THE SHADOW OF DOUBT
Before the earl had reached them Mrs. Gantry was rising.
Genevieve rose to protest. "You're not going so soon, Aunt Amice?
You'll stay for a cup of tea?"
"Not to-day, my dear. Ah, earl! you're just in time to relieve
Genevieve from the ennui of a solitary afternoon. I regret so much that
we cannot stay with you. Come, Dolores."
Dolores settled back comfortably on her chair. "Go right on, mamma.
Don't wait for me. I'll stay and help Vievie entertain Lord Avondale."
"Come--at once."
"Oh, fudge! Well, start on. I'll catch you."
Mrs. Gantry stepped past Lord James. Genevieve met his eager glance,
and hastened to overtake her aunt. "Really, won't you stay, Aunt Amice?
I'll have tea brought in at once."
"So sorry, my dear," replied Mrs. Gantry, placidly sailing on towards
the reception hall.
Dolores simulated a yawn. "O-o-ho! I'm _so_ tired. Will nobody help me
get up?"
With a boyish twinkle in his gray eyes but profound gravity In his
manner, Lord James offered her his hand. She placed her fingers in his
palm and sprang up beside him. The others were still moving up the
room. She surprised him by meeting his amused gaze with an angry flash
of her big black eyes.
"Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would take her from
him!"
He stared blankly. The girl whirled away from him with a swish of
silken skirts and fled past her mother, all her anger lost in wild
panic.
"Dolores! Whatever can--" cried Mrs. Gantry. But Dolores had vanished.
"Really, Genevieve, that madcap girl--! About yourself, my dear.
Promise me now, if you cannot say 'yes,' at least you'll not make it a
final 'no.'"
"But, Aunt Amice, unless I feel--"
"Promise me! You must give yourself time to make sure. He will wait. I
am certain he will wait until you have found out--"
"I cannot promise anything now," replied Genevieve.
Mrs. Gantry did not press the point. It was the second time during the
call that her niece had proved herself less docile than she had
expected. As she left the room, Genevieve returned to Lord James
without any outward sign of hesitancy. She seated herself and smiled
composedly at her caller, who still stood in the daze into which
Dolores's outburst had thrown him.
"Won't you sit down?" she invited. "How is Mr. Blake?"
[Illustration: "Shame!" she flung at him. "You, his friend, and would
take her from him!"]
With rather an abstracted air, Lord James sank down on the chair
opposite her and began fiddling with the cord of his monocle.
"Haven't seen him since yesterday," he replied, "Left him at the office
of a Mr. Griffith--engineer--old friend. Gave him work
immediately--something big, I take it. Asked Tom to bunk with him."
"It's so good to hear he has work already--and to stay with a friend!
You mean, live with him?"
"Yes."
"He--the friend--seems desirable?"
"Decidedly so, I should say. Engineer who first started him on his
career, if I remember aright what Tom once told me of his early life."
"Oh, that is such good news! But have you seen him since--since this
morning? He had that appointment with papa, you know."
"No, I regret to say I haven't; and I fear I cannot reassure you as to
the outcome. You know Tom's way; and your father, I take it, is
rather--It would seem that they had a disagreement before Tom went West
the last time."
"Yes. He once referred to it. Some misunderstanding with regard to the
payment of a railway survey. I asked papa about it last evening, and he
told me that it had been made all right--that Tom would get his pay for
his share in the survey."
"Little enough, in the circumstances," remarked Lord James.
"That was not all. Papa promised to give him a very good position. He
had intended to offer money. But I explained to him that, of course,
Tom would not accept money."
"Very true. I doubt if he would have accepted it even had it not been
for his hope that--" Lord James paused and stared glumly at his
finger-tips. "Bally mess, deuce take it! He and your father at outs,
and he and I--"
"You have not quarrelled? You're still friends?" exclaimed Genevieve.
"Quarrelled? No, I assure you, no! Yet am I his friend? Permit me to be
candid, Miss Leslie. I'm in a deuce of a quandary. On the trip up to
Aden, you'll remember, I told you something of the way he and I had
knocked about together."
