"Throw your coat down anywhere, Miss Baldwin," Wingate invited, as he
ushered that young lady into his rooms soon after eleven o'clock on the
following evening. "Now what can I give you? There are some sandwiches
here--ham and pâté-de-foie-gras, I think. Whisky and soda or some hock?"
"A pâté sandwich and some plain soda water, please," Sarah replied,
taking off the long motoring coat which concealed her evening clothes. "I
have been fined for everything except disorderly driving--daren't risk
that. Thanks!" she went on. "What ripping sandwiches! And quite a good
play, wasn't it?"
"I am glad you enjoyed it."
"It was a swindle Josephine not turning up," Sarah continued, as she
stretched herself out in Wingate's easy-chair. "Domestic ructions again,
I suppose. How I do hate that husband of hers!"
"It was disappointing," he admitted.
There was a brief pause, during which Sarah finished her sandwiches and
lit a cigarette.
"Wilshaw seems to be having a little trouble with the outside porter,"
her host remarked presently.
"It must cost him at least half a sovereign every time I leave the cab,"
Sarah sighed.
"How much do you make a week out of your driving, if it isn't too
personal a question?" he enquired.
"It depends upon how much Jimmy's got."
"Is he your only client, then?"
"He very seldom gives me a chance of another. Once or twice I've refused
to be engaged by the day, but he sends his man around to the garage and I
find him sitting in the cab when I arrive."
Wingate laughed softly. She looked up at him with twinkling eyes.
"I believe you're making fun of my profession," she complained.
"Not at all, but I was wondering whether it wouldn't be cheaper for you
to marry Jimmy, as you call him."
"We have spoken about it once or twice," she admitted. "The worst of it
is, I don't think the cab would support two."
"Is Wilshaw so badly off?"
"His money is tied up until he is twenty-eight," Sarah explained. "I
think that his father must have known how he was going to turn out.
Jimmy promised that he would never anticipate it, and the dear old thing
keeps his word. We shall be married on his twenty-eighth birthday, all
right, unless his mother does the decent thing before."
"Has she money?" Wingate asked.
"Plenty--but she hasn't much confidence in Jimmy. I think she shows signs
of wavering lately, though. Perhaps his latest idea--he's going into the
City to-morrow, you know--may bring her around.--Mr. Wingate!"
"Well?"
"You're rather a dear old thing, you know," she said, "although you're
so serious."
"And you're quite nice," he admitted, "although you're such an
incorrigible little flirt."
"How do you know?" she laughed. "You never give me a chance of showing
what I can do in that direction."
"Too old, my dear young lady," her host lamented, as he mixed himself a
whisky and soda.
"Rubbish!" she scoffed. "Too much in love with some one else, I believe."
"These are too strenuous days for that sort of thing," he rejoined,
"except for children like you and Mr. Wilshaw."
"I don't know so much about that," she objected. "The world has never
gone so queerly that people haven't remembered to go on loving and be
made love to. Look at the war marriages."
"Yes--and the war divorces," he reminded her.
"Brute!" she exclaimed, with a little grimace.
"Why 'brute'?" he protested. "You can't deny them. Some of these
marriages were genuine enough, of course. Others were simply the result
of a sort of amorous hysteria. Affected every one in those days just
like a germ."
"John Wingate!"
"Yes?"
"Don't try to be cynical."
"I'm not."
"You are," she persisted. "There isn't a man breathing who has a more
wonderful capacity for caring than you. You hide your feelings from most
people. Are you very angry with me for having guessed? I have, you know."
Wingate paused in the act of lighting a cigarette.
"What's that?"
"I think I have a sort of second sight in such matters, especially as
regards people in whom I am interested," Sarah continued, "and if there
is one woman in the world whom I really adore, and for whom I am heartily
sorry, it is Josephine Dredlinton."
"She has a rotten time," was Wingate's terse comment.
"Very few people know how rotten," Sarah went on. "She has lost nearly
all her own relations in the war, her husband has spent the greater part
of her fortune, flaunted his affairs with various actresses in the face
of all London, shilly-shallied through the war as a recruiting officer,
or on any odd job that kept him safely at home, and now he openly
associates with a little company of men in the City who are out to make
money any old way they can get hold of it."
