Man and Maid Part 28

The thief saw, and he turned and he fled back to his doorway, and down the steps and through the maze of vaulted pa.s.sages--fled in the dark, and empty-handed, because when he had come into the presence that informed that house with silence, he had dropped lantern and treasure, and fled wildly, the horror in his soul driving him before it. Now fear is more wise than cunning, so, whereas he had sought for hours with his lantern and with all his thief's craft to find the way out, and had sought in vain, he now, in the dark and blindly, without thought or will, without pause or let, found the one way that led to a door, shot back the bolts, and fled through the awakened rose garden and across the dewy park.

He dropped from the wall into the road, and stood there looking eagerly to right and left. To the right the road wound white and sinuous, like a twisted ribbon over the great, grey shoulder of the hill; to the left the road curved down towards the river. No least black fly of a figure stirred on it. There are no travellers on such a road at such an hour.

XI

THE GIRL AT THE TOBACCONIST'S

John Selwyn Selborne cursed for the hundredth time the fool that had bound him captive at the chariot wheels of beauty. That is to say, he cursed the fool he had been to trust himself in the automobile of that Brydges woman. The Brydges woman was pretty, rich, and charming; omniscience was her pose. She knew everything: consequently she knew how to drive a motor-car. She learned the lesson of her own incompetence at the price of a broken ankle and a complete suit of bruises. Selborne paid for his trusting folly with a broken collar-bone and a deep cut on his arm. That was why he could not go to Portsmouth to see the last of his young brother when he left home for the wars.

This was why he cursed. The curse was mild--it was indeed less a curse than an invocation.

"Defend us from women," he said; "above all from the women who think they know."

The grey gloom that stood for dawn that day crept through the curtains and made ghosts of the shadows that lingered still in his room. He stretched himself wearily, and groaned as the stretched nerves vibrated to the chord of agony.

"There's no fool like an old fool," said John Selwyn Selborne. He had thirty-seven years, and they weighed on him as the forty-seven when their time came would not do.

He had said good-bye to the young brother the night before; here in this country inn, the nearest to the scene of the enlightenment of the Brydges woman. And to-day the boy sailed. John Selborne sighed.

Twenty-two, and off to the wars, heart-whole. Whereas he had been invalided at the very beginning of things and now, when he was well and just on the point of rejoining--the motor-car and the Brydges woman! And as for heart-whole ... the Brydges woman again.

He fell asleep. When he awoke there was full sunshine and an orchestra of awakened birds in the garden outside. There was tea--there were letters. One was from Sidney--Sidney, who had left him not twelve hours before.

He tore it open, and hurt his shoulder in the movement.

"DEAR JOHN," said the letter, "I wanted to tell you last night, but you seemed so cheap, I thought I'd better not bother you.

But it's just come into my head that perhaps I may get a bullet in my innards, and I want you to know. So here goes. There's a girl I mean to marry. I know she'll say Yes, but I can't ask her till I come back, of course. I don't want to have any humbug or concealing things from you; you've always been so decent to me. I know you hate jaw, so I won't go on about that.

But I must tell you I met her first when she was serving in a tobacconist's shop. And her mother lets lodgings. You'll think this means she's beneath me. Wait till you see her. I want you to see her, and make friends with her while I'm away."

Here followed some lover's raptures, and the address of the lady.

John Selborne lay back and groaned.

Susannah Sheepmarsh, tobacconist's a.s.sistant, lodging-house keeper's daughter, and Sidney Selborne, younger son of a house whose pride was that it had been proud enough to refuse a peerage.

John Selborne thought long and deeply.

"I suppose I must sacrifice myself," he said. "Little adventuress! 'How easy to prove to him,' I said, 'that an eagle's the game her pride prefers, though she stoops to a wren instead.' The boy'll hate me for a bit, but he'll thank me later. Yalding? That's somewhere on the Medway.

Fishing? Boating? Convalescence is good enough. Fiction aid us! What would the villain in a book do to come between fond lovers? He would take the lodgings: at least he would try. And one may as well do something."

So he wrote to Mrs Sheepmarsh--she had rooms to let, he heard. Terms?

And Mrs Sheepmarsh wrote back; at least her reply was typewritten, which was a bit of a shock. She had rooms. They were disengaged. And the terms were thus and such.

