Part 10
Truth to tell, and the dark secret was locked securely in the bosom of Mr. Montagu Jupp, he had only met Lady Elfreda once, for a few brief moments, so that the faculty of observation not being his long suit, he was not so clear as he might have been as to what she really looked like. The skeleton in Montagu’s cupboard which some of his friends, the malicious Garden to wit, shrewdly suspected to be the case, was that he was inclined “to talk through his hat”; in other words, he was prone to claim an intimacy with all the world that the crude facts did not always justify. He had said once in Sir Toby’s hearing over an after-dinner whisky and cigar, that “he had taught Lady Elfreda Catkin all the acting she knew,” but that incautious statement had been less in response to sober truth than to her highly effective portrait in the _Society_ Pictorial. It was sufficient for _un homme du monde_ that he had talked with her once for five minutes at a garden party. The fact was typical of the man, even a part of his picturesqueness, but at this moment, had the luckless Girlie been aware of it, here was a card incredibly in her favor.
Girlie, alas, did not know that. She went in to dinner and took her accustomed place at the right hand of the host with a growing conviction that she was about to be hanged in public, to say nothing of the drawing and quartering to follow. She felt it was only a question of minutes before Mr. Jupp denounced her. Every time her guilty eye strayed furtively across to his side of the table she perceived his eye, in its degree hardly less guilty, furtively upon her. But she did not know, she could not guess the strength of her own position. She could only marvel as course succeeded course, as her wine glass grew empty and then grew full again, that the inevitable thunderbolt did not descend.
As the meal went on and exposure grew ever more imminent in the mind of the Deputy--a dramatic scene was surely reserved for the drawing room!--she grew increasingly bold. After her glass had been replenished three times she did not care what happened. She would die “game.” This was her very last hour of vicarious splendor, but she had now an intense desire to live it to the full. Her tongue was loosened, her laugh rose higher and more frequent, her eyes grew wonderfully bright. All this harmonized with the spirit of the others, for, as usual, Mr. Jupp had brought an infectious gayety upon the scene. Everybody laughed at everybody else; all were in a mood of festive enjoyment; the almost perilous light-heartedness of “the little Catkin puss” excited no comment--or, if it did, it counted to her for virtue. Certainly her host, who for a week now had endured “heavy cake” with a noble fortitude, was charmed by the change. There might be something in the little noodle after all.
When dinner was over other people began to think so, too. Living in the very crater of Vesuvius with an eruption long overdue, keyed up beyond a self that was rather undercharged, for the first time in her life Girlie let herself go. Somehow it seemed the only course to take. Amid the hilarity the mere presence of Mr. Jupp had induced, that remarkable man sat down at the piano and began to do it considerable violence. Thereupon one of the younger “bloods” began to fox-trot with Mrs. Spencer-Jobling. Sir Toby Philpot, not to be outdone, immediately commandeered the hostess, Mr. Minever promptly laid siege to another lady, and then Girlie grew alive to the fact that Lord Duckingfield was smiling at her and moving resolutely in her direction.
“Just show me how to--won’t you, my dear?” His voice was wonderfully persuasive and fatherly.
Girlie’s knowledge of the fox-trot was almost as vague as my lord’s. But what did that matter? What did anything matter? She rose with a laugh, she intertwined one slender arm with his; slowly she gyrated with this performing bear of a man twice round the drawing room, and then in the wake of the more enterprising couples through the open door and out into the hall.
Mr. Jupp continued to pound the piano. Tango succeeded fox-trot, there was an occasional relapse to the two-step, a brief intermission of some forgotten waltz or other, with now and again, as became a truly modern and progressive mind, a heroic attempt at the jazz. None of the dancers obeyed the music; they didn’t really try to do so; each chose the style that seemed the most natural, so that what began as a half serious performance soon degenerated into an amazing go-as-you-please. But it was highly enjoyable. At any rate, Lord Duckingfield thought it was. A strenuous youth in factory and warehouse had left him no time to pay court to Terpsichore. He knew what he liked, however. And what he did like was to wheel slowly and solemnly round on his left foot, with plenty of elbow room and without having too much ground to cover. And if he was most agreeably assisted in these maneuvers by the charmingly pretty bearer of a distinguished name, why so much the better.