"Lord Dredlinton is a bad lot," Wingate acquiesced.
"And Josephine is an angel," Sarah declared warmly. "If I were a man--"
"Well, you're not," he interrupted.
"If I were a man," she went on, laying her hand upon his, "I wouldn't let
Josephine live out these best days of her life in sorrow. I wouldn't have
her insulted and peered at, every hour of her life. I wouldn't see her
living in torture, when all the time she has such a wonderful capacity
for life and love. Do you know what I'd do, Mr. Wingate?"
"What would you do?" he asked.
"I'd take her away! I wouldn't care about anybody else or anything. If
the world didn't approve, I'd make a little world of my own and put her
in it. You're quite strong enough."
He looked through the walls of the room, for a minute.
"Yes, I am strong enough," he agreed, "but is she?"
"Why do you doubt her?" Sarah demanded. "What has she in her present life
to lose, compared with what she gains from you--what she wants more than
anything else in the world--love?"
He made no answer. The girl's words had thrilled him. Then the door swung
open and Jimmy appeared, very pink and white, very immaculate, and
looking rather more helpless than usual.
"I say, Sarah," he exclaimed, "it's no use! There's a most infernal block
down in the courtyard. Chap wanted me to push the taxi out into the
street. It's cost me all the loose change I've got to stop his sending
for a policeman. We'll have to do a scoot."
Sarah sighed as her host arranged her cloak around her.
"Sorry we couldn't have stayed a little longer," she said. "Mr. Wingate
was just getting most interesting."
"You'll have a drink before you go, Wilshaw?" Wingate insisted.
"Say when."
The young man accepted the whisky and soda and promptly disposed of it.
"Thanks, old chap! Frightfully sorry to rush away like this, but that
fellow downstairs means business."
"Good night, Mr. Wingate," Sarah said, holding out her hand, "and
thanks ever so much for the evening. You don't think I'm a forward
little minx, do you?"
"I think you're a sensible little dear," he assured her, "far too good
for Jimmy."
"Sorry I accepted your hospitality, if that's how you're feeling," Jimmy
grunted. "By the by, you haven't a few cigarettes, have you, for me to
smoke while Sarah tries to get me safely home?"
Wingate held out the box.
"Fill your case," he invited; "your pockets, too, if you like. Don't
forget, both of you, luncheon at one-thirty to-morrow in the restaurant.
Good night!"
He stood with the door open, watching them go down the corridor. Then he
came slowly back into his room. Once more the telephone bell began to
ring. He picked up the receiver. The indifference of his opening
monosyllable vanished in a second. Something amazing crept into his face.
"Who?--Lady Dredlinton?" he exclaimed.
"But where are you?--Downstairs?--Yes--Yes--Why, of course.--Here?--You
mean that you are coming here, up to my room?--I don't quite
understand.--Yes, of course.--One moment, please. Come up by the east
lift unless you want to meet Sarah Baldwin and Wilshaw. They have this
moment left me. The hall porter will show you."
Wingate laid down the receiver, glanced for a moment at the clock,
hurried to the door, pushed back and secured the latch. Then he came back
into the room and stood listening.
In the end she came quite suddenly. The door had opened and closed
before he heard even the swish of her skirts. She stood there looking at
him a little appealingly. She was dressed in dark travelling clothes and
she carried a heavy dressing case in her hand. He sprang forward and
took it from her.
"My dear friend," she exclaimed, with an attempt at levity, "don't look
so tragic! There is a very simple explanation of this extraordinary
visit, as you will soon find."
"It needs no explanation," he declared.
"Oh, yes, it does, of course," she continued. "I simply want you to
intercede with the authorities here, so that I do not have to go and
stand at that terrible counter. There is a continental train just in, and
the place is crowded."
"You wish to stay here for the night?"
"Mayn't I? I have always heard that it was such a charming hotel, and I
must stay somewhere."
"There is some trouble?" he asked slowly.
"There is always trouble," she replied, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"To-night seems to me as though it may be the climax. You won't be
horrified if I sit down and smoke one of your cigarettes? And may I
remind you that your attitude is not entirely hospitable?"
