tired of the piece, and, but for the thought of the disappointment which
(presumably) would rack the neighbouring nobility and gentry if it were
not to be produced, would have resigned their places without a twinge of
regret. People who had schemed to get the best and longest parts were
wishing now that they had been content with First Footman or Giles, a
villager.
“I’ll never run an amateur show again as long as I live,” confided
Charteris to Jimmy, almost tearfully. “It’s not good enough. Most of
them aren’t word-perfect yet.”
“It’ll be all right——”
“Oh, don’t say it’ll be all right on the night.”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Jimmy. “I was going to say it’ll be all right
after the night. People will soon forget how badly the thing went.”
“You’re a nice, comforting sort of man, aren’t you?” said Charteris.
“Why worry?” said Jimmy. “If you go on like this, it’ll be Westminster
Abbey for you in your prime. You’ll be getting brain fever.”
Jimmy himself was one of the few who were feeling reasonably cheerful.
He was deriving a keen amusement at present from the manoeuvres of Mr.
Samuel Galer, of New York. This lynx-eyed man, having been instructed by
Mr. McEachern to watch Jimmy, was doing so with a thoroughness which
would have aroused the suspicions of a babe. If Jimmy went to the
billiard-room after dinner, Mr. Galer was there to keep him company. If,
during the course of the day, he had occasion to fetch a handkerchief or
a cigarette-case from his bedroom, he was sure, on emerging, to stumble
upon Mr. Galer in the corridor. The employees of Dodson’s Private
Inquiry Agency believed in earning their salaries.
Occasionally, after these encounters, Jimmy would come upon Sir Thomas
Blunt’s valet, the other man in whom Spike’s trained eye had discerned
the distinguishing marks of the sleuth. He was usually somewhere round
the corner at these moments, and when collided with apologised with
great politeness. Jimmy decided that he must have come under suspicion
in this case vicariously, through Spike. Spike, in the servants’ hall,
would, of course, stand out conspicuously enough to catch the eye of a
detective on the look out for sin among the servants; and he himself, as
Spike’s employer, had been marked down as a possible confederate.
It tickled him to think that both these giant brains should be so
greatly exercised on his account.
He had been watching Molly closely during these days. So far no
announcement of the engagement had been made. It struck him that
possibly it was being reserved for public mention on the night of the
theatricals. The whole county would be at the castle then. There could
be no more fitting moment. He sounded Lord Dreever, and the latter said
moodily that he was probably right.
“There’s going to be a dance of sorts after the show,” he said, “and
it’ll be done then, I suppose. No getting out of it after that—it’ll be
all over the county. Trust my uncle for that! He’ll get on a table and
shout it, shouldn’t wonder, and it’ll be in the _Morning Post_ next day
and Katie’ll see it. Only two days more! Oh, Lord!”
Jimmy deduced that Katie was the Savoy girl, concerning whom his
lordship had vouchsafed no particulars save that she was a ripper and
hadn’t a penny.
Only two days! Like the Battle of Waterloo, it was going to be a
close-run affair. More than ever now he realised how much she meant to
him, and there were moments when it seemed to him that she, too, had
begun to understand. That night on the terrace seemed somehow to have
changed their relationship. He thought he had got closer to her—they
were in touch. Before she had been frank, cheerful, unembarrassed; now
he noticed a constraint in her manner, a curious shyness. There was a
barrier between them, but it was not the old barrier. He had ceased to
be one of a crowd.
But it was a race against time. The first day slipped by, a blank, and
the second, till now it was but a matter of hours. The last afternoon
had come.
Not even Mr. Samuel Galer, of Dodson’s Private Inquiry Agency, could
have kept a more unflagging watch than did Jimmy during those hours.
There was no rehearsal that afternoon, and the members of the company,
in various stages of nervous collapse, strayed distractedly about the
grounds. First one, then another, would seize upon Molly, while Jimmy,
watching from afar, cursed their pertinacity.
At last she wandered off alone, and Jimmy quitting his ambush, followed.
She walked in the direction of the lake. It had been a terribly hot,
oppressive afternoon. There was thunder in the air. Through the trees
the lake glistened invitingly.
She was standing at the water’s edge when Jimmy came up. Her back was
turned. She was rocking with her foot a Canadian canoe that lay
alongside the bank. She started as he spoke. His feet on the soft turf
had made no sound.
