Evie Colebrook had found a note awaiting her at the store on the
morning of the day she came home early. It consisted of a few words
scrawled on a plain card, and had neither address nor signature:
"_Dearest girl_: I shall not be able to see you tonight. I have a
long article to write and shall probably be working through the
night, when your dear and precious eyes are closed in sleep. _Your
lover_."
She had the card under her pillow when she slept.
"Are you sure you aren't too busy," said Beryl when she came down, a
radiant figure, to the waiting Ronnie. "Now that you have taken up a
literary career, I picture you as being rushed every hour of the day."
"Sarcasm is wasted on me," Ronnie displayed his beautiful teeth.
"Unflattering though it be, I admit to a slump in my literary stock.
I have had no commissions for a week."
"And I'm not taking you away from any of those beautiful friends of
yours?"
"Beryl!" he murmured reproachfully. "You know that I have no
friends--if by friends you mean girl friends."
"It is my mad jealousy which makes me ask these questions," she said
quizzically, "come along, Ronnie, we will be late."
What the play was about, Beryl never quite remembered. Ronnie,
sitting in the shade of the curtains, was more interested in his
companion. It was strange that he had known her ever since she was a
child and he a schoolboy, and yet had never received a true
impression of her beauty. He watched her through the first act, the
tilt of her chin, the quick smile.
"Beryl, you ought to be painted," he said in the first interval. "I
mean by a portrait painter. You look so perfectly splendid that I
couldn't take my eyes off you."
The color came slowly and, in the dim light of the box, a man who had
not been looking for this evidence of her pleasure, would have seen
nothing.
"That is a little less subtle than the usual brand of flattery you
practice, isn't it, Ronnie? Or is your artlessness really an art
that conceals art?"
"I'm not flattering you--I simply speak as I feel. I never realized
your loveliness until tonight." She straightened up and laughed.
"You think I'm crude--I suppose I am. You do not say that I am
keeping my hand in, though you probably think so. I admit I have had
all sorts of flirtations, in fact, I have been rather a blackguard in
that way, and of course I've said nice things to girls--buttered them
and played to their vanity. But if I were trying to make love to
you, I should be a little more subtle, as you say. I should imply my
compliments. It is just because my--my spasm is unpremeditated that
I find myself at a loss for words. There is no sense in my making
love to you, anyway, supposing that you would allow me. I can't
marry--I simply won't marry until I have enough money and I haven't
nearly enough. If in four years' time the money doesn't come--well
then, I'll risk being a pauper, but the girl will have to know."
She said nothing. Here was an unexpected side to his character. He
had some plan of life and a code of sorts. If she had been better
acquainted with that life of his, which she so far suspected, she
would have grown alert when Ronnie unmasked his way of retreat. She
was surprised at his virtuous reluctance to make a woman share his
comparative poverty--she should have been suspicious when he fixed a
time limit to his bachelorhood. It was not like Ronnie to plan so
far in advance, that she knew; it might have occurred to her that he
was definitely excusing the postponement of marriage. As it was, she
was seeing him in a more favorable light. Ronnie desired that she
should. His instinct in these matters was uncannily accurate.
"It was worth coming out with you, if only to hear your views on
matrimony," was all the comment she made.
"I don't know--" he looked gloomily into the auditorium, "in many
ways I have been regretting it. That doesn't sound gallant, but I am
not in a mood for nice speeches--you think I am? I did not mean to
be nice when I said that you were lovely, any more than I wish to be
nice to Titian when I praise his pictures. Beryl, I've been fond of
you for years. I suppose I've been in love with you, though I've
never wanted to be. That is the truth. I've recognized just how
unfair it would be, to chain a woman like you to a rake--I'm not
sparing myself--like me. God knows whether I could be constant. In
my heart I know that if I had you, there could be no other woman in
the world for me--an intimate knowledge of my own character makes me
skeptical."
Beryl was spared the necessity for replying. The curtain went up on
the second act just then. She knew he was looking at her, and turned
in her chair to hide her face. Her heart was beating tumultuously.