Wingate had recovered from his first stupor. His eyes were very bright,
he was filled with the sense of wonderful happenings.
"Oh, I'll be as hospitable as you like," he assured her. "You shan't have
any cause to reproach me so far as that is concerned. This easy-chair,
please. It is by far the most comfortable one. And now some cushions," he
added, slipping them behind her. "The cigarettes are here, and I have
some excellent hock. Just half a glass? Good! Miss Baldwin has been
praising my sandwiches. You'll have one, won't you?"
She sighed with content, almost with happiness. The strained look had
gone from her face. She took off her hat and he laid it upon the table.
"You are very good, very kind indeed," she murmured. "And yet not so
kind as I would like to be."
He came and stood by her side. She was eating one of the sandwiches and
had already tasted the wine. Somehow, he knew quite well that she had had
no dinner.
"I want you to understand," he began, "that you are free to tell me what
has happened to-night or not--just as you please. Don't feel obliged to
explain, I'll be quite frank, I am a curious person as regards you. I
want to know--everything. I should like to know how it was that you were
unable to come to dinner or join us at the theatre to-night. I should
like to know what has brought you out of your house to an hotel at
midnight--but don't tell me unless you want to."
"I do want to," she assured him. "I want to tell you everything. I
think--somehow I almost feel that you have the right to know."
"Cultivate that feeling," he begged her. "I like it."
She smiled, a wan little smile that passed very soon. Her face grew sad
again. She was thinking.
"I dare say you can guess," she began presently, "something of what my
daily life is like when my husband is in town. It is little less than
torture, especially since he became mixed up with Mr. Phipps, that
horrible person Martin, and their friends."
"Abominable!" Wingate muttered.
"He is all the while trying to induce me to receive their women friends,"
she continued. "I need not tell you that I have refused, as I always
should refuse."
"Naturally!"
"To-night, however," she went on, "he has surpassed himself. First of all
he telephoned to say that he was bringing home friends for dinner, and if
I had any other engagement he requested me to cancel it. As you know, I
did so. Notwithstanding his message, he did not arrive at the house until
eleven o'clock, barely an hour ago."
"And kept you waiting all that time?"
"That is nothing. Let me explain something before I conclude. Before the
war I had an Austrian maid, a woman whom I turned out of the house, and
whom my husband at that time did not dare to ask me to reinstate. He had
not then spent quite the whole of my fortune. Besides an undoubted
intrigue with my husband, I heard afterwards that she only escaped
imprisonment as a spy by leaving the country hurriedly just before war
was declared. Tonight, my husband, having kept me waiting three hours
while he dined with her in Soho, brought her back to the house,
announcing that he had engaged her as his secretary."
"Damn the fellow!" Wingate muttered.
"Naturally," she continued, "I declined to sleep under the same roof. The
woman remained--and here am I."
"You are here," he repeated. "Thank God for that!"
"It was perhaps imprudent of me," she sighed, "to choose this hotel, but
I had a curious feeling of weakness. I felt that I must see some one to
whom I could tell what had happened--some friend--before I slept. Perhaps
my nerves are going. So I came to you. Did I do wrong?"
"The wrong would be if ever you left me," he declared passionately.
She patted his hand. "Dear friend!"
"The room I will arrange for in a minute or two," he promised. "That is
quite easy. But to-morrow--what then?"
"I shall telephone home," she replied. "If that woman is still in the
house, I shall go down into the country, and from there I shall write my
lawyers and apply for a separation."
"So those are your plans," he remarked calmly.
"Yes. Can you suggest anything better?"
"I can suggest something a thousand times better."
She hesitated for a moment. Perhaps she was conscious of a certain
alteration in his deportment, the ring of his last words, the slight but
unusual air of emotional fervour with which he seemed somehow to have
become endowed. A woman of curiously strong virginal instincts, she
realised, perhaps for the first time, the approach of a great change in
Wingate's attitude towards her. Yet she could not keep from her lips the
words which must bring his avowal.
"What do you mean?" she faltered.
"That you end it all," he advised firmly, "that you take your courage in
both hands, that you do not return to your husband at all."
"Not return," she repeated, her eyes held by his.
"That you come to me," he went on, bending over the side of her chair.
