It was about nine o'clock the next morning. The heat of the night before
had given place to that incomparable freshness which spring mornings
have in Paris.
The windows of Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room were open, and a
delightfully scented air, from the lilac blossoms and all the flowers of
the gardens in the Tuileries, flooded and floated into the room.
Rooms have an aspect of this or that emotion according to the hour in
which the events of the soul have taken place within them.
There are some rooms which always have the same mood. When one goes into
them one doesn't impose one's mood, one's fancy, or one's ideas upon the
place, but is dominated by one lasting personality--of furniture, of
aspect, of general _mise en scene_.
It would be impossible, for example, to have a merry breakfast-party in
the hangman's ante-room to the gallows; and one has known rooms in
hotels which one enters gladly, unconscious of the pervading gloom which
seems to cling to floor and ceiling and rises up like a spectre into
the heart and brain after a few minutes' sojourn there.
The sitting-room in the Hotel des Tuileries, which had been the theatre
of such tragic emotions on the last spring midnight, was now ordinary
and comfortable enough.
The chairs and settees were all in their proper places. The carpet had
been brushed, and its dull blues, greys, and brick-dust reds were all
essentially artistic.
And they had brought new flowers there also. The bowls and vases were
filled with fresh purple and white lilac. The silver candlesticks had
been polished--there were no drippings of wax upon them any more. Tall
white candles, fresh, virginal, and unfired, filled all the
candlesticks.
In the middle of all this freshness two people were--a man and a woman.
One, Lord Ellerdine, was very tall and lean. He was dressed in a suit of
very immaculate grey flannel--not the greyish-green which the ordinary
person who wears flannels imagines to be the right thing, but the real
grey-grey which costs a good deal of money; if the tailors in Sackville
Street and Waterloo Place, from whom we suffer, are to be believed.
Lord Ellerdine's hair--and he hadn't much of it--was what he himself
would have described as "the same old dust-colour." He wore a stiff
double collar with blue lines upon it, a tie of China silk, and a big
black pearl, stuck right down at the bottom, so that it only peeped out
from the opening of his waistcoat now and again.
Lord Ellerdine had red eyes--that is to say, that there was a sort of
red glint in them. The brows which overhung them were straight and dark,
and contradicted with an odd grotesquerie the flickering attempt to
really be at home and happy with the world. The face itself was rather
tanned and brown, lean in contour and suggesting the explorer and the
travelled man; and all this was oddly contradicted by an engaging little
button of a mouth, which twitched and lisped and was always rather more
jolly than the occasion warranted.
By the side of Lord Ellerdine--or rather standing in the middle of the
room and looking down upon him, for he had thrown himself upon the
sofa--was a tall, slim, and gracious woman, perfectly dressed in a
travelling coat and skirt of tweed. She looked round her rather
fretfully.
Her face was radiant--there is no other word for it. Although she had
been travelling all night, she appeared to be as fresh as paint--and
that exactly describes her.
The complexion was perfect. It had that creamy _morbidezza_ one sees in
a furled magnolia bud. Two straight, decisive lips seemed like a "band
of scarlet upon a tower of ivory." Lady Attwill's eyes were
sapphire-blue and suspicious, but entirely charming. She was, in short,
a thoroughly handsome woman, and the sunlight struck curious radiances
from the little pearls she wore in the shell-like lobes of her ears.
"Tell madame, will you, Pauline?" she said.
"I'll tell madame that you have arrived," the maid said with a little
bow. She crossed the room, knocked, opened the door leading into Mrs.
Admaston's bedroom, and disappeared.
Almost immediately Lady Attwill's face changed from its quiet calm and
became vivid.
"Cheer up, Dicky!" she said to Lord Ellerdine; "you've been in many a
worse fix than this."
The diplomatist looked at her for a moment, his whole silly--but somehow
distinguished--face covered with a sort of desperate cheerfulness.
"Worse!" he said. "I should say so. I don't mind gettin' into a 'fix,'
as you call it."
"Then what in the world are you grumbling about?" Lady Attwill asked.
"Why, how am I going to get _out_ of it? Any fool can get into a
fix--any time. It's gettin' out--what? That's the bally riddle,
Alice--gettin' out of it. What?"
Lady Attwill went up to him and dug him confidentially in the shoulder
with one pretty gloved thumb.
"Look here, Dicky," she said; "now, did I ever fail you?"
