The Cup of Fury Part 28

Lady Clifton-Wyatt checked him as he hurried past her.

"Oh, Mr. Davidge, I'm stopping at the Sh.o.r.eham. Won't you drop in and have a cup of tea with me to-morrow at hahf pahst fah?"

"Thank you! Yes!"

CHAPTER VII

The intended victim of Lady Clifton-Wyatt's little lynching-bee walked away, holding her head high. But she felt the noose still about her neck and wondered when the rope would draw her back and up.

Marie Louise marched through Mrs. Prothero's hall in excellent form, with just the right amount of dizziness to justify her escape on the plea of sudden illness. The butler, like a benign destiny, opened the door silently and let her out into the open as once before in London a butler had opened a door and let her into the welcome refuge of walls.

She gulped the cool night air thirstily, and it gave her courage.

But it gave her no wisdom. She had indeed got away from Lady Clifton-Wyatt's direct accusation of being a spy and she had brought with her unscathed the only man whose good opinion was important to her. But she did not know what she wanted to do with him, except that she did not want him to fall into Lady Clifton-Wyatt's hands--in which she had left her reputation.

Polly Widdicombe would have gone after Marie Louise forthwith, but Polly did not intend to leave her pet foewoman in possession of the field--not that she loved Marie Louise more, but that she loved Lady Clifton-Wyatt less. Polly was dazed and bewildered by Marie Louise's defection, but she would not accept Lady Clifton-Wyatt's version of this story or of any other.

Besides, Polly gleaned that Marie Louise wanted to be alone, and she knew that the best gift friendship can bestow at times is solitude.

The next best gift is defense in absence. Polly announced that she would not permit her friend to be traduced; and Lady Clifton-Wyatt, seeing that the men had flocked in from the dining-room and knowing that men always discount one woman's attack on another as mere cattiness, a.s.sumed her most angelic mien and changed the subject.

As usual in retreats, the first problem was transportation. Marie Louise found herself and Davidge outside Mrs. Prothero's door, with no means of getting to Rosslyn. She had come in the Widdicombe car; Davidge had come in a hotel cab and sent it away. Luckily at last a taxi returning to the railroad terminal whizzed by. Davidge yelled in vain. Then he put his two fingers to his mouth and let out a short blast that brought the taxi-driver round. In accordance with the traffic rules, he had to make the circuit of the big statue-crowned circle in front of Mrs. Prothero's home, one of those numerous hubs that give Washington the effect of what some one called "revolving streets."

When he drew up at the curb Davidge's first question was:

"How's your gasolene supply?"

"Full up, boss."

Marie Louise laughed. "You don't want to spend another night in a taxi with me, I see."

Davidge writhed at this deduction. He started to say, "I'd be glad to spend the rest of my life in a taxi with you." That sounded a little too flamboyant, especially with a driver listening in. So he said nothing but "Huh!"

He explained to the driver the route to Grinden Hall, and they set forth.

Marie Louise had a dilemma of her own. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had had the last word, and it had been an invitation to Davidge to call on her.

Worse yet, he had accepted it. Lady Clifton-Wyatt's purpose was, of course, to rob Marie Louise of this last friend. Perhaps the wretch had a sentimental interest in Davidge, too. She was a widow and a man-grabber; she still had a tyrannic beauty and a greed of conquest.

Marie Louise was determined that Davidge should not fall into her clutches, but she could hardly exact a promise from him to stay away.

The taxi was crossing the aqueduct bridge before she could brave the point. She was brazen enough to say, "You'll accept Lady Clifton-Wyatt's invitation to tea, of course?"

"Oh, I suppose so," said Davidge. "No American woman can resist a lord; so how could an American man resist a Lady?"

"Oh!"

This helpless syllable expressed another defeat for Marie Louise. When they reached the house she bade him good night without making any arrangement for a good morrow, though Davidge held her hand decidedly longer than ever before.

She stood on the portico and watched his cab drive off. She gazed toward Washington and did not see the dreamy constellation it made with the shaft of the Monument ghostly luminous as if with a phosph.o.r.escence of its own. She felt an outcast indeed. She imagined Polly hurrying back to ask questions that could not be dodged any longer. She had no right to defend herself offensively from the rightful demands of a friend and hostess. Besides, the laws of hospitality would not protect her from Polly's temper. Polly would have a perfect right to order her from the house. And she would, too, when she knew everything. It would be best to decamp before being asked to.

Marie Louise whirled and sped into the house, rang for the maid, and said:

"My trunks! Please have them brought down--or up, from wherever they are, will you?"

"Your trunks, miss!"

"And a taxicab. I shall have to leave at once."

"But--oh, I am sorry. Shall I help you pack?"

"Thank you, no--yes--no!"

The maid went out with eyes popping, wondering what earthquake had sent the guest home alone for such a headlong exit.

Things flew in the drowsy house, and Marie Louise's chamber looked like the show-room of a commercial traveler for a linen-house when Polly appeared at the door and gasped:

"What in the name of--I didn't know you were sick enough to be delirious!"

She came forward through an archipelago of clothes to where Marie Louise was bending over a trunk. Polly took an armload of things away from her and put them back in the highboy. As she set her arms akimbo and stood staring at Marie Louise with a lovable and loving insolence, she heard the sound of a car rattling round the driveway, and her first words were:

"Who's coming here at this hour?"

"That's the taxi for me," Marie Louise explained.

Polly turned to the maid, "Go down and send it away--no, tell the driver to go to the asylum for a strait-jacket."

The maid smiled and left. Marie Louise was afraid to believe her own hopes.

"You don't mean you want me to stay, do you--not after what that woman said?"

"Do you imagine for a moment," returned Polly, "that I'd ever believe a word that cat could utter? Good Lord! if Lady Clifton-Wyatt told me it was raining and I could see it was, I'd know it wasn't and put down my umbrella."

Marie Louise rejoiced at the trust implied, but she could not make a fool of so loyal a friend. She spoke with difficulty:

"What if what she said was the truth, or, anyway, a kind of burlesque of it?"

"Marie Louise!" Polly gasped, and plounced into a chair. "Tell me the truth this minute, the true truth."

Marie Louise was perishing for a confidante. She had gone about as far without one as a normal woman can. She sat wondering how to begin, twirling her rings on her fingers. "Well, you see--you see--it is true that I'm not Sir Joseph's daughter. I was born in a little village--in America--Wakefield--out there in the Middle West. I ran away from home, and--"

She hesitated, blanched, blushed, skipped over the years she tried not to think of and managed never to speak of. She came down to:

"Well, anyway, at last I was in Berlin--on the stage--"

"You were an actress?" Polly gasped.