"Yes. Frankly, it added not a little to my esteem for you that you had
learned to value his sterling worth."
"I did not tell you how it started. It was in the Kootenay
country--British Columbia, you know. Bunch of sharpers set about to
rook me on a frame-up--a bunco game. Tom tipped me off, though I had
snubbed him, like the egregious ass I was. I paid no heed; blundered
into the trap. Wouldn't have minded losing the thousand pounds they
wanted, but they brought a woman into the affair--made it appear as if
I were a cad--or worse."
"Surely not that, Lord James. No one could believe that of you."
"You don't know the beastly cleverness of those bunco chaps. They had
me in a nasty hole, when Tom stepped in and showed them up. Seems he
knew more about the woman and two of the men than they cared to have
published. They decamped."
"That was so like Tom!" murmured Genevieve.
"Claimed he did it because of an old grudge against the parties. Had to
force my thanks on him. Told you how we'd chummed together since. Deuce
take it! why should it have been you on that steamer--with him?"
"Why?" echoed Genevieve, gazing down at her clasped hands, which still
showed a trace of tropical tan.
"You know it--it puts me in rather a nasty box," went on Lord James.
"Had I not met you before he did, it is possible that I could have
avoided--You see my predicament. He and I've been together so much, I
can foresee the effect on him of--er--of a great disappointment."
Genevieve gazed up at him with startled eyes. "Lord James, you must
explain that; you must be explicit."
"I--I did not intend to so much as mention it," stammered the young
Englishman, bitterly chagrined at himself. "It was only--pray, do not
ask me, Miss Leslie!"
"You referred, of course, to his drinking," said Genevieve, in a tone
as tense as it was quiet. "Do not reproach yourself. When we were cast
ashore together, he was--not himself. But when I remember all those
weeks that followed--! You cannot imagine how brave and resolute, how
truly courageous he was!--and under that outward roughness, how kind
and gentle!"
"I too know him. That's what makes it so hard. The thought that I may
possibly cause him a disappointment that may result in--" Lord James
came to a stop, tugging at his mustache.
Genevieve was again staring at the slender little hands, from which the
most expert manicuring had not yet entirely removed all traces of rough
usage.
"He told me something of--of what he had to fight," she murmured in a
troubled voice. "But I feel that--that if something came into his
life--" She blushed, but went on bravely--"something to take him out of
what he calls the grind--"
Lord James had instantly averted his gaze from her crimsoning face.
"That's the worst of it!" he burst out. "If only I could feel sure that
he--I've seen him fight--Gad! how he has fought--time and again. Yet
sooner or later, always the inevitable defeat!"
"I cannot believe it! I cannot!" insisted Genevieve. "With his
strength, his courage! It's only been the circumstances; that he has
had nobody to--I--I beg your pardon! Of course you--What I mean is
somebody who--" She buried her face in her hands, blushing more vividly
than before.
The Englishman's face lightened. "Then you've not let my deplorable
blunder alter your attitude towards him?"
"Not in the slightest."
He leaned forward. "Then--I can wait no longer! You must know how
greatly I--All those days coming up to Aden I could say nothing. Before
coming aboard, he had told me why he could not permit you to--to commit
yourself irrevocably."
He paused. Genevieve bent over lower. She did not speak.
He went on steadily: "It was then I realized fully his innate fineness.
I own it astonished me, well as I thought I knew him. With his brains,
his 'grit,' and _that_, I'd say he could become anything he
wished--were it not for his--for the one weakness."
Genevieve flung up her head, to gaze at him in indignant protest.
"Weakness! How can you say that? He is so strong--so strong!"
"In all else than that," insisted Lord James. "You must face the hard
fact. Gad! this is far worse than I thought it would be. But I knew you
before he did, and I've played fair with him. It was not easy to say
nothing those days before we reached Aden, or to stay away from you
after I reached home. Even he could not have found it so hard. He has
all that stubborn power of endurance; while I--"
"You have no cause to reproach yourself. I cannot say how greatly it
pleased me that you took him to Ruthby Castle."
