Nell, of Shorne Mills Part 35

Lady Luce made a little impatient movement with her hand.

"If I had only waited!" she said, with a mixture of irritation and regret. "It was just my luck that I should meet him when I did."

There was a pause. It need scarcely be said that Nell was extremely uncomfortable. These two were discussing a matter of the most private character, and she was playing the unwelcome part of listener. Had she been a woman of the world, it would have been easy for her to have emerged from her hiding place, and to have swept past them slowly, as if she had seen and heard nothing, as if she were quite unconscious of their presence. But Nell was not a woman of the world; she was just Nell of Shorne Mills, a girl at her first ball, and her first introduction to society. She could not move--could only long for them to become either silent or to go away and leave her free to escape.

"I suppose he was very much cut up?" remarked Lady Chesney.

"That goes without saying," replied Luce. "Of course. He was very fond of me; or, why should he have asked me to marry him? You wouldn't ask the question if you had seen him the day I broke with him. I never saw a man so cut up. It made me quite ill."

"Then the love was not altogether on one side, dear?" said Lady Chesney.

Lady Luce shrugged her white shoulders in eloquent silence.

"Where did the dramatic parting take place?" asked Lady Chesney.

"Here," said Lady Luce.

"Here?"

"Well, near here. At a little port--fishing place, called--I forget the name--something Mills."

"Oh! you mean Shorne Mills."

Nell's discomfort increased, and yet a keen interest reluctantly awoke in her. It seemed so strange to be listening to what seemed to her a life's drama, the scene of which was pitched in Shorne Mills.

"The yacht put in quite unexpectedly," continued Luce. "I didn't want to land at all, but Archie worried me into doing so. We climbed a miserable kind of steep place. I refused to go any farther. They went on, and I turned into a kind of recess to rest--and found Drake there."

For a moment the name did not strike with its full significance upon Nell's mind, and the soft voice had continued for a sentence or two before she realized that the man of whom this woman was speaking, the lover whose loss she was regretting, bore the same name as Drake. She had no suspicion that the men were the same; it only seemed strange and almost incredible that there should be two Drakes at Shorne Mills.

"I can imagine the scene," said Lady Chesney; "and I can quite understand how you feel about it. But, Luce, is it altogether hopeless?"

Lady Luce laughed bitterly.

"You don't know Drake," she said. There was a pause. "And yet"--she hesitated, and her tone became thoughtful and speculative--"sometimes I think that I could get him back. He is very fond of me; it must have nearly broken his heart. Yes; sometimes I feel sure that if I could have him to myself for, say, ten minutes, it would all come right."

"Don't you know where he is?"

"No. There was a row royal between his uncle and him, and he disappeared. No one knows where he is. It is just possible that he has gone abroad."

"There is danger in that," said Lady Chesney gravely. "One never knows what a man may do in a moment of pique. They are strange animals."

"You mean that he might be caught on the rebound, and marry some 'dusky bride' or ruddy-cheeked dairymaid?" said Lady Luce, with a little laugh of scorn. "You don't know Drake. He's the last man to marry beneath him.

If I were not afraid of seeming egotistical, dear, I would say that he has known me too long and loved me too well----But there! don't let us talk any more about it. The G.o.ds may send him to my side again. If they do, I shall avail myself of their gracious favor and get him back; if not----" She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders. "Heavens! how I wish I had a cigarette!"

"My dear, you shall have one," said Lady Chesney, with a laugh. "I know where the smoking room is. I'll go and get you one, you poor, dear soul!"

She went in, and Nell rose from her seat. She could not remain a moment longer, even if she had to tell this lady she had overheard their conversation, and beg her pardon for having played, most reluctantly, the eavesdropper. But as she stood fighting with her nervousness, a man came out through the window. Her heart leaped with relief and thanksgiving, for it was Drake.

"Is that you?" he said, as he saw the figure against the coping.

Lady Luce turned; the light streamed full upon her face, and he stopped dead short and stared at her.

"Luce!" he exclaimed, in a low voice.

She stood for a moment as motionless as one of the statues. Another woman would have started, would probably have shrunk back, with a cry of amazement or of joy; but she stood for just that instant, motionless and silent, and looking at him with her eyes dilating with surprise and delight. Then, holding out both hands, she moved toward him, murmuring:

"Drake! Thank G.o.d!"

CHAPTER XVI.

Lady Luce came forward to him with both hands extended; and the "Drake, thank G.o.d!" was perhaps as genuinely a devout an expression as she had ever uttered. For it seemed to her that Providence had especially intervened in her behalf and sent him to her side. We all of us have an idea that Providence is more interested in us than in other persons.

Drake stood and looked at her for an instant with the same surprise which had a.s.sailed him when he recognized her; then he took the small, exquisitely gloved hands. How could he refuse them? As he had said, the members of their set could not be strangers, though two of them had been lovers and one had been jilted. They had to meet as friends or acquaintances, as individuals of a community, which, living for pleasure, could not be bored by quarrels and estrangements.

In the "smart" set a man lives not for himself alone, but for the other men with whom he plays and shoots and jokes and drinks; for the women with whom he drives and rides and dances. He must sink personal feeling, likes and dislikes, or the social ship which he joins as one of the crew, the ship which can sail only on smooth and sunlit waves, will founder. So Drake took her hands and smiled a greeting at her.

"Why! To find you here! What are you doing here, Drake?" she said.

She had no right to call him "Drake"; she had lost that right the day she had jilted him; but she called him "Drake," and the name left her lips softly and meltingly.

"I might ask the same of you, Luce," he replied gravely, and unconscious in the stress of the moment that he, too, had used the Christian name.

But, alas! Nell had heard it! She had, half mechanically, shrunk behind the pedestal; she shrank still farther behind it as Drake spoke, and she put up her hand on the cold marble as if for support. For she was trembling in every limb, and a sensation as of approaching death was creeping over her. The terrace and the two figures grew misty and indistinct, the music of the band sounded like a blurred discord in her ears, and the blood rushed through her veins like fire one moment and like ice the next.

She would have rushed out of her hiding place and into the house, but she could not move. Was she going to die? or was this awful, sickening weakness only a warning that she was going to faint? She pressed her forehead against the marble, and the icy coldness of the unsympathetic stone revived her. She found that she could hear every word, though the two had moved to the stone rail.

"It is quite a shock!" said Lady Luce. She put her handkerchief to her lips, her eyes, and then looked up at him with the smile, the confession of weakness, which is one of woman's most irresistible weapons.

"I--I am staying at the Chesneys'--you know the Chesneys? No? There is a small party--some of us came over to-night to this dance--they are old friends of the Maltbys. Drake, I can scarcely believe it is you!"

He stood beside her patiently, and yet impatiently. He was thinking of Nell even at that moment; wondering where she was, how soon he could get away from Lady Luce and find Nell.

"You are staying here?" she asked, meaning at the Maltbys'.

He nodded, thinking it well to leave her misconception uncorrected.

"How strange! Drake, it--it is like Fate!" she murmured; and, indeed, she felt that it was.

"Like Fate?" he asked.

"Yes--that--that we should meet here, in this out-of-the way place, so soon. Oh, Drake, if you knew how glad I am!"

She put out her hand and touched his arm with the timid touch, the suggestion of a caress, which women can convey so significantly.