Wald Ensor came back to his flat in Ebury Street some time in the
early piping dawn and found a cablegram lying in his letter-box. It
told him of the sudden death of a distant but beloved relation, out in
California, a man in whose business he had a concern. A day or two
later he had arranged his affairs and sailed for the other side. He
had found time before he left to forward a bulky package to Miss
Adelaide Favarger, containing the skin of a leopard which he had shot
himself, and of which he had spoken to Adelaide. It went with her,
somehow, and she had looked flattered when he said so. He had now a
very friendly feeling towards her, she seemed to him, on the whole,
since their mutual experience, to be a saner, worthier member of the
community than before.
He did not fancy, when he stepped off this hemisphere, that he was
leaving Europe for a very long time. But it was so. He married out in
California. He conceived it to be out of pity in some sort, an idea of
giving a girl, much buffeted by fortune, a home. But as a matter of
fact Adelaide had awakened the zest of the eternal feminine in a man
who had imagined himself to be a confirmed bachelor. The girl was
saved, domesticated, but Wald Ensor’s attempts at civism and paternity
were not blessed in the usual way. After they had been married five
years his wife died in giving birth to a child, which died too. Then
he drifted, bereft of his casual impetus towards a settled life. His
cousin died, leaving him fairly well off. He started several
adventures in the world of business, nearly all of which failed, for
he had not what is called _la main heureuse_.
With an orange grove that did not pay, left on his hands, and nothing
else to speak of, he came back to Europe. Temporarily crippled in his
resources, he decided to lie low till matters should have righted
themselves. He was too proud to take his place in society, and go out
while his only dress suit was shiny at the knees. He avoided London.
He did, however, call in Portland Place and found new inmates
established there, and was told that old Dr. Favarger was dead and
Miss Favarger gone, no one knew where, and that she had taken the cook
with her.
It was in Yorkshire on a market-day, in Beverley, that he met Adelaide
again.
At first sight she seemed very little altered, only he realized that
he had always imagined that she was taller. She was walking with her
old staccato step that suggested some congenital weakness, such as a
slightly stiffened spine, on the rough cobbled stones of the market,
about and among the pens and improvised folds that prisoned lowing
cows and calves and indifferent, sullen bulls. She was not alone. Her
companion was a beautiful girl of about fifteen, a whole head taller
than herself. Perhaps that was why he thought her shrunken? There was
about her a slight countrified air, which differed greatly from the
exaggerated, rather meretricious style in which the old Adelaide had
been used to make her points, and strive to enhance her own peculiar
charm.
The two women were absorbed. They were leaning on the well-worn wooden
rail, which served to pen in the unruly cattle, and watched with
interest and attention the movements of a magnificent young bull,
which had as nearly as possible succeeded in wrenching his neck free
from the clumsy headstall that fixed him to the post. His
discontented, inflamed eyes, his stubby, determined shoulder, the
dull, passionate intentness on freedom manifested by his attitude
seemed to fascinate the elder woman, who was expatiating on his
beauties to the seemingly less interested spectator beside her.…
“Nice beast, isn’t he, Phillis?” she murmured.
“Yes, but he’ll get his head out in about a minute!” the child said
nervously.
“Then it will be Hell let loose,” replied the elder woman, evidencing
a sort of savage enjoyment in the spectacle of the younger one’s
timidity. She continued, gloating, “He’d have the whole place cleared
in no time. Shall we stay and see the racket?”