whom a passion for the stage was ineradicably implanted. It mattered
nothing to him during these days that the sun shone, that it was
pleasant on the lake, and that Jimmy would have given five pounds a
minute to be allowed to get Molly to himself for half an hour every
afternoon. All he knew or cared about was that the local nobility and
gentry were due to arrive at the castle a week from that day, and that
very few of the company even knew their lines. Having hustled Jimmy into
the part of Captain Browne, he gave his energy free play. He conducted
rehearsals with a vigour which occasionally almost welded the rabble he
was coaching into something approaching coherency. He painted scenery
and left it about—wet—and people sat on it; he nailed up horseshoes for
luck, and they fell on people. But nothing daunted him; he never rested.
“Mr. Charteris,” said Lady Julia rather frigidly, after one energetic
rehearsal, “is indefatigable. He whirled me about!”
It was, perhaps, his greatest triumph, properly considered, that he had
induced Lady Julia to take a part in his piece; but to the born
organiser of amateur theatricals no miracle of this kind is impossible,
and Charteris was one of the most inveterate organisers in the country.
There had been some talk—late at night in the billiard-room—of his being
about to write in a comic footman _role_ for Sir Thomas, but it had
fallen through; not, it was felt, because Charteris could not have
hypnotised him into undertaking it, but rather because Sir Thomas was
histrionically unfit.
Mainly as a result of the producer’s energy Jimmy found himself one of a
crowd, and disliked the sensation. He had not experienced much
difficulty in mastering the scenes in which he appeared; but
unfortunately those who appeared with him had. It occurred to Jimmy
daily, after he had finished “running through the lines” with a series
of agitated amateurs, male and female, that for all practical purposes
he might just as well have gone to Japan. In this confused welter of
rehearsers his opportunities of talking with Molly were infinitesimal.
And worse, she did not appear to mind. She was cheerful, and apparently
quite content to be engulfed in a crowd. Probably, he thought with some
melancholy, if she met his eye, and noted in it a distracted gleam, she
put it down to the same cause which made other eyes in the company gleam
distractedly during that week.
Jimmy began to take a thoroughly jaundiced view of amateur theatricals,
and of these amateur theatricals in particular. He felt that in the
electric flame department of the infernal regions there should be a
special gridiron, reserved exclusively for the man who invented these
performances, so diametrically opposed to the true spirit of
civilisation. At the close of each day he cursed Charteris with
unfailing regularity.
There was another thing that disturbed him. That he should be unable to
talk with Molly was an evil, but a negative evil. It was supplemented by
one that was positive. Even in the midst of the chaos of rehearsals he
could not help noticing that Molly and Lord Dreever were very much
together. Also—and this was even more sinister—he observed that both Sir
Thomas Blunt and Mr. McEachern were making determined efforts to foster
this state of affairs.
Of this he had sufficient proof one evening when, after scheming and
plotting in a way that had made the great efforts of Machiavelli and
Richelieu seem like the work of raw novices, he had cut Molly out from
the throng and carried her off for the alleged purpose of helping him
feed the chickens. There were, as he had suspected, chickens attached to
the castle. They lived in a little world of noise and smells at the back
of the stables. Bearing an iron pot full of a poisonous-looking mash,
and accompanied by Molly, he had felt, for perhaps a minute and a half,
like a successful general. It is difficult to be romantic when you are
laden with chicken-feed in an unwieldy iron pot, but he had resolved
that that portion of the proceedings should be brief—the birds should
dine that evening on the quick-lunch principle—then to the more fitting
surroundings of the rose-garden. There was plenty of time before the
hour of the sounding of the dressing-gong. Perhaps even a row on the
lake——
“What-ho!” said a voice.
Behind them, with a propitiatory smile on his face, stood his lordship
of Dreever.
“My uncle told me I should find you out here. What have you got there,
Pitt? Is this what you feed them on? I say, you know, queer coves, hens!
I wouldn’t touch the stuff for a fortune. What? Looks to me poisonous.”
He met Jimmy’s eye and stopped. There was that in Jimmy’s eye that would
have stopped an avalanche. His lordship twiddled his fingers in pink
embarrassment.
“Oh, look!” said Molly. “There’s a poor little chicken out there in the
cold. It hasn’t had a morsel. Give me the spoon, Mr. Pitt. Here, chick,
chick! Don’t be silly, I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve brought you your
dinner.”
She moved off in pursuit of the solitary fowl, which had edged nervously
away. Lord Dreever bent towards Jimmy.
