II
O'Rane had come very near the truth in the explanation he hazarded of Sonia's movements and changes of purpose.
The first two months of the tour had been uneventful. She had whirled with her companions through one country after another, too busy to think or quarrel, almost too busy to be conscious of herself: it was only as they left the long plains of Lombardy behind them, and mounted the first green-clad spurs of the Alps, that a restlessness and discontent settled on their spirits. There was a new tendency to find fault with their hotels, a general disagreement over what they were to do next, a candour of criticism that was less amiable than free. The party found itself disintegrating and taking sides for or against the victim of the day: Lord Pennington confided to Sonia that Sir Adolf and the Baroness would be less unbearable if they had studied table-manners. Mrs. Welman complained to Webster that Lord Pennington ought to dine alone, as no one—least of all himself—knew what stories he would tell in mixed company when he felt himself replete and cheerful. Sir Adolf wondered—in Mrs. Welman's hearing—what "liddle Zonia" could see in "thad gread zleeby Websder. He is not half awäg: she musd zdir him up, hein? He is a gread wed planked."
In justice to Sonia, who never let sentiment obscure the main chance, it should be said that she had seldom regarded Webster otherwise than as a beast of burden: he was devoted and docile, would lie somnolently in his corner of the car without venturing on "clever conversation," and could be ignored from the moment when he tucked the dust-rug round her knees till the time when she dispatched him to procure her strawberries in a wayside village.
Sometimes, indeed, she may have wondered lazily what was going on inside the sleepy brain behind the half-closed little eyes; once she looked on with amused detachment while Mrs. Welman tried to filch him from her side; once, too, she tried to make him jealous by changing places with the Baroness and driving for a day and a half in Lord Pennington's car. This last experiment was slightly humiliating, as her placid slave received her back at the end of it without reproach, surprise or rapture. Sonia half decided to abandon the invertebrate to the first-comer and was only checked by a feeling that she might be ostentatiously resigning an empire she had never won. Alternatively on the fourth day after their arrival at Bayreuth, in the purgatory of tedium which a Wagner festival must provide for auditors of only simulated enthusiasm, she accepted Sir Adolf's challenge and set herself to rouse "that great sleepy Webster" to an interest in herself.
The details of the campaign can only be supplied from imagination. Sonia, who confessed much, and Webster, who preserved his customary sphinx-like silence, united in suppressing all reference to what passed: the other members of the party saw only as much as the protagonists thought fit to allow. The results—which are all that is relevant here—came to light on the last morning of their stay in Bayreuth. Sir Adolf paid the bill, ordered his car, expounded the route and drove away. Lord Pennington followed suit, only waiting to ask if Sonia would care to drive with the Baroness and himself, as Webster's chauffeur had reported trouble with the timing-gear. Sonia replied that she would give the car another half-hour to come to its senses, and, if the repairs were not complete by then, Webster would have to bring her on by train and leave the chauffeur to pursue them as best he might. On that understanding Lord Pennington also drove away, and Sonia wandered through the gardens in front of the hotel and sent Webster once every quarter of an hour to inquire what progress was being made.
It was two o'clock before they got under way, and the car ran without mishap until eight. Then they halted for dinner, and Webster asked if Sonia thought it advisable to go any farther, or whether they should stay where they were till the following morning.
"We'll start again the moment we've finished dinner," she ordained, with great firmness.
"Right!" said Webster, "but we shan't get in till about eleven. D'you mind that?"
"Doesn't look as if it could be helped," she answered. "But I don't see myself staying alone with you in a village without a name in the middle of Bavaria."
Webster said nothing, but excused himself as soon as dinner was over and retired to discuss the condition of the car with his chauffeur.
"It's held up all right so far," he reported on his return, "but I don't know if we shall get through without a break-down. Wouldn't it be better——?"
"We'll start at once, please," said Sonia, and the car was ordered without further delay.
They ran uneventfully from nine till half-past eleven: then, as they left the single street of a slumbering village, the engines became suddenly silent, there, was a muttered oath from the chauffeur, and the car slowed down and came to a standstill at the side of the road.
"What's up?" Webster inquired, without any great show of interest.
The chauffeur detached a headlight, opened the bonnet and explored in silence for a few moments. Then he remarked, "Ignition."
Webster lit a cigarette and leant back in his corner.
"How long's it going to take you?" asked Sonia.
"Can't get another yard to-night, miss," was the answer. "If you'll get out and give a hand, sir, we'll push her back and see if we can wake anybody up in the village."
Sonia jumped out with a feeling of exasperation towards Webster for the untrustworthiness of his car and herself for refusing Lord Pennington's offer. They walked slowly back to the village, and patrolled the one street till the chauffeur discovered a house that looked like an inn, and battered on the door with a spanner.
"It couldn't be helped, you know," Webster urged in anxious apology as they waited in front of the silent houses; and then, to make his words more convincing by iteration, "You know, it simply couldn't be helped."
A head projected itself at length from an upper window and was addressed by Webster in halting German. It was withdrawn after the exchange of a few sentences, and there came a sound of heavy feet on the stairs and a hand fumbling with bolts and a chain.
"He says he's not got much accommodation," Webster explained, "but he'll do his best."
