Part 5

"I know, because later, when she complained, she did not know his name. Ronnie!" he mused. "Now I tell you what I will undertake to do. I will make a list, accurate and precise, of all his love affairs. It will be well to know these, because there may come a day when it will be good to flourish a weapon in this young man's face. Such men marry rich women."

Sault was working and only muttered his reply. He was not then interested in Ronnie Morelle.

X

He stayed on in the house long after Moropulos had dragged himself to his room and had dressed for the journey. So absorbed was he in his task that the Greek left without his noticing. At seven o'clock he finished, put away his tools in a cupboard, threw a cloth over the safe, and went out, locking the door behind him.

Both Steppe and Moropulos had urged him to live in the house, but though he had few predilections that were not amenable to the necessities of his friends, Sault was firm on this point. He preferred the liberty which his lodgings gave him. Possibly he foresaw the difficulties which might arise if he lived entirely with the Greek. Moropulos had a vicious and an uncertain tongue; was tetchy on some points, grotesquely so, on the question of Greek decadence, although he had lived so long away from his native country that English was almost his mother tongue. Sault could be tactful, but he had a passion for truth, and the two qualities are often incompatible.

A bus carried him to the end of the street where he lodged, and he stopped at a store on the corner and bought a box of biscuits for Christina. She was secretary and reader to him, and he repaid her services with a library subscription and such delicacies as she asked him to get for her. The subscription was a godsend to the girl, and augmented, as it was, by an occasional volume which Evie was allowed to bring from the store library by virtue of her employment, her days were brightened and her dreams took a wider range than ever. The driving force of learning is imagination. By imagination was Christina educated.

Evie sometimes said that she did not understand one half of the words that Christina used. To Mrs. Colebrook her daughter was an insoluble enigma. She associated education with brain fever and ideas above your station, and whilst she was secretly proud of the invalid's learning, she regarded Christina's spinal trouble as being partly responsible for the abnormality. Mrs. Colebrook believed in dreams and premonitions and the sinister significance of broken picture wires. It was part of her creed that people who are not long for this world possess supernatural accomplishments. Therefore she eyed Christina's books askance, and looked upon the extra library subscription as being a wild flight in the face of Providence. She expressed that view privately to Ambrose Sault.

"You have come at a propitious moment, Sault Effendi," said Christina solemnly as he came in. "I have just been taking my last look at the silvery Bosphorus. My husband, taking offense at a kiss I threw to the handsome young sultan as he rose beneath my latticed window, has decreed that tonight I am to be tied in a sack and thrown into the dark waters!"

"Good gracious," said Ambrose. "You have been in trouble today, Christina."

"Not very much. The journey was a lovely one. We went by way of Bergen--and thank you ever so much for that old Bradshaw you got for me. It was just the thing I wanted."

"Mr. Moropulos kindly gave it to me--yes--Bergen?"

"And then to Petrograd--the Czars were there, poor people--and then to Odessa, and down the Black Sea in--oh, I don't know. It was a silly journey today, Ambrose--I wasn't in the heart for a holiday."

"Is your back any worse?"

She shook her head. "No--it seems better. I nearly let myself dream about getting well. Do you think that other idea is possible? We can borrow a spinal carriage from the Institute but mother hasn't much time, and besides, I couldn't get down those narrow stairs without a lot of help. Yes--yes, yes! I know it is possible now. But the chariot, dear Ambrose?"

"I've got it!" he chuckled at her astonishment, "it will come tomorrow. It is rather like a motor-car for I have to find a garage for it. In this tiny house there is no room. But I got it--no, it didn't cost me a great deal. Dr. Merville told me where I could get one cheap. I put new tires on and the springs are grand. Christina, you will be--don't cry, Christina, please--you make me feel terrible!" His agitation had the effect of calming her.

"There must be something in this room that makes people weep," she gulped. "Ambrose--Evie is just worrying me to death."

"What is wrong?"

