BEAUTY
'Hum! he's going to marry her,' Simon had said, and Albert had said, and
Lily had said. 'I knew it all along.' When, at the end of six months,
Hugo went away, much furnishing of rooms near the Dome took place by his
orders during his absence.
Yet here was Hugo back at the end of the fortnight, radiant certainly,
but alone.
'There was one little matter I forgot,' Hugo began, rather timidly, as
Simon thought, when assured that everything was in order.
'Yes, sir?' said Simon.
'I want you to be good enough to give up your room.'
'My room, sir?'
'To oblige a lady.'
'A lady, sir?'
'I should say a lady's lady.'
Simon paused. He was wounded, but he would not show it.
'With pleasure, sir.'
'To-night,' Hugo proceeded, 'you can occupy my bed in the dome;' and he
pointed to the spot where, during the day, the bed lay ingeniously
hidden in a recess of the wall. 'I shall no longer need it. To-morrow we
can make some more permanent arrangement for you.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Also,' Hugo continued, 'I would like you to go along to the offices of
the _Morning Post_ for me some time to-night before ten o'clock and take
this. There will be a guinea to pay.' Hugo handed him a slip of paper.
'Yes, sir.'
'Read it,' said Hugo.
And Simon read: '"A marriage has been arranged, and"--and--has taken
place, sir?'
'Precisely.'
'Precisely, sir. "Has taken place at Hythe between Mr. Owen Hugo, of
Sloane Street, London, and Mrs. Camilla Tudor, widow of the late Mr.
Francis Tudor."'
'You are the first to know, Simon.'
Simon bowed.
'May I respectfully venture to wish you every happiness, sir?' Simon
pronounced at his most formal.
'No, you may not,' said Hugo. 'But you may shake hands with me.'
And he respectfully ventured to explain to Simon how, in the case of a
man like himself, with three thousand five hundred tongues ever ready to
wag about him, absolute secrecy had been the only policy.
'Telephone down to the refreshment department for Tortoni to come up to
me instantly. I must order a dinner for two. My wife and her maid will
be here in half an hour. I shall not want you--at any rate, before
ten-thirty or so.'
'Yes, sir. And the maid?'
'What about the maid?'
'You said you would order dinner for two, sir.'
'Look here, Simon,' said Hugo. 'If you will take the maid down to dine
in the Central Restaurant and keep her there--take her with you for a
drive to the _Morning Post_--I shall regard it as a favour. Catch!' And
he threw to Simon the gold token, which made Simon master of all the
good things in the entire building. 'Make use of that.'
Simon felt a little nervous at the prospect. He had not seen the maid.
However, he hoped for the best, and assured Hugo of his delight.
'I forgot to inform you, sir,' he turned back to tell Hugo as he was
leaving the room, 'Doctor Darcy called again to-day. He has called
several times the last few days. He said he might look in again
to-night.'
The bridegroom started.
'If he should,' Hugo ordered, 'don't say I'm in till you've warned me.'
'Yes, sir.'
Three hours later the bride and bridegroom were finishing one of the
distinguished Tortoni's most elaborate dinners. Tortoni had protested
that it was destructive of the elementary principles of art to order a
dinner for eight-thirty at seven o'clock. However, he had not completely
failed. The waiters had departed, and Camilla, in dazzling ivory-white,
was pouring out coffee. Hugo was cutting a cigar. They did not speak;
they felt. They were at the end of the brief honeymoon, and the day was
at an end. The last remnants of twilight had vanished, and through the
eastern windows of the dome the moon was rising. Neither the hour nor
the occasion made for talkativeness. Life lay before Hugo and Camilla.
Both were honestly convinced that they had not lived till that
hour--that hour whence dated the commencement of their regular united
existence. They looked at each other, satisfied, admiring, happy,
expecting glorious things from Fate.
There was a discreet alarm at the door. Simon came in. It would have
been a gross solecism to knock, but Simon performed the equivalent. He
paused, struck when he beheld Camilla, as well he might; for Camilla was
such a vision as is not often vouchsafed to the Simons of this world.
She was peerless that evening. And she smiled charmingly on him, and
asked after his health.
'Your coffee, dearest,' she murmured to Hugo.
It occurred to Simon that the dome would never be the same again. This
miraculous and amazing creature was going to be always there, to form
part of his daily life, to swish her wonderful skirts in and out of the
rooms, to--to--He did not know whether to be glad or sorry. He knew only
that he was perturbed, thrown off his balance, so much so that he forgot
to explain his invasion.