“Can I take you out on the lake?” he said.
She did not answer for a moment. She was plainly confused.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I’m waiting for Lord Dreever.”
Jimmy saw that she was nervous. There was tension in the air. She was
looking away from him, out across the lake, and her face was flushed.
“Won’t you?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
Jimmy looked over his shoulder. Down the lower terrace was approaching
the long form of his lordship. He walked with pensive jerkiness, not as
one hurrying to a welcome tryst. As Jimmy looked up he vanished behind
the great clump of laurels which stood on the lowest terrace. In another
minute he would appear round them.
Gently, but with extreme despatch, Jimmy placed a hand on either side of
Molly’s waist. The next moment he had swung her off her feet and lowered
her carefully on to the cushions in the bow of the canoe.
Then, jumping in himself with a force that made the boat rock, he loosed
the mooring-rope, seized the paddle and pushed off.
★ 19 ★
_On the Lake_
In making love, as in every other branch of life, consistency is the
quality most to be aimed at. To hedge is fatal. A man must choose the
line of action which he judges to be best suited to his temperament, and
hold to it without deviation. If Lochinvar snatches the maiden up on to
his saddlebow he must continue in that vein. He must not fancy that,
having accomplished the feat, he can resume the episode on lines of
devotional humility. Prehistoric man, who conducted his courtship with a
club, never fell into the error of apologising when his bride complained
of headache.
Jimmy did not apologise. The idea did not enter his mind. He was feeling
prehistoric. His heart was beating fast and his mind was in a whirl, but
the one definite thought that came to him during the first few seconds
of the journey was that he ought to have done this earlier. This was the
right way—pick her up and carry her off and leave uncles and fathers and
butter-haired peers of the realm to look after themselves. This was the
way—alone together in their own little world of water with nobody to
interrupt and nobody to overhear. He should have done it before. He had
wasted precious, golden time hanging about while futile men chatted to
her of things that could not possibly be of interest. But he had done
the right thing at last—he had got her. She must listen to him now. She
could not help listening. They were the only inhabitants of this new
world.
He looked back over his shoulder at the world they had left. The last of
the Dreevers had rounded the clump of laurels, and was standing at the
edge of the water, gazing perplexedly after the retreating canoe.
“These poets put a thing very neatly sometimes,” said Jimmy,
reflectively, as he dug the paddle into the water. “The man who said
‘Distance lends enchantment to the view’, for instance. Dreever looks
quite nice when you see him as far away as this, with a good strip of
water in between.”
Molly, gazing over the side of the boat into the lake, abstained from
feasting her eyes on the picturesque spectacle.
“Why did you do it?” she said, in a low voice.
Jimmy shipped the paddle and allowed the canoe to drift. The ripple of
the water against the prow sounded clear and thin in the stillness. The
world seemed asleep. The sun blazed down, turning the water to flame.
The air was hot with the damp, electric heat that heralds a
thunderstorm. Molly’s face looked small and cool in the shade of her big
hat. Jimmy, as he watched her, felt that he had done well. This was,
indeed, the way.
“Why did you do it?” she said again.
“I had to.”
“Take me back.”
“No.”
He took up the paddle and placed a broader strip of water between the
two worlds, then paused once more.
“I have something to say to you first,” he said.
She did not answer. He looked over his shoulder again. His lordship had
disappeared.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
She nodded. He filled his pipe carefully and lit it. The smoke moved
sluggishly up through the still air. There was a long silence. A fish
jumped close by, falling back in a shower of silver drops. Molly started
at the sound and half turned.
“That was a fish,” she said, as a child might have done.
Jimmy knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
“What made you do it?” he asked abruptly echoing her own question.
She drew her fingers slowly through the water without speaking.
“You know what I mean. Dreever told me.”
She looked up with a flash of spirit, which died away as she spoke.
“What right?” She stopped and looked away again.
“None,” said Jimmy. “But I wish you would tell me.”
She hung her head. Jimmy bent forward and touched her hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t! You mustn’t.”
“I must,” she said miserably.
“You shan’t! It’s wicked.”
“I must. It’s no good talking about it—it’s too late.”
“It’s not. You must break it off to-day.”
She shook her head. Her fingers still dabbled mechanically in the water.
The sun was hidden now behind a grey veil, which deepened into a sullen
black over the hill behind the castle. The heat had grown more
oppressive.
