The God in the Car Part 27

His face was turned up to Ruston. As he spoke the last words, Ruston directed his eyes, suddenly and rapidly, upon him. Harry could not escape the encounter of eyes; hastily he averted his head, and his face flushed. Ruston continued to look at him, a slight smile on his lips.

"Absorbs her?" he repeated slowly, fingering his beard.

"Well, you know what I mean."

Another long stare showed Ruston's meditative preoccupation. Harry sat uncomfortable under it, wishing he had not let fall the word.

"Well, I'll be careful," said Ruston at last. "Anything else?"

Harry rose. Ruston carried an atmosphere of business about with him, and the visit seemed naturally to end with the business of it. Taking his hat, Harry moved towards the door. Then, pausing, he smiled in an embarra.s.sed way, and remarked,

"You can talk to Marjory Valentine, you know."

"So I can. She's a nice girl."

Harry twirled his hat in his fingers. His brain had conceived more diplomacy.

"It'll be a fine chance for you to win her heart," he suggested with a tentative laugh.

"I might do worse," said Willie Ruston.

"You might--much worse," said Harry eagerly.

"Aren't you rather giving away your friend young Haselden?"

"Who told you, Ruston?"

"Lady Val. Who told you?"

"Semingham."

"Ah! Well, what would Haselden say to your idea?"

"Well, she won't have him--he's got no chance anyhow."

"All right. I'll think about it. Good-night."

He watched his guest depart, but did not accompany him on his way, and, left alone, sat down in the deep arm-chair. His smile was still on his lips. Poor Harry Dennison was a transparent schemer--one of those whose clumsy efforts to avert what they fear effects naught save to suggest the doing of it. Yet Willie Ruston's smile had more pity than scorn in it. True, it had more of amus.e.m.e.nt than of either. He could have taken a slate and written down all Harry's thoughts during the interview. But whence had come the change? Why had Dennison himself bidden him to Dieppe, to come now, a fortnight later, and beg him not to go? Why did he now desire his wife to hear no more of Omof.a.ga, whose chief delight in it had been that it caught her fancy and imparted to him some of the interest she found in it? Ruston saw in the transformation the working of another mind.

"Somebody's been putting it into his head," he muttered, still half-amused, but now half-angry also.

And, with his usual rapidity of judgment, he darted unhesitatingly to a conclusion. He identified the hand in the business; he recognised whose more subtle thoughts Harry Dennison had stumbled over and mauled in his painful devices. But to none is it given to be infallible, and want of doubt does not always mean absence of error. Forgetting this commonplace truth, Willie Ruston slapped his thigh, leapt up from his chair and, standing on the rug, exclaimed,

"Loring--by Jove!"

It was clear to him. Loring was his enemy; he had displaced Loring.

Loring hated him and Omof.a.ga. Loring had stirred a husband's jealousy to further his own grudge. The same temper of mind that made his anger fade away when he had arrived at this certainty, prevented any surprise at the discovery. It was natural in man to seek revenge, to use the nearest weapon, to counter stroke with stroke, not to throw away any advantages for the sake of foibles of generosity. So, then, it was Loring who bade him not go to Dieppe, who prayed him to not to "absorb" Mrs. Dennison in Omof.a.ga, who was ready, notwithstanding his hatred and distrust, to see him the lover of Marjory Valentine sooner than the too engrossing friend of Mrs. Dennison! What a fool they must think him!--and, with this reflection, he put the whole matter out of his head. It could wait till he was at Dieppe, and, taking hold of the great map by the roller at the bottom, he drew it to him. Then he reached and lifted the lamp from the table, and set it high on the mantlepiece. Its light shone now on his path, and with his finger he traced the red line that ran, curving and winding, inwards from the coast, till it touched the blue letters of the "Omof.a.ga" that sprawled across the map. The line ended in a cross of red paint. The cross was Fort Imperial--was to be Fort Imperial, at least; but Willie Ruston's mind overleapt all difference of tenses. He stood and looked, pulling hard and fast at his pipe. He was there--there in Fort Imperial already--far away from London and London folk--from weak husbands and their causes of anxiety--from the pleasing recreations of fascinating society, from the covert attacks of men whose noses he had put out of joint. He forgot them all; their feelings became naught to him. What mattered their graces, their a.s.saults, their weal or woe? He was in Omof.a.ga, carving out of its rock a stable seat, carving on the rock face, above the seat, a name that should live.

At last he turned away, flinging his empty pipe on the table and dropping the map from his hand.

"I shall go to bed," he said. "Three months more of it!"

And to bed he went, never having thought once during the whole evening of a French lady, who liked to get amus.e.m.e.nt out of her neighbours, and had stayed in town on purpose to have some more talks with Harry Dennison. Had Willie Ruston not been quite so sure that he read Tom Loring's character aright, he might have spared a thought for Mrs.

Cormack.

CHAPTER XIII.

A SPASM OF PENITENCE.

Tom Loring had arranged to spend the whole of the autumn in London. His Omof.a.ga articles had gained such favourable notice that his editor had engaged him to contribute a series dealing with African questions and African companies (and the latter are in the habit of producing the former), while he was occupied, on his own account, at the British Museum, in making way with a treatise of a politico-philosophical description, which had been in his head for several years. He hailed with pleasure the prospect of getting on with it; the leisure afforded him by his departure from the Dennisons was, in its way, a consolation for the wrench involved in the parting. Could he have felt more at ease about the course of events in his absence, he would have endured his sojourn in town with equanimity.

Of course, the place was fast becoming a desert, but, at this moment, chance, which always objects to our taking things for granted, brought a carriage exactly opposite the bench on which Tom was seated, and he heard his name called in a high-pitched voice that he recognised.

Looking up, he saw Mrs. Cormack leaning over the side of her victoria, smiling effusively and beckoning to him. That everyone should go save Mrs. Cormack seemed to Tom the irony of circ.u.mstance. With a mutter to himself, he rose and walked up to the carriage. He then perceived, to his surprise, that it contained, hidden behind Mrs. Cormack's sleeves--sleeves were large that year--another inmate. It was Evan Haselden, and he greeted Tom with an off-hand nod.

"The good G.o.d," cried Mrs. Cormack, "evidently kept me here to console young men! Are you left desolate like Mr. Haselden here?"

"Well, it's not very lively," responded Tom, as amiably as he could.

"No, it isn't," she agreed, with the slightest, quickest glance at Evan, who was staring moodily at the tops of the trees.

Tom laughed. The woman amused him in spite of himself. And her failures to extract entertainment from poor heart-broken Evan struck him as humorous.

"But I'm at work," he went on, "so I don't mind."

"Ah! Are you still crushing----?"

"No," interrupted Tom quickly. "That's done."

"I should not have guessed it," said Mrs. Cormack, opening her eyes.

"I mean, I've finished the articles on that point."

"That is rather a different thing," laughed she.

"I'm afraid so," said Tom.

"I wish to heaven it wasn't!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Evan suddenly, without shifting his gaze from the treetops.

"Oh, he is very very bad," whispered Mrs. Cormack. "Poor young man! Are you bad too?"

"Eh?"

"Oh, but I know."