An End to the Gossip
All masculine and human as he was, Sir Caryll Carleigh emerged from that
darkened room with a vivid vision still remaining of the white bandaged
face and a keen awareness of the engagement ring once more in his
possession, enormously eased.
If there was a sense of somewhat summary dismissal to annoy, it was more
than offset by the knowledge that he was absolutely free. Yes, free even
of the chain made by his own impulsive speech.
A thoroughly foolish man, embarrassed by the product of his various and
gregarious emotions, may still have sense enough left to experience
relief at being afforded a fresh chance.
Life, in spots, was very trying to the young baronet, but still it might
have been far worse.
One may not enjoy being buffeted about by a woman one is almost sure one
loves. Still it's a poor ball that isn't conscious of a thrill as it
rises in the air of limitless freedom after a hard kick.
So Carleigh went lightly along the corridor and turned lightly at the
angle. And as he turned he came face to face with Rosamond Veynol. And
Rosamond, it so chanced, was looking beautiful as she had never looked
beautiful before.
He stopped abruptly, and so did she. He gasped, and she likewise gasped.
But, somehow, it was far less awful than before, because here there was
no one present to witness their behavior.
He put out his hand and she put hers in it before she thought. It came
to him just then, suddenly, that he had told her he had offered himself
to Mrs. Darling and given her the ring. And now he had that very ring in
his waistcoat pocket.
His breath came fast--so fast that it almost choked him.
"Rosamond!" he stammered. "Oh, Rosamond!"
She was dressed for traveling and was evidently just on her way down. In
point of fact she was about quitting the house to save herself further
embarrassment.
She wasn't expecting to meet Carleigh on that side of the house, and the
encounter had startled her, as it did him, more than slightly.
She stood, actually panting. She strove to look at him, and failed
utterly. Then she tried to free her hand and failed in that, too.
Had the place been less public he would surely have taken her in his
arms. But dinner was barely an hour off, and guests were likely to be
passing at any minute.
Moreover, being at the angle of the corridor, they were likely to come
upon them without any warning whatever; just as they had come upon one
another.
"Rosie," he said, without the slightest premeditation or consideration,
"I've been very unhappy and very foolish, and Mrs. Darling has brought
me to my senses. She doesn't want me and she doesn't want the ring. Will
you take it back? Will you take _me_ back? She says that you are the
one I love, and I think she knows."
All this at headlong speed, spoken as fast as he could form and utter
the words. As he ended he opened the hand that had been fumbling at a
pocket and showed her the ring--her engagement ring--lying in his palm.
She seemed to stumble and fall sideways against the wall, and his arm
went out to steady her.
"Oh!" she gasped. "And mama? What of mama?"
"We'll run away and get married." His words were as wild as her own.
"We'll tell no one. We'll fly. And afterward--afterward--" But there he
stuck.
"And mama?" she said again. "And mama?"
He was sure now that for him she was the only woman in the world. "We
will live abroad," he said heartily. "Ceylon, Yukon, or some place"--his
imagination surely had limitations this evening--"and we will never come
back."
Rosamond at length achieved control.
"Mama will never leave us in peace," she declared. "Mama will find us
wherever we go. Believe me, mama is quite set against the marriage. She
will not have it. And she says if it goes forward _ever_, she'll surely
take you away from me. I can't tell you what awful things she's told
me--things you've said to her. Terrible things."
At that he paled and loosed her hand. Certainly the corridor was far too
public for this kind of conversation; and yet all he could sense was the
odor of probable triumph--the exaltation, the exhilaration of winning
out.
Never mind the mother; that selfish, narrow-viewed American grass-widow,
who had her little way of having her little way on all occasions and
under all circumstances.
He was determined that Rosamond Veynol must go off with him, so that
Nina--and everybody else, of course, might hear of it. All other
considerations were forgotten. He seized her hand again.
"Listen, my dear girl," he pleaded. "We do love one another. We've said
so a thousand times. Your mama doesn't want the match, and we've tried
to break it off. We can't break it off. It's too strong for us. We both
have found that out.
"When I suddenly saw you this morning I knew it was too strong for me.
Now you know it, too. But we can't put it through in the open. So let us
put it through in the only other way. Let's run off. And at once."
She lifted her eyes to his and he felt that she would help him to manage
it somehow. He didn't stop an instant to consider that perhaps she, too,
had her triumph to secure. Rosamond was human too.
There was the world, and her mother, and--Mrs. Darling. Oh, especially
there was Mrs. Darling. Carleigh didn't know, and Nina didn't know.