She shook her red head helplessly. "I don't know. She is changed--she is old. She's such a kid, too--such a kid! If that man hurts her," the knuckles of her clenched hand showed bone-white through the skin, "I'll ask you to do what you did for mother, Ambrose, give me strength for an hour--" her voice sank to a husky whisper, "and I'll kill him--kill him--"

Sault sat locking and unlocking his fingers, his eyes vacant. "She will not be hurt. I wish I were sure it was Ronald Morelle. Steppe has only to lift his finger--"

They heard the sound of Mrs. Colebrook's heavy feet on the stairs and Christina wondered why she was coming up. She had never interrupted their little talks before.

"Somebody to see you, Christina, and I'm sure it is too kind of you, miss, and please thank the doctor. I'll never be grateful enough for what he did--"

Ambrose Sault got up slowly to his feet as Beryl came into the room.

"I wonder if you really mind my coming--I am Beryl Merville."

"It is very good of you, Miss Merville," said Christina primly. She was ready to dislike her visitor; she hated the unknown people who called upon her, especially the people who brought jelly and fruit and last year's magazines. Their touching faith in the virtues of calves'-foot and fruit as a panacea for human ills, their automatic cheerfulness and mechanical good-humor, drove her wild. The church and its women had given up Christina ever since she had asked, in answer to the inevitable question: "Yes, there are some things I want; I'd like a box of perfumed cigarettes, some marron glace and a good English translation of 'Liaisons Dangereux'."

She loathed marron glace and scented tobacco was an abomination. Her chief regret was that the shocked inquirer had never heard of "Liaisons Dangereux". Christina only knew of its existence from a reference in a literary weekly which came her way.

Beryl sensed the hidden antagonism and the cause. "I really haven't come in a district visitor spirit," she said, "I'm not frightfully sorry for you and I haven't brought you oranges--"

"Grapes," corrected Christina. "They give you appendicitis--mother read that on the back page of 'Health Hints'. Sit down, Miss Merville. This is Mr. Sault." She nodded to Ambrose.

"Mr. Sault and I are old acquaintances," she said. She did not look at him. "I have to explain why I came at all. I know that you are not particularly enthusiastic about stray visitors--nobody is. But my father was talking about you at lunch today. He has never seen you, but Mr. Sault has spoken about you and, of course, he does know your mother. And father said: 'Why don't you go along and see her, Beryl?' I said, 'She would probably be very annoyed--but I'll take her that new long wordy novel that is so popular. I'm sure she'll hate it as much as I."

"If it is 'Let the World Go', I'm certain I shall," said Christina promptly, "but I'd love to read it. Let us sneer together." Beryl laughed and produced the book.

It seemed an appropriate moment for Ambrose to retire and he went out of the room quietly; he thought that neither of the girls saw him go, but he was mistaken. Christina Colebrook was sensitive to his every movement, and Beryl had really come to the house to see him.

On her way home she tried to arraign herself before the bar of intelligence, but it was not until she was alone in her room that night that she set forth the stark facts of her folly. She loved Ronald Morelle, loved him with an intensity which frightened her; loved him, although he was, according to all standards by which men are judged, despicable. He was a coward, a liar, a slave to his baser appetites. She had no doubt in her mind, when she faced the truth, that the stories which had been told of him were true. The East girl--the pretty parlormaid who had begun an action against him.

And yet there was something infinitely pathetic about Ronald Morelle, something that made her heart go out to him. Or was that a case of self-deception too? Was it not the beautiful animal she loved, the sleek, lithe tiger--alive and vital and remorseless? To all that was brain and spirit in her, he was loathsome. There were periods when she hated him and was bitterly contemptuous of herself. And in these periods came the soft voice of Ambrose Sault, whispering, insinuating. That was lunacy, too. He was old enough to be her father; was an illiterate workman, an ex-convict, a murderer; when her father had told her he had killed a man she was neither shocked nor surprised. She had guessed, from his brief reference to New Caledonia, that he had lived on that island under duress. He must have been convicted of some great crime; she could not imagine him in any mean or petty rôle. A coarse-handed workman, shabby of attire--it was madness to dream and dream of him as she did. And dreams, so Freud had said, were the expressions of wishes unfulfilled. What did she wish? She was prepared to answer the question frankly if any answer could be framed. But she had no ultimate wish. Her dreams of Ambrose Sault were unfinishable. Their ends ran into unfathomable darkness.