“Frightfully sorry, Pitt, old man,” he whispered feverishly. “Didn’t
want to come. Couldn’t help it. He sent me out.” He half looked over his
shoulder. “And,” he added rapidly, as Molly came back, “the old boy’s at
his bedroom window now, watching us through his opera-glasses!”
The return journey to the house was performed in silence—on Jimmy’s part
in thoughtful silence. He thought hard, and had been thinking ever
since.
He had material for thought. That Lord Dreever was as clay in his
uncle’s hands he was aware. He had not known his lordship long, but he
had known him long enough to realise that a backbone had been carelessly
omitted from his composition. What his uncle directed that would he do.
The situation looked bad to Jimmy. The order, he knew, had gone out that
Lord Dreever was to marry money, and Molly was an heiress. He did not
know how much Mr. McEachern had amassed in his dealings with New York
crime, but it could not but be something considerable. Things looked
black.
Then he had a reaction. He was taking too much for granted. Lord Dreever
might be hounded into proposing to Molly, but what earthly reason was
there for supposing that Molly would accept him? He declined even for an
instant to look upon Spennie’s title in the light of a lure. Molly was
not the girl to marry for a title. He endeavoured to examine impartially
his lordship’s other claims. He was a pleasant fellow, with—to judge on
short acquaintanceship—an undeniably amiable disposition. That much must
be conceded. But against this must be placed the equally undeniable fact
that he was also, as he would have put it himself, a most frightful ass.
He was weak. He had no character. Altogether, the examination made Jimmy
more cheerful. He could not see the light-haired one, even with Sir
Thomas Blunt shoving behind, as it were, accomplishing the knight’s
ends. Shove he never so wisely, Sir Thomas could never make a Romeo out
of Spennie Dreever.
It was while sitting in the billiard-room one night after dinner,
watching his rival play a hundred up with the silent Hargate, that Jimmy
came definitely to this conclusion. He had stopped to watch more because
he wished to study his man at close range than because the game was
anything out of the common as an exposition of billiards. As a matter of
fact, it would have been hard to imagine a worse game. Lord Dreever, who
was conceding twenty, was poor, and his opponent an obvious beginner.
Again, as he looked on, Jimmy was possessed of an idea that he had met
Hargate before. But once more he searched his memory and drew blank. He
did not give the thing much thought, being intent on his diagnosis of
Lord Dreever, who, by a fluky series of cannons, had wobbled into the
forties, and was now a few points ahead of his opponent.
Presently, having summed his lordship up to his satisfaction, and grown
bored with the game, Jimmy strolled out of the room. He paused outside
the door for a moment, wondering what to do. There was bridge in the
smoking-room, but he did not feel inclined for bridge. From the
drawing-room there came sounds of music. He turned in that direction,
then stopped again. He came to the conclusion that he did not feel
sociable. He wanted to think. A cigar on the terrace would meet his
needs.
He went up to his room for his cigar-case. The window was open. He
leaned out. There was almost a full moon, and it was very light out of
doors. His eye was caught by a movement at the farther end of the
terrace, where the shadow was. A girl came out of the shadow, walking
slowly....
Not since early boyhood had Jimmy descended stairs with such a rare
burst of speed. He negotiated the nasty turn at the end of the first
flight at quite a suicidal pace. Fate, however, had apparently wakened
up again and resumed business, for he did not break his neck. A few
moments later he was out on the terrace, bearing a cloak which he had
snatched up _en route_ in the hall.
“I thought you might be cold,” he said, breathing quickly.
“Oh, thank you,” said Molly. “How kind of you!” He put it round her
shoulders. “Have you been running?”
“I came downstairs rather fast.”
“Were you afraid the boogaboos would get you?” she laughed. “I was
thinking of when I was a small child. I was always afraid of them. I
used to race downstairs when I had to go to my room in the dark, unless
I could persuade some one to hold my hand all the way there and back.”
Her spirits had risen with Jimmy’s arrival. Things had been happening
that worried her. She had gone out onto the terrace to be alone. When
she heard his footsteps she had dreaded the advent of some garrulous
fellow-guest, full of small talk. Jimmy, somehow, was a comfort—he did
not disturb the atmosphere. Little as they had seen of each other,
something in him—she could not say what—had drawn her to him. He was a
man, she felt instinctively, she could trust.
They walked on in silence. Words were pouring into Jimmy’s mind, but he
could not frame them. He seemed to have lost the power of coherent
thought.
