Part 7

"If Louise goes to Paris," she whispered disconsolately, "I suppose there will be no luncheon-party?"

For a single moment he hesitated. She was very alluring, and the challenge in her eyes was unmistakable.

"I think," he said quietly, "that if Miss Maurel goes to Paris, I shall return to Cumberland to-morrow."

He opened the door, and Sophy passed out before him. She had dropped her veil.

* * * * *

They drove down the Strand toward Knightsbridge. For a time there was a significant silence. Then Sophy raised her veil once more and looked toward John.

"Mr. Strangewey," she began, "you won't mind if I give you just a little word of advice? You are such a big, strong person, but you are rather a child, you know, in some things."

"This place does make me feel ignorant," he admitted.

"Don't idealize any one here," she begged. "Don't concentrate all your hopes upon one object. Love is wonderful and life is wonderful, but there is only one life, and there are many loves before one reaches the end. People do such silly things sometimes," she wound up, "just because of a little disappointment. There are many disappointments to be met with here."

He took her hand in his.

"Little girl," he said, "you are very good to me, and I think you understand. Are you going to let me feel that I have found a friend on my first evening in London?"

"If you want me," she answered simply. "I like you, and I want you to be happy here; and because I want you to be happy, I want you to come down from the clouds and remember that you have left your hills behind and that we walk on the pavements here."

"Thank you," he whispered, "and thank you for what you have not said. If I am to find sorrow here instead of joy," he added, a little grimly, "it is better for me to stumble into the knowledge of it by myself."

"Your hills have taught you just that much of life, then?" Sophy murmured.

X

The Prince of Seyre handed his hat and stick to the parlor maid and seated himself upon the divan.

"I should be very sorry," he said politely, as the maid left the room, "if my coming has hastened the departure of your visitors."

"Not in the least," Louise assured him. "They were leaving when you were announced. Sophy and I are taking Mr. Strangewey to a Bohemian restaurant and a music-hall afterward."

"Fortunate Mr. Strangewey!" the prince sighed. "But, forgive me, why not a more dignified form of entertainment for his first evening?"

"The poor man has no clothes," Louise explained. "He came to London quite unexpectedly."

"No clothes?" the prince repeated. "It is a long journey to take in such a fashion. A matter of urgent business, perhaps?"

Louise shrugged her shoulders. She had risen to her feet and was busy rearranging some roses in the bowl by her side.

"Mr. Strangewey has just come into a large fortune, as you know," she said. "Probably there are many things to be attended to."

The prince made no further comment. He drew a tortoise-shell-and-gold cigarette-case from his pocket.

"It is permitted that one smokes?" he inquired.

"It is always permitted to you," was the gracious reply.

"One of my privileges," he remarked, as he blew out the match; "in fact, almost my only privilege."

She glanced up, but her eyes fell before his.

"Is that quite fair?"

"I should be grieved to do anything or to say anything to you that was not entirely fair."

She crushed one of the roses to pieces suddenly in her hands and shook the petals from her long, nervous fingers.

"To-day," she said, "this afternoon--now--you have come to me with something in your mind, something you wish to say, something you are not sure how to say. That is, you see, what Henri Graillot calls my intuition. Even you, who keep all your feelings under a mask, can conceal very little from me."

"My present feelings," the prince declared, "I do not wish to conceal. I would like you to know them. But as words are sometimes clumsy, I would like, if it were possible, to let you see into my heart, or, in these days, shall I not say my consciousness? I should feel, then, that without fear of misunderstanding you would know certain things which I would like you to know."

She came over and seated herself by his side on the divan. She even laid her hand upon his arm.

"Eugene," she expostulated, "we are too old friends to talk always in veiled phrases. There is something you have to say to me. I am listening."

"You know what it is," he told her.

"You are displeased because I have changed my mind about that little journey of ours?"

"I am bitterly disappointed," he admitted.

She looked at him curiously and then down at her rose-stained fingers.

"That does not sound quite like you," she said. "And yet I ought to know that sometimes you do feel things, even though you show it so little. I am sorry, Eugene."