Nobody knew, in fact, but Rosamond Veynol.
Caryll took her in his arms, unresisting, and hugged her very close. He
had been warned about the corridor, but he didn't heed in time.
He was still holding her, and his lips were pressed tightly to hers,
when Cecile turned the angle and uttered a little cry of astonishment.
Of course there was no escape.
"We--we're going to be married at once," Carleigh explained,
stammeringly. And Rosamond, nodding, blushed as red as a peony.
"I am glad," Cecile congratulated.
"But--but--you see," the young baronet continued, one arm still held
possessively about his fiancee's waist, "while we're delighted that you
should know, we aren't quite ready to tell society in general."
"I understand perfectly. Rely on me to preserve your confidence. I think
it is positively lovely."
"Yes, isn't it?" said Rosamond. "Caryll and I were made for one another.
You do understand, don't you, dear Mrs. Archdeacon?"
"Perfectly," repeated Cecile. "By the bye, dear, the car has been
waiting for you this half hour. If you've changed your mind--"
Rosamond shook her head vigorously. "Oh, but I haven't," she returned.
Then she said to Caryll: "I'm going over to the Manse, at Ranleigh
Copse, for a couple of days. If you'd care to ride over to-morrow--"
"Care to?" he murmured. "How can I wait until to-morrow? Suppose I run
over with you now, just to see you safely there."
"Won't you be late getting back to dinner?" asked the chatelaine of
Carfen House. "The countess might, you know, be annoyed."
Carleigh smiled. "As the earl has failed to fit me with pumps," he said,
"I consider myself excusable. Would you mind explaining for me, my dear
Cecile?"
Of course he drove over to the Manse with Rosamond. Nothing in the
world could have held him back just then.
And on the way he told her of how nearly he had lost his life in the
fire and of how her face had come before him in what he believed was his
last moment.
"That should prove beyond everything how I love you, dearest," he
murmured.
"I don't require any proof, Caryll, my own," she said. "I feel it so
deep, deep down in the heart of me. Our brain knows other things, but it
is with our heart that we know the things of love."
There was a great deal of this sort of thing on the way over, and if the
chauffeur had sharp ears he must have been very much amused or--very
much bored.
Love-making is always so infinitely entertaining to the lovers, with
every burning word a fresh delight; and yet how tiresome, flat, trite,
stale, and unprofitable to the disinterested yet enforced listener.
Carleigh got back to Cross Saddle Hall in ample time to dress for
dinner, and found no less than a dozen pairs of pumps of varying sizes
spread out on his floor for inspection and selection.
After dining he redressed and went up to town by a late train. The next
day he returned his borrowed attire, and then he went down to
Bellingdown once more for a long and important conference with his aunt.
It took place in Lady Bellingdown's boudoir, and this is the way he
began it: "Rosamond and I are to be married within a week, and we'd like
to be married here."
Lady Bellingdown's breath was quite taken away. She couldn't say a
thing. So her nephew proceeded: "You see, we thought first of going to
the registrar, saying nothing to any one, and just slipping off to some
foreign paradise all by ourselves.
"But Rosamond says she never expects to be married but once, and that as
she has her wedding-gown all ready and waiting she might as well wear it
and show it."
"But I thought--" began his kinswoman, and got no farther.
"You thought I was in love with Mrs. Darling," he interrupted. "So
I--No, I wasn't. I was fascinated, infatuated. But I--Of course you
heard about the fire at Carfen?"
"We heard she was horribly burned. Do tell me the particulars."
"They say she's disfigured," he explained. "Her face is all swathed
now."
"That will rob her of her power. And she was so beautiful."
"Yes, she was beautiful," agreed Carleigh. "And she did have power. She
could make a man forget his eternal soul."
"Nina was wonderful at making men forget," said his Aunt Kitty. "She
made you forget, didn't she?"
"For a little while. Then, by purest chance, I saw Rosamond again,
and--well, I knew that she was the only woman I could ever really care
for as one's wife should be cared for. She is an angel."
"But her mother?"
"Ah, her mother. We are going to keep clear of Mrs. Veynol."
"Can you?"
"Certainly. We must, you see. I don't know what it is, but she rouses
all the devil there is in me. And then--" He paused.
"And then?" Lady Bellingdown asked.
"Then she tells Rosamond."
"Was that how she separated you before? I never exactly knew."
"That was at the bottom of it."
"And you mean to be married now--here--without letting her know?"