Molly said nothing. It was not a night for conversation. The moon had
turned terrace and garden into a fairyland of black and silver. It was a
night to look and listen and think.
They walked slowly up and down. As they turned for the second time
Molly’s thoughts formed themselves into a question. Twice she was on the
point of asking it, but each time she checked herself. It was an
impossible question. She had no right to put it, and he had no right to
answer. Yet something was driving her on to ask it.
It came out suddenly, without warning.
“Mr. Pitt, what do you think of Lord Dreever?”
Jimmy started. No question could have chimed in more aptly with his
thoughts. Even as she spoke he was struggling to keep himself from
asking her the same thing.
“Oh, I know I ought not to ask,” she went on. “He’s your host and you’re
his friend, I know. But——”
Her voice trailed off. The muscles of Jimmy’s back tightened and
quivered, but he could find no words.
“I wouldn’t ask any one else. But you’re—different somehow. I don’t know
what I mean—we hardly know each other—but——”
She stopped again, and still he was dumb.
“I feel so alone,” she said very quietly, almost to herself. Something
seemed to break in Jimmy’s head. His brain suddenly cleared. He took a
step forward.
A huge shadow blackened the white grass. Jimmy wheeled round. It was
McEachern.
“I have been looking for you, Molly, my dear. I thought you must have
gone to bed.”
He turned to Jimmy and addressed him for the first time since their
meeting in the bedroom.
“Will you excuse us, Mr. Pitt?”
Jimmy bowed and walked rapidly towards the house. At the door he stopped
and looked back. The two were standing where he had left them.
★ 16 ★
_A Marriage has been Arranged_
Neither Molly nor her father had moved or spoken while Jimmy was
covering the short strip of turf that ended at the stone steps of the
house. McEachern stood looking down at her in grim silence. His great
body against the dark mass of the castle wall seemed larger than ever in
the uncertain light. To Molly there was something sinister and menacing
in his attitude. She found herself longing that Jimmy would come back.
She was frightened. Why, she could not have said. It was as if some
instinct told her that a crisis in her affairs had been reached, and
that she needed him. For the first time in her life she felt nervous in
her father’s company. Ever since she was a child she had been accustomed
to look upon him as her protector, but now she was afraid.
“Father!” she cried.
“What are you doing out here?”
His voice was tense and strained.
“I came out because I wanted to think, father dear.”
She thought she knew his moods, but this was one that she had never
seen. It frightened her.
“Why did he come out here?”
“Mr. Pitt? He brought me a wrap.”
“What was he saying to you?”
The rain of questions gave Molly a sensation of being battered. She felt
dazed and a little mutinous. What had she done that she should be
assailed like this?
“He was saying nothing,” she said, rather shortly.
“Nothing! What do you mean? What was he saying? Tell me!”
Molly’s voice shook as she replied.
“He was saying nothing,” she repeated. “Do you think I’m not telling you
the truth, father? He had not spoken a word for ever so long. We just
walked up and down. I was thinking, and I suppose he was, too. At any
rate, he said nothing. I—I think you might believe me.”
She began to cry quietly. Her father had never been like this before. It
hurt her.
McEachern’s manner changed in a flash. In the shock of finding Jimmy and
Molly together on the terrace he had forgotten himself. He had had
reason to be suspicious. Sir Thomas Blunt, from whom he had just parted,
had told him a certain piece of news which had disturbed him. The
discovery of Jimmy with Molly had lent an added significance to that
piece of news. He saw that he had been rough. In a moment he was by her
side, his great arm round her shoulder, petting and comforting her as he
had done when she was a child. He believed her word without question,
and his relief made him very tender. Gradually the sobs ceased. She
leaned against his arm.
“I’m tired, father,” she whispered.
“Poor little girl. We’ll sit down.”
There was a seat at the end of the terrace. He picked her up as if she
had been a baby and carried her to it. She gave a little cry.
“I didn’t mean I was too tired to walk,” she said, laughing tremulously.
“How strong you are, father! If I were naughty you could take me up and
shake me till I was good, couldn’t you?”
“Of course; and send you to bed, too, so you be careful, young woman.”
He lowered her to the seat. Molly drew the cloak closer round her and
shivered.
“Cold, dear?”
“No.”
“You shivered.”
“It was nothing; yes, it was,” she went on quickly.
“It was. Father, will you promise me something?”
“Of course. What?”
“Don’t ever, ever be angry with me like that again, will you? I couldn’t
bear it—really I couldn’t. I know it’s stupid of me, but it hurt. You
don’t know how it hurt.”
