CHAPTER XIX
THE PLOT AGAIN THICKENS
At the end of three more days Lionel was feeling a little ill-used. There was still no word from Beatrice, and the watching brief he held began to look like a permanency. A sinecure, you remark disparagingly, or (with an envious inflection) a soft job. Lionel had a roof above him, luxurious food, money in his pocket and a pretty hostess: he would be a churl who grumbled, a witless being who did not know when he was well off.
But nevertheless he grumbled. He wanted to be up and doing. Dalliance was delightful, no doubt, and he could thoroughly enjoy so pleasant a pastime. But he required a soupçon of the serious to edge his palate for frivolity, and not a single olive had been sent him from headquarters. Beatrice might have written, surely: not necessarily a letter, but a note, a telegram, even a picture post-card was not too much to have expected. After all, he was a human being trying to do her a good turn. She might, if she liked, consider him in the light of a dog; but even a dog demands an occasional pat.
Yes, Beatrice had been a little inconsiderate. When they met again he would subtly convey that she had not been quite so perfect in her handling of the case as she might have been. Not blame—oh, no! that would be too severe. But a touch of respectful and adoring frigidity—a hint of polite and ardent disappointment, that was the note to be struck. It would add to the subsequent reconciliation, or rather readjustment. Iced champagne, in short, followed by liquor brandy. Finally (perhaps ... who knows?) a mixture of the two, compounding that exhilarating beverage, king's peg.
But that could only be drunk post-mortem.... Poor, dear old Lukos.... Well, for the present he must sport the blue ribbon....
But a dog will have its pat: if the mistress will not give it, another may; and who can blame the devoted creature if it lingers piteously hard by a stranger? Again, why blame the stranger, moved doubtless by a kindly and an unselfish impulse? Why blame Miss Arkwright, in short, for growing daily more cordial, more appreciative, more anxious to oblige with the pat? Lionel was obeying the orders of Beatrice, to watch and do the bidding of his hostess; he could not be expected to damp her graciousness, check her enthusiasm: had he done so, he might have sealed the source of some important information. He must endure the pat, suffer it, permit, accept, not refuse; but ... welcome?
He was talking to her in the garden one afternoon. They had begun the conversation on some trivial theme, soon tossed aside for a subject of substance. It was not long before they were on the time-worn topic, the war of the sexes. Miss Arkwright, it appeared, was a suffragette—not militant, certainly, but convinced and ardent. She expressed surprise that Lionel did not take similar views. "For you," she said sweetly, "are a reasonable fair-minded man. And I should think," she added mischievously, "that you have many friends who might convert you."
"It isn't my brain that wants conversion," he replied meditatively. "Most of the arguments are on the women's side. Logic tells me they should have the vote; feeling—and by feeling I don't mean prejudice or bigotry, but something deeper—recoils from the idea of women in parliament. And it would mean that in the long-run. Let us keep them out of the dirty work."
"They might cleanse the stables."