An hour later Brigit Mead came quietly down the now nearly dark stairs
of the old house, smiling faintly to herself.
Joyselle's confession had been complete and circumstantial. He had not
attempted to hide from her one thing, and in the relief of his, as it
seemed, unavoidable avowal, he had hardly given her time to speak. "It
was, I think, the evening you came in the golden gown. You remember? It
was a vision; but an angelic vision, Most Beautiful; but one that turned
me first to stone, and then to fire. Vivien must have worn a golden
gown. And then the evening in Pont Street--the storm, when I put my arms
round you--they went round the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, it
is true, but also round my daughter. But--in that lightning flash of
time I found they were round the woman compared to my love of whom the
whole world does not matter! And I ran into the night and walked for
hours in the rain, and I think I was mad. Then I determined to go to
America. And I would have gone, God knows, but--you came, and your
unconsciousness broke me down. If you had suspected, I should have gone;
I was on my way to the Steamship Company when I met you. And then,
Hampstead--and this past week--and then you came to me here where I
work--and where I dream--ah, my beloved!"
He was very gentle in his unhoped-for happiness, and to her immense
relief he never once mentioned, or even appeared to remember, his son.
When he asked her, with the marvelling curiosity of a boy lover, when
and why she ever came to love him, she only shook her head. "I love
you," she answered, and he forgot, looking at her, to insist.
No word of the future had been said, not a plan had been made. Only, at
parting, to meet later in the evening at the Newlyns, he said to her, "I
will be the greatest violinist in the world, my woman."
And her heart beat high with honest pride in him.
Too happy to think, she went down the stairs, and half-way down found
herself face to face with Gerald Carron.
It was nearly dark, but she could just see that his white face was drawn
and hideous with anger.
"What are you doing here?" she cried, drawing back, but furious in her
turn.
"What are you doing here? You--you!"
"You have been spying on me," she returned with a good assumption of
courage that she was very far from feeling. "Well--I have been to talk
to Mr. Joyselle. Have you any objection to my doing so?"
"Objection? Yes, I have. You have fooled us all. Engaged to the boy,
and--I have always known that you didn't care for that child, and
wondered--Now I know." He laughed shrilly. "And other people shall know,
too! Your mother will be pleased, and--the clean peasant! I only wonder
you haven't _married_ that poor wretch. The situation would then be even
more--biblical."
She tried to pass him, but he barred her way. "If you don't let me go, I
will call for M. Joyselle. And if he doesn't hear me, someone else will.
Do you understand?"
He did not answer, and looking at him carefully for a moment she was for
the first time terrified. His eyes were not those of a sane man.
"Gerald, don't be nasty," she urged, gently. "Surely you must see that
there is no harm in my coming to see Joyselle! In a month or two he will
be my father-in-law."
He sneered. "Ah, bah! I saw your face as you passed the last window. It
was not the face of a girl coming from her future father-in-law. It was
the face----"
Before he could finish a door opened on the floor above and two children
came downstairs, chattering gaily to each other. Brigit turned to the
elder, a boy of six, dressed in a quaintly cut green blouse.
"Is your papa at home, my dear?" she asked.
The child laughed. "My papa is dead," he answered cheerfully, "but Uncle
Chris is there."
Brigit looked at Carron for a moment, and then went downstairs with her
hand on the little boy's shoulder. "And what is your name?" she asked.
"I'm Bob Seymour, and this is Patty. Uncle Chris has been painting us.
He gives us a shilling apiece each time."
"How very nice." Patty, who wore as obviously artistic a costume as her
brother's, thumped noisily from behind them, and a few seconds later
Brigit had kissed her unconscious but all-powerful bodyguard and jumped
into the hansom.
If a man had come instead of the children, almost anything might have
happened, for she had no doubt that Carron's sanity was approaching
snapping-point, but the innocent courage of Bob and Patty had quieted
him.
Brigit had a very unpleasant drive home, but the romantic cabby was
delightfully thrilled. As it happened, he had been "crawling" for some
minutes before Brigit had engaged him in Sloane Square, and had noticed
her being accosted by Carron.
"Something queer along of all this," he meditated; "that lean chap
didn't look quite right, an' she 'adn't no patience with 'im neither.
Then in she goes to the old 'ouse, an' then along comes another 'ansom
with the lean chap. Then I waits an hour, an' out she comes with the
little kids, kissin' 'em, an' the biggest little kid arsks 'er 'er nime!
If she didn't know 'im, why did she kiss 'im? An' before we'd got to the
corner out comes the lean 'un, lookin' like a bloomin' corpse. Something
must 'ave 'appened in that old 'ouse, an' I'll keep a lookout in the
_People_ and see wot it was. I'd like to 'ave been a fly on the wall
during that there interview, I would. A fly on the wall with a tiste for
short'and."