She was trembling. She was a fool--a fool. He meant nothing--he was
a liar; lied as readily as other men spoke the truth. That frankness
of his was assumed--he was acting. Versed in the weaknesses of
women, he had chosen the only approach that would storm her citadel.
She told herself these truths, her reason battling in a last
desperate stand against his attack. And yet--why should he not be
sincere? For the first time he had admitted the unpleasant charges
which hitherto he had denied. He surely could not expect to make her
love him more by the confession of his infidelities?
If he had followed up his talk, had made any attempt to carry on the
conversation from the point where he left it, she would have been
invincible. But he did not. When the curtain went down again, he
was more cheerful and was seemingly interested only in the people he
recognized in the stalls. He asked her if she would mind if he left
her. He wanted to smoke and to meet some men he knew.
She assented and was disappointed. They had a long wait between
these two acts, and as he had returned to the box after a shorter
interval than she had expected, there was plenty of time, had he so
wished, to have resumed his conversation. He showed no such desire,
and it was she who began it.
"You puzzle me, Ronnie. I can't see--if you loved me, how you could
do some of the things you have done. You won't be so commonplace as
to tell me that you wanted to keep me out of your mind and that that
form of amusement helped you to forget me."
"No," he admitted, "but, Beryl dear, need we discuss it? I don't
know why I spoke to you as I did. I felt like it."
"But I am going to discuss it," she insisted. "I want my mind set in
order. It is overthrown for the moment. What prevented you from
keeping me as a friend all this time--a real close friend, if you
loved me? Oh, Ronnie, I do want to be fair to you even at the risk
of being shameless, as I am now. Why could you not have asked me?
Even if it meant waiting?"
He looked down at the floor. "I have some sense of decency left," he
said in a low voice. And then the curtain went up.
Beryl looked at her program. The play had four acts; there was
another interval. He did not leave her this time; nor did he wait
for her to begin.
"I'm going to be straight with you, Beryl," he said, "I want you--I
adore you. But I cannot commit you to an engagement which may
adversely affect your father and incidentally myself. I am being
brutally selfish and mercenary, but I am going to say what I think.
You'll be amused and perhaps horrified when I tell you that Steppe is
very keen on you."
She was neither amused nor horrified; but on the other hand, if
Ronnie Morelle realized that in his invention he had accidentally hit
upon the truth, he would not have been amused and most certainly
terror would have struck him dumb. If Beryl had only said what she
was of a mind to say, that she had learned from her father that
Steppe was in love with her, she might have silenced him. But she
said nothing. Ronnie's explanation seemed natural--knowing Ronnie.
"I'd sooner see you dead than married to him," he said vehemently,
"but none of us can say that now. We are in a very tight place.
Steppe could ruin your father with a gesture--he could very seriously
inconvenience me." Here he was much in earnest, and the girl, with a
cold feeling at her heart, knew he spoke the truth.
"But that time will pass. We shall weather the storm which is
shrieking round our ears--you don't read the financial papers--you're
wise. You see what might happen, Beryl?"
Beryl nodded. She was ridiculously happy.
"A great play, don't you think so, Miss Merville?" It was Sir John
Maxton who had pushed through the crowd in the vestibule.
"Splendid," she said.
"Ronnie, did you like it?"
"I never heard a word," said Ronnie, and somehow that statement was
so consonant with his new honesty that it confirmed her in a faith
which was as novel.
The car carried them through the crowded circus and into the quietude
of Piccadilly.
"Oh, Ronnie--I am so happy--"
His arm slipped round her and his lips pressed fiercely against her
red mouth.
* * * * *
"Why can't you sleep?" asked the drowsy Christina, as the girl lit
her candle for the second time.
"I don't know--I'm having such beastly dreams," said Evie fretfully.
_BOOK THE SECOND_
I
The step of Ambrose Sault was light and there was a buoyancy in his
mien when he came into Mrs. Colebrook's kitchen, surprising that good
lady with so unusual an appearance at an hour of the day when she was
taking her afternoon siesta.