"Oh no, no. You've always been pretty good."
"Now, haven't I got you out of many a scrape?"
Lord Ellerdine seemed to think--that is to say, call upon the resources
of a somewhat attenuated memory. "Yes," he replied; "not so confounded
many--only two; and--yes--well, of course, that other one was rather
awkward."
He chuckled to himself. "But, after all, this is different," he
continued. "I am not in this one, exactly. No more are you. It's Peggy's
fix. And we don't _quite_ know how she's got into it. I don't like the
look of it."
Lady Attwill listened to him with an aspect of particular attention. But
if the man had been able to realise it he would have seen the flash of
contempt which came and went over her face. He did not, however, and she
replied in her ordinary tones:
"Look of it! It's merely a frolic--nothing serious. Collingwood is not
the man to run risks. He believes in the simple life."
"Does he, by Jove!" Lord Ellerdine said. "He's not so simple as that,
Alice."
"He is not so simple as to get into a complication with Admaston," she
answered. "He's no fool--you take my word for it."
Lord Ellerdine grinned his fatuous little grin.
"Seems I have to take your word for everything," he said.
"All right, Dicky," she answered; "just you leave all the thinking to
me."
"You don't give me time to think," he answered. "I know I am deuced slow
at it. But tell me this. How did Peggy and Collingwood get to my place
last autumn before ten o'clock in the morning? Tell me that--what?"
"They motored through the night, of course."
"They jolly well didn't," replied his lordship.
"But Colling told us he did," said Lady Attwill.
"I knew he did. But they didn't."
Lady Attwill had been glancing over the _Matin_ of that day, which had
been laid upon the breakfast table. At these words of her companion's
she put down the paper rather hurriedly and looked up.
"Dicky," she said, "I believe you know something."
"I know I do."
"What is it, then?"
"Bad breakdown at Selby overnight. They came on to my place in a hired
motor next morning. I heard all about it from the man who drove them
down from Selby."
Lady Attwill was very genuinely interested, or achieved a fair
assumption of interest. "Dicky!" she cried.
Lord Ellerdine nodded his thin head vigorously. "It's a fact," he
replied triumphantly. "The fellow is now my second chauffeur. So you see
I can find out things if I have time enough. Alice, I don't like this
fix Peggy's in. Staying at Selby with Collingwood all night was bad
enough, but----"
"Good gracious!" Lady Attwill answered, "can't a woman stay at the same
hotel with a man she knows without scandal?"
"Scandal!" Lord Ellerdine replied. "Damn the scandal! It's what folks
think. It's who you are. Lots of women wouldn't mind staying at the same
hotel I was staying at, and nobody would dream that there was anything
wrong--you wouldn't, Alice. But Peggy and Collingwood _make_ people
suspect them."
Lady Attwill went up to Lord Ellerdine and pinched his arm playfully.
"You silly old Dicky," she said, "you've been listening to a lot of
stupid twaddle at your clubs."
"Well," he answered, "they know pretty well what's going on."
"Yes, I suppose _they_ do," she said. "Talk about women and their
gossip! Why, Dicky, they're not in it with your smoke-room gang."
At that moment Pauline entered from Mrs. Admaston's bedroom. There was a
hardly veiled hostility in her face as she spoke, though her manner was
civil enough. "Madame will see Lady Attwill," she said.
Lady Attwill swept across the room, flashing a somewhat curious glance
at the old maidservant as she passed her, and entered the bedroom.
Lord Ellerdine had strolled up to the fireplace. "Tell Peggy I am
waiting," he called out.
"All right," Lady Attwill said. "You amuse yourself for a few minutes."
Lord Ellerdine began to hum a little tune; then he noticed Pauline, who
was arranging some violets upon a side table. "Morning, Pauline," he
said. "How's madame?"
"She has a headache," the maid replied; "just a little nervous. Is your
lordship well?"
"No, I am not well, Pauline, I am sorry to say. I feel very groggy. I
have been all night in a confounded slow train."
Pauline said nothing, but left the room just as the third door opened
and Collingwood came briskly into the room.
He was wearing a lounge suit of dark blue. The air of poise and easy
carriage which was so marked a part of his personality was very much in
evidence now. There was a quiet spring in his step, a brisk and cheery
purpose in his movements, and he seemed singularly alert and
_debonnaire_; perfectly dressed, a very proper man to look at, but
somehow or other without a suggestion of foppishness, which Lord
Ellerdine always managed to convey. His face was calm and composed, but
a close observer would have noticed that there were dark rings under the
eyes and that the face was slightly paler than its wont.
