The God in the Car Part 26

"I expect not," said Mrs. Dennison, and she opened the letter. "No; a fortnight hence at the soonest," she announced, after reading a few lines.

Marjory was both looking and listening closely, but she detected neither disappointment nor relief.

"He's seen Tom Loring! Oh, and Tom sends me his best remembrances. Poor Tom! Marjory, does Adela talk about Mr. Loring?"

"She mentioned him once."

"She thinks it was all my fault," laughed Mrs. Dennison. "A woman always thinks it's a woman's fault; at least, that's our natural tendency, though we're being taught to overcome it. Marjory, you look dull! It will be livelier for you when your brother and Mr. Ruston come."

The hardest thing about great resolves and lofty moods is their intermixture with everyday life. The intervals, the "waits," the ma.s.s of irrelevant trivialities that life inartistically mingles with its drama, flinging down pell-mell a heap of great and small--these cool courage and make discernment distrust itself. Mrs. Dennison seemed so quiet, so placid, so completely the affectionate but not anxious wife, the kind hostess, and even the human gossip, that Marjory wanted to rub her eyes, wondering if all her heroics were nonsense--a girl's romance gone wrong.

There was nothing to be done but eat and drink, and talk and lounge in the sun--there was no hint of a drama, no call for a rescue, no place for a sacrifice. And Marjory had been all aglow to begin. Her face grew dull and her eyelids half-dropped as she leant her head on the back of her chair.

"_Dejeuner!_" cried Mrs. Dennison merrily. "And this afternoon we're all going to gamble at _pet.i.ts chevaux_, and if we win we're going to buy more Omof.a.gas. There's a picture of a speculator's family!"

"Mr. Dennison's not a speculator, is he?"

"Oh, it depends on what you mean. Anyhow, I am;" and Mrs. Dennison, waving her letter in the air and singing softly, almost danced in her merry walk to the house. Then, crying her last words, "Be quick!" from the door, she disappeared.

A moment later she was laughing and chattering to her children. Marjory heard her burlesque complaints over the utter disappearance of an omelette she had set her heart upon.

That afternoon they all played at _pet.i.ts chevaux_, and the only one to win was Madge. But Madge utterly refused to invest her gains in Omof.a.gas. She a.s.signed no reasons, slating that her mother did not like her to declare the feeling which influenced her, and Mrs. Dennison laughed again. But Adela Ferrars would not look towards Marjory, but kept her eyes on an old gentleman who had been playing also, and playing with good fortune. He had looked round curiously when, in the course of the chaff, they had mentioned Omof.a.ga, and Adela detected in him the wish to look again. She wondered who he was, scrutinising his faded blue eyes and the wrinkles of weariness on his brow. Willie Ruston could have told her. It was Baron von Geltschmidt of Frankfort.

CHAPTER XII.

IT CAN WAIT.

In all things evil and good, to the world, and--a thing quite rare--to himself, Willie Ruston was an unaffected man. Success, the evidence of power and the earnest of more power, gave him his greatest pleasure, and he received it with his greatest and most open satisfaction. It did not surprise him, but it elated him, and his habit was to conceal neither the presence of elation nor the absence of surprise. That irony in the old sense, which means the well-bred though hardly sincere depreciation of a man's own qualities and achievements, was not his. When he had done anything, he liked to dine with his friends and talk it over. He had been sharing the Carlins' unfashionable six o'clock meal at Hampstead this evening, and had taken the train to Baker Street, and was now sauntering home with a cigar. He had talked the whole thing over with them. Carlin had said that no one could have managed the affair so well as he had, and Mrs. Carlin had not once referred to that lost _tabula in naufragio_, the coal business. Yes, his attack on London had been a success. He had known nothing of London, save that its denizens were human beings, and that knowledge, whether in business or society, had been enough. His great scheme was floated; a few months more would see him in Omof.a.ga; there was money to last for a long time to come; and he had been cordially received and even made a lion of in the drawing-rooms. They would look for his name in the papers ("and find it, by Jove," he interpolated). Men in high places would think of him when there was a job to be "put through;" and women, famous in regions inaccessible to the vulgar, would recollect their talks with Mr. Ruston.

Decidedly they were human beings, and therefore, raw as he was (he just knew that he had come to them a little raw), he had succeeded.

Yet they were, some of them, strange folk. There were complications in them which he found it necessary to reconnoitre. They said a great many things which they did not think, and, _en revanche_, would often only hint what they did. And----But here he yawned, and, finding his cigar out, relit it. He was not in the mood for a.n.a.lysing his acquaintance. He let his fancy play more lightly. It was evening, and work was done. He liked London evenings. He had liked bandying repartees with Adela Ferrars (though she had been too much for him if she could have kept her temper); he liked talking to Marjory Valentine and seeing her occupied with his ideas. Most of all, he liked trying to catch Maggie Dennison's thought as it flashed out for a moment, and fled to shelter again. He had laughed again and again over the talk that Tom Loring had interrupted--and not less because of the interruption. There was little malice in him, and he bore no grudge against Tom. Even his anger at the Omof.a.ga articles had been chiefly for public purposes and public consumption. It was always somebody's "game" to spoil his game, and one must not quarrel with men for playing their own hands. Tom amused him, and had amused him, especially by his behaviour over that talk. No doubt the position had looked a strange one. Tom had been so shocked. Poor Tom, it must be very serious to be so easily shocked. Mr. Ruston was not easily shocked.

