COFFEE FOR ONE ONLY
The breaking up of Mr. Grex's luncheon-party was the signal for a
certain amount of man[oe]uvring on the part of one or two of his guests.
Monsieur Douaille, for instance, was anxious to remain the escort of
Lady Hunterleys, whose plans for the afternoon he had ascertained were
unformed. Mr. Grex was anxious to keep apart his daughter and Lady
Weybourne, whose relationship to Richard Lane he had only just
apprehended; while he himself desired a little quiet conversation with
Monsieur Douaille before they paid the visit which had been arranged for
to the Club and the Casino. In the end, Mr. Grex was both successful and
unsuccessful. He carried off Monsieur Douaille for a short ride in his
automobile, but was forced to leave his daughter and Lady Weybourne
alone. Draconmeyer, who had been awaiting his opportunity, remained by
Lady Hunterleys' side.
"I wonder," he asked, "whether you would step in for a few minutes and
see Linda?"
She had been looking at the table where her husband and his companion
had been seated. Draconmeyer's voice seemed to bring her back to a
present not altogether agreeable.
"I am going back to my room for a little time," she replied. "I will
call in and see Linda first, if you like."
They left the restaurant together and strolled across the Square to the
Hotel de Paris, ascended in the lift, and made their way to
Draconmeyer's suite of rooms in a silence which was almost unbroken.
When they entered the large salon with its French-windows and balcony,
they found the apartment deserted. Violet looked questioningly at her
companion. He closed the door behind him and nodded.
"Yes," he admitted, "my message was a subterfuge. I have sent Linda over
to Mentone with her nurse. She will not be back until late in the
afternoon. This is the opportunity for which I have been waiting."
She showed no signs of anger or, indeed, disturbance of any sort. She
laid her tiny white silk parasol upon the table and glanced at him
coolly.
"Well," she said, "you have your way, then. I am here."
Draconmeyer looked at her long and anxiously. Skilled though he was in
physiognomy, closely though he had watched, for many months, the lights
and shades, the emotional changes in her expression, he was yet, at that
moment, completely puzzled. She was not angry. Her attitude seemed to
be, in a sense, passive. Yet what did passivity mean? Was it
resignation, consent, or was it simply the armour of normal resistance
in which she had clothed herself? Was he wise, after all, to risk
everything? Then, as he looked at her, as he realised her close and
wonderful presence, he suddenly told himself that it was worth while
risking even Heaven in the future for the joy of holding her for once in
his arms. She had never seemed to him so maddeningly beautiful as at
that moment. It was one of the hottest days of the season and she was
wearing a gown of white muslin, curiously simple, enhancing, somehow or
other, her fascinating slimness, a slimness which had nothing to do with
angularity but possessed its own soft and graceful curves. Her eyes were
bluer even than her turquoise brooch or the gentians in her hat. And
while his heart was aching and throbbing with doubts and hopes, she
suddenly smiled at him.
"I am going to sit down," she announced carelessly. "Please say to me
just what is in your mind, without reserve. It will be better."
She threw herself into a low chair near the window. Her hands were
folded in her lap. Her eyes, for some reason, were fixed upon her
wedding ring. Swift to notice even her slightest action, he frowned as
he discerned the direction of her gaze.
"Violet," he said, "I think that you are right. I think that the time
has come when I must tell you what is in my mind."
She raised her eyebrows slightly at the sound of her Christian name. He
moved over and stood by her chair.
"For a good many years," he began slowly, "I have been a man with a
purpose. When it first came into my mind--not willingly--its
accomplishment seemed utterly hopeless. Still, it was there. Strong man
though I am, I could not root it out. I waited. There was nothing else
to do but wait. From that moment my life was divided. My whole-soul
devotion to worldly affairs was severed. I had one dream that was more
wonderful to me, even, than complete success in the great undertaking
which brought me to London. That dream was connected with you, Violet."
She moved a little uneasily, as though the repetition of her Christian
name grated. This time, however, he was rapt in his subject.
"I won't make excuses," he went on. "You know what Linda is--what she
has been for ten years. I have tried to be kind to her. As to love, I
never had any. Ours was an alliance between two great monied families,
arranged for us, acquiesced in by both of us as a matter of course. It
seemed to me in those days the most natural and satisfactory form of
marriage. I looked upon myself as others have thought me--a cold,
bloodless man of figures and ambition. It is you who have taught me that
I have as much sentiment and more than other men, a heart and desires
which have made life sometimes hell and sometimes paradise. For two
years I have struggled. Life with me has been a sort of passionate
compromise. For the joy of seeing you sometimes, of listening to you and
watching you, I have borne the agony of having you leave me to take your
place with another man. You don't quite know what that meant, and I am
not going to tell you, but always I have hoped and hoped."
