Rayburn went out first and Vane followed him, feeling, as he said to
himself afterwards, as though he was walking across the boundary between
one world and another. He knew that Carol and Dora were in the
drawing-room. Dora he had never seen before. Carol he had not seen since
the night of the University Boat Race. Ernshaw, with the memory of what
he had said in Vane's room at Oxford fresh in his mind, caught him by
the arm and said:
"Maxwell, I believe I am going to meet my fate to-night as you met yours
in another way. Was there ever such a complication in the life-affairs
of little mortals like ourselves?"
"I don't know," said Vane, "and I don't care," gripping his arm hard as
they crossed the hall. "Wait, it may be the Providence that shapes our
ends."
"Rough-hew them as we will," said Rayburn, looking backward.
"Ah, well, since we understand each other, as I think we do now, _Vogue
la galere!_ And, Mr. Ernshaw," he went on, "I have heard things and
things. I am not giving any confidences away, but by the same token you
and I will soon be sailing in the same boat or something very like
it----"
"Oh, yes," said Ernshaw, "I see what you mean!" Then he gripped his arm
a little harder before they went into the drawing-room. Vane went on
with his father, and Ernshaw said:
"Look here, Maxwell, you have passed your crisis, you and Rayburn, I'm
only getting near mine. What am I to do, what can I do?"
"That I can't tell you. You see, to put it into the twentieth-century
language, the Eternal Feminine is here, and you have got to reckon with
her just as Rayburn has done. Come now, if you've made your mind up, go
and meet your fate."
As he said this Vane pushed the door of the drawing-room open. Sir
Arthur and Rayburn had gone in just before him.
"Carol!"
"Vane! and is it really you--you?"
"Yes," he said, taking a few swift strides towards her and for the first
time putting his arms round her. "Yes, dear, your brother."
"Really brother, Vane? Do you truly mean it--will you really take me for
your sister now that you know everything--I mean all about Cecil and
myself?"
"Yes, Carol, and because I do know, because he as a man has told me
everything. I am going to marry you soon, and no man, no priest could
marry his sister to his friend with more hope for happiness than I shall
marry you and Rayburn."
He took hold of her left hand, and stretched out his hand to Rayburn and
said:
"Come now, sister and brother, as you are going to be!"
He took their two hands and joined them. Over the two hands he clasped
his own, and looking swiftly from one to the other he said:
"Afterwards I will say the words that I cannot speak here." And then,
with a sudden change of tone and manner which came as a quick surprise
to both Carol and Rayburn, he went on:
"Rayburn, this is my sister. Carol, Rayburn tells me that he wants to
marry you, and I suppose----"
"You needn't suppose anything at all, Vane. I've said yes already. If
you and Sir Arthur will only say yes too----"
Vane drew back from her, and looked round toward Sir Arthur and Dora.
Rayburn, having gone through the formalities of introduction which
Vane's tact had made necessary, held out his hand and they shook hands.
"It is rather unceremonious, Miss Maxwell," he said, addressing her for
the first time by a name that was not her own, "but----"
"But, my dear Carol, you are forgetting that you are hostess to-night,"
said Sir Arthur, "and I think there are two of our guests who have not
been, as one would say in Society, properly introduced."
"Oh, of course; I'm so sorry," said Carol. "Dora, forgive me. I know you
will. I was too happy just now to think of anything else. Mr. Ernshaw,
this is Dora. Dora, this is Mr. Ernshaw. I hope you will be very good
friends. That's a rather unconventional way of introduction, I must
say."
As the last words left her laughing lips, and she was looking
exquisitely dainty and desirable in a quietly magnificent costume which
had cost as much as many much advertised wedding dresses, Dora and
Ernshaw faced each other for the first time. She had seen him with Vane
at the ordination service in Worcester Cathedral, but they had never met
before under the sanction of social acquaintance.
She looked at him and he looked at her, and as their eyes met some
impulse in the soul of both made them hold out their hands as people do
not usually do when they are introduced in ordinary drawing-room style.
Ernshaw's went out straight.
"Miss Russell," he said, even while her hand was moving slowly towards
his.
"My dear Mr. Ernshaw, whatever you have to say, I'm afraid I will have
to ask you to keep it just for a little," said Sir Arthur, as the door
swung open. "Here is Koda Bux, and he does not allow me to be late for
dinner; he has many virtues, but that is the best of them. Mr. Rayburn,
you will take Carol in? Mr. Ernshaw, will you give your arm to Miss
Russell, and Vane and I will bring up the rear."
"Dad," said Vane, as he gripped his father's arm, "you have helped to do
God's work to-night; look at them!"
"You did more when you got out of the cab at the top of the gardens
here," he whispered in reply.
"I didn't do that, dad; she did. She knew, and I didn't. God bless her."
"Amen," said his father. "And now we will return to earth and go and
eat."