"Oh, there you are!" Lord Ellerdine said.
"Hello, Ellerdine!" Collingwood replied. "Bright and early as usual?"
"Early, yes," said the other; "but not so deuced bright, old chap."
"When did you get here?"
"About five o'clock."
"Had breakfast?"
"No," said Lord Ellerdine. "I had a bath, a shave, a change, and a
brandy-and-soda."
Collingwood went up to the window and sat looking idly down into the Rue
de Rivoli.
"Refreshing, but not very filling," he said. "Staying here?"
"No," Lord Ellerdine replied; "they would not let us in. It's race-week,
you know. They are packed out. The place is full of big bookies and
racing fellows. We had to go to the St. Denis. A nice fix you've got us
all in, Collingwood!"
Collingwood turned away from the window.
"Fix? I've got you in? How do you mean?"
Lord Ellerdine struggled to find words in which to express his meaning.
"I'm blowed if I know--quite. Anyway, we're in it."
"I don't understand," Collingwood answered.
"Oh, come on!" replied Lord Ellerdine. "Chuck that business, Colling! I
know your beastly way of putting a fellow off, but you can't leave me
out of this."
Collingwood lit a cigarette very deliberately. "Leave you out?" he said.
"Wish to heavens you could!" was the rejoinder.
Collingwood perched himself on the end of the sofa, swinging his legs.
"Look here, what's up?"
"Are we at St. Moritz?" Lord Ellerdine asked.
"No," Collingwood answered coolly.
"Are we in Switzerland?"
"No."
"Well, where are we?"
"I make a good guess," Collingwood said, "that we are in Paris."
Lord Ellerdine flushed up and began to get angry.
"Well, there you are!" he said. "Damn it, there you are! And you have
got the sublime cheek to ask me what's up."
Collingwood smiled. "Now, don't get ratty, Dicky," he said. "It's all
right. Only a trifling contretemps. We got on the wrong train--by
mistake."
Lord Ellerdine began to stroll up and down the room. He tried to be
judicial in his manner. "Now, are you telling me that for a fact or for
a joke?" he asked.
"Fact--absolute fact. We were kept until the last moment paying duty on
Peggy's cigarettes, and had to rush for the train----"
He had been going to say something further, but Lord Ellerdine
interrupted him. "I saw you," he said.
Here Collingwood cut in suddenly: "Yes, getting into the train that was
on the move."
"Yes," Lord Ellerdine said, "the Paris express. You jumped Peggy on and
sprang after her, dragging her maid with you. A clever bit of work, my
friend."
Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Well, where were you?" he replied.
"In the other train--the right one. With Alice. It was a rotten thing
for you to do."
"What, leave you with Alice?"
Lord Ellerdine shook his head impatiently. "No, no," he said irritably;
"to leave us in the lurch like that."
"But I telegraphed to you to Chalons that we had got on the wrong
train."
"Yes, you wired to Chalons right enough, but that didn't make it true. I
would not have gone if Alice had not persuaded me that the train was
running in two parts, and that you would be sure to join us at Chalons."
"Well, it's all right now," Collingwood replied, still preserving the
perfect _sang-froid_ with which he had listened to all the other's
remarks. "It's all right now, so don't let's say any more about it."
"All right now, by Jove!" Ellerdine replied. "Is it? Suppose Admaston
hears about it--what?"
"Of course," Collingwood said, "if you think it is absolutely necessary,
we'll invent some yarn that will satisfy him."
"I do think it necessary. But _you'll_ have to do it. I never could
invent--never. No good at it. Confound you, Colling, leaving us...."
Collingwood's manner changed from coolness to something more intimate.
"Now, look here, Dicky," he said persuasively. "I didn't think you'd cut
up rough about it. I thought Alice possibly might, but not you."
"Oh, she doesn't mind," Ellerdine answered. "She never believes that
people get on the wrong train, or have motor accidents so that they can
have a night off."
Collingwood put his feet down to the floor and threw the end of his
cigarette into the fireplace. "Now, look here," he said; "do you mean
that you think that I----" He hesitated for a moment.
"No, I don't," Lord Ellerdine answered; "but what will Admaston think?