"I wonder if he is very fond of that red-haired girl?" she asked her mirror. Contemplating such a possibility she experienced a pang of jealousy and hated herself for it.

Jan Steppe came back from Paris on the eve of her birthday. He called at the house the next morning, before she was down, and interviewed Dr. Merville; when Beryl went in to breakfast, two little packages lay on her plate. The first was a diamond shawl pin.

"You are a dear, daddy!" She went round the table and kissed him. "It is beautiful and I wanted one badly."

She hurried back to her place. Perhaps Ronnie had remembered--?

She picked up the card that was enclosed and read it. "Mr. Steppe?"

Her father shot a quick glance at her. "Yes--bought it in Paris. He came in person to present it, but left when he found that you were not down--rather pretty." This was an inadequate description of the beautiful plaque that flashed and glittered from its velvet bed.

"It is lovely," she said, but without warmth. "Ought I accept--it is a very expensive present!"

"Why not? Steppe is a good friend of ours; besides, he likes you," said the doctor, not looking up from his plate. "He would be terribly hurt if you didn't take it--in fact, you cannot very well refuse."

She ran through her letters. There was a note from Ronnie, an invitation to a first night. He said nothing about her birthday.

"Oh, by the way, some flowers came. I told Dean to put them in your room. I have been puzzling my head to remember when I told him the date of your birthday. I suppose I must have done so, and, of course, he has the most colossal memory."

"Who, father?"

"Sault. He must have got up very early and gone to the market to get them. Very decent of him."

She went out of the room with an excuse and found her maid in the pantry. She had filled a big bowl with the roses. There were so many that only room for half of them had been found.

"The others I will put in the doctor's room, Miss," said the maid.

"Put them all in my room, every one of them," demanded Beryl.

She selected three and fastened them in her belt before she went back to the breakfast room. The doctor laughed.

"I've never seen you wearing flowers before--Sault would be awfully pleased."

This she knew. That was why she wore them.

XI

Evie Colebrook came home at an unusually early hour and the girl on the bed looked up in surprise.

"I heard mother talking to somebody, but I had no idea it was you, Evie. What is the matter--has your swain another engagement?"

"My swain, as you call him, is working tonight," said Evie, "and it is so hot that I thought I would come home and get into my pajamas."

"Mother has been talking about your eccentric tastes, with particular reference to pajamas," said Christina. "She thinks that pajamas are indelicate. In her young days girls weren't supposed to have legs."

"Father wore pajamas."

"Father also drank. Mother thinks that the pajamas had something to do with it. She also thinks that book reading was a contributary cause."

"What terrible jaw-breaking words you use, Christina. Father did read a lot, didn't he?"

"Father was a student. He studied, amongst other things, race horses. Do you know who father was?" Evie stared at her expectantly.

"He was a carpenter, wasn't he?"

"He was the youngest son of the youngest son of a lord. Take that look off your face, Evie; there is no possibility of our being the rightful heiresses of the old Hall. But it is true; he had a coat of arms."

"Then why did he marry mother?"

"Why do people marry anybody?" demanded Christina. "Why did grandfather marry grandmother? Besides, why shouldn't he have married mother? He was only a cabinet maker when he met her. She has told me so. And his father was a parson, and his mother the Honorable Mrs. Colebrook, the daughter of Lord Fanshelm. There is blue blood in your veins, Evie."

"But really, Christina," Evie's voice was eager and her eyes bright, "you are not fooling; is it true? It makes such an awful difference--"

Christina groaned. "My God, what have I said?" she asked dramatically.

"But really, Christina?"

"You are related so distantly to nobility that you can hardly see it without a telescope," said Christina, "I thought you knew. Mother used always to be talking about it at one time. My dear, what difference does it make?"

Evie was silent.

"A man doesn't love a girl any more because she has a fifth cousin in the House of Lords; he doesn't love her any less because her mother takes in laundry, and if her lowly origin stands in the way of his marriage, and he finds that really she is the great grandaughter of a princess, he cannot obliterate her intermediate relations."