There were not many more delightful dinners eaten in London that night
than what Cecil Rayburn called his betrothal feast. He and Carol now
understood each other thoroughly. Vane and his father also knew the
circumstances so far as they were concerned, and a little more. Ernshaw
and Dora, each knowing just a little more than the others did, began to
make friends fast, and therefore rapidly, but Dora was still
_declassee_. Carol had already been lifted beyond the confines of that
half-sphere which is inhabited by so many thousands of women who are
neither maiden, wife, nor widow. Dora was still a dweller in it, knowing
all its infamy and shame, and knowing, too, that awful necessity which
is so often at once the equivalent and the excuse for sin.
Everyone took Sir Arthur's hint, and the conversation rattled on around
the table as lightly as it might have around any other dinner table in
London. Carol and Sir Arthur and Rayburn had it mostly to themselves at
first, but after a little the conversation grew more general. Dora and
Carol engaged in a really brilliant discussion on the subject of Mrs.
Lynn Linton's last book, with the result that Carol said that she
wouldn't live for ever at any price, to which Dora replied with just a
suspicion of a note of sadness in her voice.
"Yes, Carol, I quite agree with you, or at least if I were you I should
do."
"Which," said Ernshaw, "is, I think, as nearly as possible the same
thing. Surely if one cannot agree with one's self----"
"No, Mr. Ernshaw," said Dora, putting her elbows on the table and her
chin between her hands. "No, I'm afraid I can hardly agree with you
there. After all, our worst enemies are those of our own household, by
which of course I mean our immediate surroundings. It is this awful
necessity to live, to eat and to have a place to sleep in. Of course you
are thinking of what Talleyrand said to the young aristocrat who wanted
to live for nothing."
"Yes," said Ernshaw, "I know that. He said he didn't see the necessity,
and I am not altogether certain that he was wrong, but you----"
"Yes, I," she replied in a tone that had a thrill of angry reproach
running through it, "I, as you know, am--well--a superfluous woman, one
who isn't wanted, a sort of waste product of the factory that we call
civilisation."
"I am afraid you people are getting far too serious in your
conversation," said Carol from her end of the table opposite Sir Arthur.
"No, Dora, I really can't allow it; social problems are not in the menu
to-night, and you and Mr. Ernshaw will have to keep them for some other
time. Meanwhile, suppose we leave the rest for their smokes, and you
come with me and run through that song you are going to sing; we haven't
tried it together for quite a long time, as Mr. Rayburn said when we
were on the other side of the Atlantic. Come along."
As she rose from her chair, Koda Bux, who had been standing immovable
behind his master, opened the door, and as Carol, daintily and yet most
plainly dressed, passed through, his sombre eyes lit up as though by an
inspiration of long past days, and his teeth came together and he said
in his soul:
"It is the daughter of the Mem Sahib; what marvel is this! If there is
vengeance to be done, may mine be the hand. Inshallah! I should die
content, even if it was only a minute afterwards. He has his kismet, and
I have mine. Allah will give it to me; but they may be the same. Once
the roomal round his neck, and his breath would be already in his mouth.
Dog and son of a dog, he would be better dead!"
It had been arranged that Carol and Dora should take up their abode with
Sir Arthur, so that Carol might be married from her father's house.
Under the circumstances it was only natural that the wedding was to be
absolutely private, and it was already decided that immediately after
the wedding Rayburn and Carol should leave for a month in Paris, and
then go on to Western Australia, where most of Rayburn's mining
properties were. He also owned one side of a street in Perth and a
country estate with a big bungalow-built house on the eastern hills
overlooking the Swan River.
The only difficulty appeared ahead to Sir Arthur was some mysterious
connection with the Raleighs and the Garthornes. It was, of course,
impossible that the wedding could take place without their knowledge, if
Sir Arthur was to give Carol away as he intended to do, and yet the
moment that Garthorne's name was mentioned Carol had turned white to the
lips and a look of deadly fear had come into her eyes.
"No, no," she said, "not them, I can't tell you why, and you mustn't ask
me. You have been very good to me, and you are going to do more for me
than ever was done to a girl like me before, but sooner than meet them I
would run away again as I did from Melville Gardens. I would, really,
but you must not ask me why; there are some things that cannot be told."
After this Sir Arthur, finding it impossible to get any inkling of the
mystery from Carol, asked Dora if she could tell him the meaning of it,
and she too turned white. She did not reply for a few moments, and then
she said:
"No, Sir Arthur, I cannot tell you. All I can say is that Carol is
perfectly right. It would be utterly impossible for her to meet either
Sir Reginald Garthorne or his son, and of course she could not meet Mrs.
Garthorne without meeting her husband. There is a reason, and a very
solemn one, too, for this, but I can assure you, Sir Arthur----"
"That is enough, Miss Russell," said Sir Arthur gravely. "I am perfectly
satisfied, and I have no right to ask for an explanation. The wedding
shall be absolutely private; no one shall be asked except ourselves.
