I
Stephen Knight was very angry, though he meant to be kind and patient
with Margot. Perhaps, after all, she had not given the interview to the
newspaper reporter. It might be what she herself would call a "fake."
But as for her coming to stop at a big, fashionable hotel like the
Carlton, in the circumstances she could hardly have done anything in
worse taste.
He hated to think that she was capable of taking so false a step. He
hated to think that it was exactly like her to take it. He hated to be
obliged to call on her in the hotel; and he hated himself for hating it.
Knight was of the world that is inclined to regard servants as automata;
but he was absurdly self-conscious as he saw his card on a silver tray,
in the hand of an expressionless, liveried youth who probably had the
famous interview in his pocket. If not there, it was only because the
paper would not fit in. The footman had certainly read the interview,
and followed the "Northmorland Case" with passionate interest, for
months, from the time it began with melodrama, and turned violently to
tragedy, up to the present moment when (as the journalists neatly
crammed the news into a nutshell) "it bade fair to end with
marriage-bells."
Many servants and small tradespeople in London had taken shares, Stephen
had heard, as a speculative investment, in the scheme originated to
provide capital for the "other side," which was to return a hundred per
cent. in case of success. Probably the expressionless youth was
inwardly reviling the Northmorland family because he had lost his money
and would be obliged to carry silver trays all the rest of his life,
instead of starting a green grocery business. Stephen hoped that his own
face was as expressionless, as he waited to receive the unwelcome
message that Miss Lorenzi was at home.
It came very quickly, and in a worse form than Stephen had expected.
Miss Lorenzi was in the Palm Court, and would Mr. Knight please come to
her there?
Of course he had to obey; but it was harder than ever to remain
expressionless.
There were a good many people in the Palm Court, and they all looked at
Stephen Knight as he threaded his intricate way among chairs and little
tables and palms, toward a corner where a young woman in black crape sat
on a pink sofa. Her hat was very large, and a palm with enormous
fan-leaves drooped above it like a sympathetic weeping willow on a
mourning brooch. But under the hat was a splendidly beautiful dark face.
"Looks as if he were on his way to be shot," a man who knew all about
the great case said to a woman who had lunched with him.
"Looks more as if he were on his way to shoot," she laughed, as one does
laugh at other people's troubles, which are apt to be ridiculous. "He's
simply glaring."
"Poor beggar!" Her companion found pleasure in pitying Lord
Northmorland's brother, whom he had never succeeded in getting to know.
"Which is he, fool or hero?"
"Both. A fool to have proposed to the girl. A hero to stick to her, now
he has proposed. He must be awfully sick about the interview. I do think
it's excuse enough to throw her over."
"I don't know. It's the sort of business a man can't very well chuck,
once he's let himself in for it. Every one blames him now for having
anything to do with Miss Lorenzi. They'd blame him a lot more for
throwing her over."
"Women wouldn't."
"No. Because he happens to be young and good-looking. But all his
popularity won't make the women who like him receive his wife. She isn't
a woman's woman."
"I should think not, indeed! We're too clever to be taken in by that
sort, all eyes and melodrama. They say Lord Northmorland warned his
brother against her, and prophesied she'd get hold of him, if he didn't
let her alone. The Duchess of Amidon told Lady Peggy Lynch--whom I know
a little--that immediately after Lorenzi committed suicide, this Margot
girl wrote to Stephen Knight and implored him to help her. I can quite
believe she would. Fancy the daughter of the unsuccessful claimant to
his brother's title writing begging letters to a young man like Stephen
Knight! It appeals to one's sense of humour."
"What a pity Knight didn't see it in that light--what?"
"Yet he has a sense of humour, I believe. It's supposed to be one of his
charms. But the sense of humour often fails where one's own affairs are
concerned. You know he's celebrated for his quaint ideas about life.
They say he has socialistic views, or something rather like them. His
brother and he are as different from one another as light is from
darkness. Stephen gives away a lot of money, and Lady Peggy says that
nobody ever asks him for anything in vain. He can't stand seeing people
unhappy, if he can do anything to help. Probably, after he'd been kind
to the Lorenzi girl, against his brother's advice, and gone to see her a
few times, she grovelled at his feet and told him she was all alone in
the world, and would die if he didn't love her. He's just young enough
and romantic enough to be caught in that way!"