"What's 'intermediate'?"

"Well, mother and father, and the parson who got into trouble through drinking, and his wife who ran away with a groom."

Evie drew a long sigh.

"Where is your swain?" she asked. "I don't like that word 'swain,' it sounds so much like 'swine'."

"I hope you will never see the resemblance any clearer," said Christina. "My swain is working, too. I shouldn't take off that petticoat, if I were you, Evie; he may come in and you can see your knickers through that dressing-gown."

"Christina!"

"I hate mentioning knickers to a pure-minded girl," said Christina, fanning herself with a paper, "but sisters have no secrets from one another. Ambrose, if that is who you mean, is very busy these days."

"Do you call him Ambrose to his face?" asked Evie curiously, and her sister snorted.

"Would you call Julius Cæsar 'Bill' or 'Juley' to his face; of course not. But I can't think of him as Ambrose Sault, Esquire, can I?"

"I don't understand him," said Evie. "He seems so dull and quiet."

"I'll get him to jazz with you the next time you're home early," said Christina sardonically.

"Don't be so silly. Naturally he isn't very lively being so old."

"Old! He is lively enough to carry me downstairs as though I were a pillow and wheel me for hours at a time in that glorious chariot he got for me! And he is old enough--but what is the good of talking to you, Evie?"

Presently her irritation passed and she laughed. "Tell me the news of the great world, Evie; what startling happenings have there been in Knightsbridge?"

"I can tell you something about Mr. Sault you don't know," Evie was piqued into saying. "He has been in prison." Christina turned on her side with a wince of pain.

"Say that again."

"He has been in prison." A long pause.

"I hoped he had," Christina said at last. "I believe in imprisonment as an essential part of a man's education--who told you?"

"I'm not going to say."

"Ronald Morelle--aha!" She pointed an accusing finger at the dumbfounded Evie.

"I know your guilty secret! The 'Ronnie' you babble about in your sleep is Ronnie Morelle!"

"Wh--what makes you--it isn't true--it is a damned lie--!"

"Don't be profane, Evie. That is the worst of druggists' shops, you pick up such awful language. Mother says you can't work amongst pills without getting ideas in your head."

"I never talk in my sleep--and I don't know Ronnie Morelle--who is he?"

Evie's ignorance was badly assumed. Christina became very thoughtful. She lay with her hand under her cheek, her gray eyes searching her sister's face.

"Would Ronnie be impressed by your distant relationship with nobility?" she asked quietly. "Would it make such an awful difference if he knew about the coat of arms in father's Bible? I don't think it would. If it did, he isn't worth worrying about. What is he?"

"Didn't Mr. Sault tell you?" asked Evie hotly. "He seems to spend his time gossiping about people who are a million times better than him--"

"Than he," murmured Christina, her eyes closed.

"He is a nasty scandal-mongering old man! I hate him!"

"He didn't say that Ronnie had been in prison," Christina's voice was gentle. "All that he said was that the only 'Ronnie' he knew was Ronald Morelle. He did not even describe him or give him a character."

"How absurd, Christina! As if old Sault could give Mr. Morelle 'a character'! One is a gentleman and the other is an old fossil!"

"Old age is honorable," said Christina tolerantly, "the arrogance of you babies!"

"You're half in love with him!"

"Wholly," nodded Christina. "I love his mind and his soul. I am incapable of any other kind of love. I never want a man to draw my flaming head to his shoulder and whisper, that until he met me, the world was a desert, and food didn't taste good. It is because Ambrose Sault never paws me or holds my hand or kisses me on the brow in the manner of a father who hopes to be something closer, that I love him. And I shall love him through eternity. When I am dead and he is dead. And I want nothing more than this. If he were to die tomorrow, I should not grieve because his flesh means nothing to me. The thing he gives me is everlasting. That is where I am better off than you, Evie. You have nothing but what you give yourself. You think he gives you these wonderful memories which keep you awake at nights. You think it is his love for you that thrills you. It isn't that, Evie. Your love is the love of the martyr who finds an ecstatic joy in his suffering."

