BRANDON COURT
"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do
you?"
"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"
"Do _you_ call it that too?" ...
... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you
all my life!"--RUDYARD KIPLING, "The Brushwood Boy."
The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed
myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.
"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she
had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the
rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be
there."
As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second
reading of his admirably lucid instructions.
"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the
Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last
minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own
account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley
or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize
him...."
"Do you _know_ him?" Gladys asked me in surprise.
"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he
had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the
Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."
Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to
gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several
years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the
sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly
respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public
position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for
his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do
so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the
waters returned to me after not many days.
"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.
"Oh, a topper!"
I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.
"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded, _per obscurans ad
obscurantius_; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of
the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent
specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in
weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the
kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of
speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might
starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your
plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was
brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and
followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination
he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and
unready sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose
he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him,
and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a
Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity
Eight.
I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.
"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He
is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not
comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime
Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime
Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise
him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you
with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on
five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and
finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also
his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious
enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic
instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously;
he is making a mark in the House."
"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the
Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a
very general feeling.
I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of
the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more
than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable,
I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I
have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to
size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did. Nigel
went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an
abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of
personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those
who--like the Jews--trample that they be not trampled on. He became
overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for
fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his
tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House
christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was
not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom
to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when
he was sure of his ground.
I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have
been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff,
make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness.
Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own
case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him
no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will
carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and
humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the
youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and
figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not
now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery
of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still
able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I
laughed--though he had all the trumps in his hand--he must needs think
I had reason for my laughter.
"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat
Culling. He is an irrepressible Irishman of some thirty summers, with
a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ
it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless
face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument
from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to
Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in
Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I
know.
"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he
will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing
that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a
special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be
losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He
is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your
hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him
gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable
foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will
deal himself five aces with the utmost _sang froid_."
"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in
my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.
"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her
belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole
time."
I reminded myself that I stood _in loco parentis_, shook hands with
Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.
The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip
conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my
presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told
me how life had treated him since our parting in Asia Minor; while
Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated
history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Avénement de
Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily
summoned to be informed of the birth--I noticed that the ministers
were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi--it concluded with
the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For
reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived
of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the
badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable
as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry
when we arrived at Brandon Junction.
We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being
collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and
from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I
recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long
rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour
of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony
must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from
Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect
without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.
When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at
the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud
youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the
ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling
black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft,
unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge
hovered round her small, straight mouth, as though she were conscious
of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile
there lurked--or so I fancied--a suggestion of weariness as with one
whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling
blend of frankness and reserve. The _camaraderie_ of her greeting
reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers;
fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by
her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the
man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It
was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends
were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr.
Culling."
Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach
Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were
astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in
trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be
filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other
people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick
movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I
remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical
energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame
could contain such fire without eruption.
Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....
"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands.
"And where's the wicked uncle?"
My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.
"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a
hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."
"I feel even younger," I began.
"Face massage," Culling murmured.
"A good conscience," I protested.
"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.
It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other
than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would
outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched
Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an
excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his
arrangements.
"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in
desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come
to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in,
everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."
"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage,"
objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one
else.
"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.
"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good
enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.
Philip was seized with inspiration.
"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"
"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes,"
his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."
My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was
shod with neat, serviceable brogues.
"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the
way."
Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia
and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across
the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon
Court.
"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.
"What was?" she asked.
"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand,
but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."
We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a
temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking
down on me.
"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.
"I sincerely hope so."
"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time
to go back and get a cab at the station."
"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.
"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake
of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to
make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them.
Will you promise?"
"The flesh is weak," I protested.
"Am I worth a little promise like that?"
"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."
"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar,
as you call them. You know you're really--you won't mind my saying
it?--you're old enough...."
"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was
perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the
subject. So far as I can see, my declining years will be one long
riot of senile infidelity.
"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I
don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood
facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine.
"You're not in love with me, are you?"
I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot
tapped the ground with impatience.
"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known
me five minutes. Well,"--her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may
have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm--"please
don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till
I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've
knocked about the world, you're seasoned----"
I held out my hand to seal the bargain.
"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence.
"I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."
"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.
"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she
added with a flash of pride.
"I think I saw that the moment we met."
"I wonder."
It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before
I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty
years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and
troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared
with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them
had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and
Sylvia had been in attendance at every important match in which he
was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a
prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an
end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of
Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and
Sylvia, whose one cry--like Kundry's--had ever been, "Let me serve,"
found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household,
when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without
an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding.
Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had
slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his
place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the
world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her
devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am
convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an
outlet for her activities in militancy.
"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her
eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be
friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."
"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate
them all!"
"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.
"Yes. Did you know her?"
I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by
her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came
afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was
reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.
"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.
"You think so?" she asked without conviction.
It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions;
they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was
being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had
troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers
superfluous.
"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden
standstill.
"I _say_, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.
"He didn't come," I reassured her.
"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept
invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably
polite."
"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.
"Why?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Shyness, I suppose."
"I hate shy people."
"You must ask him."
"I don't know him. What's he like?"
"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the
Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I
ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather
haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very
nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."
"Sounds like a degenerate poet."
"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia.
Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."
"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."
"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time
to hate!"
"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate
myself more than anybody else."
"Why?"
"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't
control myself."
On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden
was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the
household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained
Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as
Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in
prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget
that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect
for Morningtons--or any other pre-Conquest families--whether they come
from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn
reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have
possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon
Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for
pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the
Judge?" she said when we met. "Then--let me see--your sister-in-law
was a Hylton."
I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench
politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion
quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt.
Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"--it
now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square--rescued the conversation
from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we had to arrange
for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was
coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought
over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia
volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while
the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon
Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.
"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me,
when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a
cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that
high, and now--God knows--it's in a decline you'd say he was taken.
You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has
his heart broken."
I did not know what answer to give.
"Just a passing mood," I suggested.
"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.
He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those
feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world
and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other
business--a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost
to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel
moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy
kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and
the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.
"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came
towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his
thumb in the front door of his flat, and while we dragged the depths
of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick
and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual,
and his manner restless.
"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.
"I was giving up hope."
"I _had_ to come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into
one of his longest silences.
We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens,
reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming
masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve
rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth
in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun,
and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We
drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymphæas
closing their eyes for the night.
Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom,
Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old
spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.
"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we
approached.
"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it,"
said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of
us did to improve or debase our minds.
"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two
glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and
Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind
as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his
head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"
Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At
two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and
passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as
many minutes.
"He _knows_ it's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance.
If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"
"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "If _you_ were blind,
you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."
"Not enough," said Gartside.
"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ.
You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive
surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive
organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing,
hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."
Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.
"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."
"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.
"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the
sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the
moment he got into the room."
"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.
"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather,"
Gartside went on.
"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't
coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere
on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute
touch sense."
I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the
fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.
"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.
"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling,
infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.
"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called
'premonition.'"
Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.
"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."
"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.
"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's
dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What
about all those other mornings...."
"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.
"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure
coincidence."
I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.
"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."
"For instance?"
I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my
observation in the East--the power possessed by many natives of
foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came
across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had
been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One
morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature
was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I
congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die
punctually at eight that evening.
In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the
relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme
unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect
health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his
assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be
morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at
hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on
his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.
"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating
illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to
fancies. An idea--from a dream, perhaps--that death will take place at
a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body
is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm
going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I
shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an
unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick
to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and
dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."
"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from
the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in
his voice.
We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had
a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.
"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my
bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know--it's your livelihood."
"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."
"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"
Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or
verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason.
To write an entirely imaginative work would be--as the poet said of
love--"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like
keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal
length.
"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when
I put this view before him.
"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.
"You'd lose the psychology of expectation--uncertainty."
"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.
"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."
"What form does it take?"
His lips parted, and closed again quickly.
"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.
Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and
after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the _entrée_, it
was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in
my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were
unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away
from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between
Philip and the Seraph.
"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.
He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.
"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words
the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair.
I saw the footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and
whisper something to Arthur.
"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.
"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she
had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.
"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.
"The man only said...."
Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia
framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress,
and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed
with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle
of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study
in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into
relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared
unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my
forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through
bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted
lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into
the room.
"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair
by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be
sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr.
Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she
ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She
hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and
as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs.
Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."
"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the tone that tries to be
sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.
Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph
as she did so.
"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him
with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood
likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I
came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"
I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the
one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.
"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was
ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."
Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at
last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had
already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant
tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood
about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table
with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation
for a stroll on the terrace.
He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time
and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and
a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the
face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that
at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and
unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's
many feminine characteristics.
It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he
and I were the two last men in the world, and Brandon Court the only
house in England--till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found
two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house.
Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had
been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty
years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or
other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.
It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open
library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he
would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it
would have enlightened neither of us.
On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the
frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed
herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair
braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no
portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the
fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to
judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable
temperament....
I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or
twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately--almost before I
had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the
adjoining room.