees, seeing less and less of her, and that thought was equally intolerable. He planned to let things remain as they were, and recognised that that was impossible. No love-affair remains at a fixed point half-way. It goes on and on.
He stepped over to the telephone at his desk and contemplated it for a few seconds, as if he were seeking counsel from it. Then he took down the receiver and asked for a number.
"That is you, Rosamond?"
"Quite."
"I've been thinking about you."
"I've been thinking about you, too."
"I want you to tell me something. Do you think that I love you?"
"Oh, yes, of course." The tone of the voice was mocking.
"I am serious," said Elton.
There were a few seconds of silence. What had happened?
"Are you there?" he asked.
"It is very dangerous to be serious. Good-bye."
"You have not been sleeping well lately, have you?" Grace asked her husband.
"Oh yes," he lied. "What makes you think that?"
"Well, you look horribly tired, anyhow. I don't believe you're well. I do wish you'd see a doctor."
Harry reassured her. He was, he said, as fit as could be.
"Well, what are you and Rosamond Fayre going to do after dinner?"
"Don't know exactly. It depends upon what she wants. A theatre, I suppose. Is there anything going on not too absolutely rotten?"
"Nothing that I have seen lately. If you can get out of it, don't take her to the theatre. Get home early and go to bed. You really look as if you wanted a rest."
Grace was going to hear Kubelik that evening, dining first with the Halwards. Her husband did not hear Kubeliks cheerfully, and it had been Grace's suggestion that he should take poor Rosamond to dine somewhere. Everyone felt they must do something for poor Rosamond to get a little colour and brightness into her days. Eight hundred a year and a husband in China! What a life!
Harry Elton had accepted the suggestion without enthusiasm. He said he supposed he might as well do that as anything else.
It was part of the tragedy of Rosamond's poverty that she could not afford as many taxicabs as she needed. She went about a good deal, and she found it necessary to go about economically. Left to herself, she would have taken the tube to Dover Street and then stepped across the road. But Elton's expensive motor-car, after taking Grace to the Halwards', went on to South Kensington to fetch Rosamond.
She was grateful, as she always was. "I often wonder," she said plaintively, "why everybody is so good to me—you especially."
"I am by no means certain that I am good to you. I spoke to you on the telephone this afternoon."
"Not now, no," said Rosamond firmly.
She was quite right. You cannot discuss the sweet and secret sinfulness of your heart when the waiter is handing you the entrée. Possibly Elton also recognised this. But his next remark was rather brutal.
"You have never told me about the man in China. Tell me now."
Rosamond answered in French. There were no waiters near at the moment to overhear her. If there had been, they all understood French perfectly. But to Rosamond, French had always given a feeling of security. Her story was brief and simple. She had married at eighteen. It had been a girl's infatuation, and it had lasted just two years. No, there had never been any actual break between them. He had to take up this post in China. They were too poor for him to refuse it. It brought him five hundred a year.
"Out of which," said Elton, "he sends you a measly hundred."
"He knows I have some means of my own. Oh no, we have never quarrelled. It is just that the thing died. I should be sorry for his death, as I should be for the death of any old companion—nothing more than that. He would regard my death in the same way. There is no longer any love between us. He sends me four rather formal letters every year, and I send him four replies, telling him about London theatres and so on. It's funny, isn't it? But, my God!" (It did not sound so strong in French.)
"I do not think," said Elton slowly, "that you were meant to spend your years without love."
"No? How do you know?"
Elton smiled. "Do you know the eyes of women who do without love and do not need it? They are the eyes of a business-like fish. Your eyes are not like that."
She leant a little forward over the small table. "Look into them," she said, "and tell me what you read there."
"Don't do that. Do you want to drive me mad?"
"Yes—sometimes."
"Well, I dare not tell you what I read in your eyes."
She laughed nervously. "Is it so bad as that?" she said, and began to speak of other matters.
She was intending to send a picture to the Academy, and felt quite hopeful about it. She described it to him, and he made appropriate replies; but though he watched her intently all the time he was hardly conscious of what she was saying. He tried to pull himself together.
"What are we to do this evening? A theatre?"
"I don't think so. I'm tired of theatres. I'm tired of everything. We will talk for a little in the lounge, and then I will take my train back again and go through the farce of trying to go to sleep."
"You, too, have not been sleeping well then? Of course, you won't go back in the train. I shall drive you back."
"It is frightfully good of you, but I don't really deserve so much kindness to-night. I have the feeling all the time that I am behaving badly, and talking like an idiot."
"Come on into the lounge. We will both talk like idiots."
They found a secluded corner, and a waiter brought them coffee. Elton watched the man's back as he went away. Then he turned to Rosamond.
"Now then," he said, "about our conversation on the telephone."
She paused before replying, breathing quickly, and then she spoke very rapidly and in a low voice.
