Barnaby Part 36

She had been in a jeweller's shop with Barnaby once, and it was in Bond Street. If she could find it ... the girl's suggestion had made her nervous; she would have more courage in going where she had been with him. Would they eye her askance even there? Would they make difficulties, ask questions? The thought hara.s.sed her.

She lingered a minute outside the shop, when she had found it; gazing into the glittering window, so preoccupied with her errand that it never entered her head that there might be anyone who would recognize her among the idle people that were abroad. Defending herself by a haughty carriage she took a long breath and went inside.

"How are you?"

She started as violently as if she had been a thief. She had never expected to meet this man again; and there he was, holding her limp hand in his.

"I saw you over the way," he said, "and plunged in here to catch you and ask about Barnaby. How is he getting on?"

At first she thought it must be in merciless irony he was speaking, and plucked up a spirit to defy him. He had glanced from her face to the counter; he was a witness of her singular transaction. She felt his glance burn her. What was he thinking of it?

"Oh, he is getting on very well," she said recklessly.

"Is he up here with you?" said Rackham. Was it possible that he did not know?--She gasped.

"No," she stammered. And now he looked at her more strangely. She was gathering up the price of her star and turning to leave the shop. They had made no demur; they had given her more than she dared to expect....

"Which way are you going?" said Rackham.

"Your way isn't mine," she said.

He was keeping at her side; she could not outstrip his strides with her flying little steps.

"But I want to talk to you," he said boldly. "You were a little beside yourself, weren't you, at our last meeting? I've not seen you since Barnaby's accident.... You blamed me for it, didn't you? My dear girl, if I had wanted to murder him I wouldn't have been so clumsy.--What are you doing in London all by yourself?"

That last question came suddenly, just when his bantering speech had roused her, and put her off her guard. He was watching her face; and it blanched.

"What's the trouble?" he said. "Confound--!"

He had cannoned into another man, whose approaching figure he had not marked. It was Kilgour, in London clothes, who blocked the way, with a growl for Rackham and a friendly hand-grip for Susan.

"Who's the man charging?" he grumbled. "Though you can't see daylight through me, still I'm not a bullfinch. Come along, Mrs. Barnaby; you are just the person I want. I've been praying my G.o.ds for a sympathetic eye. Come and look at my masterpiece in the window."

His large presence was a safeguard. She could have clung to him.

"Half Leicestershire is in Bond Street in a frost," he said. "I knew I'd run across somebody. I've been up myself since Friday. But what is Barnaby doing in town? What do the doctors say?"

What a fool she had been not to have dreaded this. Half Leicestershire in Bond Street! And she had fled to London, the great, engulfing city--! She could have laughed wildly at herself, at her childish want of precaution, her romantic imprudence in haunting places where she had been with him, where it was so likely that she would meet his acquaintances. But what would he think of her when he heard that she had been seen....?

Mechanically she walked on a few paces. Rackham was still at her right hand; he would not be shaken off. And Kilgour was talking in his loud, kind, friendly voice; taking it for granted that Barnaby and she were in town together. He did not guess that she was a runaway.

"It came to me in a vision on the top of Burrough Hill," he said.

"Rain and mist and the setting sun.... A kind of greyish-black gauziness with a stripe of crimson. There! What do you think of that?"

With a grandiloquent gesture he pointed out a diminutive grey and black turban throned in solitary majesty in the middle of a shop-window. His shop; his personal achievement. A quaint pride sat on his good red face, roughened by wind and weather. It was somewhat akin to the pride great men feel in doing little things. The big successes in life are too overweighting; they oppress a man with the memory of his struggle, the long strain, the effort,--the troubling secret of how he has fallen short. Kilgour might have swelled with pride over greater matters, but when he thought of them he was humble.... He wagged a delighted forefinger at his creation, boasting.

"There isn't much of it," said Rackham.

Susan was between the two men; she felt like a caught bird that dared not flutter, and she had still a frantic desire to laugh.

"That's it," said Kilgour. "No feminine exaggeration. It's all idea and no tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, instead of all tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and no idea. And as light as a feather. I tried it on myself."

She _was_ laughing; not at the absurd image his speech called up, not at the picture of this bluff sportsman gravely regarding himself in a mirror, balancing his insecure idea on his close-cropped head;--but at the tragic absurdity of her own position. How little they knew, these men!

"Good-bye," she said. "I--I am in a hurry."

"Just wait a minute," said Kilgour. "There's another point in its favour. If you are in a hurry you can clap it on hind-before. Wait a bit and let me ill.u.s.trate what I mean. Two or three doors up. You know this place? It's my rival _Jane_. Now, impartially, let's pick these hats to pieces."

But she interrupted his scientific disparagement rather wildly. She had not known how much she liked him, Barnaby's friend who might have talked to her of him if she had dared to loiter just for the sake of hearing his name spoken now and then.... She held out her hand to him wistfully.

"Good-bye, Lord Kilgour," she said hurriedly. "Good-bye!"

He squeezed the little hand kindly, not uttering his surprise till she had vanished from his ken.

"Bolted into the very shop!" he said. "How like a woman. Next time I meet her she'll have one of these monstrosities on her head."

He nodded carelessly at Rackham, to whom Susan had bidden no farewell, and strolled on, hailing his acquaintances, looking in the shops.

Turning into Piccadilly he saw a face he knew coming towards him in a hansom, and raised his stick.

"Thought it was you," he said. "You don't look very fit to be out.

What do you mean by it? I told your wife you had no business racketing in London."

The hansom had stopped. Barnaby was leaning out, staring at him.

"What did you say?" he asked. There was an incredulous eagerness in his voice.

"Eh?" said Kilgour, struck by his looks, and sorry. "Barnaby, old chap, you ought to be in bed. What's up? You haven't come to town to consult any fancy doctors? No complications, are there? It's generally when a fellow is mending that they crop up."

"No, it's not doctors," said Barnaby. "Look here, Kilgour----"

"Seems to me," said Kilgour, "as if you had been roped in by Christian Science. Don't you know what a battered-looking ghost you are?"

"I'm all right," said Barnaby impatiently. "Just answer me, Kilgour.

What did you mean by saying you told my wife----?"

"I wasn't meddling," said Kilgour sagely, "I was offering a rational opinion----"

"Oh, stop fooling!" said Barnaby. "Do you mean you saw her?"

The other man was puzzled by the urgent note in his voice. Then he laughed.

"Missed her have you?" he said. "Oh, yes, you fractious invalid,--I saw her."

"When?"