CHAPTER XX. FROM THE PAST.
“One and one with a shadowy third.”
“You have the air, mon ami, of a malgamiter,” said Mrs. Vansittart, looking into Cornish's face—“lurking here in your little inn in a back street! Why do you not go to one of the larger hotels in Scheveningen, since you have abandoned The Hague?”
“Because the larger hotels are not open yet,” replied Cornish, bringing forward a chair.
“That is true, now that I think of it. But I did not ask the question wanting an answer. You, who have been in the world, should know women better than to think that. I asked in idleness—a woman's trick. Yes; you have been or you are ill. There is a white look in your face.”
She sat looking at him. She had walked all the way from Park Straat in the shade of the trees—quite a pedestrian feat for one who confessed to belonging to a carriage generation. She had boldly entered the restaurant of the little hotel, and had told the waiter to take her to Mr. Cornish's apartment.
“It hardly matters what a very young waiter, at the beginning of his career, may think of us. But downstairs they are rather scandalized, I warn you,” she said.
“Oh, I ceased explaining many years ago,” replied Cornish, “even in English. More suspicion is aroused by explanation than by silence. For this wise world will not believe that one is telling the truth.”
“When one is not,” suggested Mrs. Vansittart.
“When one is not,” admitted Cornish, in rather a tired voice, which, to so keen an ear as that of his hearer, was as good as asking her why she had come.
She laughed. “Yes,” she said, “you are not inclined to sit and talk nonsense at this time in the morning. No more am I. I did not walk from Park Straat and take your defences by storm, and subject myself to the insult of a raised eyebrow on the countenance of a foolish young waiter, to talk nonsense even with you, who are cleverer with your non-committing platitudes than any man I know.” She laughed rather harshly, as many do when they find themselves suddenly within hail, as it were, of that weakness which is called feeling. “No, I came here on—let us say—business. I hold a good card, and I am going to play it. I want you to hold your hand in the mean time; give me to-day, you understand. I have taken great care to strengthen my hand. This is no sudden impulse, but a set purpose to which I have led up for some weeks. It is not scrupulous; it is not even honest. It is, in a word, essentially feminine, and not an affair to which you as a man could lend a moment's approval. Therefore, I tell you nothing. I merely ask you to leave me an open field to-day. Our end is the same, though our methods and our purpose differ as much as—well, as much as our minds. You want to break this Malgamite corner. I want to break Otto von Holzen. You understand?”
Cornish had known her long enough to permit himself to nod and say nothing.
“If I succeed, tant mieux. If I fail, it is no concern of yours, and it will in no way affect you or your plans. Ah, you disapprove, I see. What a complicated world this would be if we could all wear masks! Your face used to be a safer one than it is now. Can it be that you are becoming serious—un jeune homme sérieux? Heaven save you from that!”
“No; I have a headache; that is all,” laughed Cornish.
Mrs. Vansittart was slowly unbuttoning and rebuttoning her glove, deep in thought. For some women can think deeply and talk superficially at the same moment.
“Do you know,” she said, with a sudden change of voice and manner, “I have a conviction that you know something to-day of which you were ignorant yesterday? All knowledge, I suppose, leaves its mark. Something about Otto von Holzen, I suspect. Ah, Tony, if you know something, tell it to me. If you hold a strong card, let me play it. You do not know how I have longed and waited—what a miserable little hand I hold against this strong man.”
She was serious enough now. Her voice had a ring of hopelessness in it, as if she knew that limit against which a woman is fated to throw herself when she tries to injure a man who has no love for her. If the love be there, then is she strong, indeed; but without it, what can she do? It is the little more that is so much, and the little less that is such worlds away.
Cornish did not deny the knowledge which she ascribed to him, but merely shook his head, and Mrs. Vansittart suddenly changed her manner again. She was quick and clever enough to know that whatever account stood open between Cornish and Von Holzen the reckoning must be between them alone, without the help of any woman.
“Then you will remain indoors,” she said, rising, “and recover from your ... strange headache—and not go near the malgamite works, nor see Percy Roden or Otto von Holzen—and let me have my little try—that is all I ask.”
“Yes,” answered Cornish, reluctantly; “but I think you would be wiser to leave Von Holzen to me.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Vansittart, with one of her quick glances. “You think that.”
She paused on the threshold, then shrugged her shoulders and passed out. She hurried home, and there wrote a note to Percy Roden.