"Lord, how you startled me!" she said, "the ostymopat came this
morning. A stout gentleman with whiskers. Very nice, too, and
American. But bless you, Mr. Sault, he'll never do any good to
Christina, though I wish he could, for I'm up and down those blessed
stairs from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. He'll
never cure her. She's had ten doctors and four specialists, and
she's been three times to St. Mary's hospital; to say nothing of the
Evelyna when she was a child and fell out of the perambulator that
did it. Ten doctors and four specialists--they're doctors, too, in a
manner of speaking, so you might say fourteen."
Sault never interrupted his landlady, although his forbearance meant,
very often, a long period of waiting.
"Can I see Christina, Mrs. Colebrook?" he begged.
"Certainly you can, you needn't ask me. She'll be glad to see you,"
said Mrs. Colebrook conventionally. "I thought of going up myself,
but she has always got those books. Do you think so much reading is
good for her--?"
"I'm sure it is."
"But--well, I don't know. I've never read anything but the Sunday
papers, and they've got enough horrors in 'em--but they actually
happened. It isn't guesswork like it is in books. I never read a
book through in my life. My husband--! Why, when he passed away,
there was enough books in the house to fill a room. He'd sooner read
than work at any time. He was a bit aristocratic in his way."
Sault had come to understand that "aristocratic" did not stand, as
Mrs. Colebrook applied the word, for gentleness of birth, but for a
loftiness of demeanor in relation to labor.
He made his escape up the stairs. Christina was not reading. She
lay on her back, her hands lightly folded, and she was inspecting the
end bed-rail with a fixity of gaze that indicated to Ambrose how far
she was from Walter Street and the loud little boys who played
beneath her window.
"I have nothing for you today--I haven't been baking."
She patted the bed and he sat down.
"The osteopath has been, I suppose mother told you? She has the
queerest word for him, 'ostymopat'. Yes, he came and saw, or rather,
he prodded in a gentle, harmless kind of way, but I fancy that my
spine has conquered. He didn't say very much, but seemed to be more
interested in the bones of my neck and shoulders than he was in the
place where it hurts. He wouldn't tell me anything, I suppose he
didn't want to make me feel miserable. Poor, kind soul--after all
the uncomplimentary things that have been said about my spinal
column!"
"He told me," said Ambrose, and something in his face made her open
her eyes wide.
"What did he say--please tell me--was it good?"
He nodded and a beatific smile lightened his face.
"You can be cured; completely cured. You will walk in a year or
maybe less. He thinks it will take six months to manipulate the
bones into their place; he talked about 'breaking down' something,
but he didn't mean that he would hurt you. He just meant that he
would have to remove--I don't know what it is, but it would be a
gradual process and you would feel nothing. He wants your mother to
put you into a sort of thin overall before he comes."
He lugged a parcel from his pocket. "I bought one--a smock of thick
silk. I thought you had better have silk. He works at you through
it, and it makes his work easier for him and for you if--anyhow, I
got silk, Christina."
Her eyes were shining, but she did not look at him. "It doesn't seem
possible," she said softly, "and it is going to cost a lot of
money--cost you. The silk overall is lovely, but I wouldn't mind if
I wore sackcloth. You great soul!"
She caught his hand in both of hers and gripped it with a strength
that surprised him.
"Evie is quite sure that I am in love with you, Ambrose--I lied to
her when I said I never called you Ambrose. And, of course, we are
in love with one another, but in a way that poor Evie doesn't
understand. If I was normal, I suppose I'd love you in her way--poor
Ambrose, you would be so embarrassed."
She laughed quietly.
"Love is a great disturbance," said Ambrose, "I think Evie means that
kind."
"Were you ever in love that way? I have never been. I think I love
you as I should love my child, if I had one. If you say that you
love me as a mother, I shall be offended, Ambrose. Do you think it
will really happen--will it cost very much?"
"A pound a visit, and he is coming every day except Sunday."
Christina made a calculation and the immensity of the sum left her
horror-stricken.
"A hundred and fifty pounds!" she cried. "Oh, Ambrose--how can you?