This dainty, gray-eyed little girl quite set the genius of my lord. She was so simple. And with all his riches and his ambitions and his recent nobility, at heart he was really simple himself. After a most exhilarating twenty minutes on the hall parquet, in a space hardly more than six feet square, in the course of which Girlie, with the inimitable tact of her sex, contrived neatly to fit step for step, Lord Duckingfield espied a corner almost perilous in its charm and its seclusion in an angle of the stairs. In point of fact he had had his eye on it from the first. By the time he had truly earned a rest he felt that it would come to him as the just reward of his merit and his virtue.
In the room adjacent, on a piano whose extreme resonance was almost unbearable, Mr. Jupp continued to do surprising things, while his fellow guests, each after his or her manner, kept pace with him as far as was humanly possible. At last, however, Lord Duckingfield came to a sudden halt and drew a series of deep breaths. Then, Girlie upon his arm, he made a bee-line for the palm-shrouded alcove beneath the hall stairs. Kindly providence had decreed that two chairs, of the sort called “comfortable,” should be there already. Girlie, a little breathless too after her altruistic exertions, found herself at rest in one a brief ten seconds before her cavalier came to anchor in the other.
She was feeling entirely reckless. She didn’t care. Her limit had been reached, nay, it had been overstepped. She would drink of the cup. Life was dancing a fiery symbol before her eyes. In spite of the sword that hung by a thread in mid-air she was enjoying her hour. She was enjoying it terribly. If she died of the shame that must follow, at least she would be able to point to an experience beyond the run of women.
“Nice of you, my dear, to help an old duffer like me.” The rich, half chuckling tone of Lord Duckingfield had an odd humility that was wonderfully attractive in the ear of a woman.
“Not at all.” Softly she lisped in true Galsworthian phrase. A powerful genius enfolded her. With a kind of mad dignity she sat up in the wicker chair.
“Oh, but it is, though,” My lord was heavily serious for all that there was a kind of elephantine humor in him. “Not many of you smart young ladies would be bothered with a clumsy old fool like me.”
“But you are not clumsy--you are not at all clumsy,” It was not the speech of a smart young lady, it was not true, it was not subtle, above all, it was unworthy of the author of “The Patrician,” and by the light of the inner mind she knew this only too well, but the stage-manager of the pleasant little comedy understood the business better than did she. The crude simplicity for which she could have wept at the moment her lips betrayed it, really met the situation exactly. In spite of her lineage--or perhaps because of it--Lord Duckingfield was more than ever convinced that she was a very nice little girl.
“You see,” he said, and his abrupt fall to an almost disconcerting intimacy was the truest compliment such a highly practical man could have paid her, “you see, I don’t pretend to be one of the fancy sort. No Eton and Oxford for me. At your age, my dear, I was earning my thirty shillings a week at the carpenter’s bench and thinking myself almighty lucky to be getting it.”
She actually had the wit to reward the reminiscence with a ripe Galsworthian “Really!” But again she must have fallen short of the rich quality of her mentor, since my lord went on, for all the world as if she had not been a marquis’s daughter, “You don’t know, my dear, what I’ve had to fight against. Most of you young ladies laugh at men like me, but you are one of the sensible kind, so that’s why I don’t mind telling you of my early life.”
The gray eyes smiled at Lord Duckingfield. And as the stage-manager had fixed an electric bulb at a psychological angle midway between the two chairs, so that its rays caught the light of those eyes and set it dancing, Lord Duckingfield was suddenly and acutely aware of quite the sharpest thrill he had ever experienced.
“Of course, I’m very rich now.” Lord Duckingfield seemed inclined to carry naïveté to the verge of indelicacy. “Very rich indeed. Your father will make allowances for that. But you are such a very nice little girl that even had you been just plain Miss Brown....”