"He's no boy. He must be nearly thirty."
"All nice, normal men are boys until after thirty. Lady Peggy's new name
for this poor child is the Martyr Knight."
"St. Stephen the Second is the last thing I heard. Stephen the First was
a martyr too, wasn't he? Stoned to death or something."
"I believe so," hastily returned the lady, who was not learned in
martyrology. "He will be stoned, too, if he tries to force Miss Lorenzi
on his family, or even on his friends. He'll find that he'll have to
take her abroad."
"That might be a good working plan. Foreigners wouldn't shudder at her
accent. And she's certainly one of the most gorgeously beautiful
creatures I ever saw."
"Yes, that's just the right expression. Gorgeous. And--a _creature_."
They both laughed, and fell to talking again of the interview.
Stephen Knight's ears were burning. He could not hear any of the things
people were saying; but he had a lively imagination, and, always
sensitive, he had grown morbidly so since the beginning of the
Northmorland-Lorenzi case, when all the failings and eccentricities of
the family had been reviewed before the public eye, like a succession of
cinematograph pictures. It did not occur to Stephen that he was an
object of pity, but he felt that through his own folly and that of
another, he had become a kind of scarecrow, a figure of fun: and because
until now the world had laughed with instead of at him, he would rather
have faced a shower of bullets than a ripple of ridicule.
"How do you do?" he inquired stiffly, and shook Miss Lorenzi's hand as
she gave it without rising from the pink sofa. She gazed up at him with
immense, yellowish brown eyes, then fluttered her long black lashes in a
way she had, which was thrilling--the first time you saw it. But Stephen
had seen it often.
"I am glad you've come, my White Knight!" she said in her contralto
voice, which would have been charming but for a crude accent. "I was so
afraid you were cross."
"I'm not cross, only extremely ang--vexed if you really did talk to that
journalist fellow," Stephen answered, trying not to speak sharply, and
keeping his tone low. "Only, for Heaven's sake, Margot, don't call
me--what you did call me--anywhere, but especially here, where we might
as well be on the stage of a theatre."
"Nobody can hear us," she defended herself. "You ought to like that dear
little name I made up because you came to my rescue, and saved me from
following my father--came into my life as if you'd been a modern St.
George. Calling you my 'White Knight' shows you how I feel--how I
appreciate you and everything. If you just _would_ realize that, you
couldn't scold me."
"I'm not scolding you," he said desperately. "But couldn't you have
stopped in your sitting-room--I suppose you have one--and let me see you
there? It's loathsome making a show of ourselves----"
"I _haven't_ a private sitting-room. It would have been too
extravagant," returned Miss Lorenzi. "Please sit down--by me."
Stephen sat down, biting his lip. He must not begin to lecture her, or
even to ask why she had exchanged her quiet lodgings for the Carlton
Hotel, because if he once began, he knew that he would be carried on to
unsafe depths. Besides, he was foolish enough to hate hurting a woman's
feelings, even when she most deserved to have them hurt.
"Very well. It can't be helped now. Let us talk," said Stephen. "The
first thing is, what to do with this newspaper chap, if you didn't give
him the interview----"
"Oh, I did give it--in a way," she admitted, looking rather frightened,
and very beautiful. "You mustn't do anything to him. But--of course it
was only because I thought it would be better to tell him the truth.
Surely it was?"
"Surely it wasn't. You oughtn't to have received him."
"Then do you mind so dreadfully having people know you've asked me to
marry you, and that I've said 'yes'?"
Margot Lorenzi's expression of pathetic reproach was as effective as her
eyelash play, when seen for the first time, as Stephen knew to his
sorrow. But he had seen the one as often as the other.
"You must know I didn't mean anything of the sort. Oh, Margot, if you
don't understand, I'm afraid you're hopeless."
"If you speak like that to me, I shall simply end everything as my
father did," murmured the young woman, in a stifled, breaking voice. But
her eyes were blazing.
