THE LADY--AND THE GENTLEMAN
Apparently each of the pair was equally surprised. Each stared at the
other as if tongue-tied; Mr Holland motionless, holding the ring a
little in front of him, as if suffering from at least temporary
paralysis; Miss Bewicke, equally rigid, with her fingers up to her
throat, just as she had raised them intending to remove the boa which
was about her neck. It was she who first regained the faculty of
speech.
'Guy!' The word came with a little gasp, as if she uttered it
unwittingly. He was still; staring at her as if he were powerless to
remove his eyes from off her face. 'What are you doing?'
Still silence from the man. His incapacity seemed to inspire her with
confidence. She removed her boa, smiling as she did so. She sauntered
here and there, eyeing things. She walked right round him, peering at
him as she went. He might have been some mechanical figure, he endured
so stolidly her ostentatious curiosity. Only he followed her with his
glance as she passed round.
She did not speak when she had finished her inspection; with apparent
indifference to his presence she took off her hat and coat. Unable,
perhaps, to endure the situation any longer he struggled to obtain
possession of his voice. It sounded harsh and husky.
'I thought you had gone to Brighton?'
'So you keep an observation on my movements, I see?' The words were
accompanied by a smile which made him clench his fists so tightly that
he drove the nails into the palms. She was folding up a veil, with a
dainty show of peculiar care. 'I ought to be at Brighton; but I'm not.
I meant to go; but I didn't. It was so late that I put off my journey
till tomorrow; so I went to see some people instead. It was painfully
slow; this promises to be better.'
Her airy manner, which seemed to him to be so pregnant with contempt,
tried him more than reproaches might have done, or rage. He was so
conscious of his position that indifference stung more than lashes. A
policeman he could have faced, but not this smiling girl. All his
self-respect had gone clean out of him; he felt she knew, and
floundered in his efforts to regain some part of it.
'Miss Bewicke, you know why I am here.'
'To see me, I suppose. So good of you, Guy. Especially as I take it
that you intended to wait for me till I returned from Brighton.'
'I came to take my own.'
'Your own?'
'This.'
He held out the ring between his finger and thumb. She came nearer, so
that she might see what it was he held, smiling all the time.
'That--that's mine!'
'It was bequeathed me by my uncle.'
'Your uncle? Impossible; it wasn't his to bequeath.'
'You know the conditions which were attached to its possession. Since
you declined to give it me--'
'I did not decline.'
'I don't know what other construction you put upon your conduct of
last night. I gathered that you declined. Therefore, since its
immediate possession was of capital importance, I came and took it.'
'How nice of you. And you waited till you thought I was at Brighton to
show your mettle? How discreet! Guy, weren't you once to have been my
husband?'
Nothing was further from his desire than to become involved in a
tangle of reminiscences, so he became a little brutal.
'I have the ruby; that is the main point.'
'Are you proud of having robbed me--the girl who was to have been your
wife?'
'You would have robbed me.'
'Even supposing that to be true, does that entitle you to throw aside
all those canons of honour to which you have always given me to
understand you were such a stickler, and become--a thief? Oh, Guy!'
'I do not propose to bandy words with you. I know of old your capacity
to make black seem white--you were ever an actress, May. How the ruby
originally came into your possession I cannot say.'
'It's not a pretty story, Guy; scarcely to your uncle's credit.'
'But you were perfectly well aware that morally it was mine. It was
nothing to you; it was all the world to me. I believe that you refused
to let me have it precisely because you knew that your refusal might
entail my ruin; and so your cup of revenge might be filled to the
full. Under those circumstances I hold that I was justified in using
any and every means to save myself from being utterly undone by the
whim of a revengeful woman.'
'I meant to let you have it.'
'That was not the impression you left upon my mind last night.'
'You took me unawares--I had to think things over.'
'Then if it was your intention that I should have it you cannot but be
pleased to find that my action has kept abreast of your intention.'
Miss Bewicke was silent. She was drawing imaginary pictures with her
finger-tip on the table by which she was standing, looking down as she
did so. His desire was to get away; it was not an interview which he
wished to have prolonged. But his departure was postponed.
'Why do you say I am revengeful?'
'You know better than I.'
'Do you think I wish to be revenged on you because once you pretended
to love me, and now you keep up that pretence no longer?'
'It was no pretence.'
'I am glad to hear that, because, Guy, I love you still.'
She looked up at him in such a way that she seemed to compel him to
meet her eyes. He shivered.
'I wish you wouldn't say such things.'