"Why are you sorry?"

"Because I feel that I cannot take that journey."

"You mean that you cannot now, or that you cannot at any time?"

"I do not know," she answered. "You ask me more than I can tell you. Sometimes life seems so stable, a thing one can make a little chart of and hang up on the wall, and put one's finger here and there--'To-day I will do this, to-morrow I will feel that'--and the next morning comes and the chart is in the fire. I wish I understood myself a little better, Eugene!"

"Self-understanding is the rarest of all gifts," the prince remarked. "It is left for those who love us to understand us."

"And you?"

"I believe that I understand you better, far better, than you understand yourself," he declared. "That is why I also believe that I am necessary to you. I can prevent your making mistakes."

"Then prevent me," she begged. "Something has happened, and the chart is in the fire to-day."

"You have only," he said, "to give your maid her orders, to give me this little hand, and I will draw out a fresh one which shall direct to the place in life which is best for you. It is not too late."

She rose from beside him and walked toward the fireplace, as if to touch the bell. He watched her with steady eyes but expressionless face. There was something curious about her walk. The spring had gone from her feet, her shoulders were a little hunched. It was the walk of a woman who goes toward the things she fears.

"Stop!" he bade her.

She turned and faced him, quickly, almost eagerly. There was a look in her face of the prisoner who finds respite.

"Leave the bell alone," he directed. "My own plans are changed. I do not wish to leave London this week."

Her face was suddenly brilliant, her eyes shone. Something electric seemed to quiver through her frame. She almost danced back to her place by his side.

"How foolish!" she murmured. "Why didn't you say so at once?"

"Because," he replied, "they have only been changed during the last few seconds. I wanted to discover something which I have discovered."

"To discover something?"

"That my time has not yet come."

She turned away from him. She was oppressed with a sense almost of fear, a feeling that he was able to read the very thoughts forming in her brain; to understand, as no one else in the world could understand, the things that lived in her heart.

"I must not keep you," he remarked, glancing at the clock. "It was very late for me to call, and you will be wanting to join your friends."

"They are coming here for me," she explained. "There is really no hurry at all. We are not changing anything. It is to be quite a simple evening. Sometimes I wish that you cared about things of that sort, Eugene."

He blew through his lips a little cloud of smoke from the cigarette which he had just lit.

"I do not fancy," he replied, "that I should be much of a success as a fourth in your little expedition."

"But it is silly of you not to visit Bohemia occasionally," she declared, ignoring the meaning that lay beneath his words. "It is refreshing to rub shoulders with people who feel, and who show freely what they feel; to eat their food, drink their wine, even join in their pleasures."

The prince shook his head.

"I am not of the people," he said, "and I have no sympathy with them. I detest the _bourgeoisie_ of every country in the world--my own more particularly."

"If you only knew how strangely that sounds!" she murmured.

"Does it?" he answered. "You should read my family history, read of the men and women of my race who were butchered at the hands of that drunken, lustful mob whom lying historians have glorified. I am one of those who do not forget injuries. My estates are administered more severely than any others in France. No penny of my money has ever been spent in charity. I neither forget nor forgive."

She laughed a little nervously.

"What an unsympathetic person you can be, Eugene!"

"And for that very reason," he replied, "I can be sympathetic. Because I hate some people, I have the power of loving others. Because it pleases me to deal severely with my enemies, it gives me joy to deal generously with my friends. That is my conception of life. May I wish you a pleasant evening?"

"You are going now?" she asked, a little surprised.

He smiled faintly as he raised her fingers to his lips. She had made a little movement toward him, but he took no advantage of it.

"I am going now."

"When shall I see you again?" she inquired, as she came back from ringing the bell.

"A telephone-message from your maid, a line written with your own fingers," he said, "will bring me to you within a few minutes. If I hear nothing, I may come uninvited, but it will be when the fancy takes me. Once more, Louise, a pleasant evening!"