He is sure to hear of it. I'll bet you a fiver it's known in London
to-night. There is always someone on the spot to notice things that go
wrong, and this is so suspicious--so damned suspicious, mind you. Why,
_I_ don't like the look of it--mind, the look of it--myself."
"Then we must set your conscience at rest, that's all," Collingwood
replied.
"How?"
"Well, we must all have a proper, coherent, connected yarn to tell.
That's quite simple."
Ellerdine shook his head thoughtfully. "I don't think it will work," he
said. "You can't get four people to tell the same yarn without
variation. There's sure to be one let it down just where it ought to be
kept up."
"If it were a long, complicated yarn, perhaps," said Collingwood; "but I
don't mean that at all. Just a plain, unvarnished tale."
"Unvarnished!" the peer replied. "Well, it'll take a deuce of a lot of
paint to make this one look all right."
"Not a bit of it," Collingwood replied. "Easy as anything."
Lord Ellerdine went to the fireplace once more and stood with his back
to the flames. "Right ho," he said; "go ahead."
"Here you are, then," Collingwood began. "We all got on the wrong
train."
"But we didn't."
"Damn it!" Collingwood said, "of course we didn't; but we'll say we
did."
Lord Ellerdine began to check the points upon the fingers of one hand,
as if anxious to commit them to memory even at this early stage. "Am I
to say we did?" he asked.
"We will all say we did," Collingwood replied.
"I shall never be able to," Lord Ellerdine remarked hopelessly.
"Confound it, Dicky! Are you the George Washington of the lot?"
The peer shook his head more vigorously. That imputation, at anyrate, he
was anxious to avoid. "No, no," he said quickly; "it's not the truth
that bothers me. It's getting the blooming fib to sound all right."
Collingwood repeated his instruction as if he were teaching a lesson to
a child, speaking slowly and impressively. "'We all got on the wrong
train.' There's nothing difficult about saying that."
Lord Ellerdine repeated the sentence in exactly the same voice.
"'We all got on the wrong train.'"
"Bravo, Dicky!" said Collingwood. "Now then, don't relax your attention,
old chap. The next is that we all stayed the night at this hotel."
The index finger of Lord Ellerdine's right hand moved from the thumb to
the first finger of his left. He appeared to have got it all right, when
suddenly a doubt seemed to enter the vacant spaces of his mind.
"What, here?" he asked.
"Yes, here; at this hotel."
"Oh! Come, old chap! Doesn't that look like a bally lie? Now think it
over for yourself. Listen. 'We all stayed the night at this hotel.'"
Collingwood was a patient man, and he listened without any betrayal of
what he really felt in dealing with this pleasant fool.
"Well," he said, "what's wrong with it?"
"Oh! it lacks something," was the reply; and though the speaker did not
amplify his statement, his voice was full of doubt and hesitation.
"Oh, rot!" Collingwood answered. "It's only wrong because we didn't stay
here. If you can say, 'We all got on the wrong train,' surely to
goodness you can say that we all stayed the night at this hotel?"
"Yes," Ellerdine answered slowly. "I suppose it ought to be easy
enough."
"No wonder you chucked diplomacy," Collingwood said.
"Oh! I didn't mind a fib or two for international reasons."
"I see," Collingwood rejoined. "Your conscience begins to prick you only
when fibs are told for domestic purposes."
"Well, you see, you run much greater risks of being found out. It's
awful to be found out in an _ordinary_ lie--people make such a _fuss_ of
other people's lies."
"Do you mean to tell me that national lies are never found out?"
"Well, you see," Ellerdine replied--the discussion was getting a little
bit beyond him, and again he struggled to find words,--"you see,
national lies are not about persons." Then he shook his head. "I'm
damned bad at it, Collingwood," he said in a final sort of voice. "I
can't rely on my memory. I suppose there's no other way out of it?"
"My dear chap, none whatever," Collingwood said.
"'We all got on the wrong train,'" Ellerdine repeated to himself slowly
in a sing-song voice; and then, looking up brightly, "Does seem easy,
doesn't it?"
"Top hole," said Collingwood.
Thus encouraged, Lord Ellerdine began to repeat the second half of his
lesson. "'We all stayed the night at this hotel.' There's something
wrong with that."
"It's only your sense of the scrupulous," Collingwood replied. "Only say
it often enough. Say it thirty or forty times; then it will sound all
right."
At this moment the door opened and Lady Attwill came in. She looked
quickly at Collingwood and he at her.
