The God in the Car Part 20

"Well, yes; I did, at last, not without hesitation, accede to his request."

Then Lord Semingham, with no apparent excuse, laughed in the face of the great man, left the House (much in the same sudden way as he had left Queen Street, Cheapside), and pa.s.sed rapidly through the lobbies till he reached Westminster Hall. Here he met a young man, clad to perfection, but looking sad. It was Evan Haselden. With a sigh of relief at meeting no one of heavier metal, Semingham stopped him and began to talk. Evan's melancholy air enveloped his answers in a mist of gloom. Moreover there was a large streak on his hat, where the nap had been rubbed the wrong way; evidently he was in trouble. Presently he seized his friend by the arm, and proposed a walk in the Park.

"But are you paired?" asked Semingham; for an important division was to occur that day in the Commons.

"No," said Evan fiercely. "Come along;" and Lord Semingham went, exclaiming inwardly, "A girl!"

"I'm the most miserable devil alive," said Evan, as they left the Horse Guards on the right hand.

Semingham put up his eyegla.s.s.

"I've always regarded you as the favourite of fortune," he said. "What's the matter?"

The matter unfolded itself some half-hour after they had reached the Row and sat down. It came forth with difficulty; pride obstructed the pa.s.sage, and something better than pride made the young man diffuse in the telling of his trouble. Lord Semingham grew very grave indeed. Let who would laugh at happy lovers, he had a groan for the unfortunate--a groan with reservations.

"She said she liked me very much, but didn't feel--didn't, you know, look up to me enough, and so on," said poor Evan in puzzled pain. "I--I can't think what's come over her. She used to be quite different. I don't know what she means by talking like that."

Lord Semingham played a tune on his knee with the fingers of one hand.

He was waiting.

"Young Val's gone back on me too," moaned Evan, who took the brother's deposal of him hardly more easily than the sister's rejection. Suddenly he brightened up; a smile, but a bitter one, gleamed across his face.

"I think I've put one spoke in his wheel, though," he said.

"Ruston's?" inquired Semingham, still playing his tune.

"Yes. A fortnight ago, old Detchmore" (Lord Detchmore was the very great man before referred to) "asked me if I knew Loring. You know Ruston's been trying to get Detchmore to back him up in making a railway to Omof.a.ga?"

"I didn't know," said Lord Semingham, with an unmoved face.

"You're a director, aren't you?"

"Yes. Go on, my dear boy."

"And Detchmore had seen Loring's articles. Well, I took Tom to him, and we left him quite decided to have nothing to do with it. Oh, by Jove, though, I forgot; I suppose you'd be on the other side there, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose I should, but it doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

"Because I fancy Ruston's got what he wanted;" and Lord Semingham related what he had heard from the Earl of Detchmore.

Evan listened in silence, and, the tale ended, the two lay back in their chairs, and idly looked at the pa.s.sing carriages. At last Lord Semingham spoke.

"He's going to Omof.a.ga in a few months," he observed. "And, Evan, you don't mean that he's your rival at the Valentines'?"

"I'm not so sure, confound him. You know how pretty she is."

Semingham knew that she was pretty; but he also knew that she was poor, and thought that she was, if not too insipid (for he recognised the unusual taste of his own mind), at least too immature to carry Willie Ruston off his feet, and into a love affair that promised no worldly gain.

"I asked Mrs. Dennison what she thought," pursued Evan.

"Oh, you did?"

"But the idea seemed quite a new one to her. That's good, you know. I expect she'd have noticed if he'd shown any signs."

Lord Semingham thought it very likely.

"Anyhow," Evan continued, "Marjory's awfully keen about him."

"He'll be in Omof.a.ga in three or four months," Semingham repeated. It was all the consolation he could offer.