"Yes, you love me. I have known that for a long time. I wanted you to love me. You know the rest, don't you? I adore you. There's no one but you in the world. Now I've said it. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It's over, and we can never speak to one another again."
He rose from his place. "Come," he said, "I am going to take you home. I had the car waiting here in case we wanted to go to the theatre."
He signed to a waiter.
"Go and find my car, Mr Elton's car," he said to the man, "and tell the driver he won't be wanted to-night. He is to go home."
Rosamond looked at him wonderingly. "I—I think I see."
"Of course. Get your cloak quickly, dear."
He put her into the taxi and gave the address, not of the little flat where she lived, but of her studio.
"Things are better," said Mrs Halward to her husband. "I was afraid at one time that there was going to be serious trouble between Harry and his wife about that wretched Fayre. I gave him a word of warning at the time, and I am convinced it did good."
"What makes you think so?" said her husband, not greatly interested.
"Didn't you notice yourself at dinner last night? He hardly said five words to Rosamond. He seemed to take no notice of her."
Mrs Halward had observed correctly, but had made wrong deductions. Harry and Rosamond were meeting more frequently than ever, but nearly always in secrecy. If his wife suggested that Rosamond should be asked to one of her dinner-parties, Harry shrugged his shoulders and made some excuse. He lunched frequently at his club now, so his wife said, and she said what he had told her. As a matter of fact, he never lunched there at all. He took Rosamond to out-of-the-way restaurants where he would be unlikely to meet anybody he knew. Sometimes they improvised a lunch in the studio together. No day passed that he did not see her, or, at any rate, hear from her. And there was no happiness for either of them. Elton hated lies and hated secrecy. Grace had never been jealous of Rosamond, but Rosamond was furiously jealous of Grace.
"I can see the end of this," said Rosamond one night when he had come late to the studio. "We cannot possibly go on like this. It is killing me. I cannot share you with another woman."
"I know, dear," said Elton. "The position is hateful. And it is all my fault. And what is to be the end of it?"
"Quite simple," said Rosamond. "I take something for my insomnia, you know. There will be an accident."
"You are not to say that, and you are not even to think about it. That will not be the end. I am going to take you away. We must face it. A little scandal, a change of name, and, in a year, it is all over. I shall be willing enough to live abroad. We will go to your beloved Sicily."
"Yes, to Taormina. Oh! but that would be too much happiness. That could never be."
But, there and then, they made their plans how it should be.
Even now, if there was a prospect of happiness for Rosamond, there seemed to Elton to be none for himself. He would have to leave Grace. It was against accepted ideas and against rules, but, none the less, he loved Grace. He could not have said which woman he loved more—Grace or Rosamond. They were so absolutely different—Grace with her suavity and Rosamond with her temperament—that no comparison was possible. Both seemed absolutely necessary to him, and he could not have both.
Grace and her husband had to fulfil an engagement to spend a week-end with some friends who lived in Oxfordshire. One morning she went out alone and found the cottage of her dreams—the country cottage she had always meant to have. She came back in the spirits of a child who has a new toy. Harry was to go and look at it at once.
"And what do you think I have done? I have telegraphed to that poor Rosamond Fayre to come down here on Monday morning. I am going to give her a commission—to paint my cottage garden. She is rather good at gardens—I mean she is better at gardens."
It was useless to raise any objection, and Harry felt convinced Rosamond would not come. So he said it was rather a good idea, and discussed gravely the improvements his wife meant to make at the cottage.
"You see," she said, "I must make it comfortable."
A little later the telegram arrived from Rosamond: "Very many thanks. Will come by the train you suggest."
Harry met that train at his wife's suggestion.
"Why did you come?" he asked Rosamond anxiously.
"Didn't you want to see me?"
"I always want to see you, but the position is too horrible."
"I know it is difficult, but in three days now it will all be over, and we shall be at peace together. Meanwhile, if I refuse to meet Grace, she will think—oh, she may think anything. Come on. Take me to the cottage."
Harry made an excuse to leave the two women alone there together. He would be back in an hour. And in a little more than an hour he was walking back to the station with Rosamond and his wife. There was only just time to catch Rosamond's train. But it was all right, so Grace said; there was a short cut across the line. They would be there in time. And then Grace made a terrible discovery. She had left the key of the cottage in the door. Harry must run back and fetch it, or the people who were letting her the cottage would consider she was not a responsible person.
Harry tried the door of the cottage to see that it was locked, put the key in his pocket, and ran after them. They had reached the crossing now, but were standing still. He could not at first make out what it was they were doing. Rosamond then bent down to her shoe, and Harry realised what had happened. The shoe had got wedged in the points, and she would have to take her foot out of it to get free.
And then he heard the scream of the whistle, and dashed forward.
He managed to save one of the two women. It was Grace.
The moment had revealed him to himself. He had made his choice.