XIII
Evie Colebrook had found a note awaiting her at the store on the morning of the day she came home early. It consisted of a few words scrawled on a plain card, and had neither address nor signature:
"Dearest girl: I shall not be able to see you tonight. I have a long article to write and shall probably be working through the night, when your dear and precious eyes are closed in sleep. Your lover."
She had the card under her pillow when she slept.
"Are you sure you aren't too busy," said Beryl when she came down, a radiant figure, to the waiting Ronnie. "Now that you have taken up a literary career, I picture you as being rushed every hour of the day."
"Sarcasm is wasted on me," Ronnie displayed his beautiful teeth. "Unflattering though it be, I admit to a slump in my literary stock. I have had no commissions for a week."
"And I'm not taking you away from any of those beautiful friends of yours?"
"Beryl!" he murmured reproachfully. "You know that I have no friends—if by friends you mean girl friends."
"It is my mad jealousy which makes me ask these questions," she said quizzically, "come along, Ronnie, we will be late."
What the play was about, Beryl never quite remembered. Ronnie, sitting in the shade of the curtains, was more interested in his companion. It was strange that he had known her ever since she was a child and he a schoolboy, and yet had never received a true impression of her beauty. He watched her through the first act, the tilt of her chin, the quick smile.
"Beryl, you ought to be painted," he said in the first interval. "I mean by a portrait painter. You look so perfectly splendid that I couldn't take my eyes off you."
The color came slowly and, in the dim light of the box, a man who had not been looking for this evidence of her pleasure, would have seen nothing.
"That is a little less subtle than the usual brand of flattery you practice, isn't it, Ronnie? Or is your artlessness really an art that conceals art?"
"I'm not flattering you—I simply speak as I feel. I never realized your loveliness until tonight." She straightened up and laughed.
"You think I'm crude—I suppose I am. You do not say that I am keeping my hand in, though you probably think so. I admit I have had all sorts of flirtations, in fact, I have been rather a blackguard in that way, and of course I've said nice things to girls—buttered them and played to their vanity. But if I were trying to make love to you, I should be a little more subtle, as you say. I should imply my compliments. It is just because my—my spasm is unpremeditated that I find myself at a loss for words. There is no sense in my making love to you, anyway, supposing that you would allow me. I can't marry—I simply won't marry until I have enough money and I haven't nearly enough. If in four years' time the money doesn't come—well then, I'll risk being a pauper, but the girl will have to know."
She said nothing. Here was an unexpected side to his character. He had some plan of life and a code of sorts. If she had been better acquainted with that life of his, which she so far suspected, she would have grown alert when Ronnie unmasked his way of retreat. She was surprised at his virtuous reluctance to make a woman share his comparative poverty—she should have been suspicious when he fixed a time limit to his bachelorhood. It was not like Ronnie to plan so far in advance, that she knew; it might have occurred to her that he was definitely excusing the postponement of marriage. As it was, she was seeing him in a more favorable light. Ronnie desired that she should. His instinct in these matters was uncannily accurate.
"It was worth coming out with you, if only to hear your views on matrimony," was all the comment she made.
"I don't know—" he looked gloomily into the auditorium, "in many ways I have been regretting it. That doesn't sound gallant, but I am not in a mood for nice speeches—you think I am? I did not mean to be nice when I said that you were lovely, any more than I wish to be nice to Titian when I praise his pictures. Beryl, I've been fond of you for years. I suppose I've been in love with you, though I've never wanted to be. That is the truth. I've recognized just how unfair it would be, to chain a woman like you to a rake—I'm not sparing myself—like me. God knows whether I could be constant. In my heart I know that if I had you, there could be no other woman in the world for me—an intimate knowledge of my own character makes me skeptical."
Beryl was spared the necessity for replying. The curtain went up on the second act just then. She knew he was looking at her, and turned in her chair to hide her face. Her heart was beating tumultuously. She was trembling. She was a fool—a fool. He meant nothing—he was a liar; lied as readily as other men spoke the truth. That frankness of his was assumed—he was acting. Versed in the weaknesses of women, he had chosen the only approach that would storm her citadel. She told herself these truths, her reason battling in a last desperate stand against his attack. And yet—why should he not be sincere? For the first time he had admitted the unpleasant charges which hitherto he had denied. He surely could not expect to make her love him more by the confession of his infidelities?
If he had followed up his talk, had made any attempt to carry on the conversation from the point where he left it, she would have been invincible. But he did not. When the curtain went down again, he was more cheerful and was seemingly interested only in the people he recognized in the stalls. He asked her if she would mind if he left her. He wanted to smoke and to meet some men he knew.
She assented and was disappointed. They had a long wait between these two acts, and as he had returned to the box after a shorter interval than she had expected, there was plenty of time, had he so wished, to have resumed his conversation. He showed no such desire, and it was she who began it.
"You puzzle me, Ronnie. I can't see—if you loved me, how you could do some of the things you have done. You won't be so commonplace as to tell me that you wanted to keep me out of your mind and that that form of amusement helped you to forget me."
"No," he admitted, "but, Beryl dear, need we discuss it? I don't know why I spoke to you as I did. I felt like it."
"But I am going to discuss it," she insisted. "I want my mind set in order. It is overthrown for the moment. What prevented you from keeping me as a friend all this time—a real close friend, if you loved me? Oh, Ronnie, I do want to be fair to you even at the risk of being shameless, as I am now. Why could you not have asked me? Even if it meant waiting?"
He looked down at the floor. "I have some sense of decency left," he said in a low voice. And then the curtain went up.
Beryl looked at her program. The play had four acts; there was another interval. He did not leave her this time; nor did he wait for her to begin.
"I'm going to be straight with you, Beryl," he said, "I want you—I adore you. But I cannot commit you to an engagement which may adversely affect your father and incidentally myself. I am being brutally selfish and mercenary, but I am going to say what I think. You'll be amused and perhaps horrified when I tell you that Steppe is very keen on you."
She was neither amused nor horrified; but on the other hand, if Ronnie Morelle realized that in his invention he had accidentally hit upon the truth, he would not have been amused and most certainly terror would have struck him dumb. If Beryl had only said what she was of a mind to say, that she had learned from her father that Steppe was in love with her, she might have silenced him. But she said nothing. Ronnie's explanation seemed natural—knowing Ronnie.
"I'd sooner see you dead than married to him," he said vehemently, "but none of us can say that now. We are in a very tight place. Steppe could ruin your father with a gesture—he could very seriously inconvenience me." Here he was much in earnest, and the girl, with a cold feeling at her heart, knew he spoke the truth.
"But that time will pass. We shall weather the storm which is shrieking round our ears—you don't read the financial papers—you're wise. You see what might happen, Beryl?"
Beryl nodded. She was ridiculously happy.
"A great play, don't you think so, Miss Merville?" It was Sir John Maxton who had pushed through the crowd in the vestibule.
"Splendid," she said.
"Ronnie, did you like it?"
"I never heard a word," said Ronnie, and somehow that statement was so consonant with his new honesty that it confirmed her in a faith which was as novel.
The car carried them through the crowded circus and into the quietude of Piccadilly.
"Oh, Ronnie—I am so happy—"
His arm slipped round her and his lips pressed fiercely against her red mouth.
* * * * *
"Why can't you sleep?" asked the drowsy Christina, as the girl lit her candle for the second time.
"I don't know—I'm having such beastly dreams," said Evie fretfully.