"Good morning," he said. "Well, how is Peggy?"
"She has a bad headache," Lady Attwill replied. "She's coming in in a
minute or two. I have had a warm quarter of an hour, I can tell you,
though I am sure I don't know what _I_ have done...."
If the woman was acting she was acting supremely, for there seemed
genuine disgust in her voice.
"Is she much cut up?" Lord Ellerdine asked.
"I should think she is! She's dreadfully cut up! I don't know what we
are to do," Lady Attwill said.
Lord Ellerdine suddenly became important; his little mouth smiled
brightly. He was the bearer of good news. "Oh, that's all settled," he
said, rubbing his hands briskly together. "I and Collingwood have
arranged it all."
"Arranged what?" Lady Attwill asked.
"Well, do you see, we all----"
The bright expression faded from the ex-diplomatist's face. "Tell her,
Collingwood," he said. "My head won't work. I've forgotten everything
already."
"You've never given Dicky anything to think about?" Lady Attwill said in
mock alarm.
"Not much," Collingwood answered.
Ellerdine flushed up angrily. "Not much!" he cried. "He gets on the
wrong train. He leaves us standing at the post like a couple of sublime
martyrs. Goes off to Paris and leaves us kicking our confounded heels at
Chalons. We come here after them--find the hotel full of bookies--travel
all night in a beastly slow train--no sleep, no food, no Switzerland.
Not much to think about! I shall have an attack of brain fever after
this affair."
Lady Attwill went up to the enraged gentleman. "Poor Dicky!" she said
soothingly. "He's had a bad night. Dicky is no good unless he gets his
proper sleep. Now sit down, there's a good boy, and let's talk it over
properly."
She led him to a chair with a radiant smile, and then turned to
Collingwood. "Now tell me, what is it that you have arranged?" As she
said this she felt in the side pocket of his coat and drew out his
cigarette case. Opening it, she gave him one and took one for herself,
struck a match and lit it.
"Well," Collingwood answered, leaning over the back of the sofa on which
his friend had seated herself. "A short, straight tale--simple, to the
point, and easy to tell."
"The truth?" Lady Attwill asked.
"The truth! Never! Who's going to tell Admaston the truth?" Lord
Ellerdine burst out.
"How's _he_ to know?" Lady Attwill said.
"Know!" Ellerdine retorted. "I'll bet Collingwood a fiver all _London_
knows to-night."
He looked anxiously at the other man, unable to understand how he could
take things so easily, absolutely unconscious of anything underlying
this unfortunate occurrence, absolutely unsuspicious of the sinister
forces at work around him.
"Oh, bosh!" Collingwood answered. "Anyway, we can say we all got on the
wrong train."
"'That we all got on the wrong train,'" came with parrot-like precision
from the diplomatist.
"But we didn't," Lady Attwill said, looking from one to the other.
Lord Ellerdine jumped up from his chair, his face radiant with triumph.
"There you are!" he said to Collingwood. "Just what I told you!"
Lady Attwill became alive to the situation. "Oh, I see," she said;
"that is the short, straight, simple tale. I see. 'We all got on the
wrong train.'"
"You see, Dicky!" Collingwood said with a smile. "See how quickly Alice
picks it up."
"Oh, she's used to it," said Ellerdine. "She picks up things very
quickly. But tell her the sequel--that's the water-jump for me."
"Come on; let's have a look at it," said Lady Attwill.
Collingwood seemed vastly amused. He assumed the air of a comedian. His
hands fluttered before him in pantomime. His handsome face became droll
and merry.
"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" he said.
Lord Ellerdine nodded with an anxious look in his eyes towards Lady
Attwill. "Now try that," he said.
"'We all stayed the night at this hotel,'" said Lady Attwill with
perfect naturalness and ease.
"There you are!" said Collingwood.
The middle-aged fool in the arm-chair was quite interested and pleased.
He saw nothing of the grimness which underlay this gay, light-hearted
chatter, in this gay and brilliant room. The other two, man and woman,
were playing their parts most skilfully--not so much to deceive
Ellerdine, but to trick themselves into the belief that they were not
engaged in a very dirty, ugly business.
It's an extraordinary thing, but nevertheless perfectly true, that
people who are able to infuse a sinister and tragic moment with mocking
gaiety certainly provide for themselves an anodyne to the pain and fear
it would otherwise bring them.