'Why? Because they're true? I like to tell the truth. I have always
loved you, and I always shall, though I shall never be your wife.'
'I thought you said you were engaged to Dumville.'
'So I am. And I daresay that perhaps one day I shall marry him. I
don't know quite why. But it certainly isn't because I love him. I
have never pretended to. Ask him; he's frankness itself; he'll
confess. Although, as you have only told me, I am a woman with
ill-regulated passions and irresponsible tendencies, I'm a woman with
only one love in her life, and you are he. Good-night, and good-bye.'
Now that she had formally dismissed him he felt that it was difficult
to go. He fidgeted instead.
'I know you think that I have behaved meanly.'
'Not at all. I suppose you have acted according to your lights.'
'I'm not so sure of that. But, the truth is, I was desperate.'
'Indeed? Is that so? Like the man with the twelve starving children,
who steals the bottle of whisky. I know. If I were you I wouldn't
trouble to explain. This sort of situation is not improved by
explanation. I think you had better pocket your booty and go.'
'As for the ruby'--he was holding it out on the palm of his open
hand--'I will give you another for it a dozen times as good as this.'
For the first time she fired up.
'You dare to do anything of the kind--you dare! Do you think I am to
be bought and sold?'
'I simply don't wish you to suffer from my action.'
'Do you think that your giving me one piece of stone in exchange for
another piece of stone will prevent my suffering? Guy, please, go.'
He placed the ring before her on the table.
'There is the ruby.'
'Take it.'
'Do you mean that?'
'I do. If it is of the slightest use to you, by all means take it.'
'You give it to me--freely?'
'Oh, yes, so freely! Only--I wish you'd go.'
Thrusting the ruby into his waistcoat pocket, he went, without another
word. Without it seemed darker even than before. He stumbled, blindly,
down the stairs. Presently the darkness lightened; a gleam descended
from above. Glancing up he perceived that Miss Bewicke was leaning
over the railing with a lighted candle in her hand. He said nothing;
attempted no word of thanks. So far as he knew she, too, was still;
but as he descended, assisted by the light she held, he felt as he was
convinced the whipped cur must feel, which sneaks off with its tail
between its legs. The candle was still showing a faint glimmer of
light as he passed into the street. He applied a dozen injurious
epithets to himself as he thought that he had not even acknowledged
the courtesy he had received. But for the life of him he could not, at
that moment, have uttered a word of thanks.
Now that he was out in the street he raged. In his first mad impulse
he would have taken what Miss Bewicke had called his 'booty' from his
pocket and hurled it from him through the night. Prudence, however,
prevailed. He told himself, again and again, that he was an ineffable
thing to allow it to remain a second longer in his possession. It
stayed there all the same. He was conscious that nothing could be less
romantic than the whole adventure; nothing more undignified than the
part which he had played in it. He had been throughout a mere
figurehead--a counter manipulated by three women--he who thought that
if he had anything on which to pride himself it was his manhood. His
rage waxed hotter as he strode along; he was angry even with Miss
Broad.
'If it hadn't been for her--' he began. Then stopped, stood still,
struck with his fist at the air--his stick, it seemed, he had left
behind him. 'What a cur I am! I try to put the blame, like some
snivelling sneak of a schoolboy, upon everyone except myself, as
though the fault was not mine, and mine alone. Am I some weak idiot
that I am not responsible for my own actions? that I do a dirty thing,
and then exclaim that someone made me? Well, it's done, and can't be
undone, and I stand, self-confessed, a hound; but, as I live, I'll
return at once and make her take the ruby back again. Then off once
more for Africa. Better to be haunted by my uncle's ghost than by my
own conscience.'
He turned, prepared to put his new-born resolution immediately into
effect, and found himself confronted by an individual by whom his
steps had been dogged ever since he left Miss Bewicke's. Had he had
his wits about him he could hardly have helped noticing the fact, the
proceedings of the person who took such a warm interest in his
movements had been so singular. To begin with, he had been on the
other side of the road. When Mr Holland first appeared he had slunk
back into a doorway, from which he presently issued in pursuit,
keeping as much as possible in the shadow. When, however, he perceived
himself unnoticed he became bolder. Until, at last, making a sudden
dash across the street, he began to follow within a few feet of the
unconscious pedestrian. He carried something, which every now and then
he gripped with both hands, as if about to strike.
The mathematical moment came when Mr Holland turned. Without giving
him a chance to speak the man swung the something which he carried
through the air, bringing it down heavily, with a thud, upon his head.
Mr Holland dropped on to the pavement. And there he lay.