With a shiver, half enchantment, half dismay, Girlie realized that a sympathetic hand had put forth from the adjacent chair and that it was exquisitely enclosing hers. The close-breathing pause which followed must have meant embarrassment for both, had either been in a condition to respond to that form of emotion. But Girlie had burnt her boats. She was past all caring. As for Lord Duckingfield he was now suddenly alive to the fact that he was quite in love with this pretty gray-eyed mouse.
“You are so sensible.” The grip tightened upon the slender arm. “There’s no nonsense about you. If you don’t mind my saying so you are not at all like most of the smart girls I’ve met. They are so knowing. And they take so much living up to--for an old duffer like me. Give me something homely and sensible.” Inch by inch the wicker chair came closer. She felt one arm, half chivalrous, half masterful, slowly encircle her.
She made no effort to repel this audacity. Somehow it marched with her own state of mind. But in the next moment something had happened, something which had the effect of bringing her up short in the midst of her folly and incidentally of summoning her northern forbears primly upon the scene. Lord Duckingfield took her in his arms and kissed her.
It was the first time in Girlie’s life of twenty years that such a thing had happened or had seemed likely to happen. Nothing could have been more subversive of her strait “high-brow” code than to be kissed by a man, and a rather elderly man, without so much as a by-your-leave, in circumstances of semi-publicity. Even if she had a sense of having dined, deep down she knew it to be an epic moment; she was thrilled as she had never been thrilled; it was the event of her life. He might be a real live peer of the realm; all the same his boldness was just a little too much for Miss Cass of Laxton.
Involuntarily she stiffened, involuntarily she drew her chair a few paces away from him. Slightly abashed but wholly impenitent Lord Duckingfield followed her. But Miss Cass of Laxton was not quite lost to a sense of her high destiny. What kind of man was this! How dare he! She must let him know that this was not the form of a budding Charlotte Brontë.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, as soon as the mild horror in her eyes had convicted him. He spoke so nicely, so gently, that it was not in her heart to be angry even had it been in her nature to be so.
He proved the depth of his contrition by a sudden descent into autobiography. His early life was unfolded before her, his struggles, his defeats, his slow ascent of fortune’s ladder. She could not help admiring this large simplicity, she could not help honoring him for it, but when she perceived that it was leading all-too-surely to what she feared, but by another road, she was overcome. She began to steel herself to bear the blow she had more than half invited.
_Don’t let me see you or hear from you again until he has proposed to you._ Those grim words, brutal and incredible, came upon her ears for the hundredth time. Was she weakly to yield to such cynicism! If a spark of human decency remained to her, she must avert while there was yet time that which too clearly was going to happen.
Spurred to action by a cruel desperation, she rose abruptly. But that did not serve. Lightly, but firmly, Lord Duckingfield grabbed her by the wrist and propelled her with half whimsical precision back to her chair. The deed was accomplished with a kind of humorous deftness, but the “insight” of Miss Cass might have told her, had she been able just then to bring it into play, that the seeming archness of her suitor was a mere mask. Really he was possessed by a most becoming nervousness and this a lady of her powers ought to have divined. Perhaps she did divine it. Underneath Lord Duckingfield’s humor was a fitting sense of presumptuous audacity. He, at least, in spite of his democratic sense, could not forget who she was. What more likely than that being a thoroughly clumsy fellow he had already gone too far.
“Lady Elfreda.” His voice--his deep voice--sounded rather hoarse. “I want you to help me if you can. I’m in love with you, as I never thought I could be in love with any girl. You are just my sort. I think we understand one another. I am sure I can make you happy. Will you marry me?”
The moment had come. She had but herself to blame. Hers the sole fault that the thing had happened. The blunt words of one whom she was quite sure was a good and simple man fell upon her like a douche. They were like a douche of ice-cool reason. In that instant she saw that this wicked madness must cease. No matter what the cost she must forget her miserable self. Such a horrid farce could not go on.
