I shall not pretend that I knew the man in America or that he was a
friend of my family or that some one had written to me about him. The
plain truth is that I never laid eyes on him until Sir Henry Marquis
pointed him out to me the day after I went down from here to London. It
was in Piccadilly Circus.
“There's your American,” said Sir Henry.
The girl paused for a few moments. There was profound silence.
“And that isn't all of it. Nobody presented him to me. I deliberately
picked him up!”
Three persons were in the drawing-room. An old woman with high
cheekbones, a bowed nose and a firm, thin-lipped mouth was the central
figure. She sat very straight in her chair, her head up and her hands in
her lap. An aged man, in the khaki uniform of a major of yeomanry, stood
at a window looking out, his hands behind his back, his chin lifted as
though he were endeavoring to see something far away over the English
country--something beyond the little groups of Highland cattle and the
great oak trees.
Beside the old woman, on a dark wood frame, there was a fire screen made
of the pennant of a Highland regiment. Beyond her was a table with
a glass top. Under this cover, in a sort of drawer lined with purple
velvet, there were medals, trophies and decorations visible below
the sheet of glass. And on the table, in a heavy metal frame, was
the portrait of a young man in the uniform of a captain of Highland
infantry.
The girl who had been speaking sat in a big armchair by this table.
One knew instantly that she was an American. The liberty of manner,
the independence of expression, could not be mistaken in a country of
established forms. She had abundant brown hair skillfully arranged under
a smart French hat. Her eyes were blue; not the blue of any painted
color; it was the blue of remote spaces in the tropic sky.
The old woman spoke without looking at the girl.
“Then,” she said, “it's all quite as”--she hesitated for a
word--“extraordinary as we have been led to believe.”
There was the slow accent of Southern blood in the girl's voice as she
went on.
“Lady Mary,” she said, “it's all far more extraordinary than you have
been led to believe--than any one could ever have led you to believe. I
deliberately picked the man up. I waited for him outside the Savoy, and
pretended to be uncertain about an address. He volunteered to take me in
his motor and I went with him. I told him I was alone in London, at the
Ritz. It was Blackwell's bank I pretended to be looking for. Then we had
tea.”
The girl paused.
Presently she continued: “That's how it began: You're mistaken to
imagine that Sir Henry Marquis presented me to this American. It was the
other way about; I presented Sir Henry. I had the run of the Ritz,” she
went on. “We all do if we scatter money. Sir Henry came in to tea the
next afternoon. That's how he met Mr. Meadows. And that's the only place
he ever did meet him. Mr. Meadows came every day, and Sir Henry formed
the habit of dropping in. We got to be a very friendly party.”
The motionless old woman, a figure in plaster until now, kneaded her
fingers as under some moving pressure. “At this time,” she said, “you
were engaged to Tony and expected to be his wife!”
The girl's voice did not change. It was slow and even. “Yes,” she said.
“Tony, of course, knew nothing about this?”
“He knows nothing whatever about it unless you have written him.”
Again the old woman moved slightly. “I have waited,” she said, “for the
benefit of your explanation. It seems as--as bad as I feared.”
“Lady Mary,” said the girl in her slow voice, “it's worse than you
feared. I don't undertake to smooth it over. Everything that you have
heard is quite true. I did go out with the man in his motor, in the
evening. Sometimes it was quite dark before we returned. Mr. Meadows
preferred to drive at night because he was not accustomed to the English
rule of taking the left on the road, when one always takes the right in
America. He was afraid he couldn't remember the rule, so it was safer at
night and there was less traffic.
“I shall not try to make the thing appear better than it was. We
sometimes took long runs. Mr. Meadows liked the high roads along the
east coast, where one got a view of the sea and the cold salt air. We
ran prodigious distances. He had the finest motor in England, the very
latest American model. I didn't think so much about night coming on, the
lights on the car were so wonderful. Mr. Meadows was an amazing driver.
We made express-train time. The roads were usually clear at night and
the motor was a perfect wonder. The only trouble we ever had was with
the lights. Sometimes one, of them would go out. I think it was bad
wiring. But there was always the sweep of the sea under the stars to
look at while Mr. Meadows got the thing adjusted.”
This long, detailed, shameless speech affected the aged soldier at the
window. It seemed to him immodest bravado. And he suffered in his heart,
as a man old and full of memories can suffer for the damaged honor of a
son he loves.