“But my dear——”
“Oh, I know it’s stupid. But——”
“But, my darling, it wasn’t so. I was angry, but it wasn’t with you.”
“With——. Were you angry with Mr. Pitt?”
McEachern saw that he had travelled too far. He had intended that
Jimmy’s existence should be forgotten for the time being—he had other
things to discuss; but it was too late now. He must go forward.
“I didn’t like to see you out here alone with Mr. Pitt, dear,” he said.
“I was afraid——”
He saw that he must go still farther forward. It was more than awkward.
He wished to hint at the undesirability of an entanglement with Jimmy
without admitting the possibility of it. Not being a man of nimble
brain, he found this somewhat beyond his powers.
“I don’t like him,” he said briefly. “He’s crooked.”
Molly’s eyes opened wide. The colour had gone from her face.
“Crooked, father?”
McEachern perceived that he had travelled very much too far, almost to
disaster. He longed to denounce Jimmy, but he was gagged. If Molly were
to ask the question that Jimmy had asked in the bedroom—that fatal,
unanswerable question! The price was too great to pay.
He spoke cautiously, vaguely, feeling his way.
“I couldn’t explain to you, my dear—you wouldn’t understand. You must
remember, my dear, that out in New York I was in a position to know a
great many queer characters—crooks, Molly. I was working among them.”
“But, father, that night at our house you didn’t know Mr. Pitt. He had
to tell you his name.”
“I didn’t know him—then,” said her father slowly; “but—but——” He paused.
“But I made inquiries,” he concluded, with a rush, “and found out
things.”
He permitted himself a long, silent breath of relief. He saw his way
now.
“Inquiries?” said Molly. “Why?”
“Why?”
“Why did you suspect him?”
A moment earlier the question might have confused McEachern, but not
now. He was equal to it. He took it in his stride.
“It’s hard to say, my dear. A man who has had as much to do with crooks
as I have recognises them when he sees them.”
“Did you think Mr. Pitt looked—looked like that?” Her voice was very
small. There was a drawn pinched expression on her face. She was paler
than ever.
He could not divine her thoughts. He could not know what his words had
done—how they had shown her in a flash what Jimmy was to her, and lit up
her mind like a flame, revealing the secret hidden there. She knew now.
The feeling of comradeship, the instinctive trust, the sense of
dependence—they no longer perplexed her. They were signs which she could
read.
And he was crooked!
McEachern proceeded. Relief made him buoyant.
“I did, my dear. I can read him like a book. I’ve met scores of his
sort. Broadway is full of them. Good clothes and a pleasant manner don’t
make an honest man. I’ve run up against a mighty high-toned bunch of
crooks in my day. It’s a long time since I gave up thinking that it was
only the ones with the low foreheads and the thick ears that needed
watching. It’s the innocent Willies who look as if all they could do was
to lead the cotillon. This man Pitt’s one of them. I’m not guessing,
mind you—I know. I know his line, and all about him. I’m watching him.
He’s here on some game. How did he get here? Why, he scraped
acquaintance with Lord Dreever in a London restaurant. It’s the
commonest trick on the list. If I hadn’t happened to be here when he
came I suppose he’d have made his haul by now. Why, he came all prepared
for it! Have you seen an ugly, grinning, red-headed scoundrel hanging
about the place? His valet, so he says. Valet! Do you know who that is?
That’s one of the most notorious Yegg-men on the other side. There isn’t
a policeman in New York who doesn’t know Spike Mullins. Even if I knew
nothing of this Pitt that would be enough. What’s an innocent man going
round the country with Spike Mullins for, unless they are standing in
together at some game? That’s who Mr. Pitt is, my dear, and that’s why,
maybe, I seemed a little put out when I came upon you and him out here
alone together. See as little of him as you can. In a large party like
this it won’t be difficult to avoid him.”
Molly sat staring out across the garden. At first every word had been a
stab. Several times she had been on the point of crying out that she
could bear it no longer, but gradually a numbness succeeded the pain.
She found herself listening apathetically.
McEachern talked on. He left the subject of Jimmy, comfortably conscious
that, even if there had ever existed in Molly’s heart any budding
feeling of the kind he had suspected, it must now be dead. He steered
the conversation away until it ran easily among commonplaces. He talked
of New York, of the preparations for the theatricals. Molly answered
composedly. She was still pale, and a certain listlessness in her manner
might have been noticed by a more observant man than Mr. McEachern.
