Three Persons Go Three Ways
As he realized the full meaning of Lord Kneedrock's amazing statement,
the young and unhappy baronet started. His eyes opened very wide and his
jaw dropped, leaving his mouth open, too, though not so wide.
"Yes, we're married," Kneedrock continued. "We've been married a long
time."
The only thing that could have drowned the sound of the proverbial
dropping pin was the low snoring of one of the sleeping dogs.
"It was one of those useful businesses that are managed sometimes," the
speaker amplified without any feeling apparently. "Nobody knew. Nobody
knows. I went to South Africa, was supposed to have been killed in
battle, and Darling came along.
"She married him at the end of a year, and went to India with him. It
was about then that I got my memory back. My head was pretty badly
knocked about, you see, and for months I didn't know my own name. Of
course I heard about it, but I kept my mouth shut and hid myself away in
the South Pacific."
Carleigh just stared. It was altogether too much for him to grasp fully.
So he had no questions. But Kneedrock kept on:
"So she wasn't exactly the debutante that Darling thought. Naturally,
it's all a mess. Everything's a mess. You take my advice and go off with
your mother-in-law."
Carleigh was shaking now as if with the ague.
"They call the whole business love," Nibbetts said. "Well, I thank
Heaven I had it young! I'm the one man that Nina can't fool. She knows
it. I know it. And you know it, too, now.
"Of course she hasn't any claim on me, and I haven't on her. But we
shall neither of us ever marry. That's understood. We can't very well.
Don't talk about this. Going? Well, then, good-by, old chap! Better go
off with Mrs. Veynol. Good-by!"
Carleigh got out somehow. He was faint and giddy. He went to one of his
many clubs, and sat there for a long while. Life looked to him a very
low, sordid business.
Outside there was fog and mud, slime and filth. And in his heart there
was little that was cleaner.
* * * * *
Nina went down to Puddlewood the next week and surprised everybody.
They weren't expecting her in the least. They hadn't heard a word from
her or of her, and they didn't know a thing about the skin-grafting and
the wonderful success that Pottow, aided by the Andrews cuticle, had
made of it.
They were all gathered in the great hall for tea when she arrived, and
her entrance was rather dramatic. She insisted that she should not be
announced, but permitted to find her way in alone.
The black staghound, Tara, was with her, and at her command he preceded
her, bounding into the group with Nina's umbrella gripped in his lean
jaws.
Every woman screamed, and every man who was not already standing sprang
to his feet.
"God bless my soul!" cried the duke. "How did that beast get here? It's
Nina Darling's. There isn't another such in all England."
Lord Waltheof reached for the umbrella, which Tara gave up without
protest, and turned with expectant gaze toward the door.
"It's Mrs. Darling's umbrella," said Wally, examining the initials on
the silver-gilt handle. "She must be here."
The duchess rose at that, and her gaze joined that of the hound. She and
every one else had the same question in mind: "How will she look?" But
there was a very trying delay before it was answered.
Nina came running in an instant later; but, to the dismay of the
curious, she was thickly and closely veiled.
From this, of course, they drew their own conclusions, just as she
wished them to. Every last one of them believed that her face was not
fit to be seen.
Every man, without exception, was sorry--deeply sorry; and every woman,
without exception, wasn't. Nina's beauty had always been a hard thing to
combat.
For the duchess's kiss she lifted her veil the least bit and presented
the extreme point of her chin. The duchess, observing closely, noted
that it was unmarred, and concluded that it was the only portion of her
great-niece's face that was.
"I have been perfectly brutal to all of you," Nina admitted gaily, "but
when you hear my story I'm sure you'll all forgive me."
It is hard for most women to forgive a pretty woman, but to forgive a
pretty woman who has suddenly become ugly is not so difficult.
They--the women, that is--were disposed to overlook the poor creature's
rudeness. The men were always her slaves, so they didn't count. It was
the women she had appealed to, anyhow.
"Nina never is brutal," declared the duke. "I say, Doody, haven't I
always said--"
But no one was listening, not even the duchess, who rarely failed to
confirm him.
"I've had the most awful time with my burns," Nina was hurrying on; "and
I hadn't the heart to write letters, talk, or even see any one. I denied
myself to everybody."
"Until you were quite all right again, I suppose?" ventured Lady
Bellingdown in an effort to draw her.
"Until I got so desperately lonely--so hungry for the faces and voices
of my own people--that I should have come to you even without any face
at all."