"Needless, wonderful words, but I love you. You were the first woman in
my life. You will be the last. I have been silent, as you know. I have
waited for something like this, and I think the time has come."
"The time can never come," she cried despairingly.
"The time has come at least for me to tell you that I love you more than
any woman on earth," he declared, "that I want to take care of you, to
take you into my life, to build a wall of passionate devotion around you,
to keep you free from every trouble and every harm."
"Ah, dear friend, if it were but possible!" she murmured, holding his
hands tightly.
"But it is possible," he insisted. "All that we need is courage. You owe
nothing to your husband. You can leave him without remorse or a moment's
shame. Your life just now is wasted,--a precious human life. I want you,
Josephine. God knows how I want you!"
"You have my friendship--even my love. There, I have said it!" she
repeated, with a little sob, "my love."
His arms were suddenly around her. She shrank back in her chair. Her
terrified eyes invited and yet reproached him.
"Remember--oh, please remember!" she cried.
"What can I remember except one thing?" he whispered.
She held him away from her.
"You talk as though everything were possible between us. How can that be?
I have no joy in my husband, nor he in me--but I am married. We are not
in America."
He rose to his feet, a strong man trembling in every limb. He stood
before her, trying to talk reasonably, trying to plead his cause behind
the shelter of reasonable words.
"Let me tell you," he began, "why our divorce laws are so different
from yours. We believe that the worst breach of the Seventh Commandment
is the sin of an unloving kiss, the unwillingly given arms of a
shuddering wife, striving to keep the canons of the prayer book and
besmirching thereby her life with evil. We believe, on the other hand,
that there is no sin in love."
"If you and I were alone in the world!"
"If you are thinking of your friends," he pleaded, "they are more likely
to be proud of the woman who had the courage to break away from a
debasing union. Every one realises--what your husband is. He has been
unfaithful not only to you but to every friend he has ever had."
"Do I not know it!" she moaned. "Isn't the pain of it there in my heart,
hour by hour!"
His reasonableness was deserting him. Again he was the lover, begging for
his rights.
"Wipe him out of your mind, sweetheart," he begged. "I'll buy you from
him, if you like, or fight him for you, or steal you--I don't care which.
Anything sooner than let you go."
"I don't want to go," she confessed, afraid of her own words, shivering
with the meaning of them.
"You never shall," he continued, his voice gaining strength with his
rising hopes. "You've opened my lips and you must hear what is in my
heart. You are the one love of my life. My hours and days are empty, I
want you always by my side."
The love of him swept her away. Her head had fallen back, she saw his
face through the mist.
"Go on, go on," she begged.
"I want you as I have wanted nothing else in life--not only for my own
sake, for yours. I want to chase all those lines of sorrow away from
your face."
"My poor, tired face," she faltered.
"Tired?" he repeated. "It's the most beautiful face on earth."
The smile which suddenly transformed her quivering mouth made it
indeed seem so.
"You are so foolish, dear, but go on," she pleaded.
"I want to see you grow younger and lighter-hearted. I want you to
realise day by day that something beautiful is stealing into your life. I
want you to feel what real love is--tender, passionate, lover's love."
"My dear, my dear!" she cried. "I do not dare to think of these things,
yet they sound so wonderful."
"Leave the daring to me, sweetheart," he answered. "You shall have
nothing to do but rest after these horrible days, rest and care for me
a little."
"Oh, I do care!" she exclaimed, with sudden passion. "That is what makes
it all so wonderful."
"You love me? Tell me so once more?" he begged.
"Dear, I love you. You must have known it or you couldn't have said these
things. And I thought I was going to die without knowing what love was."
"Never fear that again," he cried joyfully. "You shall know what it is
every hour of the day. You shall know what it is to feel yourself
surrounded by it, to feel it encompass you on every side. You shall know
what it is to have some one think for you, live for you, make sweet
places for your footsteps in life."
Her eyes shone. The years had fallen away. She rose tremblingly to her
feet, her arms stole around his neck.
"John, you dear, wonderful lover," she whispered, "why, it has come
already! I am forgetting everything. I am happy!"