No doubt that is why the devil is generally represented as smirking or
leering.
The door opened and the Scotch-French waiter with a large tray entered,
followed by another also carrying a tray, but whose swarthy features and
thick purple lips proclaimed him no hybrid, but a true son of the Cote
d'Azur.
Lord Ellerdine jumped up. "Food!" he said. "I am starving."
Lady Attwill rose also. "Poor Dicky must always have his food," she
said. "I always think he never seems quite human till he has had his
breakfast. When we were down at his place together----"
Collingwood nudged her with a warning look. "Piano!" he said.
"What about?" she whispered, with a rather sardonic grin. "I don't want
to play."
"The waiter, I mean," Collingwood replied.
"Bien!" she answered, seating herself in front of the cafetiere and
pouring out the hot brown coffee.
Lord Ellerdine had also sat down. He looked at his as yet empty plate
and drummed with his fingers upon the table-cloth. "'We all stayed the
night at this hotel,'" he said in a perfectly audible voice.
"Oui, monsieur," said Jacques of Ecclefechan suddenly.
Ellerdine started and looked up, his face expressing great surprise.
"Get away," he said. "I wasn't speaking to you."
Collingwood frowned. His nerves, now, didn't seem quite under the same
control as they had been before. "Laissez les autres choses, garcon.
Nous nous servirons."
"Bien, monsieur," said the waiter, with an ugly and furtive smile upon
his face, which nobody noticed, as he left the room.
"Come on, Alice. Where's my coffee?" said Lord Ellerdine.
"There you are," she answered. "Coffee, Colling?"
Collingwood nodded. "What is there?" he asked.
Lady Attwill lifted the covers. "Omelette, bacon, sole, mushrooms."
"Sole for me."
"Bacon and mushrooms, Alice," Ellerdine remarked, quite himself again at
the thought of breakfast.
"You have no idea how I buck up after a cup of coffee," he continued;
"but, upon my soul, I feel like a fried flounder this morning. I don't
think I shall ever be in a hotter place than that confounded train from
Chalons."
"Yes, you will, Dicky," Lady Attwill remarked, taking a piece of toast
from the rack.
"Oh yes, you will, Dicky," Collingwood echoed; "don't make any mistake
about that."
"After all," Lady Attwill went on, "it wasn't so bad. You worried; that
was what made you hot."
"You don't know anything about it. You slept like a log all the way,"
Ellerdine said.
"Easy conscience," answered the lady, beginning her breakfast with great
satisfaction.
"You didn't get on the wrong train," said Ellerdine meaningly.
Collingwood put down his fish-fork. The long strain to which his nerves
had been subjected, the irritation which he had so well suppressed until
now, had its way with him and burst out.
"Oh, damn it!" he said, "you two make me tired. Do shut up about the
wrong train. Let's have our breakfast in peace."
Lord Ellerdine busied himself with his mushrooms. "I wish I had a hide
as thick as yours, Colling, old man," he said. "You do take things
smoothly. Look at him, Alice--eating away as if he was on his
honeymoon!"
Collingwood glared at his _vis-a-vis_. "Honeymoon!" he said.
"He doesn't care a fig about getting us into this mess. What excellent
bacon they have here!" Lord Ellerdine went on.
Again Collingwood got the better of his rising temper. "Oh, you'll be
all right, Dicky," he said, "when we get to St. Moritz to-morrow."
"We're not going," Lady Attwill said shortly.
Collingwood started. "We are," he said.
"Wrong, my boy," said Lady Attwill again. "Peggy is going back."
"Back! Back where?"
"To London."
"She doesn't mean it?" Collingwood said, putting down his fork and
looking straight at Lady Attwill.
She nodded at him, and he knew that what she said was true.
"There you are!" piped out in Lord Ellerdine's voice. "I knew it; I felt
it in my bones all the time I was in that beastly train. Peggy's got the
hump. You have spoilt the whole show, Colling. I can't eat any more."
He pushed his chair away from the table with a perplexed and angry face,
and began to walk up and down the room.
"Hang it!" Collingwood said, "is this the first time that anyone got on
the wrong train?"
"No, it is not," Ellerdine answered shortly. "But it is the first time
it has happened to _Peggy_. Anybody but _Peggy_."
"It seems to me," Collingwood said, "that we are making a lot of
unnecessary fuss."
"Yes; let's drop it," came from Lady Attwill.