“What made you do it?” he asked again.
“Don’t let’s talk about it, please!”
He had a momentary glimpse of her face. There were tears in her eyes. At
the sight his self-control snapped.
“You sha’n’t!” he cried. “It’s ghastly. I won’t let you. You must
understand now—you must know what you are to me. Do you think I shall
let you——”
A low growl of thunder rumbled through the stillness, like the muttering
of a sleepy giant. The black cloud which had hung over the hill had
crept closer. The heat was stifling. In the middle of the lake, some
fifty yards distant, lay the island, cool and mysterious in the
gathering darkness.
He broke off and seized the paddle.
On this side of the island was a boat-house—a little creek, covered over
with boards, and capable of sheltering an ordinary row-boat. He ran the
canoe in just as the storm began, and turned her broadside on so that
they could watch the rain, which was sweeping over the lake in sheets.
He began to speak again, more slowly now.
“I think I loved you from the first day I saw you on the ship—and then I
lost you. I found you again by a miracle, and lost you again; I found
you here by another miracle, but this time I am not going to lose you.
Do you think I am going to stand by and see you taken from me by—by——”
He took her hand.
“Molly, you can’t love him. It isn’t possible. If I thought you did, I
wouldn’t try to spoil your happiness—I’d go away. But you don’t—you
can’t. He’s nothing. Molly!”
“Molly!”
She said nothing, but for the first time her eyes met his, clear and
unwavering. He could read fear in them, fear—not of himself, of
something vague, something he could not guess at. But they shone with a
light which conquered the fear as the sun conquers fire; and he drew her
to him, and kissed her again and again, murmuring incoherently.
Suddenly she wrenched herself away, struggling like some wild thing. The
boat plunged.
“I can’t!” she cried, in a choking voice. “I mustn’t! Oh, I can’t!”
He stretched out a hand and clutched at the rail that ran along the
wall. The plunging ceased. He turned. She had hidden her face, and was
sobbing, quietly, with the forlorn hopelessness of a lost child.
He made a movement towards her, but drew back. He felt dazed.
The rain thudded and splashed on the wooden roof. A few drops trickled
through a crack in the boards. He took off his coat and placed it gently
over her shoulders.
“Molly!”
She looked up with wet eyes.
“Molly dear, what is it?”
“I mustn’t. It isn’t right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mustn’t, Jimmy.”
He moved cautiously forward, holding the rail till he was at her side,
and took her in his arms.
“What is it, dear? Tell me.”
She clung to him without speaking.
“You aren’t worrying about him, are you—about Dreever? There’s nothing
to worry about. It’ll be quite easy and simple. I’ll tell him if you
like. He knows you don’t care for him, and besides, there’s another girl
in London that he——”
“No, no; it’s not that.”
“What is it, dear? What’s troubling you?”
“Jimmy——” She stopped.
“Yes?”
“Jimmy, father wouldn’t. Father—father doesn’t——”
“Doesn’t like me?”
She nodded miserably.
A great wave of relief swept over Jimmy. He had imagined—he hardly knew
what he had imagined—some vast, insuperable obstacle, some tremendous
catastrophe whirling them asunder. He could have laughed aloud in his
happiness. So this was it, this was the cloud that brooded over
them—that Mr. McEachern did not like him! The angel, guarding Eden with
a fiery sword, had changed into a policeman with a truncheon.
“He must learn to love me,” he said lightly.
She looked at him hopelessly. He could not see, he could not understand.
And how could she tell him? Her father’s words rang in her brain. He was
“crooked”; he was “here on some game”; he was being watched. But she
loved him—she loved him. Oh, how could she make him understand?
She clung tighter to him, trembling. He became serious again.
“Dear, you mustn’t worry,” he said. “It can’t be helped. He’ll come
round. Once we’re married——”
“No, no! Oh, can’t you understand? I couldn’t—I couldn’t.”
“But, dear,” he said, “you can’t— Do you mean to say— Will that——“(he
searched for a word)—“stop you?” he concluded.
“It must,” she whispered.
A cold hand clutched at his heart. His world was falling to pieces,
crumbling under his eyes.
“But—but you love me,” he said slowly. It was as if he were trying to
find the key to a puzzle.
“I—don’t see——”
“You couldn’t—you can’t. You’re a man—you don’t know—it’s so different
for a man. He’s brought up all his life with the idea of leaving home,
he goes away naturally.”