He passed out of the door, which the parlor maid was holding open for him. Crossing to the window, Louise watched him leave the house and enter his waiting automobile. He gave no sign of haste or disappointment. He lit another cigarette deliberately upon the pavement and gave his orders to the chauffeur with some care.

As the car drove off without his having once glanced up at the window, she shivered a little. There was a silence which, it seemed to her, could be more minatory even than accusation.

XI

The little room was gaudily decorated and redolent with the lingering odors of many dinners. Yet Louise, who had dined on the preceding evening at the Ritz and been bored, whose taste in food and environment was almost hypercritical, was perfectly happy. She found the cuisine and the Chianti excellent.

"We are outstaying every one else," she declared; "and I don't even mind their awful legacy of tobacco-smoke. Do you see that the waiter has brought you the bill, Mr. Strangewey? Prepare for a shock. It is fortunate that you are a millionaire!"

John laughed as he paid the bill and ludicrously overtipped the waiter.

"London must be a paradise to the poor man!" he exclaimed. "I have never dined better."

"Don't overdo it," Sophy begged.

"I can only judge by results," John insisted. "I have dined, and I am happy; therefore, the dinner must have been good."

"You are so convincing!" Sophy murmured. "There is such a finality about your statements that I would not venture to dispute them. But remember that your future entertainment is in the hands of two women, one of whom is a deserving but struggling young artist without the means of gratifying her expensive tastes. There are heaps of places we are going to take you to which even Louise pretends she cannot afford. It is so fortunate, Mr. Strangewey, that you are rich!"

"I believe you would be just as nice to me if I weren't," John ventured.

"I am so susceptible!" Sophy sighed, looking into her empty coffee-cup; "much more susceptible than Louise."

"I won't have Mr. Strangewey spoiled," Louise put in. "And don't build too much upon his being content with us as entertainers-in-chief. Remember the halfpenny papers. In a few days he will be interviewed--'Millionaire Farmer Come to London to Spend His Fortune.' He will become famous. He will buy a green morocco engagement-book, and perhaps employ a secretary. We shall probably have to ask ourselves to luncheon three weeks ahead."

"I feel these things coming," John declared.

"My children," said Louise, rising, "we must remember that we are going to the Palace. It is quite time we started."

They made their way down two flights of narrow stairs into the street. The commissionnaire raised his whistle to his lips, but Louise stopped him.

"We will walk," she suggested. "This way, Mr. Strangewey!"

They passed down the long, narrow street, with its dingy foreign cafes and shops scarcely one of which seemed to be English. The people who thronged the pavements were of a new race to John, swarthy, a little furtive, a class of foreigner seldom seen except in alien lands. Men and women in all stages of dishabille were leaning out of the windows or standing on the doorsteps. The girls whom they met occasionally--young women of all ages, walking arm in arm, with shawls on their heads in place of hats--laughed openly in John's face.

"Conquests everywhere he goes!" Louise sighed. "We shall never keep him, Sophy!"

"We have him for this evening, at any rate," Sophy replied contentedly; "and he hasn't spent all his fortune yet. I am not at all sure that I shall not hint at supper when we come out of the Palace."

"No hint will be necessary," John promised. "I feel the gnawings of hunger already."

"A millionaire's first night in London!" Sophy exclaimed. "I think I shall write it up for the _Daily Mail_."

"A pity he fell into bad hands so quickly," Louise laughed. "Here we are! Stalls, please, Mr. Millionaire. I wouldn't be seen to-night in the seats of the mighty."

John risked a reproof, however, and was fortunate enough to find a disengaged box.

"The tone of the evening," Louise grumbled, as she settled herself down comfortably, "is lost. This is the most expensive box in the place."

"You could restore it by eating an orange," Sophy suggested.

"Or even chocolates," John ventured, sweeping most of the contents of an attendant's tray onto the ledge of the box.

"After this," Sophy declared, falling upon them, "supper will be a farce."

"Make you thirsty," John reminded her.

They devoted their attention to the show, Louise and Sophy at first with only a moderate amount of interest, John with the real enthusiasm of one to whom everything is new. His laughter was so hearty, his appreciation so sincere, that his companions found it infectious, and began to applaud everything.

