As those whose memories run back thirty years know, Sir Nelson Poynter
owes his baronetcy to his financial ability and the fact that he made
his huge fortune honestly and always stood ready to sacrifice himself at
times of threatened panic on ’Change. Essentially a “City man,” when he
became a country gentleman he established himself in Surrey, where he
could keep an eye on Capel Court and reach the office in a little time.
To Drayton Hall, his princely mansion, it might be objected that it
was a trifle too pretentious, with its battlements and towers, but no
fault could be found either with its hospitality or with the kindly old
gentleman and dear old lady who dispensed it. A week-end at Drayton was
always charming.
On the terrace at Drayton on the day following that on which so much had
transpired at Fair’s town house, Travers was smoking and reading the
paper, when Allyne sauntered out of a window and approached him.
“What! Not gone to church with the rest, Travers?” he said reprovingly.
“Dry up, idiot!” replied Travers, not looking up from his paper. “Church?
Why, hang it, did you ever hear the curate here read? He’s the worst I
ever heard—except the vicar himself. And their sermons—lord! I wonder
where Poynter ever unearthed these two mummies.”
“Oh, come, I say; no heresy now,” protested Allyne, sitting on the
balustrade of the terrace. “But, I say, old chap,” he added, knocking the
newspaper out of Travers’s hand, “what a funk poor Fair has got into!
What the deuce is in the wind, anyway?”
“Give it up,” answered Travers, growing serious at once; “but I know one
thing. You and I have some decidedly nasty experience of some sort in
store for us tonight, see if we haven’t. You are going up to town with
him this afternoon, he tells me. So am I.”
“Yes,” answered Allyne, also grown serious; “he wants us to spend the
night with him in Carlton House Terrace—going over his papers, that sort
of thing. The poor devil is regularly bowled over for some reason. Queer
turn for him to take—the coolest man I ever met, you know. I’m half
inclined to believe that the speculative strain of the last year has been
too much for him—in fact, that his mind is threatened; I do indeed.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Travers impatiently. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t
let him suspect that you feel in any such way about it! Why, man, he
cares no more about the ups and downs on ’Change than you care about
my books. I was with him the day he dropped eighty thousand pounds in
Kaffirs a few years ago, and I could not get him to care about it as much
as he should have done, for it was no laughing matter with him at that
time. No, Allyne, my boy, Fair’s troubles are not financial—and as for
women——”
“Yes, that’s the difficulty,” broke in Allyne. “If it were almost any
other man, one might say, ‘Find the lady in the puzzle’; but Fair is an
iced edition of Sir Galahad. But whatever it is, he has a horror of some
kind eating out that big, warm, pure heart of his. And, Travers, old man,
we must get at the truth tonight and save him.”
“Right you are,” answered Travers heartily; “but I have my doubts as to
our ability to get inside of him. He’s so beastly—But hush—here they come
from church.”
As he spoke Fair and Lady Poynter strolled quietly up the gravel path
toward the terrace, followed shortly by Sir Nelson, who was pointing out
his splendid flowers to Mrs. March.
“Good morning,” said Travers and Allyne in concert, rising to meet them.
“You naughty boys,” scolded little old Lady Poynter, shaking a finger at
the unregenerate pair. “Not at church—and such a lovely sermon, too!”
“All about loving one another,” commented Mrs. March, coming up. “Lovely?
I should say so.”
“And delivered in a voice of tepid silk,” remarked Fair, with so much
spirit that Travers and Allyne looked at each other relieved.
“By Jove, you know, the vicar’s voice is a bit trying after the first
five minutes, is it not?” said Sir Nelson, who invariably slumbered after
the period he mentioned, during the sermon.
“Well, trying or not, we all eat, do we not?” remarked Lady Poynter.
“So I’m off to hurry luncheon, for I want you all to drive over to the
Derwents’ this afternoon, and I can’t persuade Mr. Fair to stop tonight.
In half an hour—and till then be good.”
The good old soul went away into the house to stir up the servants, and
Sir Nelson, taking Fair’s arm, said: “Fair, what was it you wanted to
say?”
“Ah, yes,” answered Fair, smiling; “if Mrs. March will forgive me for
leaving her to be bored by these two schoolboys, I’ll have a little chat
with you, Sir Nelson, in the library.”
“Pray don’t mind me,” jauntily returned Mrs. March. “I am going to send
Mr. Allyne off to the church to fetch my prayer-book, which I left there,
and Mr. Travers and I always get on famously. Trot away, all of you.”
“Come on, Fair,” growled Sir Nelson, pulling at Fair’s sleeve. “Allyne,
you seem to be in luck—it’s only two miles to the church! Come, Fair.”
They walked along the terrace, and Allyne, glaring at Mrs. March, vaulted
over the balustrade and began the hot walk to the parish church through
the park.
When he was out of sight Travers ventured to turn to Mrs. March, who
had remained annoyingly silent, although, he felt, she must know, after
receiving his letter by the hands of her maid that morning, that his
reason for desiring to see her was as great as his diffidence in stating
it.
He looked long at her and wondered how she could be so cruel—and so
beautiful. At last she looked up at him as if only now realizing that he
was there.
“Now, my dear Dick, we can have our little say without any such
ridiculous rendezvous as you suggested in your overwrought note. What
seems to weigh upon us? Tell me—that is, if you think you must.”
“Mrs. March—” he began, but she stopped him with a protesting hand.
“Mrs. March?” she complained, with a delightful little contraction of
her brows. “I thought we had agreed that I was to be the Dorothy of our
childhood?”