She felt his honest grip upon her fingers. The pause that followed became more than she could bear. If ever she was to respect herself again, here and now she must make an end. Desperately she assembled the fugitive fragments of her will, but the very stars in their courses were against her now. One phrase, one unforgettable phrase he had used was running like quicksilver in her brain. “You are such a very nice little girl that even had you been just plain Miss Brown...!”
Fatal corollary! She was “just plain Miss Brown” had he but known it. Therefore, as his own words proved, where could be the purpose of his knowing it? The argument was too sweetly specious! Torn as she was, she had not the strength to fight it. Half-heartedly she strove to overcome the spell of those fatal words, but she knew only too well that the task was hopeless.
“Think it over, my dear.” He was no longer nervous; he was calm, precise, matter of fact. “I’m not so young as I might be, but anything that money can buy I am in a position to give you. No need for an answer just now. I see you want time to think it over--it’s only proper and natural. But to-morrow I hope you’ll be able to tell me that I may write to your father.”
Again, with an increasing horror, Girlie felt the kiss of an honest man upon her shrinking finger tips.
XXIV
TO bed--to dream, but not to sleep. The situation that shaped itself so fantastically to Girlie’s mind in the tardy hours of a long and wakeful night was almost more than she could bear. Here was the last straw. Playing with human souls is a perilous game. In drifting at another’s bidding into such a position she had not reckoned upon the cost to herself. She was not of the stuff of which the real adventuress is made. The whole affair was really an outrage upon her deepest instincts. She had neither the cynicism, the native impudence nor “the sense of the theater” to keep the thing going. Somewhere about the hour of four, when the night was at its darkest and her courage was very low, she resolved to make an end. With remorse inflicting such torments upon her there seemed nothing else to do. She spent the rest of the night feverishly planning a way out. None there was, alas, that could hope to spare her the tragic weight of humiliation, and worse than humiliation she had so honestly earned; but as far as possible she must defend herself against a public exposure.
Until getting-up time came she strove with this problem. But she was caught in a trap from which there was no escape. Daylight stealing into the cell of the condemned could not have been more unwelcome than the faint rose of dawn creeping through the blinds of King Edward’s bedroom. Girlie did not know how to face another day. The matutinal cup of tea, brought to her at eight o’clock by a very trim housemaid, found her in an abject state of “nerves.” She had reached the conclusion by this time that her only hope lay in immediate flight. By some miracle Mr. Jupp had not yet denounced her, but she felt sure it could only be a question of hours. And even if the miracle went on and he still refrained from doing so, the position into which she had allowed herself to drift with Lord Duckingfield was quite unendurable. She was now haunted by the thought of this good and simple man for whom she had a real regard.
Yes, she must get away. But where could she go? To The Laurels? Only too clearly did she realize that there was nothing to hope for from that quarter--at any rate if she flagrantly disobeyed her instructions. Besides in her present state of mental and moral weakness she really went in fear of her Evil Genius.
After a time her mind began to run upon an aunt in Scotland. Now that she had wantonly forfeited her only means of getting a living, that austere dame, an elder sister of her mother’s, whom she remembered but faintly, was the only relation or friend to whom she could turn. Her recollection of Aunt Alice was dim and it was not agreeable. Aunt Alice lived a long way off, she was the wife of a struggling doctor with a large family of her own, and the best her niece could hope for was an astonished and grudging welcome. Still there seemed no alternative now.
Wrought upon by the need for action, Girlie got out of bed and took her purse from the left hand drawer of the dressing table. In a state of nervous excitement she hunted for the address of Aunt Alice. Presently she was rewarded with the sight of an old letter bearing the postmark “Inverness.” Her heart sank. She knew nothing of Inverness, except that it was somewhere in the north of Scotland.
Further examination of the inside of the purse revealed that her means of getting to Inverness amounted to just two pounds, five shillings and ninepence. Such a meager sum, even if it allowed her to get so far, which at the present cost of travel was very doubtful, would provide absolutely nothing to live upon. That fact alone seemed to make the project hopeless. For one weak instant, in the face of this rebuff, her mind reverted to Lady Elfreda’s jewels, to which she had access. But the thought--if thought it could be called--was at once dismissed. Not for a moment could any scheme of that kind be entertained. All the same she indulged in a forlorn little sigh as the fact came home to her once more that nature had not designed her for the adventuress _pur sang_.
