On an afternoon in late summer Heloise van Oynne looked across the
darkening river, seemed for a moment absorbed in the gay lighting of one
of the moored house-boats, and then:
“Tell me some more about Diana, please. She must be fas-cinating!” she
pleaded.
Her companion shifted a little uncomfortably. He had already said more
about Diana than he wished or intended saying.
“Well ... you know all about Diana. I hope you will meet her ... some
day.”
There was just that little pause before the last word that meant so much
to a woman with an acute sense of tone, and Heloise was supersensitive
because it was her business to be. To-day she seemed unusually ethereal.
She was pretty, slim (Diana would have called her “skinny”),
spirituelle. In the deep, dark eyes was mystery ... elusiveness;
something that occasionally made his flesh creep pleasantly.
Gordon Selsbury was not in love. He was not the easily loving kind. It
pleased him to know that he had a mystery of his own--he had once been
described as “sphinx-like.”
If Diana had been older and were not his cousin, and had not
in her masterful way installed herself in his house, defiant
of the conventions, and were not so infernally sarcastic and
self-sufficient--well, he might feel nicer toward her.
Talking of Diana....
He looked at the watch on his wrist. He had told her he would be in for
dinner. Heloise saw the movement and smiled inwardly.
“Was it serious, that affair of hers?” she asked gently.
Gordon coughed. Heloise never met him but she talked of Diana’s affair.
It was a curious piece of femininity that he did not expect to find in a
woman. Not his kind of woman.
He was relieved of the necessity for answering.
“Who is that man, Gordon?”
The skiff had passed twice under the hotel terrace where they sat at tea
that afternoon, and twice the big, red-faced man had peered up at the
two people.
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t we be going?”
She made no attempt to rise.
“When do I see you again, Gordon? Life is so blank and miserable without
you. Does Diana monopolise you so entirely? People wouldn’t understand,
would they? I don’t love you and you do not love me. If you thought I
loved you, you would never see me again.” She laughed quietly. “It is
just your soul and mind”--her voice was very low--“just the clear
channel of understanding that makes our minds as one. Love doesn’t bring
that, or marriage.”
“It is rather wonderful.” He nodded many times. “Extraordinary--people
would never understand.”
She thought they wouldn’t.
“I’m just aching for The Day to come,” she said, staring across the
river. “I don’t think it ever will come: not The Day of my dreams.”
Gordon Selsbury had this premonition too; had been waiting all afternoon
to translate his doubt into words.
“I’ve been thinking the matter over, Heloise--that trip to Ostend. Of
course, it would be lovely seeing one another every day and all day, and
living, if not under the same roof, at least in the same environment.
The uninterrupted contact of mind--that is beautifully appealing. But
do you think it wise? I am speaking, of course, from your point of view.
Scandal doesn’t touch a man grossly.”
She turned her glorious eyes to his.
“‘They say: what say they? Let them say,’” she quoted contemptuously.
He shook his head.
“Your name is very precious to me,” he said, not without a hint of
emotion, “very precious, Heloise. I feel that, although the Ostend
season is past and most of the hotels are closed and visitors have
dispersed, as I understand they do disperse from fashionable seaside
resorts, there is a possibility, a bare possibility, that we should see
somebody there who knew me--us, I mean--and who would put the worst
possible construction upon what--er--would be the most innocent
intellectual recreation. It is extremely dangerous.”
She was laughing hardly as she rose.
“I see,” she said. “You are really conventional underneath, Gordon. It
was a mad idea--don’t let us talk any more about it. It hurts me a
little.”
In silence he paid the bill, in silence followed her into his car. He
was hurt too. Nobody had ever called him conventional. Half way across
Richmond Park he said:
“We will go: let us say no more. I will meet you as we arranged.”
The only answer she made was to squeeze his arm until they were flying
down Roehampton Lane, and then, dreamily:
“There is something Infinite in friendship like ours, Man. It is all too
wonderful....”
Diana was reading a magazine in The Study when Gordon came in. She threw
down the magazine and jumped up from the chair (she sat at his desk when
she read, with the exasperating result that the writing surface, which
he left neat and ordered on his going out, was generally in a state of
chaos on his coming in).
“Dinner,” she said tersely. “You’re late, Gord, devilishly late.”
Mr. Selsbury’s expression was pained.
“I wish you would not call me ‘Gord,’ Diana,” he complained gently. “It
sounds--well, blasphemous.”
“But oh, it fits,” she said, shaking her head. “You don’t know how it
fits!”
Gordon shrugged his shoulders.
“At any rate, ‘devilish’ is not ladylike.”
“Where have you been?” she asked with that disconcerting brusqueness of
hers.
“I have been detained----”
“Not at your office,” said Diana promptly, as she sat down at the table
and pointed an accusing finger. “You haven’t been back since luncheon.”
Mr. Selsbury cast a resigned look at the ceiling.
“I have been detained on a purely private business matter,” he said
stiffly.
“Dear, dear!” said Diana, unimpressed.
Nothing really impressed Diana. She had, she boasted, passed the
impressionable age.
Gordon had come to admit to himself that she was pretty; in a way she
was beautiful. She had blue eyes, willow pattern blue, and a skin like
satin. He admitted that her figure was rather lovely. If she had been
older or younger, if her hair had not been bobbed--if she had a little
more respect for wisdom, an appreciation of thought, a little something
of hero-worship!
He strolled gloomily to the window and stared blankly into the dusk.
Diana was an insoluble problem.
Trenter came in at that moment.
“Trenter.”
“Yes, sir.” The butler crossed to his employer.
“Do you see that man on the other side of the road--that red-faced man?”
It was the stranger of the skiff. Gordon recognised him at once.
“I’ve seen him before to-day ... rather a coincidence.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Trenter. “That’s Mr. Julius Superbus.”
Gordon gaped at him.
“Julius Superbus--what the devil do you mean?”
“Language!” murmured a voice in the background. How like Diana.
“What on earth do you mean? That is a Roman name.”
Trenter smirked.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Superbus is a Roman, the last Roman left in England. He
comes from Cæsar Magnus--it’s a little village near Cambridge. I used to
be in service there, that’s how I come to know him.”
Gordon frowned heavily. By what strange chance had he come to see this
oddly named creature twice in one day--at Hampton, rowing a boat with
some labour; in Cheynel Gardens, apparently absorbed in the study of a
near-by lamp-post?
“What is he--by profession?”
“A detective, sir,” said Trenter.
Gordon went suddenly pale.