"What children we are!" Louise exclaimed. "Fancy shrieking with laughter at a ventriloquist whom I have seen at every music-hall I have been to during the last five or six years!"

"He was wonderfully clever, all the same," John insisted.

"The bioscope," Louise decided firmly, "I refuse to have anything to do with. You have had all the entertainment you are going to have this evening, Mr. Countryman."

"Now for supper, then," he proposed.

Sophy sighed as she collected the half-empty chocolate-boxes.

"What a pity I've eaten so many! They'd have saved me a luncheon to-morrow."

"Greedy child," Louise laughed, "sighing for want of an appetite! I think we'll insist upon a taxi this time. I don't like overcrowded streets. Where shall we take him to, Sophy? You know the supper places better than I do."

"Luigi's," Sophy declared firmly. "The only place in London."

They drove toward the Strand. John looked around him with interest as they entered the restaurant.

"I've been here before," he said, as they passed through the doors.

"Explain yourself at once," Louise insisted.

"It was eight years ago, when I was at Oxford," he told them. "We were here on the boat-race night. I remember," he added reminiscently, "that some of us were turned out. Then we went on to--"

"Stop!" Louise interrupted sternly. "I am horrified! The one thing I did not suspect you of, Mr. Strangewey, was a past."

"Well, it isn't a very lurid one," he assured them. "That was very nearly the only evening about town I have ever been guilty of."

Luigi, who had come forward to welcome Sophy, escorted them to one of the best tables.

"You must be very nice to this gentleman, Luigi," she said. "He is a very great friend of mine, just arrived in London. He has come up on purpose to see me, and we shall probably decide to make this our favorite restaurant."

"I shall be vairy happy," Luigi declared, with a bow.

"I am beginning to regret, Mr. Strangewey, that I ever introduced you to Sophy," Louise remarked, as she sank back into her chair. "You won't believe that all my friends are as frivolous as this, will you?"

"They aren't," Sophy proclaimed confidently. "I am the one person who succeeds in keeping Louise with her feet upon the earth. She has never had supper here before. Dry biscuits, hot milk, and a volume of poems are her relaxation after the theater. She takes herself too seriously."

"I wonder if I do!" Louise murmured, as she helped herself to caviar.

She was suddenly pensive. Her eyes seemed to be looking out of the restaurant. Sophy was exchanging amenities with a little party of friends at the next table.

"One must sometimes be serious," John remarked, "or life would have no poise at all."

"I have a friend who scolds me," she confided. "Sometimes he almost loses patience with me. He declares that my attitude toward life is too analytical. When happiness comes my way, I shrink back. I keep my emotions in the background, while my brain works, dissecting, wondering, speculating. Perhaps what he says is true. I believe that if one gets into the habit of analyzing too much, one loses all elasticity of emotion, the capacity to recognize and embrace the great things when they come."

"I think you have been right," John declared earnestly. "If the great things come as they should come, they are overwhelming, they will carry you off your feet. You will forget to speculate and to analyze. Therefore, I think you have been wise and right to wait. You have run no risk of having to put up with the lesser things."

She leaned toward him across the rose-shaded table. For those few seconds they seemed to have been brought into a wonderfully intimate communion of thought. A wave of her hair almost touched his forehead. His hand boldly rested upon her fingers.

"You talk," she whispered, "as if we were back upon your hilltops once more!"

He turned his head toward the little orchestra, which was playing a low and tremulous waltz tune.

"I want to believe," he said, "that you can listen to the music here and yet live upon the hilltops."

"You believe that it is possible?"

"I do indeed," he assured her. "Although my heart was almost sick with loneliness, I do not think that I should be here if I did not believe it. I have not come for anything else, for any lesser things, but to find--"

For once his courage failed him. For once, too, he failed to understand her expression. She had drawn back a little, her lips were quivering. Sophy broke suddenly in upon that moment of suspended speech.

