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"Wasn't it just like Christina not to get excited with the great news? But really Evie was to blame, because she kept the greater news to the last.
"I can't believe it. That young man who called on Christina? I really can't believe it," said Mrs. Colebrook, who could, and did, believe it.
"Why don't you yell, Chris!" demanded her indignant sister.
"I am yelling," said Christina placidly. "I've been yelling longer than you, for I knew that it was Ronnie's house when the letter came."
But the announcement of Evie's engagement had an electrifying effect.
"That is the first time I have ever seen Christina cry," said Mrs. Colebrook with melancholy satisfaction. "There's a lot more in Christina than people think. If she'd only showed a little more nice feeling over poor Mr. Sault, I'd have liked it better. But you can't expect everything in these days, girls being what they are. Well, Evie, you're the first to go. I don't suppose Christina will ever marry. She's too hard. Canada won't seem so far if I'm in Bolo, Boole—whatever they call it."
Evie was sitting with her mother in the kitchen; from Christina's room came crooning.
"My dear, oh my dear,
Have ye come from the west—"
"Why Christina sings those old-fashioned songs when she knows 'Swanee' and 'The Bull Dog Patrol'—'Bull Frog', is it?—I can't understand."
A rat-tat at the door made Evie jump.
Mrs. Colebrook's eyes went to the faded face of a clock on the mantelshelf. Allowing for day to day variation, to which the timepiece was subject, she made it out to be past eleven.
"Don't open the door," she said. "It may be those Haggins; they've been fighting all day."
Evie went to the door.
"Who is there?"
"Beryl Merville."
Evie opened the door and admitted the girl. Outside she glimpsed the tail lamps of a car.
"You are Evie, aren't you?" Beryl was breathless. "Have you any idea where I can find Ronnie?"
"Is that Beryl?"
It was Christina's voice; she came down in her dressing gown.
"I want to find Ronnie—I have been to his flat, he is not at home. I must see him."
She was wild with fear, Christina saw that; something had happened which had thrown her off her balance and had driven her, frantic, to Ronnie Morelle.
"Come up to my room, Beryl," she said gently.
Mrs. Colebrook looked at Evie as the sound of a closing door came down.
"It looks to me like a scandal," she said profoundly.
Evie said nothing. She was wondering whether she ought not to have been indignant at the suggestion that she knew the whereabouts of Ronnie Morelle. She wished she knew Beryl better—then she might have been asked upstairs to share the secret. After all, she knew Ronnie better than anybody.
"Perhaps I am better out of it, Mother," she said. "I am not sure that Teddy would like me to be mixed up in other people's affairs."
Christina pushed the trembling girl on to the bed.
"Sit down, Beryl. What is wrong?"
Beryl's lips were quivering.
"I must see Ronnie—oh, Christina, I'm just cornered. That man—Talbot, I think his name is, he is a friend of Ronnie's, has written to father—the letter came by hand, marked 'Urgent', whilst daddy was out, and I opened it."
She fumbled in her bag and produced a folded sheet and Christina read:
"Dear Dr. Merville: I think it is only right that you should know that your daughter spent a night at Ronald Morelle's flat.
"Miss Merville, at Morelle's suggestion, told you that she had been to a ball at Albert Hall. I can prove that she was never at the Albert Hall that night. I feel it is my duty to tell you this, and I expect you to inform Mr. Steppe, who, I understand, is engaged to your daughter."
"How did he know?"
Beryl shook her head wearily.
"Ronald told him—about the ball. When the elevator was going down, the morning I left the flat, I saw a man walking up the stairs. He must have seen me. Ronnie told me the night before that Jeremiah Talbot was coming to breakfast with him. I just saw him as the lift passed him—he had stopped on the landing below Ronnie's and probably recognized me. Christina, what am I to do? Father mustn't know. It seems ever so much more important to me now."
"When do you marry, Beryl?"
"The day after tomorrow. I know Ronnie has quarreled with this man. I read that story in the newspapers. It was splendid of Ronnie, splendid. It was a revelation to me."
Christina bit her lip in thought.
"I will see Ronnie—tonight. No, I will go alone. I have been resting all day. You must go home. Have you brought your car? Good. I will borrow it. Give me the letter."
Beryl protested, but the girl was firm.
"You must not go—perhaps I am wrong about Ronnie, but I don't think so. Sir John Maxton has the same mad dream."
"What do you mean?"
Christina smiled. "One day I will tell you."
The vision of her daughter dressed for going out temporarily deprived Mrs. Colebrook of speech. Before she could frame adequate comment, Christina was gone.
She dropped Beryl at her house and drove to Knightsbridge. The porter was not sure whether Mr. Morelle was in or out. It was his duty to be uncertain. He took her up to Ronnie's floor and waited until the door opened.
"My dear, what brings you here at this hour?"