It was an unfortunate choice of phrasing. Every one noticed it and
thought of poor Darling. Every one, that is, except Nina herself, to
whom the comparison never occurred. She was too occupied in thinking of
how Charlotte Grey would look when she saw her without her veil.
"You needn't mind us, of course," said Charlotte just at that minute.
"Oh, I don't!" Nina came back. "I know you'll overlook any blemishes."
"Indeed we will," agreed the duke; "we're all so devilish glad to see
you!" He put a hand under her elbow and whispered close to her ear.
"Come sit by me. There's some very excellent seed-cake."
Then, laughing, Nina sat down with the duke on her right and Sir George
Grey on the other side of her. The three ladies faced her directly. So
did Lord Waltheof, who had his customary place behind Kitty
Bellingdown's chair.
A footman came in with the tea-things, and Nina glanced around
inquiringly. "Isn't Nibbetts here?" she asked, striving to make the
question appear casual.
Everybody seemed to look at everybody else, and no one was in any haste
to answer. Already the duchess was busy with the cups and saucers.
"Nibbetts has gone to Scotland," Shucks finally told her.
"Is it possible he's still running after his marmalade lass?" she
laughed. "You men do have odd tastes."
"Something wrong with Nibbetts--that's a fact," declared his grace
bluntly. "Does most unheard-of things."
"I don't understand," she said, turning to him with sudden seriousness.
"What unheard-of things, for example?"
But here the duchess intervened. "Do be still, Pucketts. You're very
hard on Nibbetts. You always were. He's never been anything but
eccentric. Why magnify a phase of it into something extraordinary?"
"Because it is extraordinary," the duke defended. "Fancy a man haunting
the tiger-house at the Zooelogical Gardens day after day, and for hours
at a stretch! It's not sane, you know."
Nina bent her veiled face closer to him. "Does Hal Kneedrock do that?"
she asked.
"He did," was the answer. "I saw him there myself. Others saw him. I
say, Doody, didn't I see Nibbetts in the tiger-house?"
"I dare say you did," his wife confirmed. "But what of it?"
"It's very odd, I say. Very odd. It looks like second childhood. The
kiddies like to go to the tiger-house."
No one else said a word. But they all seemed most interested, in Nina
especially.
"But now he's gone to Scotland, you say?" she asked.
"Yes, to Scotland. Are there any zooelogical gardens in Scotland, I
wonder? Doody, are there any zooelogical gardens in Scotland?"
"Nibbetts has gone to Dundee," the duchess returned, pouring tea. "I
don't fancy he'll be able to find any tigers there."
"There's a girl there," said Nina. "He told me so. A girl and a parrot.
Can you imagine Nibbetts and a romance?" Her laugh rippled through her
veil.
Sir George handed her her tea, and she lifted her veil to a point
between her nose and her upper lip. The women stared, and so did the
men. But there wasn't a scar in sight.
"Do try the seed-cake," urged the duke. "I can recommend it. I can,
really."
Nina tried it. A minute later her veil went to the bridge of her nose,
which she brushed with a filmy speck of handkerchief.
They all gazed over their cups, and their eyes testified to their
astonishment. Her cheeks were of rose-leaf texture, unmarred.
Then, quite casually, she put down her cup and saucer, lifted her arms,
got busy with her hands, and--presto!--her hat and veil were off and her
whole face bare to where her golden hair swept across her brow.
Charlotte Grey gasped. The duchess and Lady Bellingdown were dumb.
"By gad!" exclaimed Waltheof in a fervor of astonished admiration.
"You're more beautiful than ever, Mrs. Darling."
"We fancied you were horribly marked," cried the duke. "We did, really.
All purple blotches and that sort of thing. Didn't we, Doody?"
"Speak for yourself, Pucketts," said Doody. "I could never imagine Nina
anything but lovely."
Kitty Bellingdown had turned to frown at her cavalier. She regarded his
outburst as quite unnecessary and very ill-timed.
Charlotte Grey gasped a second time. Then she said: "I'd be willing to
be burned to get a complexion like yours, dear."
"But, you see, I had the foundation to begin on; and I had a friend who
was willing to sacrifice something for me," replied Nina sweetly. So
sweetly that Charlotte Grey fairly gritted her teeth.
Lady Bellingdown grasped the situation and rushed to the rescue with a
change of subject.
"Nina," she said, "did you know that Caryll had returned to his wife?"
Then it was really Mrs. Darling's turn to gasp. "Really!" she exclaimed.
"Yes. He was in England for a week, but never came near us. It seems
they had a quarrel over some trifle and he ran away to give her a
lesson. Unfortunately it got into the papers."