Continuing, the girl said: “Of course it isn't true that we spent
the nights touring the east coast of England in a racer. It was
dark sometimes when we got in--occasionally after trouble with the
lights--quite dark. We did go thundering distances.”
“With this person, alone?” The old woman spoke slowly, like one
delicately probing at a wound.
“Yes,” the girl admitted. “You see, the car was a roadster; only two
could go; and, besides, there was no one else. Mr. Meadows said he was
alone in London, and of course I was alone. When Sir Henry asked me to
go down from here I went straight off to the Ritz.”
The old woman made a slight, shivering gesture. “You should have gone to
my sister in Grosvenor Square. Monte would have put you up--and looked
after you.”
“The Ritz put me up very well,” the girl continued. “And I am accustomed
to looking after myself. Sir Henry thought it was quite all right.”
The old woman spoke suddenly with energy and directness. “I don't
understand Henry in the least,” she said. “I was quite willing for you
to go to London when he asked me for permission. But I thought he would
take you to Monte's, and certainly I had the right to believe that he
would not have lent himself to--to this escapade.”
“He seemed to be very nice about it,” the girl went on. “He came in to
tea with us--Mr. Meadows and me--almost every evening. And he always
had something amusing to relate, some blunder of Scotland Yard or some
ripping mystery. I think he found it immense fun to be Chief of the
Criminal Investigation Department. I loved the talk: Mr. Meadows was
always interested and Sir Henry likes people to be interested.”
The old woman continued to regard the girl as one hesitatingly touches
an exquisite creature frightfully mangled.
“This person--was he a gentleman?” she inquired. The girl answered
immediately. “I thought about that a good deal,” she said. “He had
perfect manners, quite Continental manners; but, as you say over here,
Americans are so imitative one never can tell. He was not young--near
fifty, I would say; very well dressed. He was from St. Paul; a London
agent for some flouring mills in the Northwest. I don't know precisely.
He explained it all to Sir Henry. I think he would have been glad of
a little influence--some way to meet the purchasing agents for the
government. He seemed to have the American notion that he could come to
London and go ahead without knowing anybody. Anyway, he was immensely
interesting--and he had a ripping motor.”
The old man at the window did not move. He remained looking out over the
English country with his big, veined hands clasped behind his back. He
had left this interview to Lady Mary, as he had left most of the crucial
affairs of life to her dominant nature. But the thing touched him far
deeper than it touched the aged dowager. He had a man's faith in the
fidelity of a loved woman.
He knew how his son, somewhere in France, trusted this girl, believed
in her, as long ago in a like youth he had believed in another. He knew
also how the charm of the girl was in the young soldier's blood, and
how potent were these inscrutable mysteries. Every man who loved a
woman wished to believe that she came to him out of the garden of a
convent--out of a roc's egg, like the princess in the Arabian story.
All these things he had experienced in himself, in a shattered romance,
in a disillusioned youth, when he was young like the lad somewhere in
France. Lady Mary would see only broken conventions; but he saw immortal
things, infinitely beyond conventions, awfully broken. He did not move.
He remained like a painted picture.
The girl went on in her soft, slow voice. “You would have disliked Mr.
Meadows, Lady Mary,” she said. “You would dislike any American who came
without letters and could not be precisely placed.” The girl's voice
grew suddenly firmer. “I don't mean to make it appear better,” she said.
“The worst would be nearer the truth. He was just an unknown American
bagman, with a motor car, and a lot of time on his hands--and I picked
him up. But Sir Henry Marquis took a fancy to him.”
“I cannot understand Henry,” the old woman repeated. “It's
extraordinary.”
“It doesn't seem extraordinary to me,” said the girl. “Mr. Meadows was
immensely clever, and Sir Henry was like a man with a new toy. The Home
Secretary had just put him in as Chief of the Criminal Investigation
Department. He was full of a lot of new ideas--dactyloscopic bureaus,
photographie mitrique, and scientific methods of crime detection. He
talked about it all the time. I didn't understand half the talk. But
Mr. Meadows was very clever. Sir Henry said he was a charming person.
Anybody who could discuss the whorls of the Galton finger-print tests
was just then a charming person to Sir Henry.”