Beyond that there was nothing to show that her heart had been born and
killed but a few minutes before. Women have the Red Indian instinct; and
Molly had grown to womanhood in those few minutes.
Presently Lord Dreever’s name came up.
It caused a momentary pause, and McEachern took advantage of it. It was
the cue for which he had been waiting.
He hesitated for a moment, for the conversation was about to enter upon
a difficult phase, and he was not quite sure of himself.
Then he took the plunge.
“I have just been talking to Sir Thomas, my dear,” he said. He tried to
speak casually, and as a natural result infused so much meaning into his
voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern coughed
confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He abandoned it
in favour of directness.
“He was telling me that you had refused Lord Dreever this evening.”
“Yes, I did,” said Molly. “How did Sir Thomas know?”
“Lord Dreever told him.”
Molly raised her eyebrows.
“I shouldn’t have thought it was the sort of thing he would talk about,”
she said.
“Sir Thomas is his uncle.”
“Of course. So he is,” said Molly dryly. “I forgot. That would account
for it, wouldn’t it?”
Mr. McEachern looked at her with some concern. There was a hard ring in
her voice which he did not altogether like. His greatest admirer had
never called him an intuitive man, and he was quite at a loss to see
what was wrong. As a schemer he was perhaps, a little naive. He had
taken it for granted that Molly was ignorant of the manoeuvres which had
been going on, and which had culminated that afternoon in a stammering
proposal of marriage from Lord Dreever in the rose-garden. This,
however, was not the case. The woman incapable of seeing through the
machinations of two men of the mental calibre of Sir Thomas Blunt and
Mr. McEachern has yet to be born. For some considerable time Molly had
been alive to the well-meant plottings of that worthy pair, and had
derived little pleasure from the fact. It may be that woman loves to be
pursued, but she does not love to be pursued by a crowd.
Mr. McEachern cleared his throat and began again.
“You shouldn’t decide a question like that too hastily, my dear.”
“I didn’t—not too hastily for Lord Dreever, at any rate, poor dear.”
“It was in your power,” said Mr. McEachern portentously, “to make a man
happy.”
“I did,” said Molly, bitterly. “You should have seen his face light up.
He could hardly believe it was true for a moment, and then it came home
to him, and I thought he would have fallen on my neck. He did his very
best to look heartbroken—out of politeness—but it was no good. He
whistled most of the way back to the house—all flat, but very
cheerfully.”
“My dear! What do you mean?”
Molly had made the discovery earlier in their conversation that her
father had moods whose existence she had not suspected. It was his turn
now to make a similar discovery regarding herself.
“I mean nothing, father,” she said. “I’m just telling you what happened.
He came to me looking like a dog that’s going to be washed——”
“Why, of course; he was nervous, my dear.”
“Of course. He couldn’t know that I was going to refuse him.”
She was breathing quickly. He started to speak, but she went on looking
straight before her. Her face was very white in the moonlight.
“He took me into the rose-garden. Was that Sir Thomas’s idea? There
couldn’t have been a better setting, I’m sure—the roses looked lovely.
Presently I heard him gulp, and I was so sorry for him. I would have
refused him then, and put him out of his misery, only I couldn’t very
well till he had proposed, could I? So I turned my back and sniffed at a
rose, and then he shut his eyes—I couldn’t see him, but I knew he shut
his eyes—and began to say his lesson.”
“Molly!”
“He did—he said his lesson. He gabbled it. When he had got as far as
‘Well don’t you know, what I mean is, that’s what I wanted to say, you
know,’ I turned round and soothed him. I said, I didn’t love him. He
said, ‘No, no, of course not.’ I said he had paid me a great compliment.
He said, ‘Not at all,’ looking very anxious, poor darling, as if even
then he was afraid of what might come next. But I reassured him, and he
cheered up, and we walked back to the house together, as happy as could
be.”
McEachern put his hand round her shoulder. She winced, but let it stay.
He attempted gruff conciliation.
“My dear, you’ve been imagining things. Of course he isn’t happy. Why, I
saw the young fellow——”
Recollecting that the last time he had seen the young fellow—shortly
after dinner—the young fellow had been occupied in juggling, with every
appearance of mental peace, with two billiard-balls and a box of
matches, he broke off abruptly.
“Father?”
“My dear?”
“Why do you want me to marry Lord Dreever?”
“I think he’s a fine young fellow,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
“He’s quite nice,” said Molly quietly.