He had been out, he told her. A Royal Society lecture on Einstein's Theory had been absorbing. He was so full of the subject, so alive, so boyish in his interest that for a while he forgot the hour and the obvious urgency of her call.
"I love lectures," he laughed, "but you know that. Do you remember how I was so late last night that your mother locked me out—no, not your mother—it must have been François." He frowned heavily. "How curious that I should confuse François with your dear mother."
She listened eagerly, delightedly, forgetting, too, the matter that brought her. The phenomenon had no terror for her, tremendous though it was. He was the first to recall himself to the present.
"From Beryl?" he said quickly, "what is wrong?"
She handed him the letter and he read it carefully.
"How terrible!" he said in a hushed voice, "how appallingly terrible! He says she is marrying Steppe! That can't be true, either. It would be grotesque—"
She was on the point of telling him that the marriage was due for the second day, when he went abruptly into his room. He returned, carrying his overcoat, which he put on as he talked.
"The past can only be patched," he said, "and seldom patched to look like new. Omar crystallizes its irrevocability in his great stanza. We can no more 'shatter it to bits,' than 'remould it nearer to our heart's desire.'"
"Ronnie, Beryl is to be married the day after tomorrow."
"Indeed?"
He looked at her with a half smile and then at the clock. It was a minute past midnight.
"Tomorrow?"
She nodded.
"Where are you going?"
"To see Talbot. He acted according to his lights. You can't expect a cockerel to sing like a lark. There is no sense in getting angry because things do not behave unnaturally. I made him feel very badly toward me yesterday. I think he can be adjusted. Some problems can be solved: some must be scrapped. Have you a car—Beryl's—good. Will you drop me in Curzon Street?"
She asked him no further questions and when in the car he held her hand in his, she felt beautifully peaceful and content.
"Good night, Christina. I will see Beryl tomorrow."
He closed the car door softly and she saw him knocking at No. 703 as she drove away.
The door was opened almost immediately.
"Is Mr. Talbot in, Brien?"
The butler stared.
"Why—why, yes, Mr. Morelle," he stammered.
He had not waited at table these past two days without discovering that Ronald Morelle was a name to be mentioned to the accompaniment of blasphemous et ceteras.
"He is in bed. I was just locking up. Does he expect you, Mr. Morelle?"
"No," said Ronnie. "All right, Brien, I know my way up."
He left an apprehensive servant standing irresolutely in the hall.
Jeremiah was not in bed. He was in his dressing gown before a mirror and his face was mottled with patches of gray mud—a cosmetic designed to remove wrinkles from tired eyes.
Ronnie he saw reflected in the mirror.
"What—what the devil do you want?" he demanded hollowly. "What are you doing?"
"Locking the door," said Ronnie, and threw the key on to the pillow of a four-poster bed.
"Damn you—open that door—you sneaking cad!"
Mr. Talbot experienced a difficulty in breathing, his voice was a little beyond his control. Also the plaster at the corner of his mouth made articulation difficult.
"I've come to see you on rather a pressing matter," said Ronnie evenly. "You wrote a letter to Dr. Merville making a very serious charge against my friend, Miss Merville. I do not complain and I certainly do not intend abusing you. I may kill you: that is very likely. I hope it will not be necessary. If you shout or make a noise, I shall certainly kill you, because, as you will see, being an intelligent man, I cannot afford to let you live until your servants come."
Mr. Talbot sat down suddenly, a comical figure, the more so since the dried mud about his eyes and the corner of his mouth made it impossible that he should express his intense fear. As it was, he spoke with difficulty and without opening his mouth wider than the mud allowed.
"You shall pay for thish, Morelle—vy God!"
"I want you to write me a letter which I shall give to Miss Merville apologizing for your insulting note to the doctor—"
With a gurgle of rage, Talbot sprang at him. Ronnie half turned and struck twice.
The butler heard the thud of a falling body; it shook the house. Still he hesitated.
"Get up," said Ronnie. "I am afraid I have dislocated your beauty spots, Jerry, but you'll be able to talk more freely."
Mr. Talbot nursed his jaw, but continued to sit on the floor. His jaw was aching and his head was going round and round. But he was an intelligent man.
When he did get up he opened a writing bureau and, at Ronnie's dictation, wrote.
"Thank you, Jerry," Ronnie pocketed the letter. "Perhaps when I have gone you will regret having written and will complain to the police; you may even write a worse letter to the doctor—who hasn't seen your first epistle, by the way. I must risk that. If you do, I shall certainly destroy you. I shall be sorry because—well, because I don't think you deserve death. You can be adjusted. Most people can. Will you put a stamp on the envelope, Jerry?"
At the street door: "Perhaps you will lose your job because you have admitted me, Brien. If that happens, will you come to me, please?"
The dazed butler said he would.
Ronnie stopped at a pillar box to post the letter and walked home.