Unaffected, free from self-consciousness, undividedly bent on his schemes, unheeding of everything but their accomplishment, he had spent little time in considering the considerable stir which he had, in fact, created in the circle of his more intimate a.s.sociates. They had proved pliable and pleasant, and these were the qualities he liked in his neighbours. They said agreeable things to him, and they did what he wanted. He had stayed not (save once, and half in jest, with Maggie Dennison) to inquire why, and the quasi-real, quasi-burlesque apprehension of him--burlesqued perhaps lest it should seem too real--which had grown up among such close observers as Adela Ferrars and Semingham, would have struck him as absurd, the outcome of that idle business of brain which weaves webs of fine fancies round the obvious, and loses the power of action in the fascination of self-created puzzles. The _nuances_ of a woman's attraction towards a man, whether it be admiration, or interest, or pa.s.s beyond--whether it be liking and just not love--or interest running into love--or love masquerading as interest, or what-not, Willie Ruston recked little of. He was a man, and a young man. He liked women and clever women--yes, and handsome women.

But to spend your time thinking of or about women, or, worse still, of or about what women thought of you, seemed poor economy of precious days--amusing to do, maybe, in spare hours, inevitable now and again--but to be driven or laughed away when there was work to be done.

Such was the colour of his floating thoughts, and the loose-hung meditation brought him to his own dwelling, in a great building which overlooked Hyde Park. He lived high up in a small, irregular, many-cornered room, sparely-furnished, dull and pictureless. The only thing hanging on the walls was a large scale map of Omof.a.ga and the neighbouring territories; in lieu of nicnacks there stood on the mantlepiece lumps of ore, specimens from the mines of Omof.a.ga (would not these convince the most obstinate unbeliever?), and half-smothered by ill-dusted papers, a small photograph of Ruston and a potent Omof.a.gan chief seated on the ground with a large piece of paper before them--a treaty no doubt. A well-worn sofa, second-hand and soft, and a deep arm-chair redeemed the place from utter comfortlessness, but it was plain that beauty in his daily surroundings was not essential to Willie Ruston. He did not notice furniture.

He walked in briskly, but stopped short with his hand still on the k.n.o.b of the door. Harry Dennison lay on the sofa, with his arm flung across his face. He sprang up on Ruston's entrance.

"Hullo! Been here long? I've been dining with Carlin," said Ruston, and, going to a cupboard, he brought out whisky and soda water.

Harry Dennison began to explain his presence. In the first place he had nothing to do; in the second he wanted someone to talk to; in the third--at last he blurted it out--the first, second, third and only reason for his presence.

"I don't believe I can manage alone in town," he said.

"Not manage? There's nothing to do. And Carlin's here."

"You see I've got other work besides Omof.a.ga," pleaded Harry.

"Oh, I know Dennisons have lots of irons in the fire. But Omof.a.ga won't trouble you. I've told Carlin to wire me if any news comes, and I can be back in a few hours."

Harry had come to suggest that the expedition to Dieppe should be abandoned for a week or two. He got no chance and sat silent.

"It's all done," continued Ruston. "The stores are all on their way.

Jackson is waiting for them on the coast. Why, the train will start inland in a couple of months from now. They'll go very slow though. I shall catch them up all right."

Harry brightened a little.

"Belford said it was uncertain when you would start," he said.

"It may be uncertain to Belford, it's not to me," observed Mr. Ruston, lighting his pipe.

The speech sounded unkind; but Mr. Belford's mind dwelt in uncertainty contentedly.

"Then you think of----?"

"My dear Dennison, I don't 'think' at all. To-day's the 12th of August.

Happen what may, I sail on the 10th of November. Nothing will keep me after that--nothing."

"Belford started for the Engadine to-day."

"Well, he won't worry you then. Let it alone, my dear fellow. It's all right."

Clearly Mr. Ruston meant to go to Dieppe. That was now to Harry Dennison bad news; but he meant to go to Omof.a.ga also, and to go soon; that was good. Harry, however, had still something that he wished to convey--a bit of diplomacy to carry out.

"I hope you'll find Maggie better," he began. "She was rather knocked up when she went."

"A few days will have put her all right," responded Ruston cheerfully.

He was never ill and treated fatigue with a cheery incredulousness. But, at least, he spoke with an utter absence of undue anxiety on the score of another man's wife.

Harry Dennison, primed by Mrs. Cormack's suggestions, went on,

"I wish you'd talk to her as little as you can about Omof.a.ga. She's very interested in it, you know, and--and very excitable--and all that. We want her mind to get a complete rest."

"Hum. I expect, then, I mustn't talk to her at all."

The manifest impossibility of making such a request did not prevent Harry yearning after it.

"I don't ask that," he said, smiling weakly.

"It won't hurt her," said Willie Ruston. "And she likes it."

She liked it beyond question.

"It tires her," Harry persisted. "It--it gets on her nerves. It absorbs her too much."