“But, dear, you couldn’t live at home all your life. Whoever you
married——”
“But this would be different. Father would never speak to me again— I
should never see him again. He would go right out of my life. Jimmy, I
couldn’t. A girl can’t cut away twenty years of her life and start
afresh like that. I should be haunted. I should make you miserable.
Every day a hundred little things would remind me of him, and I
shouldn’t be strong enough to resist them. You don’t know how fond he is
of me, how good he has always been. Ever since I can remember, we’ve
been such friends. You’ve only seen the outside of him, and I know how
different that is from what he really is. All his life he has thought
only of me. He has told me things about himself which nobody else dreams
of, and I know that all these years he has been working just for me.
Jimmy, you don’t hate me for saying this, do you?”
“Go on,” he said, drawing her closer to him.
“I can’t remember my mother—she died when I was quite little—so he and I
have been the only ones, till you came.”
Memories of those early days crowded her mind as she spoke, making her
voice tremble; half-forgotten trifles, many of them, fraught with the
glamour and fragrance of past happiness.
“We have always been together. He trusted me and I trusted him, and we
saw things through together. When I was ill he used to sit up all night
with me, night after night. Once—I’d only got a little fever really, but
I thought I was terribly bad—I heard him come in late and called out to
him, and he came straight in and sat and held my hand all through the
night; and it was only by accident I found out later that it had been
raining, and that he was soaked through. It might have killed him. We
were partners, Jimmy dear. I couldn’t do anything to hurt him now, could
I? It wouldn’t be square.”
Jimmy turned away his head, for fear his face might betray what he was
feeling. He was in a hell of unreasoning jealousy. He wanted her, body
and soul, and every word she said bit like a raw wound. A moment before
and he had felt that she belonged to him; now, in the first shock of
reaction, he saw himself a stranger, an intruder, a trespasser on holy
ground.
She saw the movement, and her intuition put her in touch with his
thoughts.
“No, no!” she cried. “No, Jimmy—not that!”
Their eyes met, and he was satisfied.
They sat there silent. The rain had lessened its force and was falling
now in a gentle shower; a strip of blue sky, pale and watery, showed
through the grey over the hills. On the island close behind them a
thrush had begun to sing.
“What are we to do?” she said at last. “What can we do?”
“We must wait,” he said. “It will all come right. It must. Nothing can
stop us now.”
The rain had ceased. The blue had routed the grey and driven it from the
sky. The sun, low down in the west, shone out bravely over the lake. The
air was cool and fresh.
Jimmy’s spirits rose with a bound. He accepted the omen. This was the
world as it really was, smiling and friendly, not grey, as he had
fancied it. He had won. Nothing could alter that. What remained to be
done was trivial. He wondered how he could ever have allowed it to weigh
upon him.
After a while he pushed the boat out of its shelter on to the glittering
water, and seized the paddle.
“We must be getting back,” he said. “I wonder what the time is? I wish
we could stay out for ever. But it must be late. Molly!”
“Yes?”
“Whatever happens, you’ll break off this engagement with Dreever? Shall
I tell him? I will if you like.”
“No, I will. I’ll write him a note if I don’t see him before dinner.”
Jimmy paddled on a few strokes.
“It’s no good,” he said suddenly; “I can’t keep it in. Molly, do you
mind if I sing a bar or two? I’ve got a beastly voice, but I’m feeling
rather happy. I’ll stop as soon as I can.”
He raised his voice discordantly.
Covertly, from beneath the shade of her big hat, Molly watched him with
troubled eyes. The sun had gone down behind the hills, and the water had
ceased to glitter. There was a suggestion of chilliness in the air. The
great mass of the castle frowned down upon them, dark and forbidding in
the dim light.
She shivered.
★ 20 ★
_A Lesson in Piquet_
Lord Dreever, meanwhile, having left the waterside, lit a cigarette, and
proceeded to make a reflective tour of the grounds. He felt aggrieved
with the world. Molly’s desertion in the canoe with Jimmy did not
trouble him. He had other sorrows. One is never at one’s best and
sunniest when one has been forced by a ruthless uncle into abandoning
the girl one loves and becoming engaged to another to whom one is
indifferent. Something of a jaundiced tinge stains one’s outlook on life
in such circumstances. Moreover, Lord Dreever was not by nature an
introspective young man, but, examining his position as he walked along,
he found himself wondering whether it was not a little unheroic. He came
to the conclusion that perhaps it was.