“If you like,” he answered, saying to himself that if she knew what
was in his mind and intended to deny him, then the cruelty of her
present tormenting winsomeness was beyond belief. No. She could not be
so base—she must know what he was about to say to her. But failure had
grown into the very marrow of his bones, so it was with unspeakably
hopeless hope that he went on. “If you like. Well, Dorothy, it will be
no news to you—this that I am now to tell you—I love you. I am sure you
must have known this for a long time. You have also known, I trust, why
I have remained silent. I had the best possible of all reasons for not
speaking—I was a beggar without a penny, without a lucrative calling and
without prospects.”
“Oh, Dick, Dick,” Mrs. March broke in, taking his hand in both of hers;
“are you going to spoil our dear old partnership in this way? I’m so
sorry! Be a dear, good boy, tell me of your new play. Have you finished
it yet? I’m sure it will prove a tremendous success.”
“No,” he returned rather sharply, “no; you must hear me, Dorothy. No man
can associate with you long without growing to think of you as a woman
altogether different from others. You are the cleverest woman in London.
You fascinate because you puzzle and mystify men. Even women cannot
resist you. They are attracted to you much as the men are—because they
do not comprehend you, because they find you different. But, Dorothy, my
love for you draws its inspiration from a source wholly unguessed by your
other friends. I love you because you are the one woman in my world who
sees the pathos and the meaning of life—my life and any life that fails
and drowns and dies in the rush and the madness of existence. I have
discovered the real you—the you behind the clever, fashionable, worldly
Mrs. March—and I claim you by right of discovery.”
“Why, Dick, what nonsense!” she cried, with a not very successful effort
to smile down the tears that his searching look and his throbbing words
had brought to those great hazel eyes of hers. “What nonsense! I am
only an ambitious woman of the world, happy in the possession of social
influence. I am hard and cold and calculating—and anyhow, really, dear,
dear boy, you must not think of this any more. I mean it.”
“To some you may seem worldly,” he went on, ignoring her protest; “but I
know you. And I was forgetting to justify myself by telling you that I
now have the right to speak. I am no longer penniless, Dorothy. I am now
in a position to ask you to share my life on the plane to which you are
accustomed. Will you listen?”
“I must not—I cannot—don’t be cruel, Dick,” she answered. “And aren’t you
a bit hard on me when you imply that I would listen to you now, but that
I would not have done so when you were poor? Am I so mercenary?”
“No,” he said warmly; “but I should have despised myself had I spoken
when I had not the means to support you. Dorothy, my love for you began
the night you had that poor Bohemian boy play the violin at your little
party. The idiots who crowded your rooms gambled all the time the
marvelous lad was playing; but I saw you whisper to him when he finished
one sublime number, and noted how his thin, white face lighted up with
gratitude and hope at whatever it was you said to him. Well, you know
he died of consumption in my chambers a few months afterward. Among his
papers I found the letter you wrote him inclosing ten pounds. That letter
revealed you to me. It was glorious! It was you! From that time I have
loved you with a love passing the love of women. Poverty, which until
that time had seemed rather a welcome refuge and protection to me, now
became a hell, for it alone barred me from the hope of speaking to you.
But today I am a comparatively rich man. Dorothy, be my wife.”
“Oh, Dick, Dick, this is awful—don’t!” she cried, shrinking from him.
“Pray, pray, stop—really you must not go on!”
But Travers had waited too long and too yearningly for this hour to be
lightly deterred from stating his whole case. So he proceeded eagerly:
“You heard last night of Fair’s phenomenal success? Well, he told me
after you had gone that it had also made me rich. Some time ago he bought
my poor father’s library from me—more to assist me than from any need
of those particular books—and I left the money with him for investment.
He now tells me that he bought Empire Mines shares with it and that my
profits amount to fifty thousand pounds sterling. Of course I thought
that this was merely a bit of his wonderful generosity and altogether
an afterthought—the result of that erratic and impulsive unselfishness
which puzzles all who know him—but he assures me that he can prove from
his broker’s books that he bought stock for my account at the time that
he purchased his own, before it was at all certain that it would turn out
such a staggering success. At all events, there the money is to my credit
at Burton’s bank.”
“Oh, I am so glad, dear fellow!” cried Mrs. March. “What a king he is!”
“Isn’t he? A knight, a brother—one in a million!”
“Well, Dick,” went on Mrs. March after her first flush of pleasure and
surprise, “I can’t tell you how I rejoice with you in this great good
fortune; but truly, dearest friend, our love can never be more than that
of two tried old friends who have known each other always. So be good.”
“Only one thing can ever make me believe that love like mine will be
denied,” replied Travers with great intensity; “I shall press my sacred
claim, Dorothy, until you tell me that there is another whom you love.”
Mrs. March waited in evident distress for a few moments, and then,
speaking very low and painfully:
“Poor old Dick, it hurts me terribly to wound you—but, Dick, there is
another. I am not free.”
“Good God!” leaped from the man’s lips as he started forward with the
iron entering his soul. “Mrs. March—with all my heart I beg you to forget
me and my mad words of this day. I—I—I— Good-bye!”
“God bless you!” she murmured, crushed by his suffering. “And, Dick, of
course I have told you this in confidence.”
“Certainly,” he answered, raising his hat and moving toward the house. At
the window of the library he stopped, and then came slowly back to where
she stood thinking. “Tell me one thing more. Dorothy, it is not this
clown Allyne, is it?”
Mrs. March thanked him with her eyes for this bit of humor, which she
knew must have cost him much, and exclaimed, with an effort to meet his
own pleasantry: “Heavens! No!”
“Thank goodness for that,” replied Travers, with a sickly smile. “I could
not have borne that,” and he rushed off into the house to face final
failure on the one only day when success seemed to have dawned dimly with
more of promise than had ever shone in the east of his hope.