"I knew how it would be!" she exclaimed. "I leave you both alone for less than a minute, and there you sit, as grave as two owls. I ask you, now, is this the place to wander off into the clouds? When two people sit looking at each other as you were doing a minute ago, here in Luigi's, at midnight, with champagne in their glasses, and a supper, ordered regardless of expense, on the table before them, they are either without the least sense of the fitness of things, or else--"

"Or else what?" Louise asked.

"Or else they are head over heels in love with each other!" Sophy concluded.

"Perhaps the child is right," Louise assented tolerantly, taking a peach from the basket by her side. "Evidently it is our duty to abandon ourselves to the frivolity of the moment. What shall we do to bring ourselves into accord with it? Everybody seems to be behaving most disgracefully. Do you think it would contribute to the gaiety of the evening if I were to join in the chorus of 'You Made Me Love You,' and Mr. Strangewey were to imitate the young gentleman at the next table and throw a roll, say, at that portly old gentleman with the highly polished shirt-front?"

"There is no need to go to extremes," Sophy protested. "Besides, we should get into trouble. The portly old gentleman happens to be one of the directors."

"Then we will just talk nonsense," Louise suggested.

"I am not very good at it," John sighed; "and there is so much I want to say that isn't nonsense."

"You ought to be thankful all your life that you have met me and that I am disposed to take an interest in you," Sophy remarked, as she moved her chair a little nearer to John's. "I am quite sure that in a very short time you would have become--well, almost a prig. Providence has selected me to work out your salvation."

"Providence has been very kind, then," John told her.

"I hope you mean it," she returned. "You ought to, if you only understood the importance of light-heartedness."

The lights were lowered a few minutes later, and John paid the bill.

"We've enjoyed our supper," Louise whispered, as they passed down the room. "The whole evening has been delightful!"

"May I drive you home alone?" he asked bluntly.

"I am afraid we can't desert Sophy," she replied, avoiding his eyes. "She nearly always goes home with me. You see, although she seems quite a frivolous little person, she is really very useful to me--keeps my accounts, and all that sort of thing."

"And does her best," Sophy joined in, "to protect you against your ruinously extravagant habits!"

Louise laughed. They were standing in the little hall, and the commissionnaire was blowing his whistle for a taxi.

"I won't be scolded to-night," she declared. "Come, you shall both of you drive home with me, and then Mr. Strangewey can drop you at your rooms on his way back."

Sophy made a little grimace and glanced up at John anxiously. He was looking very big and very grim.

"Shall you mind that?" she asked.

A slight plaintiveness in her tone dispelled his first disappointment. After all, it was Louise's decision.

"I will try to bear it cheerfully," he promised, smiling, as he handed them into the cab.

XII

As they drove from Luigi's to Knightsbridge, Louise leaned back in her corner. Although her eyes were only half closed, there was an air of aloofness about her, an obvious lack of desire for conversation, which the others found themselves instinctively respecting. Even Sophy's light-hearted chatter seemed to have deserted her, somewhat to John's relief.

He sat back in his place, his eyes fixed upon Louise. He was so anxious to understand her in all her moods and vagaries. He was forced to admit to himself that she had deliberately chosen not to take any portion of that drive home alone with him. And yet, as he looked back through the evening, he told himself that he was satisfied. He declined to feel even a shadow of discouragement.

After a time he withdrew his eyes from her face and looked out upon the human panorama through which they were passing.

They were in the very vortex of London's midnight traffic. The night was warm for the time of year, and about Leicester Square and beyond the pavements were crowded with pedestrians, the women lightly and gaily clad, flitting, notwithstanding some sinister note about their movements, like butterflies or bright-hued moths along the pavements and across the streets. The procession of taxicabs and automobiles, each with its human freight of men and women in evening dress on their way home after an evening's pleasure, seemed endless.

Presently Sophy began to talk, and Louise, too, roused herself.

"I am only just beginning to realize," the latter said, "that you are actually in London."

"When I leave you," he replied, "I, too, shall find it hard to believe that we have actually met again and talked. There seems to be so much that I have to say," he added, looking at her closely, "and I have said nothing."