The clock on Wingate's mantelpiece struck one. He drew himself gently
away from the marvel of those soft entwining arms, stooped and kissed
Josephine's fingers reverently.
"Dear," he said, "let me begin to take up my new responsibilities. We
must arrange for your stay here."
She laughed happily, rose, and with a woman's instinct stood before the
mirror, patting her hair.
"I don't recognise myself," she murmured. "Is this what love
brings, John?"
He stood for a moment by her side.
"Love?" he repeated. "Why, you haven't begun yet to realise what it
means--what it will bring to you."
Once more she set her hands upon his shoulders. Her eyes, which a moment
before had looked so longingly into his, drooped for a moment.
"Dear," she begged, "you won't ever be sorry, will you, and--does this
sound selfish, I wonder?--you won't mind waiting?"
He smiled down at her.
"I shall never be sorry," he declared firmly. "I shall always bless
this night and the impulse that brought you here. And as to waiting,"
he went on, "well, I have had four years of waiting without any
particular hope, even of seeing you again. I think that with hope I can
hold out a little longer."
He went over to the telephone and spoke for a few moments. Then he laid
down the receiver and returned.
"A boy is bringing up the key of your room at once," he announced. "You
will be in the south block, a long way off, but the rooms there are
comfortable."
"Thank you, John dear," she said, smiling.
"Just one thing more," he continued. "I want you to remember that this
miserable, tangled skein of unhappiness which you have called life is
finished and done with. From to-night you belong to me. I must see you
to-morrow--if possible at Dredlinton House--and we can work out some
plans then. But you are to worry about nothing. Remember that I am here,
and I love you.--Good night!"
Once more she rested for a moment in his arms. The seconds sped by.
Then he took a quick step backwards, and they both stared at the door.
It was closed now, but the slam of it a moment before had sounded like
a pistol shot.
"Who was that?" she asked in a terrified whisper.
"That idiot of a boy with the key, I expect," he replied. "Wait, dear."
He hurried outside, through the little hall and into the corridor. There
was no one in sight, not even the sound of footsteps to be heard. He
listened for a moment and then returned.
"Who was it?" she repeated.
"Nobody!"
"But some one must have looked in--have seen us!"
"It may have been the outside door," he suggested.
She shook her head.
"The door was closed. I closed it behind me."
"You mustn't worry, dear," he insisted. "In all probability some one did
look into the room by mistake, but it is very doubtful whether they would
know who we were. It may have been Sparks, my man, or the night valet,
seeing a light here. Remember what I told you a few minutes ago--there is
no trouble now which shall come near you."
She smiled, already reassured.
"Of course, I am rather absurd," she said, "but then look at me! It
is past one o'clock, and here am I in your rooms, with that terrible
dressing case on the table, and without a hat, and still looking, I
am afraid," she concluded, with a final glance into the glass, "a
little tumbled."
"You look," he told her fondly, "like a girl who has just realised for
the first time in her life that she is loved."
"How strange," she laughed happily,--"because that is exactly how I
feel!"
There was a knock at the door. A page entered, swinging a key in his
hand.
"Key of 440 for the lady, sir," he announced.
"Quite right, my boy. Listen. Did you meet any one in the corridor?"
"No one, sir."
"You haven't been in here before without knocking, have you?"
"No, sir," was the prompt reply. "I came straight up in the lift."
Wingate turned to Josephine with a little shrug of the shoulders.
"The mystery, then, is insoluble," he declared cheerfully, "but
remember this, sweetheart," he added, as the boy stepped discreetly
outside, "in small things as well as large, the troubles of this world
for you are ended."
"You don't know how wonderful it sounds to hear words like that," she
sighed, as they stood hand in hand. "I shan't seem very selfish, John,
shall I, if I ask for a little time to realise all this? I feel that
everything I have and am ought to be yours at this moment, because you
have made me so happy, because my heart is so full of gratitude. But,
alas, I have my weaknesses! I am a very proud woman. Sometimes I am
afraid I have been a little censorious--as regards others!"
He stooped and kissed her fingers.
"If you knew what it felt like," he whispered, as he held open the door
for her, "to have something to wait for! And whether you realise it or
not, you are with me--from now on--always--my inspiration--my daily
happiness."