'Well, Simon,' said Hugo, 'had your dinner and been to the _Morning
Post_ office?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Alone?'
Simon blushed.
'No, sir.'
'Good.'
'Doctor Darcy is here, sir. Are you at home?'
Hugo had utterly forgotten about Doctor Darcy. He glanced at his wife
interrogatively, but Camilla looked at the moon through the window.
'Show Doctor Darcy in in five minutes,' said Hugo.
'Poor old Darcy!' exclaimed Camilla when they were alone. 'Does he
know?'
'Know what? That we are married? No. I wrote to him nearly six months
ago to tell him that you were safe and all that, and he acknowledged the
letter on a postcard. Afterwards I sent him that trifle of money that
you owed him, and he sent a stamped receipt.'
'He always hides his feelings,' said Camilla. 'This will be a blow for
him!'
'How?'
'Didn't he tell you he was most violently in love with me in Paris?'
'He did not,' said Hugo. 'Did he tell _you_?'
'No, of course not. He was far too chivalrous for that. It would have
seemed like taking advantage of my situation to force me into a
marriage.'
'How do you know he was violently in love with you, bright star?' Hugo
demanded in that amiably malicious tone which he could never withstand
the temptation to employ.
'My precious boy,' replied Camilla, 'how _does_ a woman know these
things?'
And she came over and kissed Hugo.
'You shall talk to him first,' she said. 'I'll join you later.'
'Did he ever commit sublime follies for you,' Hugo asked, detaining her
hand, 'as I did when I shut up the entire place because I thought you
looked exhausted one hot morning?'
She bent over him.
'Darcy is incapable of any folly in regard to women,' she said. 'That is
one reason why we should never have suited each other, he and I. A fool
should always marry a fool. Consider _my_ folly when I came back to work
in your Department 42 simply because I could not forget your masterful
face. Wasn't that also sublime?'
'You never told me--'
'But you guessed.'
'Perhaps.'
She withdrew her hand, and then that delicious swish of skirts which
Simon's imagination had foretold thrilled Hugo with delight. He launched
a kiss towards her as she vanished.
'We are all to be heartily congratulated,' said Darcy, somewhat
astonished when Hugo had put him abreast of the times. 'At one period I
suspected that you were going to make a match of it, and then, as I
heard nothing, I began to be afraid that she had been unable to banish
my humble self from her mind. And, to tell you the truth, the object of
this present visit to London was to inform myself, and, if necessary,
to--offer her--See?'
Hugo was bound to admit that he saw. Inwardly he laughed to think that
he had been seriously disturbed by Darcy's statement in regard to the
condition of Camilla's heart.
'Shall we go out to the top of the dome?' he suggested.
They rose.
And at that juncture Camilla reappeared.
The greeting between the Paris friends was commendably calm, but neither
seemed to be able to speak freely. And at length Camilla said she would
get a cloak and follow them to the belvidere.
The two men climbed to the summit which dominated the City of Pleasure.
To the east the famous roof restaurant glittered and jingled under the
moon. To the west the Great Wheel was outlined in flame--a symbol of the
era. Hugo told Darcy the history of the night in the cemetery, and what
preceded, and what came after it, including the strange death of
Ravengar in a lunatic asylum, and how everything was explained or
explicable--even Mr. Brown, the manager of the Safe Deposit, had run up
against justice in Caracas--save and except the identity of Ravengar's
accomplice during the last days. He was enlarging upon the
inscrutability of that part of the affair, and upon the interest which
it lent to the whole episode, when Darcy, who had not been listening,
broke in upon his observation with an inapposite remark which obviously
sprang from deep feeling.
'She's simply marvellous!' cried Darcy.
'Who?'
'Your wife. Simply marvellous! I had no idea--in Paris--'
'Recollect, you are not in love with her, my friend,' Hugo laughed.
'She must have the best blood in her veins. With that style, that
carriage, she surely must be--'
'My dear fellow,' said Hugo, 'beauty has no rank. It bloweth where it
listeth. It is the one thing in the world that you can't account for.
You've only got to be thankful for it when it blows your way, that's
all.'
A white figure appeared in the cavity of the steps leading to the
circular gallery.
'What are you talking about?' Camilla inquired.
'Women,' said Hugo.
THE END
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BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.