"Could you but have been there, too! He and the pater hit it off out of
hand. Jolly sensible chap, the pater--quiet, bookish--long head."
"He must be!"
"Not strange about Tom, though. It's odd how his bigness makes itself
felt--to those who've any sense of judgment. And yet it's not so odd,
when you come to think. My word! if only it were not for his--Forgive
me, Miss Genevieve! I've the right to consider what it might mean to
you. It gives me the right to speak for myself. He himself insisted
that, in justice to you, I should not withdraw."
"Lord James!"
"Pray, do not misunderstand, Miss Genevieve. He knew what it meant to
me. But our first thought was for you. He wished you to have the full
contrast of your own proper environment, that you might regain your
perspective--the point of view natural to one of your position."
"He could think I'd go back to the shams and conventions, after those
weeks of _real_ life!"
"Sometimes life is a bit too real in the most conventional of
surroundings," said his lordship, with a rueful smile. "No. He saw that
you had no right to commit yourself then; that you should reconsider
matters in the environment in which you belong and for which he is not
now fitted--whatever may be the outcome of his efforts to make himself
fit."
"He will succeed!"
"He may succeed. I should not have the slightest hesitancy in saying
that success would be certain, were it not for that one flaw. It's not
to be held against him--an inherited weakness."
"Do you not believe we can overcome heredity?"
"In some cases, I daresay. But with him--You must bear in mind I've
seen the futility of his struggle. All his resolution and courage and
endurance seem to count for nothing. But it's too painful! Can't we
leave him out of this? You are aware that I missed my opportunity when
Lady Bayrose changed her plans and rushed you off on the other ship.
After that you may imagine how difficult I found it to say nothing, do
nothing, coming up to Aden."
"Please, please say no more!" begged Genevieve, her eyes bright with
tears of distress. "I regard you too highly. You have my utmost esteem,
my respect and friendship, my--you see he has taught me to be
sincere--you have my affection. Dear friend, I shall be perfectly
candid. I was a silly girl. I had never sensed the realities of life. I
had a young girl's covetousness of a coronet--of a title. Yet that was
not all. I felt a warm regard for you. Had you spoken before I met him,
before I learned to know him--"
"Before you knew him? Then you still--? The contrast of
civilization--of your own environment--has made no difference?"
"I do not say that. Yet it is not in the manner you suppose." She
looked away, with a piteous attempt to smile. "It's strange how much
pain can be caused by the slightest shadow of a doubt."
"Miss Genevieve! I--I shall never be able to forgive myself! For me to
have said a word--it was despicable!"
"No, do not say it. Can you think me capable of misunderstanding? Dear
friend, I esteem you all the more for what I know it must have cost
you. But no; what I spoke of was something that was already in my own
mind."
"Ah--then you, too--Miss Genevieve, it's been so good of you. Let me
beg that you do not consider this as final."
"But I can promise you nothing. It would not be right to you."
"I ask only that you do not consider this final. You have admitted a
shadow of a doubt. With your permission, I propose to wait until you
have solved that doubt. You have given me cause to hope that, were it
not for him--"
"It is not right for me to give you the slightest hope."
"But I take it. Meantime, no more annoyance to you. We'll be jolly good
friends, no more. You take me?"
"I'll ring for tea. You deserve it."
"No objections, I assure you. I'll serve as stopgap till Tom turns up."
Genevieve rose quickly, her color deepening. "He is coming?--this
afternoon!"
"I should not have been surprised had I found him here. And now--" He
glanced at his watch. "It's already half after four."
"Oh, and papa said he'd be home early to-day!--though his custom is to
come barely in time to dress for dinner."
"Hope Tom hit it off with him this morning--but--" Lord James shook his
head dubiously--"I fear he was not in a conciliatory mood."