It almost burst from Stephen to order her not to threaten him again, to
tell her that he was sick of melodrama, sick to the soul; but he kept
silence. She was a passionate woman, and perhaps in a moment of madness
she might carry out her threat. He had done a great deal to save her
life--or, as he thought, to save it. After going so far he must not fail
now in forbearance. And worse than having to live with beautiful,
dramatic Margot, would it be to live without her if she killed herself
because of him.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you," he said when he could control
his voice.
She smiled. "No, of course you didn't. It was stupid of me to fly out. I
ought to know that you're always good. But I _don't_ see what harm the
interview could do you, or me, or any one. It lets all the world know
how gloriously you've made up to me for the loss of the case, and the
loss of my father; and how you came into my life just in time to save me
from killing myself, because I was utterly alone, defeated, without
money or hope."
She spoke with the curiously thrilling emphasis she knew how to give her
words sometimes, and Stephen could not help thinking she did credit to
her training. She had been preparing for the stage in Canada, the
country of the Lorenzis' adoption, before her father brought her to
England, whither he came with a flourish of trumpets to contest Lord
Northmorland's rights to the title.
"The world knew too much about our affairs already," Stephen said
aloud. "And when you wished our engagement to be announced in _The
Morning Post_, I had it put in at once. Wasn't that enough?"
"Every one in the world doesn't read _The Morning Post_. But I should
think every one in the world has read that interview, or will soon,"
retorted Margot. "It appeared only yesterday morning, and was copied in
all the evening papers; in this morning's ones too; and they say it's
been cabled word for word to the big Canadian and American dailies."
Stephen had his gloves in his hand, and he tore a slit across the palm
of one, without knowing it. But Margot saw. He was thinking of the
heading in big black print at the top of the interview: "Romantic Climax
to the Northmorland-Lorenzi Case. Only Brother of Lord Northmorland to
Marry the Daughter of Dead Canadian Claimant. Wedding Bells Relieve Note
of Tragedy."
"We've nothing to be ashamed of--everything to be proud of," Miss
Lorenzi went on. "You, of your own noble behaviour to me, which, as I
said to the reporter, must be making my poor father happy in another
world. Me, because I have won You, _far_ more than because some day I
shall have gained all that father failed to win for me and himself. His
heart was broken, and he took his own life. My heart would have been
broken too, and but for you I----"
"Don't, please," Stephen broke in. "We won't talk any more about the
interview. I'd like to forget it. I should have called here yesterday,
as I wired in answer to your telegram saying you were at the Carlton,
but being at my brother's place in Cumberland, I couldn't get back
till----"
"Oh, I understand," Margot cut in. Then she laughed a sly little laugh.
"I think I understand too why you went to Cumberland. Now tell me.
Confession's good for the soul. Didn't your brother wire for you the
minute he saw that announcement in _The Morning Post_, day before
yesterday?"
"He did wire. Or rather the Duchess did, asking me to go at once to
Cumberland, on important business. I found your telegram, forwarded from
my flat, when I got to Northmorland Hall. If I'd known you were moving,
I wouldn't have gone till to-day."
"You mean, dear, you wouldn't have let me move? Now, do you think
there's any harm in a girl of my age being alone in a hotel? If you do,
it's dreadfully old-fashioned of you. I'm twenty-four."
During the progress of the case, it had been mentioned in court that the
claimant's daughter was twenty-nine (exactly Stephen Knight's age); but
Margot ignored this unfortunate slip, and hoped that Stephen and others
had forgotten.
"No actual harm. But in the circumstances, why be conspicuous? Weren't
you comfortable with Mrs. Middleton? She seemed a miraculously nice old
body for a lodging-house keeper, and fussed over you no end----"
"It was for your sake that I wanted to be in a good hotel, now our
engagement has been announced," explained Miss Lorenzi. "I didn't think
it suitable for the Honourable Stephen Knight's future wife to go on
living in stuffy lodgings. And as you've insisted on my accepting an
income of eighty pounds a month till we're married, I'm able to afford a
little luxury, dearest. I can tell you it's a pleasure, after all I've
suffered!--and I felt I owed you something in return for your
generosity. I wanted your _fiancée_ to do you credit in the eyes of the
world."
Stephen bit his lip. "I see," he said slowly.
