The God in the Car Part 35

"I should have made it all brown," said Adela, and the Baron gave an appreciative chuckle.

"And what are these little red crosses?" asked Mrs. Dennison, laying the tip of her finger on one.

"Eh? What, those? Oh, let me see. Here, just hold it while I look at Carlin's letter. He explains it all," and Lord Semingham began to fumble in his breast-pocket.

"Dear me," said Bessie Semingham, in a tone of delicate pleasure, "they look like tombstones."

"Hush, hush, my dear lady," cried the old Baron; "what a bad omen!"

"Tombstones," echoed Maggie Dennison thoughtfully. "So they do--just like tombstones."

A pause fell on the group. Adela broke it.

"Well, Director, have you found your directions?" she asked briskly.

"It was a momentary lapse of memory," said Semingham with dignity.

"Those--er--little----"

"No, not tombstones," interrupted the Baron earnestly.

"Little--er--signposts are, of course, the forts belonging to the Company. What else should they be?"

"Oh, _forts_," murmured everybody.

"They are," continued Lord Semingham apologetically, "in the nature of a prophecy at present, as I understand."

"A very bad prophecy, according to Bessie," said Mrs. Dennison.

"I hope," said the Baron, shaking his head, "that the official name is more correct than Lady Semingham's."

"So do I," said Marjory; and added, before she could think not to add, and with unlucky haste, "my brother's going out, you know."

Mrs. Dennison looked at her. Then she crossed over to her, saying to Adela,

"You never let me have a word with my own guest, except at breakfast and bedtime. Come and walk up and down with me, Marjory."

Marjory obeyed; the group began to scatter.

"But didn't they look like tombstones, Baron?" said Bessie Semingham again, as she sat down and made room for the old man beside her. When she had an idea she liked it very much. He began to be voluble in his reproof of her gloomy fancies; but she merely laughed in glee at her ingenuity.

Adela, by a gesture, brought Semingham to her side and walked a few paces off with him.

"Will you go with me to the post-office?" she said abruptly.

"By all means," he answered, feeling for his gla.s.s.

"Oh, you needn't get your gla.s.s to spy at me with."

"Dear, dear, you use one yourself!"

"I'll tell you myself why I'm going. You're going to send a telegram."

"Am I?"

"Yes; to invite someone to stay with you. Lord Semingham, when you find a woman relies on a man--on one man only--in trouble, what do you think?"

She asked the question in a level voice, looking straight before her.

"That she's fond of him."

"And does he--the man--think the same?"

"Generally. I think most men would. They're seldom backward to think it, you know."

"Then," she said steadily, "you must think, and he must think, what you like. I can't help it. I want you to wire and ask a man to come and stay with you."

He turned to her in surprise.

"Tom Loring," she said, and the moment the name left her lips Semingham hastily turned his glance away.

"Awkward--with the other fellow here," he ventured to suggest.

"Mr. Ruston doesn't choose your guests."

"But Mrs.----"

"Oh, fancy talking of awkwardness now! He used to influence her once, you know. Perhaps he might still. Do let us try," and her voice trembled in earnestness.

"We'll try. Will he come? He's very angry with her."

And Adela answered, still looking straight in front of her,

"I'm going to send him a wire, too."

"I'm very glad to hear it," said Lord Semingham.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LAST BARRIERS.

Willie Ruston rested his elbows on the jetty-wall and gazed across the harbour entrance. He had come there to think; and deliberate thinking was a rare thing for him to set his head to. His brain dealt generally--even with great matters, as all brains deal with small--in rapid half-unconscious beats; the process coalescing so closely with the decision as to be merged before it could be recognised. But about this matter he meant to think; and the first result of his determination was (as it often is in such a case) that nothing at all relevant would stay by him. There was a man fishing near, and he watched the float; he looked long at the big hotel at Puys, which faced him a mile away, and idly wondered whether it were full; he followed the egress of a fishing boat with strict attention. Then, in impatience, he turned round and sat down on the stone bench and let his eyes see nothing but the flags of the pavement. Even then he hardly thought; but after a time he became vaguely occupied with Maggie Dennison, his mind playing to and fro over her voice, her tricks of manner, her very gait, and at last settling more or less resolutely on the strange revelation of herself which she had gradually made and had consummated that day. It changed his feelings towards her; but it did not change them to contempt. He had his ideas, but he did not make ideal figures out of humanity; and humanity could go very far wrong and sink very deep in its lower possibilities without shocking him. Nor did he understand her, nor realise how great a struggle had brought what he saw to birth. It seemed to him a thing not unnatural, even in her, who was in much unlike most other women. There are dominions that are not to be resisted, and we do not think people weak simply because they are under our own influence. His surprise was reserved for the counter-influence which he felt, and strove not to acknowledge; his contempt for the disturbance into which he himself was thrown. At that he was half-displeased, puzzled, and alarmed; yet that, too, had its delight.

"What rot it is!" he muttered, in the rude dialect of self-communion, which sums up a bewildering conflict in a word of slang.