The door opened, and a sleepy-eyed landlord admitted them to the house. Lights appeared mysteriously, there were sounds of movement upstairs and in the kitchen and, by the time the car was lodged in a stable and the luggage carried into the house, Sonia found herself seated at a meal of ham and eggs washed down with draughts of dark Munich beer. The food gradually restored her good temper, and she became disposed to treat their break-down as a new and rather amusing experience: Webster, however, remained silent, when he was not apologetic, and seemed nervous and unsettled.
"D'you mind being left alone with me like this?" he asked. "You know, it might have happened to either of the other cars."
"I'd sooner be with you than with Lord Pennington or Sir Adolf," she admitted.
"If you don't mind, you can bet I don't," he answered, with a gleam of excitement in his dull eyes.
"It's rather a joke," she went on, looking round the old-fashioned, heavily-timbered room; and then warningly—"Provided it isn't repeated."
"I shan't say anything," he promised.
Sonia found that it was one thing for her to treat their misadventure as a joke and quite another to be exchanging the language of conspiracy with him.
"That'll do, Fatty," she said. "And it wasn't what I meant."
Webster's eyes dulled at the rebuke.
"No offence," he murmured indistinctly. "May I smoke?"
"You may do whatever you like. I'm going to bed."
He opened a cigar-case and crossed to the fireplace in search of matches.
"I'm afraid you'll find the accommodation rather limited," he remarked, with his face turned away from her.
"I don't expect the Ritz in a village of six houses," she answered.
"There's only one room."
Sonia sat up very erect in her chair; her breath came and went quickly and all her pulses seemed to be throbbing.
"Are you suggesting I should toss you for it?" she asked, with a flurried laugh.
He turned half round and regarded her out of the corner of one eye.
"No need, is there?" he mumbled.
Sonia jumped up hastily.
"Well, then, I'll take possession," she said. "You finish your cigar in peace; the landlord'll show me the way."
She hurried into the hall and rapped on a table till the proprietor appeared. He asked some question in German, but she could only shake her head and point up the stairs. Her meaning must have been clear, for he nodded and led the way with a lighted candle in his hand. There were two doors at the head of the stairs, and he opened the first. Looking over his shoulder, Sonia saw a bed without sheets or pillow-cases, and a jug standing upside down in the basin. The landlord closed the door with a muttered "Nein" and opened the one opposite. It was a room of the same size and character, but there were sheets on the bed and hot-water cans by the wash-hand stand. Two cabin trunks stood side by side under the window, their straps unloosed and hanging to the floor.
Sonia thanked the landlord and bade him good night. Left to herself, she inspected the lock, which seemed in order, removed her coat and hat—and tried to lift down Webster's trunk and drag it across the room. Her hand slipped as she tilted it off the chair, and there was a heavy thud, which reverberated through the silent house. She paused and listened. There was a footstep on the stairs and a subdued tapping at the door; then her name was called.
"You can come in, Fatty," she answered.
He entered quickly, yet with embarrassment, and stood at the door, smiling lop-sidedly.
"You're a bit of a liar, aren't you?" she suggested, as she bent once more over the trunk.
"Here, let me help!" he said, coming forward and seizing the handle. "Where d'you want this put?"
"In the next room—the room you're going to sleep in. Hurry up!"
Webster straightened his back and looked at her reproachfully.
"I say!—Sonia!" he protested.
His mouth seemed suddenly to have taken on a new flabbiness of outline.
"Hurry up, Fatty," she repeated, "and don't look so down on your luck. You've a lot to be thankful for. I've two brothers, and if either of them were in this house he'd be taking the skin off your back in strips. Clear the box out and then come back for your suitcase."
Webster obeyed her with docile humility.
"Now then," she went on, when he returned, "one or two questions, Fatty. There's nothing wrong with your car, is there? And never was? This is all a little plot between you and your man. I thought so. Why?"
He smiled—and avoided her eyes.
"It was rather a joke. You said so."
"But not to be carried too far. How old am I, Fatty? Well, I'll tell you. Twenty-eight. And I've knocked about a bit. D'you think I go in for jokes of that kind?" He made no answer. "Well, as it happens, I don't. And if I did——! Tell me candidly, Fatty, do you think I should choose you?"
She stood watching him with an expression of such contempt that the worm turned in spite of himself.
"Then why the devil did you go on as you've been doing the last week?" he demanded, looking up and flushing under her gaze.
"What have I done?"
"You've led me on—the whole way."
"You?" She laughed and put her hands on his shoulders. "Go to bed, Fat Boy, and we'll hope you'll wake up sane."
The touch of her hands seemed to fire him.
"This is my joke!" he exclaimed, catching her round the waist with one arm and pressing her head forward with the other till their lips met. "What are you afraid of, Sonia?" he whispered, as she struggled to break free from his arms. "No one'll ever know.... My God, you've nearly blinded me!"
He loosed her with a shrill cry of pain and staggered back, holding both hands to an eye that she had all but driven through its socket with the pressure of her thumb.
"That'll teach you!" she panted. "Get out, you little cur! Get out, I say, and let me never see your face again! Get out! Get out!!"
He stumbled from the room, and she slammed and bolted the door behind him. Then she flung herself on the bed with one hand over her mouth, sobbing, "To be kissed by that brute! Oh, you devil, you devil!"