Yet what he saw most clearly was a very different picture. Margot as she
had seemed the day he met her first, in the despised South Kensington
lodgings, whither he had been implored to come in haste, if he wished to
save a wretched, starving girl from following her father out of a cruel
world. Of course, he had seen her in court, and had reluctantly
encountered her photograph several times before he had given up looking
at illustrated papers for fear of what he might find in them. But
Margot's tragic beauty, as presented by photographers, or as seen from
a distance, loyally seated at the claimant's side, was as nothing to the
dark splendour of her despair when the claimant was in his new-made
grave. It was the day after the burial that she had sent for Stephen;
and her letter had arrived, as it happened, when he was thinking of the
girl, wondering whether she had friends who would stand by her, or
whether a member of his family might, without being guilty of bad taste,
dare offer help.
Her tear-blotted letter had settled that doubt, and it had been so
despairing, so suggestive of frenzy in its wording, that Stephen had
impulsively rushed off to South Kensington at once, without stopping to
think whether it would not be better to send a representative combining
the gentleness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent, and armed for
emergencies with a blank cheque.
Margot's hair, so charmingly dressed now, folding in soft dark waves on
either side her face, almost hiding the pink-tipped ears, had been
tumbled, that gloomy afternoon six weeks ago, with curls escaping here
and there; and in the course of their talk a great coil had fallen down
over her shoulders. It was the sort of thing that happens to the heroine
of a melodrama, if she has plenty of hair; but Stephen did not think of
that then. He thought of nothing except his sympathy for a beautiful
girl brought, through no fault of her own, to the verge of starvation
and despair, and of how he could best set about helping her.
She had not even money enough to buy mourning. Lorenzi had left debts
which she could not pay. She had no friends. She did not know what was
to become of her. She had not slept for many nights. She had made up her
mind to die as her father had died, because it seemed the only thing to
do, when suddenly the thought of Stephen had flashed into her mind, as
if sent there by her guardian angel. She had heard that he was good and
charitable to everybody, and once she had seen him looking at her
kindly, in court, as if he were sorry for her, and could read something
of what was in her heart. She had imagined it perhaps. But would he
forgive her for writing to him? Would he help her, and save her life?
Any one who knew Stephen could have prophesied what his answer would be.
He had hated it when she snatched his hand to kiss at the end of their
interview; but he would scarcely have been a human young man if he had
not felt a sudden tingle of the blood at the touch of such lips as
Margot Lorenzi's. Never had she seemed so beautiful to him since that
first day; but he had called again and again, against his brother's
urgent advice (when he had confessed the first visit); and the story
that the Duchess of Amidon was telling her friends, though founded
entirely on her own imagination of the scene which had brought about
Stephen's undoing, was not very far from the truth.
Now, he saw a picture of Margot as he had seen her in the lodgings she
hated; and he wished to heaven that he might think of her as he had
thought of her then.
"I've got something important to say to you," the girl went on, when she
realized that Stephen intended to dismiss the subject of the hotel, as
he had dismissed the subject of the interview. "That's the reason I
wired. But I won't speak a word till you've told me what your brother
and the Duchess of Amidon think about you and me."
"There's nothing to tell," Stephen answered almost sullenly. And indeed
there was no news of his Cumberland visit which it would be pleasant or
wise to retail.
Margot Lorenzi's complexion was not one of her greatest beauties. It was
slightly sallow, so she made artistic use of a white cosmetic, which
gave her skin the clearness of a camellia petal. But she had been
putting on rather more than usual since her father's death, because it
was suitable as well as becoming to be pale when one was in deep
mourning. Consequently Margot could not turn perceptibly whiter, but she
felt the blood go ebbing away from her face back upon her heart.
"Stephen! Don't they mean to receive me, when we're married?" she
stammered.
"I don't think they've much use for either of us," Stephen hedged, to
save her feelings. "Northmorland and I have never been great pals, you
know. He's twenty years older than I am; and since he married the
Duchess of Amidon----"
"And her money! Oh, it's no use beating about the bush. I hate them
both. Lord Northmorland has a fiendish, vindictive nature."
"Come, you mustn't say that, Margot. He has nothing of the sort. He's a
curious mixture. A man of the world, and a bit of a Puritan----"
"So are you a Puritan, at heart," she broke in.