He did speak to him that very night.
It was after ten o'clock, and Straker, who ought to have been in the
drawing-room playing bridge, or in the billiard-room playing
billiards, or in the smoking-room talking to Brocklebank--Straker,
who ought to have known better, had sneaked into the library to have
a look at a brief he'd just got. He ought to have known better, for
he knew, everybody knew, that after ten o'clock the library at
Amberley was set apart as a refuge for any two persons who desired
uninterrupted communion with each other. He himself, in the library
at Amberley--but that was more than two years ago, so far before
Philippa's time that he did not associate her with the library at
Amberley. He only knew that Furnival had spent a good deal of time
in it with Nora Viveash, and poor Nora was gone. It was poor Nora's
departure, in fact, that made him feel that the library was now open
to him.
Now the library at Amberley was fitted, as a library should be, with
a silent door, a door with an inaudible latch and pneumatic hinges.
It shut itself behind Straker with a soft sigh.
The long room was dim and apparently deserted. Drawn blinds obscured
the lucid summer night behind the three windows opposite the door.
One small electric globe hung lit under its opaline veil in the
corner by the end window on the right.
Straker at the doorway turned on the full blaze of the great ring
that hung above the central table where he meant to work. It
revealed, seated on the lounge in the inner, the unilluminated
corner on the right, Miss Tarrant and Laurence Furnival.
To his intense relief, Straker perceived that the whole length of
the lounge was between the two. Miss Tarrant at her end was sitting
bolt upright with her scarf gathered close about her; she was
looking under her eyelids and down her beautiful nose at Furnival,
who at his end was all huddled among the cushions as if she had
flung him there. Their attitudes suggested that their interview had
ended in distance and disaster. The effect was so marked that
Straker seized it in an instant.
He was about to withdraw as noiselessly as he had entered, but Miss
Tarrant (not Furnival; Furnival had not so much as raised his
head)--Miss Tarrant had seen him and signed to him to stay.
"You needn't go," she said. "_I'm_ going."
She rose and passed her companion without looking at him, in a sort
of averted and offended majesty, and came slowly down the room.
Straker waited by the door to open it for her.
On the threshold she turned to him and murmured: "Don't go away. Go
in and talk to him--about--about anything."
It struck him as extraordinary that she should say this to him, that
she should ask him to go in and see what she had done to the man.
The door swung on her with its soft sigh, shutting him in with
Furnival. He hesitated a moment by the door.
"Come in if you want to," said Furnival. "I'm going, too."
He had risen, a little unsteadily. As he advanced, Straker saw that
his face bore traces of violent emotion. His tie was a little
crooked and his hair pushed from the forehead that had been hidden
by his hands. His moustache no longer curled crisply upward; it hung
limp over his troubled mouth. Furnival looked as if he had been
drinking. But Furnival did not drink. Straker saw that he meant in
his madness to follow Philippa.
He turned down the lights that beat on him.
"Don't," said Furnival. "I'm going all right."
Straker held the door to. "I wouldn't," he said, "if I were you. Not
yet."
Furnival made the queer throat sound that came from him when words
failed him.
Straker put his hand on the young man's shoulder. He remembered how
Mrs. Viveash had asked him to look after Furny, to stand by him if
he had a bad time. She had foreseen, in the fierce clairvoyance of
her passion, that he was going to have one. And, by Heaven! it had
come.
Furnival struggled for utterance. "All right," he said thickly.
He wasn't going after her. He had been trying to get away from
Straker; but Straker had been too much for him. Besides, he had
understood Straker's delicacy in turning down the lights, and he
didn't want to show himself just yet to the others.
They strolled together amicably toward the lounge and sat there.
Straker had intended to say, "What's up?" but other words were given
him.
"What's Philippa been up to?"
Furnival pulled himself together. "Nothing," he replied. "It was
me."
"What did you do?"
Furnival was silent.
"Did you propose to her, or what?"
"I made," said Furnival, "a sort of p-proposal."
"That she should count the world well lost--was that it?"
"Well, she knew I wasn't going to marry anybody, and I knew she
wasn't going to marry me. Now was she?"
"No. She most distinctly wasn't."
"Very well, then--how was I to know? I could have sworn----"
He hid his face in his hands again.
"The fact is, I made the devil of a mistake."
"Yes," said Straker. "I saw you making it."
Furnival's face emerged angry.
"Then why on earth didn't you _tell_ me? I asked you. Why couldn't
you tell me what she was like?"
"You don't tell," said Straker.
Furnival groaned. "I can't make it out _now_. It's not as if she
hadn't got a t-t-temperament."
"But she hasn't. _That_ was the mistake you made."
"You'd have made it yourself," said Furnival.
"I have. She's taken me in. She _looks_ as if she had
temperament--she behaves as if she had--oceans. And she hasn't, not
a scrap."
"Then what does she do it for? What does she do it for, Straker?"
"I don't know what she does it for. She doesn't know herself.
There's a sort of innocence about her."
"I suppose," said Furnival pensively, "it's innocence."
"Whatever it is, it's the quality of her defect. She can't let us
alone. It amuses her to see us squirm. But she doesn't know, my dear
fellow, what it feels like; because, you see, she doesn't feel. She
couldn't tell, of course, the lengths _you'd_ go to."
Straker was thinking how horrible it must have been for Philippa.
Then he reflected that it must have been pretty horrible for Furny,
too--so unexpected. At that point he remembered that for Philippa it
had not been altogether unexpected; Fanny had warned her of this
very thing.
"How--did she--take it?" he inquired tentatively.
"My dear fellow, she sat there--where you are now--and lammed into
me. She made me feel as if I were a cad and a beast and a
ruffian--as if I wanted k-kick-kicking. She said she wouldn't have
seen that I existed if it hadn't been for Fanny Brocklebank--I was
her friend's guest--and when I tried to defend myself she turned
and talked to me about things, Straker, till I blushed. I'm
b-blushing now."
He was.
"And, of course, after that, I've got to go."
"Was that all?" said Straker.
"No, it wasn't. I can't tell you the _other_ things she said."
For a moment Furny's eyes took on a marvelous solemnity, as if they
were holding for a moment some sort of holy, supersensuous vision.
Then suddenly they grew reminiscent.
"How could I tell, Straker, how could I possibly tell?"
And Straker, remembering the dance that Philippa had led him, and
her appearance, and the things, the uncommonly queer things she had
done to him with her eyes, wondered how Furny _could_ have told, how
he could have avoided drawing the inferences, the uncommonly queer
inferences, he drew. He'd have drawn them himself if he had not
known Philippa so well.
"What I want to know," said Furnival, "is what she did it for?"
He rose, straightening himself.
"Anyhow, I've got to go."
"Did she say so?"
"No, she didn't. She said it wasn't necessary. _That_ was innocent,
Straker, if you like."
"Oh, jolly innocent," said Straker.
"But I'm going all the same. I'm going before breakfast, by the
seven-fifty train."
And he went. Straker saw him off.