"And now," she said, looking at him, "I owe you four thousand pounds and
you think, perhaps, that your time has come to speak?"
He shivered as though she had struck him a blow.
"You think," he exclaimed, "that I am a man of pounds, shillings, and
pence! Is it my fault that you owe me money?"
He snatched her cheques from his inner pocket and ripped them in pieces,
lit a match and watched them while they smouldered away. She, too,
watched with emotionless face.
"Do you think that I want to buy you?" he demanded. "There! You are free
from your money claims. You can leave my room this moment, if you will,
and owe me nothing."
She made no movement, yet he was vaguely disturbed by a sense of having
made but little progress, a terrible sense of impending failure. His
fingers began to tremble, his face was the face of a man stretched upon
the rack.
"Perhaps those words of mine were false," he went on. "Perhaps, in a
sense, I do want to buy you, buy the little kindnesses that go with
affection, buy your kind words, the touch sometimes of your fingers, the
pleasant sense of companionship I feel when I am with you. I know how
proud you are. I know how virtuous you are. I know that it's there in
your blood, the Puritan instinct, the craving for the one man to whom
you have given yourself, the involuntary shrinking from the touch of any
other. Good women are like that--wives or mistresses. Mind, in a sense
it's narrow; in a sense it's splendid. Listen to me. I don't want to
declare war against that instinct--yet. I can't. Perhaps, even now, I
have spoken too soon, craved too soon for the little I do ask. Yet God
knows I can keep the seal upon my lips no longer! Don't let us
misunderstand one another for the sake of using plain words. I am not
asking you to be my mistress. I ask you, on my knees, to take from me
what makes life brighter for you. I ask you for the other things
only--for your confidence, for your affection, your companionship. I ask
to see you every day that it is possible, to know that you are wearing
my gifts, surrounded by my flowers, the rough places in your life made
smooth by my efforts. I am your suppliant, Violet. I ask only for the
crumbs that fall from your table, so long as no other man sits by your
side. Violet, can't you give me as much as this?"
His hand, hot and trembling, sought hers, touched and gripped it. She
drew her fingers away. It was curious how in those few moments she
seemed to be gifted with an immense clear-sightedness. She knew very
well that nothing about the man was honest save the passion of which he
did not speak. She rose to her feet.
"Well," she said, "I have listened to you very patiently. If I owe you
any excuse for having appeared to encourage any one of those thoughts of
which you speak, here it is. I am like thousands of other women. I
absolutely don't know until the time comes what sort of a creature I am,
how I shall be moved to act under certain circumstances. I tried to
think last night. I couldn't. I felt that I had gone half-way. I had
taken your money. I had taken it, too, understanding what it means to be
in a man's debt. And still I waited. And now I know. I won't even
question your sincerity. I won't even suggest that you would not be
content with what you ask for--"
"I have sworn it!" he interrupted hoarsely. "To be your favoured friend,
to be allowed near you--your guardian, if you will--"
The words failed him. Something in her face checked his eloquence.
"I can tell you this now and for always," she continued. "I have nothing
to give you. What you ask for is just as impossible as though you were
to walk in your picture gallery and kneel before your great masterpiece
and beg Beatrice herself to step down from the canvas. I began to wonder
yesterday," she went on, rising abruptly and moving across the room,
"whether I really was that sort of woman. With your money in my pocket
and the gambling fever in my pulses, I began even to believe it. And now
I know that I am not. Good-bye, Mr. Draconmeyer. I don't blame you. On
the whole, perhaps, you have behaved quite well. I think that you have
chosen to behave well because that wonderful brain of yours told you
that it gave you the best chance. That doesn't really matter, though."
He took a quick, almost a threatening step towards her. His face was
dark with all the passions which had preyed upon the man.
"There is a man's last resource," he muttered thickly.
"And there is a woman's answer to it," she replied, her finger suddenly
resting upon an unsuspected bell in the wall.
They both heard its summons. Footsteps came hurrying along the corridor.
Draconmeyer turned his head away, struggling to compose himself. A
waiter entered. Lady Hunterleys picked up her parasol and moved towards
the door. The man stood on one side with a bow.
"Here is the waiter you rang for, Mr. Draconmeyer," she remarked,
looking over his shoulder. "Wasn't it coffee you wanted? Tell Linda I'll
hope to see her sometime this evening."
She strolled away. The waiter remained patiently upon the threshold.
"Coffee for one or two, sir?" he enquired.
Mr. Draconmeyer struggled for a moment against a torrent of words which
scorched his lips. In the end, however, he triumphed.
"For one, with cream," he ordered.