"I saw it," Nina white-lied valiantly.
"But did you see about Mrs. Veynol?"
"You mean--"
"About her marriage."
"Her marriage? Surely--"
"Yes. She's married for the third time. Now it's a journalist, a
sub-editor on one of the cheap and nasty society weeklies. Fancy!"
"Ah, that cleared the way, then. Caryll would never have gone back
otherwise."
"You think that?"
"I know it. He told me as much."
"You mean you saw him--saw him the week he was here?"
Nina colored faintly. She had not meant to tell.
"Yes," she answered. "He came to me at Bath. He wanted me to save him.
He couldn't quite decide between the pair of them, so he wished to
compromise on me."
Lady Bellingdown nearly boiled over.
"He's a most ungrateful boy," she cried. "He must have known how anxious
we all were about you, and he never sent me a line. Only a wire that he
had returned to Nice and Rosamond."
"If he--" Nina began, and finished with: "He might have said Rosamond
and Nice. Don't you think so? It's straws, you know--"
After dinner that evening Nina got the duke alone in a corner.
"Tell me more about Hal Kneedrock," she begged, taking the clawlike
ducal hand in both her own. "Is there anything really wrong, do you
think?"
His grace, out of ear-shot of the duchess, didn't mince matters. "Mad as
a hatter," he said earnestly. "Brain gone all to pieces over something.
No doubt about it. Poor old Nibbetts!"
"But how? What has he done except haunt the tiger-house?"
"Nothing. But the way he haunts it. There all day, you know, from
opening to close, every day of the week."
"That's an odd mania. Can't anything be done? Has any one talked with
him?"
"Yes," answered the duke. "His man. Bellingdown and I saw his man and
told him what was up. We asked him to keep his master in sight and see
that no harm came to him. Just that. But the beggar exceeded his
instructions. He let Kneedrock see him and then he tried to argue him
out of his habit."
"And what did Hal say?"
"He didn't say; he acted. He beat the poor fellow up most fearfully.
Went into a towering rage, in fact."
"And now nobody'll speak to him about it, I suppose," cried Nina
indignantly. "You men are such cowards."
"No, no, no," the duke protested. "It isn't that, my child. It isn't
really. But, you see, it's a most delicate matter. He probably has some
reason for going there that in his own mind seems perfectly right and
proper."
"Then, after all, why interfere?"
"Because he's attracting attention. Or was. Of course, he's not now.
He's in Dundee, you know."
"Yes. I've heard that. When he comes back perhaps he won't go to the
tiger-house any more."
His grace adjusted his monocle and carefully examined his three massive
rings of yellow gold, handsomely set with jewels.
"If he does there'll be trouble," he said quietly.
"But if he's not creating a disturbance?"
"Ah, but he is. That's just it. He collects a crowd."
"How?"
The duke hesitated. "I suppose it's this that Kitty was afraid I'd tell
you. You've been through a lot of nervous strain, with the fire and
things, and she wanted to save you. I can see it."
Nina naturally was doubly interested. "You've gone too far now to turn
back," she said. "You must tell me the rest. I have a right to know
all."
"Well, it's this way"--the duke dropped his glass and turned to her, his
voice very low--"it's just one cage that he's a _penchant_ for. He
stands before it, or paces up and down before it continuously." Then he
paused.
Nina was growing annoyed. "What of it?" she asked.
"You know that story he's always telling you--that you're a reincarnated
tigress. Well, this is the cage of a tigress."
"I think you are all very silly," she declared. "Fancy connecting the
two facts! He's probably doing it on a wager--or been doing it." But
she was disturbed, nevertheless.
"The tigress is a very handsome beast," continued the duke, "and--you
may as well have the worst of it--he talks to her. He mumbles under his
breath. Sometimes it's a tone that is most adoring, and again he berates
her scandalously. And, Nina, you'd never imagine it, but it's quite
true--the creature seems to understand."
Then she laughed nervously. "No," she said. "I won't believe that. It's
too silly for words. I'm surprised at you, Pucketts, taking such a thing
seriously. Nibbetts has been playing a joke on you. And your imagination
has done the rest. I never heard such ridiculous folderol in all my
life."
She stood up and started to move away, but the duke was by her side.
"There's one thing he says that is quite plain," he continued. "I heard
it and Bellingdown heard it. We were there beside him, and he didn't so
much as see us. He was blind to everything except that great, lithe,
purring she-cat."
Nina turned to him. In spite of her little speech of repudiation she was
all a-quiver from head to feet. "What was it?" she asked.
"He was calling the beast Nina."