Of course, Uncle Thomas could make it deucedly unpleasant for him if he
kicked—that was the trouble. If only he had even, say, a couple of
thousand a year of his own, he might make a fight for it. But, dash it!
Uncle Tom could cut off supplies to such a frightful extent, if there
was trouble, that he would have to go on living at Dreever indefinitely,
without so much as a fearful quid to call his own. Imagination boggled
at the prospect. In the summer and autumn, when there was shooting, his
lordship was not indisposed to stay at the home of his fathers. But all
the year round! Better a broken heart inside the radius than a sound one
in the country in the winter.
“But, by gad,” mused his lordship, “if I had as much as a couple—yes,
dash it! even a couple of thousand a year, I’d chance it and ask Katie
to marry me, dashed if I wouldn’t!”
He walked on, drawing thoughtfully at his cigarette. The more he
reviewed the situation, the less he liked it. There was only one bright
spot in it, and that was the feeling that now money must surely get a
shade less tight. Extracting the precious ore from Sir Thomas hitherto
had been like pulling back-teeth out of a bulldog. But now, on the
strength of this infernal engagement, surely he might reasonably be
expected to scatter largesse to some extent.
His lordship was just wondering whether, if approached in a softened
mood, the other might not disgorge something quite big, when a large,
warm rain-drop fell on his hand. From the bushes round about came an
ever-increasing patter. The sky was leaden.
He looked round him for shelter. He had reached the rose-garden in the
course of his perambulations. At the far end was a summer-house. He
turned up his coat-collar and ran.
As he drew near he heard a slow and dirge-like whistling proceeding from
the interior. Plunging in out of breath, just as the deluge began, he
found Hargate seated at the little wooden table with an earnest
expression on his face. The table was covered with cards. Hargate had
not yet been compelled to sprain his wrist, having adopted the
alternative of merely refusing invitations to play billiards.
“Halloa, Hargate!” said his lordship. “Isn’t it coming down, by Jove!”
Hargate glanced up, nodded without speaking, and turned his attention to
the cards once more. He took one from the pack in his left hand, looked
at it, hesitated for a moment, as if doubtful whereabouts on the table
it would produce the most artistic effect, and finally put it face
upwards. Then he moved another card from the table and put it on top of
the other one. Throughout the performance he whistled painfully.
His lordship regarded him with annoyance.
“That looks frightfully exciting,” he said disparagingly. “What are you
playing at? Patience?”
Hargate nodded again—this time without looking up.
“Oh, don’t sit there looking like a frog,” said Lord Dreever irritably.
“Talk, man.”
Hargate gathered up the cards and proceeded to shuffle them in a
meditative manner, whistling the while.
“Oh, stop it!” said his lordship.
Hargate nodded, and stopped.
“Look here,” said Lord Dreever, “this is boring me stiff. Let’s have a
game at something—anything to pass away the time. Hang this rain! We
shall be cooped up here till dinner at this rate. Ever played piquet? I
could teach you in five minutes.”
A look almost of awe came into Hargate’s face—the look of one who sees a
miracle performed before his eyes. For years he had been using all the
large stock of diplomacy at his command to induce callow youths to play
piquet with him, and here was this admirable young man, this pearl among
young men, positively offering to teach him the game. It was too much
happiness. What had he done to deserve this? He felt as a toil-worn lion
might feel if some antelope, instead of making its customary bee-line
for the horizon, were to trot up and insert its head between his jaws.
“I— I shouldn’t mind being shown the idea,” he said.
He listened attentively while Lord Dreever explained at some length the
principles which govern the game of piquet. Every now and then he asked
a question. It was evident that he was beginning to grasp the idea of
the game.
“What exactly is re-piquing?” he asked, as his lordship paused.
“It’s like this,” said his lordship, returning to his lecture.
“Yes, I see now,” said the neophyte.
They began playing. Lord Dreever, as was only to be expected in a
contest between teacher and student, won the first two hands. Hargate
won the next.
“I’ve got the hang of it all right now,” he said complacently. “It’s a
simple sort of game. Make it more exciting, don’t you think, if we
played for something?”
“All right,” said Lord Dreever slowly; “if you like.”