Groping toward understanding, Evie seized this illustration. "God loves the martyr--it isn't one-sided," she quavered and Christina nodded.

"That is true, or it may be true. Does your god love you?"

"It is blasphemous to--to talk of Ronnie as God."

"God with a small 'g'."

"It is blasphemous anyhow. Ronnie does love me. He hasn't silly and conventional ideas about--about love as most people have. He is much broader-minded, but he does love me. I know it. A girl knows when a man loves her."

"That is one of the things she doesn't know," interrupted Christina. "She knows when he wants her, but she doesn't know how continually he will want her. He is unconventional, too? And broad-minded? The broad-minded are usually people who take a generous view of their own shortcomings. Is he one of those unconventional souls who think that marriage is a barbarous ceremony?"

"Who told you that?" Evie was breathless from surprise.

"It isn't an unique view--broad-minded men often try to get narrow-minded girls to see that standpoint."

"You're cynical--I hate cynical people," said Evie, throwing herself on her bed, "and you have all your ideas of life out of books, and the rotten people who come in here moaning about their troubles. You can't believe writers--not some writers--there are some, of course, that give just a true picture of life--not in books, but in articles in the newspapers. They just seem to know what people are thinking and feeling, and express themselves wonderfully."

"Ah--so Ronnie writes for the newspapers, does he?"

Evie's indignant retort was checked by a knock on the door.

"That is Mr. Sault--can he come in?"

"I suppose so," answered Evie grudgingly. She got off the bed and tied her dressing-gown more tightly. "I don't really show my legs through this kimono do I, Christina?"

"Not unless you want to--come in!"

Ambrose Sault looked tired. "Just looked in before I went to my room," he said. "Good evening, Evie."

"Good evening, Mr. Sault."

Evie's dressing-gown was wrapped so tightly as to give her a mummified appearance.

"I saw the osteopath today and I've arranged for him to come and talk to you tomorrow," said Ambrose, sitting on the edge of the bed at the inviting gesture of Christina's hand.

"I will parley with him," she nodded. "I don't believe that he will make a scrap of difference. I've seen all sorts of doctors and specialists. Mother has a list of them--she is very proud of it."

"I'm only hoping that this man may do you some good," said Ambrose, rubbing his chin meditatively. "I have seen some wonderful cures--in America. Even Dr. Merville believes in them. He says that if you build a sky-scraper and the steel frame isn't true, you cannot expect the doors to shut or the windows to open. I'm sorry I am so late, but the osteopath was dining out, and I had to wait until he came back. He hurt his ankle too, and that took time. I had to give him a rubbing. He is the best man in London. Dr. Duncan More."

She did not take her eyes from his face. Evie noticed this and discounted Christina's earlier assertion.

"Will it cost a lot of money?" asked Christina.

"Not much, in fact very little. The first examination is free. He doesn't really examine you, you know. He will just feel your back, through your clothes. I asked him that, because I know how you dislike examinations. And if he doesn't think that you can be treated, and that there is a chance of making you better, he won't bother you any more."

"I don't believe in these quack doctors," said Evie decidedly. "They promise all sorts of cures and they only take your money. We have a lot of those kind of remedies at the store, but Mr. Donker, the manager, says that they are all fakes--don't tell me that an osteopath isn't a medicine. I know that. He's a sort of doctor, but I'll bet you he doesn't do any good."

"Cheer up, Job!" said Christina. "Faith is something. I suppose you mean well, but if I took any notice of you I'd give up the struggle now."

"I don't want to depress you, you're very unkind, Christina! But I don't think you ought to be too hopeful. It would be such an awful--what's the word, come-down for you."

"Reaction," said Sault and Christina together and they laughed.

Sault went soon after and Evie felt that a dignified protest was called for.

"There is no reason why you should make me look like a fool before Sault," she said hurt. "Nobody would be happier than I should be if you got well. You know that. I'm not so sure that Mr. Sault is sincere--"

"What?"

Christina leaned upon her arm and her eyes were blazing.

"You can say that he is old and ugly, if you like, and shabby and--anything. But don't dare to say that, Evie--don't dare to say that he isn't sincere!"