In spite, however, of such a lack of means her mind continued to run upon Inverness. Throughout an uncomfortable, appetiteless breakfast the thought of that distant haven obsessed her. She managed to nibble a piece of toast under the eye of the attentive and solicitous Lord Duckingfield, who had so assiduously helped her to this simple fare with a comment upon its meagerness. This morning, as every morning, he was the soul of kindness and courtesy. But she was quite unable to talk to him; in fact, she did not dare to look in his direction. It was a great relief when at last she was able to carry Bradshaw to the good log fire in the hall.
There, upon the scene of the previous evening’s tragi-comedy she delved further into the problem of transporting herself from Clavering St. Mary’s to the north of Scotland.
One important fact in regard to a very long and tortuous journey was soon established. The sum of two pounds five shillings and ninepence rendered the project hopeless.
Bradshaw in hand, she was still trying to meet a not unexpected facer, when a voice of rather delicately reproachful curiosity came from over her shoulder. It was that of the hostess and Girlie felt a tremor of guilty dismay.
“Not thinking of leaving us, are you, Lady Elfreda?”
Quickly and nervously Girlie replied that she was not.
“Of course you’re not,” Mrs. Minever laughed. “Until after Tuesday at all events. You have only three days now.” Mrs. Minever laughed a second time, perhaps a shade sardonically. “How relieved you’ll be! I am sure you have found us very dull. But when you get to Amory Towers you’ll be able to play piquet with Mrs. Lancelot. I hope you are a good player. Mrs. Lancelot, I believe, is very proud of her piquet.”
The yellow chrysanthemum lady was a little inclined to quiz. She was the soul of good nature, but Girlie’s aloof detachment from her surroundings invited criticism. The manner of the chief guest was so constrained, so unnatural, that the only explanation was “side.” Evidently this daughter of Lord Carabbas had such a sense of her position that she did not find it easy to mix with other people on terms of equality. Yet when the worst had been said of the yellow chrysanthemum lady she was really the least censorious of women. Besides, she was not in a mood for chaff this morning, no matter how fully it was deserved or how much the occasion called for it. Mrs. Minever, in point of fact, was graver this morning, more resolutely serious than the guest had yet seen her. In Mrs. Minever’s own words, “a very provoking thing had happened.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Minever in a fluttered tone, “you must please tell your maid to be sure and keep your jewels under lock and key. One of my rings--a rather valuable one--has disappeared. And you heard what Mrs. Lancelot said yesterday? I’m afraid there is not the slightest doubt that a gang of burglars is at work in the neighborhood.”
Readily enough Girlie promised to keep her jewels under lock and key.
“Of course it may be some one in the house. We are always changing our servants. My husband is consulting the police.”
Girlie’s heart sank. She did not need to be very wise or very clever to foresee the bearing such a circumstance would have upon her flight. If she bolted now, without ostensible cause, the mere fact would be terribly against her. Even as it was, when her imposture was revealed, she felt sure it would go hard with her; yet with these deeper grounds for even blacker suspicion, she was likely to be faced with a charge she was wholly unable to meet.
Her nerve was badly shaken, but this new turn of events gave her a sudden distaste for the half-formed plan. Beyond the crude fact that she simply lacked the money to undertake the journey there was now an even stronger reason why she should continue to stand her ground.
All the same the standing of her ground promised to be a soul testing process. It was by no means certain that her courage would hold out. For one thing the mere sight of Lord Duckingfield had the power to involve her in a perfect orgy of conflicting emotions. If the look of him, gravely polite, rather anxiously formal, meant anything, he was clearly waiting for his answer. Why had she not had the strength of mind to let him know the previous evening that he sought the impossible? What was the good of having perceptions and fine feelings, if one did not act in accordance with them?