Behold John Selwyn Selborne then, his baggage neatly labelled with his first and second names, set down on the little platform of Yalding Station. Behold him, waggonette-borne, crossing the old stone bridge and the golden glory of the Leas, flushed with sunset.

Mrs Sheepmarsh's house was long and low and white. It had a cla.s.sic porch, and at one end a French window opened through cascades of jasmine to a long lawn. There were many trees. A middle-aged lady in decent black, with a white cap, and white lace about her neck, greeted him with formal courtesy. "This way," she said, and moved for him to follow her through a green gate and down a shrubbery that led without disguise or pretence straight away from the house. It led also to a little white building embowered in trees. "Here," said the lady. She opened the door.

"I'll tell the man to bring your luggage. Good evening----"

And she left him planted there. He had to bend his head to pa.s.s under the low door, and he found himself in a tiny kitchen. Beyond were a sitting-room and two bedchambers. All fitted spa.r.s.ely, but with old furniture, softly-faded curtains, quiet and pleasant to look upon. There were roses in a jug of Gres de Flandre on the gate-table in the sitting-room.

"What a singular little place!" he said. "So these are the lodgings. I feel like a dog in a kennel. I suppose they will throw me a bone by-and-by--or, at any rate, ask me what kind of bones I prefer."

He unpacked his clothes and laid his belongings in the drawers and cupboards; it was oddly charming that each shelf or drawer should have its own little muslin bag of grey lavender. Then he took up a book and began to read. The sunset had died away, the daylight seemed to be glowing out of the low window like a tide, leaving bare breadths of darkness behind. He lighted candles. He was growing hungry--it was past eight o'clock.

"I believe the old lady has forgotten my existence," he said, and therewith opened his cottage door and went out into the lighter twilight of the garden. The shrubbery walks were winding. He took the wrong turning, and found himself entering on the narrow lawn. From the French window among the jasmine came lamplight--and voices.

"No servant, no food? My good mother, you've entertained a lunatic unawares."

"He had references."

"Man cannot live by references alone. The poor brute must be starving--unless he's drunk."

"Celia! I do wish you wouldn't----"

John Selborne hastening by, put a period to the conversation by boots crunching heavily and conscientiously on the gravel. Both voices ceased. He presented himself at the lamp-lit oblong of the window.

Within that lamplight glowed on the last remnants of a meal--dinner, by the gla.s.ses and the fruit. Also on the lady in the cap, and on a girl--the one, doubtless, who had evolved the lunatic idea. Both faces were turned towards him. Both women rose: there was nothing for it but advance. He murmured something about intrusion--"awfully sorry, the walks wind so," and turned to go.

But the girl spoke: "Oh, wait a moment. Is this Mr Selwyn, mother?"

"My daughter, Miss Sheepmarsh--Mr Selwyn," said the mother reluctantly.

"We were just talking about you," said the girl, "and wondering whether you were ill or anything, or whether your servant hasn't turned up, or something."

"Miss Sheepmarsh." He was still speechless. This the little adventuress, the tobacconist's a.s.sistant? This girl with the glorious hair severely braided, the round face, the proud chin, the most honest eyes in the world? She might be sister to the adventuress--cousin, perhaps? But the room, too--shining mahogany, old china, worn silver, and fine napery--all spoke of a luxury as temperate as refined: the luxury of delicate custom, of habit bred in the bone; no mushroom growth of gross self-indulgence, but the unconscious outcome of generations of clear self-respect.

"Can we send anything over for you?" the elder lady asked. "Of course we----"

"We didn't mean by 'entirely private' that we would let our tenant starve," the girl interrupted.

"There is some mistake." Selborne came to himself suddenly. "I thought I was engaging furnished apartments with er--attendance."

The girl drew a journal from a heap on the sofa.

"This was the advertis.e.m.e.nt, wasn't it?" she asked.

And he read:

"Four-roomed cottage, furnished, in beautiful grounds. Part of these are fenced in for use of tenant of cottage. And in the absence of the family the whole of the grounds are open to tenant. When at home the family wish to be entirely private."

"I never saw this at all," said Selborne desperately. "My--I mean I was told it was furnished lodgings. I am very sorry I have no servant and no means of getting one. I will go back to London at once. I am sorry."

"The last train's gone," said Miss Sheepmarsh. "Mother, ask Mr Selborne to come in, and I'll get him something to eat."

"My dear," said the mother, "surely Mary----"