"Alice," Lord Ellerdine persisted, "don't you agree with me?"
She sighed, but it was necessary to preserve appearances. "Well, Dicky,"
she said, "Peggy has not shown a tenacious desire to observe the strict
letter of every propriety. I know that there has been nothing wrong.
Absolutely nothing but little frisks and frolics now and then--quite all
right actually--looking perhaps worse than they were--nothing else. But,
after all, it is not what you do; the trouble of it is what other folks
say you do."
The persistent moralist was not to be put off. "The married woman," he
said, in a voice as near to a pulpit manner as he could get, "cannot
afford to have anyone say a word. Look at Alice. Before Attwill kicked
the bucket she lived in a glass case. Didn't you, Alice?"
Collingwood chuckled: not merrily at all, but with a rather nasty
cynicism--a snigger, in fact.
"Look here, Dicky," he said, "if you don't stop your sickening habit of
preaching left-handed morality at me I'll give you up. I can't stand it.
I am _not_ moral--don't know the first thing about it--never met anybody
who did. Man is not moral; environment makes it impossible. You're not
moral, Dicky, although you may think you are. And as for society, it is
absolutely unmoral."
"I say! I say! I say! Listen to our future Home Secretary!" said Lord
Ellerdine.
"No fear," Collingwood answered. "I leave that field to Admaston and the
other cackling crew of humbugs."
Lady Attwill laughed amusedly, and Ellerdine was about to say something
else, when the door opened and Peggy entered.
She was very simply but very expensively dressed in an exquisite
walking-dress of a colour which was neither grey nor amethyst, but a
cunning blend of both. At her breast she wore a little sprig of white
lilac. There was a sudden silence as she entered, a silence almost as if
the three people were conspirators.
Peggy walked briskly up to the table, nodding and smiling. "Well, you're
a nice lot," she said. "Why didn't you tell me breakfast was ready? I
have been dying for a cup of coffee. Anything good in the food line?
Something smells good. What is it? Mushrooms--just the very thing! I
like mushrooms. Remind one of early risings and misty mornings. How are
you, Dicky? Alice, give me some coffee, there's a dear. Hello, Colling!
any news?"
Her chatter was more general than addressed to any particular person,
and she didn't seem to require any answer to her questions. At anyrate,
nobody made any answer, and there was an uncomfortable silence as Peggy
began her breakfast.
"You're a jolly lot," she said after a minute or so. "What's up with you
all? These mushrooms are nice. Dicky, pass the toast. What? I thought
you said something, Alice."
Lady Attwill shook her head. "No," she answered in a rather strained
voice.
There was another silence. Suddenly Peggy put down her knife and fork
with a little clatter and rose from her chair. "This room is horribly
stuffy," she said, going to the window. "There, that's better. Oh! what
a lovely morning! Dear old Paris! how I do love it!"
She seemed restless and unable to remain long in one position, and soon
she had fluttered back to the breakfast-table.
"Alice," she said, "please pour me out another cup of coffee.--Well,
Dicky, I put my foot into it nicely last night, didn't I?"
"Yes, you jolly well did," Lord Ellerdine answered shortly.
"I knew what you wanted to talk about, Dicky," she said.
Collingwood interposed. "Peggy, don't go on like that. I have explained
it to Dicky."
"Were you quite the one to explain?" she asked.
"Well," Collingwood replied, "it was my fault I rushed you into the
train."
Lord Ellerdine started. Something already beginning to be familiar had
penetrated his consciousness. "We all got on the wrong train," he said.
"Oh! All?" Peggy asked.
"Yes," said the diplomatist--"yes--no--that's what we're going to say."
"To whom?" asked Peggy.
"Well--well--to--well, to anyone who wants to know."
"Who should want to know?" Peggy asked.
"Oh, no one, Peggy," said Lady Attwill; "but it's best to be prepared,
you know."
"But I don't know. Why should I know? Be prepared for what?"
"Nothing, dear, absolutely nothing. Only, some chatty fool might ask."
"Ask what?"
"Well--awkward questions."
"About getting on the wrong train?"
[Illustration: "We all got on the wrong train and we all stayed the
night at this hotel"]
"Yes--and----"
Peggy pressed home her questions. She would not understand. "What else?"
she said.
"We all stayed the night at this hotel," Lord Ellerdine remarked.
"Did we?" Peggy asked.