Vane shall marry them early in the morning, we will come back here for
lunch, and then they will go straight off to Paris. I will tell the
Garthornes about it afterwards."
"Yes," said Dora, "I think that would be best."
That night Carol and Dora had a talk in Carol's room. It was rather a
discussion perhaps than a conversation, and the question was whether Sir
Arthur and Vane should be told the dreadful secret which Carol had
discovered at Reginald Garthorne's wedding. Carol, clean-hearted and
straightforward as she was naturally, shrank in horror from such a
revelation as this; but Dora, whose nature was deeper, and who had a
stronger religious bias, felt that at all hazards the truth should be
told, horrible as it was.
"That man Garthorne," she said, "is a brute. I am perfectly certain that
he deliberately made your brother drunk that day at Oxford--I mean that
he took advantage of the weakness that you discovered to tempt him to go
on drinking, so that he might get drunk on the most important morning of
his life. He knew very well what he was doing. He knew if he could only
make him drunk that morning, everything would be at an end between him
and Miss Raleigh."
"But, my dear Dora, suppose that is so, and I hope it isn't," replied
Carol, "how on earth can you have found that out? Of course, if it
really is so, Vane and Sir Arthur ought to know of it, and, well, I
suppose of the other thing too, dreadful and all as it is, but----"
"I see what you mean," said Dora, "and I will tell you why. In the first
place, when we were at the flat, Bernard--I mean Mr. Falcon--told me one
or two things Mr. Garthorne had said to him when they were getting
confidential over their whiskies, and I had a few minutes' talk with
Mr. Ernshaw this evening which--well, what Mr. Falcon told me and what
he said were the two and two that made four. I am afraid that is not
very grammatical, but it is true. Of course he wouldn't have told me if
I had not said something about it; but the moment he told me about your
brother's collapse that morning the truth came to me like a flash.
Reginald Garthorne is a scoundrel, and his father is worse, for he is a
hypocrite as well as a scoundrel. He pretends to be Sir Arthur's
friend--he has done so for years. He has allowed his son to steal Vane's
life-long love from him, knowing all that he himself did--and, well,
no--I can't say the rest."
"You mean," said Carol quietly, and with a note of hardness in her
voice, "you mean that he is my father. It is very dreadful, isn't it?"
"Yes, Dora, it is, but you are not to blame after all; you didn't know,
and of course we must admit that Mr. Garthorne didn't know so morally.
You are both quite innocent there, but there is someone else just now.
We've been friends and comrades now for a long time, tell me, dear, does
Mr. Rayburn know?"
"I have told him everything," replied Carol, with an effort which she
could not conceal, even from Dora.
"Yes, everything, even the very worst. You know when, as he says, he
fell in love with me and, as I told you, began to treat me altogether
differently, and then asked me to marry him, I said 'No.' I felt that I
couldn't say 'Yes' honestly unless he knew everything. I had got very
fond of him, and I suppose that was the reason why. I felt that I had to
tell him the truth, and so I told him. Of course it wouldn't have been
the straight thing to do anything else. If he had been like other
men----"
"But he isn't," said Dora; "all men are not men, you know, and he's a
man, and you are just about as lucky a girl as ever got a real man for
her husband. Now I see what you mean. Yes, of course, it would be wicked
to tell the truth just now. In a week you will be married and away to
Australia to live a new life in a new world. Then no one will know Mrs.
Rayburn, the wife of the millionaire, except as Mrs. Rayburn, but after
that vengeance must be done."
"But why, Dora--why not let things stop just as they are? What is the
use of bringing all these things up again and making misery for
everybody?"
"Simply because the truth should be known, because a man who has done
another the greatest possible injury should not be allowed to remain his
friend even in appearance. The truth ought to be told, and it must be
told."
"Very well," said Carol, "tell it, Dora, after I am gone. I have told
him all the truth, but you know I am like a girl coming out of hell into
heaven."
"And do you think that I would spoil your heaven?" said Dora. "No, you
are too good for that."
"I am not half so good as you," said Carol. "I have only had infinitely
more good fortune than I deserve."
"I don't think that," replied Dora. "I have known you too long and too
well. I believe, after all, that everyone does get in this world just
about what they deserve if everything was understood, which of course it
isn't; but I am quite certain about you. Good-night, Carol, and pleasant
dreams--as of course they will be if you have any."
"Good-night, Dora!" laughed Carol, with one of her swift changes of
manner. "By the way, I have quite forgotten to ask you how you like Mr.
Ernshaw?"
Dora looked at her straight in the eyes for a moment, her cheeks flushed
ever so slightly, and she said almost stiffly:
"I am afraid, Carol, you have begun to dream already."
As the door closed Carol went and stood in front of the long mirror in
the wardrobe, and still smiling at herself, as well she might, she said:
"Well, it is all very wonderful, and part of it very terrible, and I
certainly have got a great deal more than I deserve. If Dora only gets
what she deserves it will make things a little more equal.
Good-night--Mrs. Rayburn!"