Hours afterward, when, well towards morning, Jane closed her eyes and tried to sleep, her mind refused to give her anything to look at but a series of pictures, like scenes in a well-staged play. Certain ones stood out, and the earliest of these showed Mrs. Burns crossing a quiet reception room to lay one hand on her husband’s arm, while her eyes met frankly first his questioning gaze and then that of Robert Black. Nothing could have been simpler than her reasonable request of them. Might they change their plans a bit, now that she had found Miss Ray, and all go over to the Napoleon to dinner, to find Miss Fitch and Mr. Ray? The hazel eyes of Red Pepper Burns had looked deeply into his wife’s at this—he saw plainly that she was definitely planning, with a reason. He was well used to trusting her—he trusted her now. He nodded. “Of course, dear,” he said.
Robert Black came to Jane. “I think I understand,” he said quietly. “We’ll all stand by.”
They crossed the street together—Red went to interview the head waiter. Within five minutes the four were being led to a table at the very back of the room, close beside one of those small recesses, holding each a table for two, which are among the Napoleon’s most popular assets. And then Mrs. Burns, looking across into the recess, had nodded and smiled, and spoken to her husband, and he had promptly gone across, and invited the pair there to come over and be his guests.
Cary had turned violently red, and had begun to say stiffly and very definitely that his order had gone in, and that it would be as well not to change, thank you, when Robert Black came also into the recess, bowing in his most dignified manner to Fanny Fitch. Somehow Jane Ray had not known until that moment quite how much dignity he could assume. “Ray,” he had said, in the other’s ear, “I imagine you haven’t heard that Richard Temple is here to-night—on his way back. Couldn’t you cut everything else and go with me to hear him? There won’t be such a chance again before we get across. I’m sure Miss Fitch would excuse you. It’s a smoker, arranged in a hurry. Nobody knew he was coming.”
Well, that made all the difference. Call it luck, call it what you will, that the great war-correspondent, the greatest of them all up to that time, a man whom Cary Ray would almost have given his right arm to meet, was passing through the town that night. It had been another man, more famous in a different line, an Englishman from a great university, turned soldier, whom Black and Red had stayed in town to meet. But the moment Black had discovered Jane’s anxiety and its cause he had leaped at this solution. The correspondent’s coming was an accident owing to a train detention—he had arrived unheralded, and the two men had but just got wind of it. They had been saying, as Mrs. Burns and Jane came to the hotel, that it was hard to have to choose between two such rich events, and that they must look in on the smoker when the Englishman had been heard. But now—Black had all at once but one purpose in the world—to carry off Cary Ray to that smoker, and to stay beside him till he was at home again. That Cary would drink no drop while he, Robert, was beside him, was a thing that could be definitely counted on.
It is possible that no point of view, in relation to the remainder of the evening, could be better worth study than that of Fanny Fitch. Sitting on the foot of Nan Lockhart’s bed at two o’clock that morning, she gave a dramatic account of what had happened. Nan, sleepy enough at first, and indignant with Fanny for waking her, found herself wide awake in no time.
“The perfectly calm and charming way in which Mrs. Burns simply switched everything to suit Jane shows plainly what an intriguer that girl is—precisely as I told you. Oh, yes—Doctor Burns asked us over, and Robert Black fixed Cary for the war-correspondent affair, and Jane sat there looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Both she and Mrs. Burns seemed merely lovely, innocent creatures intent on distributing good to everybody! But those men never would have thought of taking Cary away from me if they hadn’t been put up to it; men never conceive that sort of thing by themselves. That dinner—oh, how I hated it! Will you tell me why Cary Ray had to be pried loose from me, as if I were some kind of vampire of the movie variety——”
“But really, Fanny, Richard Temple is the one man in the world Cary Ray ought not to miss hearing and meeting just now. It would mean such a lot to him. And if he was only there that one evening——”
“Oh, I’ll admit that! But to hear Richard Temple Cary Ray didn’t have to be moved over to the Burns table and put in a high chair and have a bib tied round his neck! He was furious himself when the change was proposed; then of course he went delirious at hearing that the Temple man was in town, and forgot his fury. He had to cancel part of his order—worse luck; Mrs. Burns is the sort who wouldn’t stand for iced tea if it was served in a champagne glass!”
“Fanny! You don’t mean——Why, surely you’ve been told about Cary Ray. You wouldn’t let him——”