I won't have the treatment. It is certain to fail--I won't, Ambrose!"
"I've paid a hundred on account. He didn't want to take it, but I
said I would only let him come on those terms. I wasn't speaking the
truth--I'd have let him come on any terms. So you see, Christina,
I've paid, and you must be treated!"
"Hold my hand, Ambrose--and don't speak a word. I'm going for a long
walk--I haven't dared walk before."
She resumed her gaze upon the bed-rail and he sat in silence whilst
she dreamed.
Evie returned at ten o'clock that night and heard Christina singing
as she mounted the stairs. "Enter, sister, has mother told you that
I am practically a well woman?"
"Don't put too high hopes--"
"Shut up! I'm a well woman I tell you. In a year I shall walk into
your medicine shop and sneer at you as I pass. Have you brought home
any candy? 'Sweets' is hopelessly vulgar, and I like the American
word better. And you look bright and sonsy. Did you see the god?"
"I wish you wouldn't use religious words, Christina, just when we are
going to bed, too. I wonder you're not afraid. Yes, I saw my boy."
"Have you a boy?" in simulated surprise. "Evie, you are a surprising
child. Whom does he take after?"
"Really, I think you are indecent," said her sister, shocked. "You
know perfectly well I mean--Ronnie."
"Oh, is he the 'boy'? To you girls everything that raises a hat or
smokes a cheap cigar is strangely boyish. Well, is he nearly dead
from his midnight labors?"
"I'd like to see you write a long article for the newspapers," said
Evie witheringly.
"I wish you could. You may even see that. Tell me about him, Evie.
What is he like--what sort of a house has he?" She waited.
"He lives in a flat, and, of course, I've never seen it. You don't
imagine that I would go into a man's flat alone, do you?'"
Christina sighed. "There are points about the bourgeoisie mind which
are admirable," she said. "What does 'bourgeoisie' mean? The
bourgeoisie are the people who have names instead of numbers to their
houses; they catch the nine twenty-five to town and go home by the
five seventeen. They go to church at least once on Sunday and their
wives wear fascinators and patronize the dress circle."
"You talk such rubbish, Christina. I can't make head or tail of it
half the time. I don't see what it has got to do with my not going
in to Ronnie's flat. It wouldn't be respectable."
"Why didn't I think of that word?" wailed Christina. "Evie."
"Huh?" said Evie, her mouth full of pins and in an unconscious
imitation of one who, did she but know it, held her soul in the
hollow of his hands.
"Where do you meet your lad--I simply can't say 'boy'?"
"Oh, anywhere," said Evie vaguely. "We used to meet a lot in the
park. As a matter of fact, that is where I first saw him, but now he
doesn't go to the park. He says the crowd is vulgar and it is you
know, Christina; why I've heard men addressing meetings and saying
that there wasn't a God! And talking about the king most familiarly.
It made my blood boil!"
"I don't suppose the king minds, and I'm sure God only laughed."
"Christina!"
"Well, why not? What's the use of being God if He hasn't a sense of
humor? He has everything He wants, and that is one of the first
blessings He would give Himself. Where do you meet Ronnie, Evie?"
"Sometimes I have dinner with him, and sometimes we just meet at the
tube station and go to the pictures." Christina pinched her chin in
thought.
"He knows that girl who came to see you, Miss Merville. I told him
about her visit, and he asked me if she knew that I was a friend of
his, and whether she had seen me. She rather runs after him, I
think. He doesn't say so, he is too much a gentleman. I can't
imagine Ronnie saying anything unkind."
"But he sort of hinted," suggested Christina.
"You are uncharitable, Christina! Nothing Ronnie does is right in
your eyes. Of course he didn't hint. It is the way he looks, when I
speak about her. I know that he doesn't like her very much. He
admitted it, because, just after we had been talking about her, he
said that I was the only girl he had ever met who did not bore
him--unutterably. His very words!"
"That was certainly convincing evidence," said Christina, and her
sister arrested the motion of her hair brush to look suspiciously in
her direction. You could never be sure whether Christina was being
nice or unpleasant.