"Yes," he said--"no! Oh! But it is best to be prepared."
"I see," Peggy said at last. "What a dull creature I am! Dear me! how
stupid I didn't see it before! You have all made it up to put me right.
You and Alice didn't go to Switzerland--you came on to Paris. You and
Alice didn't get to Chalons and come on here by the slow train--you
stayed here _all_ night. I see. Now, that's so kind and thoughtful of
you all! But for whom is this delightful story?"
"Dicky's scruples," Collingwood said hurriedly.
"I see. Dicky wanted it, did he?" Peggy replied. "Well, Dicky, I hope
your moral sensibilities are quite satisfied. We all got on the wrong
train and we all stayed the night at this hotel."
"Quite so," Ellerdine said quickly; "just a short, straight, simple
tale, ready for any emergency."
"And what emergency do you _expect_?"
"Dearest Peggy, none at all," Lady Attwill said, with a note of anxious
affection in her voice.
"I see. I understand. But don't you think the tale will need a lot of
corroboration?"
"But only if someone questions it."
"Oh!" Peggy said, and there was a world of meaning in the exclamation.
"You see," Lord Ellerdine went on anxiously--"you see, it's all right,
Peggy. We have left nothing to chance."
Lady Attwill nodded. "Nothing at all," she said, echoing her friend.
Peggy looked at them each in turn. Her sweet and youthful face bore
little trace of what she had gone through the night before; and though
her head was throbbing and her nerves were all jangling and raw, her
freshness and purity of countenance remained absolutely unimpaired.
Beside her Alice Attwill suddenly seemed to have grown old.
She looked at them each in turn with grave contemplation--lastly at
Collingwood. "And what do you think about it, Colling?" she asked at
length. "Don't you think that we are a precious set of fools? No--that's
unkind of me. Not you, Alice. Not you, Dicky. I am the precious fool.
Fool! Why, I should have been in cap and bells! A thing to make the
whole world laugh. For only the fool will ask for an explanation--the
wise, if they ask, will look on the explanation as the better part of
the joke. But tell me, Dicky, why is the explanation necessary?"
"Oh! Come, Peggy, come. Confound it!" Lord Ellerdine blundered out. "It
_looks_ so deuced bad."
Peggy made a grimace at him. "Candid!" she said. "Now that was frank.
'It _looks_ so deuced bad.' That's it. Looks! But only _looks_. What do
you think, Colling? Can't we tell the truth? Is there anything to hide?"
"Nothing," Collingwood said.
"There," Peggy went on; "there's nothing to hide."
"Oh, we all know that," Lord Ellerdine said hastily.
Peggy's rising temper almost got the better of her. "Then why the
explanation--the 'short, straight, simple tale'? Why not the truth?"
She clenched her hands, and an angry light burned in her eyes. "Oh! I'll
leave you for a moment. I must go out. This place is stifling! We ought
all to be out in the air. We'll grow mouldy in here--plotting. Alice,
I'll put on my hat. Colling, you must invent another tale to satisfy
Dicky's scruples. Think it over."
She tore out of the room into her own and shut the door with a rather
vicious slam.
"Well, I'm jiggered!" Lord Ellerdine said.
Lady Attwill nodded with a slight tightening of the lips. "I told you
she was upset," she answered.
Collingwood rose from the table and went towards his own room.
"Well, Dicky," he said, "I have done the best I can to satisfy you. I'll
get my hat and take Peggy for a walk and talk it over." And he also left
the room.
"Well," Ellerdine remarked, "this comes of thinking of your friends." He
went to the fireplace and gazed rather gloomily at the glowing logs.
"May the devil take me if I ever care a damn again what folks think of
'em," he went on.
Alice Attwill went up to the window. "Dicky, it is very strange," she
said. "I have never seen Peggy in that nasty mood before."
"I've a jolly good mind to think the worst has happened," the man
remarked.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, anyway, Colling is not in Peggy's
good books," she said, and, pulling one of the large windows open, she
stepped out upon the balcony.
Lord Ellerdine was left alone. His face was grave and perplexed; but
seeing the _Matin_ lying on the sofa, where Lady Attwill had dropped it
before breakfast, he went up, sat down, and was soon immersed in the
news of the day.
There came a light tap upon the door leading into the corridor, which
was flung open immediately afterwards. Jacques stood there holding the
door open.
"Mr. Admaston," he said in a loud, clear voice.