A MAN MUST ACT AS HE THINKS BEST
Louisa knew the flat in Exhibition Road very well. She had helped Edie
to furnish it, and to make it pretty and cosey, for Edie's passion was
for dogs and for golf; drawing-room chairs and saucepans were not much
in her line. So Louisa had chosen practically everything--the piano,
as well as the coal-scuttles, and every stick of furniture in Luke's
room.
To-night she went up the well-known stairs very slowly: she ached so
in every limb that she could scarcely walk. She seemed to have aged
twenty years in two days.
Edie was sitting alone in the pretty drawing room buried in a
capacious arm-chair, her hands folded before her. The room was in
darkness save for the glow of the firelight. She jumped up when
Colonel Harris and Louisa were announced and the neat servant in black
dress and smart cap and apron switched on the electric light.
"Oh," said poor little Edie impetuously, "I am so thankful you've
come!"
She ran up to Louisa and put her arms round her, kissing her.
"Do come and sit with me," she continued, loath to relinquish Colonel
Harris's hand after she had shaken it, "I feel that in this solitude I
shall go dotty."
Whilst she spoke, she detached with nervous, febrile movements
Louisa's fur from round her neck, and dragged the older woman nearer
to herself and to the fire. Then she threw herself down on the hearth
rug, squatting there in front of the fire, with nervy fingers picking
at the fringe of the rug. Her cheeks were red and blotchy with traces
of recent tears, her hair, towzled and damp, clung to her moist
temples. Suddenly she burst into a torrent of weeping.
"Oh, Lou! what does it all mean?" she exclaimed between heavy sobs.
"What does it all mean? They say Luke has murdered that odious Philip!
and I have been cooped up here for two days now, not daring to go out!
ashamed to face any one! and Luke--Luke--oh!"
The outburst was almost hysterical. The young girl was obviously
fearfully overwrought, and had endured a severe nerve-strain by not
having the means of giving vent to her feelings. Colonel Harris, with
all an Englishman's horror of feminine scenes, was clearing his
throat, looking supremely uncomfortable all the time.
"Sh!--sh!" admonished Louisa impatiently, "be quiet, Edie, you mustn't
go on like that! Be quiet now!" she added more severely seeing that
the girl made no effort to control herself. "What will your servants
think?"
"Do you suppose," retorted Edie, "that I care what they think? They
can't think more, can they? when they all talk of Luke as if he were a
murderer."
"Do for God's sake be silent, Edie. This is too awful."
And Louisa, almost roughly, dragged herself away from the girl's
hysterical embrace. She had tried so hard for two days and two nights
to keep herself together, and her nerves in check. All day to-day had
been one long continuous battle against the danger of "breaking
down," that bugbear of the conventional woman of the world.
Now this danger, backed up by this poor child's grief, loomed greater
than ever, now--now--that "breaking down" would become a positive sin,
the most abject form of cowardice. But Edie's bewilderment, her
loneliness, were intensely pathetic. Louisa had tried to be severe,
and insisted on checking the access of hysteria, but her heart went
out to the child, and to her puzzlement in face of this awful,
un-understandable riddle.
"Look here, Edie," she said gently, putting her own kind arms round
the quaking shoulders of the younger girl, "you are just going to show
father and me how brave you can be. You are Luke's nearest and dearest
one on earth; you must not add to his troubles by this exaggerated
show of grief. We'll all have to be brave--all of us--but Luke will
have to be the bravest of us all, and so we must all do our best to
keep up our courage, and help his own."
She was not accustomed to making such long speeches, nor yet to preach
and to admonish. Life, before now, had never placed her in the
necessity of admonishing others: everybody round her--the people with
whom she came in contact always behaved very much as they should--in
the proper conventional worldly manner. People she had hitherto to do
with, did not give way to hysterical tears, nor had they occasion to
display fortitude in the face of an overwhelming moral shock.
Therefore Louisa was not sure if her words would carry weight, or if
they would produce the effect she desired. She gazed anxiously at Edie
whilst she spoke, looking with hopeful yet fearful eyes in the poor
girl's face, wondering if she had succeeded in calming the hysterical
outburst.
Edie hung her head, wilfully veiling her eyes beneath the drooping
lids. She twirled her gossamer handkerchief into a tight wet ball and
toyed with it nervously.
"It's not much good," she said at last, in very low tones so that
Louisa had some difficulty in hearing what she said, "my trying to be
brave--when Luke is such a coward!"
"Be quiet, Edie," retorted Louisa, all her kindness and sympathy gone,
and pushing the girl roughly away from her. "You have no right to talk
like that."
"Well, Colonel Harris," rejoined Edie, turning to the man in her
distress, "I ask you, if it isn't just cowardice to run away now, and
leave me and Jim to face the whole thing alone?"
"To run away? What do you mean?" demanded Louisa, placing her hand on
the girl's shoulder, forcing her to turn round and to face her.
"Who's running away?" queried Colonel Harris with a frown.
"Luke," said Edie hotly, "is running away. He came home just now, and
calmly told me that he was going off abroad to-night, and since then
he has been shut up in his room, packing his things. I have been all
alone here all day. Jim won't be home till late to-night. Poor old
Jim! what a fearful home-coming it will be for him."
But to this renewal of Edie's lamentations, Louisa had not listened,
only to the words: "Luke said that he was going abroad to-night!"
Luke--fugitive from justice! The monstrous, unbelievable picture
which she had tried to visualize just now had become a mirror
reflecting awful, hideous reality.
"Where's Luke?" asked the colonel. "I'd better see him."
"No, father," interposed Louisa quickly. "I'd sooner speak to Luke.
Can I go to him, Edie?"
"Yes, I think so," replied the other. "I don't suppose that he has
locked his door."
"Louisa," said her father gently, "I don't think you'll be doing any
good, dear. A man must act as he thinks best."
"I'm not," she replied, "going to interfere with Luke's plans. I only
want to speak to him. Don't bother, Edie. I know my way."