Presently Evan got up and strode away. Lord Semingham sat on, musing on the strange turmoil the coming of the man had made in the little corner of the world he dwelt in. He was reminded of what was said concerning Lord Byron by another poet. They all felt Ruston. His intrusion into the circle had changed all the currents, so that sympathy ran no longer between old friends, and hearts answered to a new stimulus. Some he attracted, some he repelled; none did he leave alone. From great to small his influence ran; from the expulsion of Tom Loring to the christening of the Omof.a.ga mantle. Semingham had an acute sense of the absurdity of it all, but he had seen absurd things happen too often to be much relieved by his intuition. And when absurd things happen, they have consequences just as other things have. And the most exasperating fact was the utter unconsciousness of the disturber. He had no mystery-airs, no graces, no seeming fascinations. He was relentlessly business-like, unsentimental, downright; he took it all as a matter of course. He did not pry for weak spots. He went right on--on and over--and seemed not to know when he was going over. A very Juggernaut indeed! Semingham thanked Adela for teaching him the word.

He was suddenly roused by the merry laughter of children. Three or four little ones were scampering along the path in the height of glee. As they came up, he recognised them. He had seen them once before. They were Carlin's children. Five there were, he counted now; three ran ahead; two little girls held each a hand of Willie Ruston's, who was laughing as merrily as his companions. The whole group knew Semingham, and the eldest child was by his knees in a moment.

"We've been to the Exhibition," she cried exultantly; "and now Willie--Mr. Ruston, I mean--is taking us to have ices in Bond Street."

"A human devil!" said the astonished man to himself, as Willie Ruston plumped down beside him, imploring a brief halt, and earnestly a.s.severating that his request was in good faith, and concealed no lurking desire to evade the ices.

"I met young Haselden as we came along," Ruston observed, wiping his brow.

"Ah! Yes, he's been with me."

The children had wandered a few yards off, and stood impatiently looking at their hero.

"He's had a bit of a facer, I fancy," pursued Willie Ruston. "Heard about it?"

"Something."

"It'll come all right, I should think," said Ruston, in a comfortably careless tone. "He's not a bad fellow, you know, though he's not over-appreciative of me." Lord Semingham found no comment. "I hear you're going to Dieppe next week?" asked Ruston.

"Yes. My wife and Mrs. Dennison have put their heads together, and fixed on that. You know we're economising."

Ruston laughed.

"I suppose you are," he said through his white teeth. The idea seemed to amuse him. "We may meet there. I've promised to run over for a few days if I can."

"The deuce you have!" would have expressed his companion's feelings; but Lord Semingham only said, "Oh, really?"

"All right, I'm coming directly," Ruston cried a moment later to his young friends, and, with a friendly nod, he rose and went on his way.

Lord Semingham watched the party till it disappeared through the Park gates, hearing in turn the children's shrill laugh and Willie Ruston's deeper notes. The effect of the chance meeting was to make his fancies and his fancied feelings look still more absurd. That he perceived at once; the devil appeared so very human in such a mood and such surroundings. Yet that attribute--that most demoniac attribute--of ubiquity loomed larger and larger. For not even a foreign land--not even a watering-place of p.r.o.nounced frivolity--was to be a refuge. The man was coming to Dieppe! And on whose bidding? Semingham had no doubt on whose bidding; and, out of the airy forms of those absurd fancies, there seemed to rise a more material shape, a reality, a fabric not compounded wholly of dreams, but mixed of stuff that had made human comedies and human tragedies since the world began. Mrs. Dennison had bidden Willie Ruston to Dieppe. That was Semingham's instant conclusion; she had bidden him, not merely by a formal invitation, or by a simple acquiescence, but by the will and determination which possessed her to be of his mind and in his schemes. And perhaps Evan Haselden's innocent asking of her views had carried its weight also. For nearly an hour Semingham sat and mused. For awhile he thought he would act; but how should he act? And why? And to what end? Since what must be must, and in vain do we meddle with fate. An easy, almost eager, recognition of the inevitable in the threatened, of the necessary in everything that demanded effort for its avoidance, had stamped his life and grown deep into his mind. Wherefore now, faced with possibilities that set his nerves on edge, and wrung his heart for good friends, he found nothing better to do than shrug his shoulders and thank G.o.d that his own wife's submission to the man went no deeper than the inside lining of that famous Omof.a.ga mantle, nor his own than the bottom, or near the bottom, of his trousers' pocket.

"Though that, in faith," he exclaimed ruefully, as at last he rose, "is, in this world of ours, pretty deep!"