"Yes. Once we are married, what can she do? Rosie's of age, you know.
She doesn't have to ask any one's consent. When she is Lady Carleigh we
can defy the mater."
"But I thought you were going to keep out of the way."
"We are if--if we can. Absence is better than defiance, isn't it?"
"Absence may be defiance," said his aunt. "I didn't think of it that
way."
"Yes," he agreed, but he evidently had some misgiving.
"But you're not so certain as you were a minute ago that you can keep
the place of your absence a secret. Is that it?"
"Mrs. Veynol has an uncanny faculty of finding things out," he confided
miserably.
"Now, there's where Nina has an advantage," Lady Bellingdown suggested.
"She has no mother. You would have had no distressing mother-in-law."
Sir Caryll was thoughtful. Then: "But Mrs. Darling is too old for me.
She said so herself."
"I suppose that's true. Nina seems fixed in her purpose never to marry.
Fancy a woman saying she is too old for any man!"
"She counts by experience rather than years possibly. One would never
think of age in her case if she didn't remind one."
"She's very lovely," said Kitty Bellingdown with something of finality.
"Where will you and Rosamond spend your honeymoon?" she added.
"That's just it," Carleigh returned with knitted brow. "It's the one
problem that troubles me. Honeymoon places are so devilishly well known.
All Mrs. Veynol would have to do is to keep her eyes on the newspapers.
She'd spot us within a week. And then--she'd follow."
"You might travel _incognito_."
"On one's wedding journey? Never! How can you think of it, Aunt Kitty?
Don't you see--"
"Of course I see," she broke in. "Forgive me. It never once occurred to
me."
Then they let that question drop, having been frightened away by thus
straying on dangerous ground.
The arrangements for the nuptials were all completed in the next hour.
They were not to be in any wise simple. They were to be very imposing,
in fact, with a whole house full of guests, hurriedly brought together,
yet every one under a strict bond of secrecy.
Rosamond was to stop on at the Manse until the second day before. Then
she was to withdraw her trousseau from where it had been so hurriedly
rushed into storage in London and appear at Bellingdown on the eve of
her last day of maidenhood.
Lord Waltheof was deputed to look after minor details; but Lord
Kneedrock, could his consent be obtained, was to be best man.
Carleigh saw personally to this, of course, and encountered no trouble.
Kneedrock consented without demur and offered to see his grace, the
Archbishop of Highshire, and arrange with him to perform the ceremony.
And, wonder of wonders, everything was carried out precisely as planned!
The September day proved glorious. The sun shone on the bride in good
omen, and the bride was a picture of loveliness.
Many of the presents, returned six weeks before, came back in the same
wrappings, and most of the rest would probably come later when the
givers learned what had happened and how.
But no one--not even Lady Bellingdown--was given a hint as to the
honeymoon destination of bride and bridegroom.
They drove away toward London under a deluging shower of rice and old
slippers, and with white ribbon--yards and yards of it--streaming from
every attachable place on Sir Caryll's own motor-car.
After they had gone the guests continued very merry. A great quantity of
champagne had been consumed in drinking the health and happiness of the
launched voyagers on the matrimonial sea, and every one's spirits were
keyed high.
Every one's, that is to say, except Kitty Bellingdown's and Kneedrock's.
"Poor dear Caryll!" sighed his aunt, who, like some others, always chose
to weep over those that were given in matrimony. "Well, and so he's
married at last!"
"And such a surprise!" exclaimed the duke. "I say, Doody, wasn't it a
surprise?"
Doody didn't say anything. She was trying a new dance-step with
Waltheof.
"And so now there's an end to the gossip," contributed Charlotte Grey.
Kneedrock, who had his back turned, wheeled around.
"Oh, is there?" he observed in his characteristic ringing undertone.
The duchess gave over trying the dance-step, and joined the group.
"His mother-in-law will be after them, of course," she said. "There'll
be no keeping it from her. Such a dreadful person she is!"
"She rides races in boy's clothes," put in the duke. "She does--doesn't
she, Doody?"
"And she bathes in one-piece, Continental bathing-suits," volunteered
Waltheof. "I've seen her at Ostend. Ripping figure for the mother of
such a big girl!"
"I wonder what will happen next?" mused Lady Bellingdown, who loved
Carleigh like a son and was more than a little frightened.
"Nina will happen next," said Lord Kneedrock, _sotto voce_.
He was wondering why it was that the new Lady Carleigh reminded him so
much of that Ramsay girl he had met through Nina at Simla.