The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 15

"I was staring at your picture," Tabs continued, "because I thought I recognized----"

"I daresay you did," Maisie interrupted. "Though you may not have met her, her face is forever in the papers. Among the family she's known as the Princess Czarina Bolsheviki----"

"She looks it. But is she a princess?"

Maisie laughed. "Not yet, but it won't be her fault if she isn't. It'll have to be a prince next time. If she marries again, she'll stoop to nothing less. Look at the way she carries her head; she almost feels the weight of her coronet already. But she says she's had enough of marriage. We've all said that. Poor dear Di, she misses a lot of fun by her exclusiveness. If I only had half her wealth----"

She evidently wanted Tabs to ask her what she would do with it. Her eyes grew round with spendthrift promises of jolliness, if ever such wealth should come within reach of her tiny, managing hands. She looked as mischievously covetous as a magpie while she waited for him to put the obvious question.

But Tabs wasn't interested in the obvious. He stuck to his enquiry.

"What you've told me doesn't help me to recall her," he said. "Who is she? It's most annoying to recognize a face and not to be able to place it against any background."

Maisie pretended to pout. "You're like all the rest of them; you come to see me and do nothing but talk of her. I'd have hidden her in the attic long ago, only she's by Sargent. She's too beautiful for hiding, and then no one can afford to hide her Sargent under a bushel in these hard times."

"And still you've not told me," Tabs reproached her.

III

"Wouldn't we be more comfortable sitting down?" Maisie slid between the couch and the tea-table, making herself comfortable against a pile of cushions. When Tabs looked round for a seat, he discovered the strategy of the arrangement of the furniture. The nearest available chair to Maisie was at least four yards away; to have selected it would have been to have isolated himself. He would have had to have hailed her ridiculously across the room's breadth. It was plainly intended that he should challenge fate and share the couch, just as Pollock, Gervis, Lockwood, Adair and so many others had done before him.

All this friendliness would make it a little difficult for him presently when he broached the subject of Adair. He had an uneasy feeling that Sir Tobias wouldn't approve of this way of conducting his mission. It was one thing to fly the white flag of truce while you parleyed with the enemy; it was quite another to share the same couch with her in a cozy room, where there were only the two of you and the jumping flames of the fire in the grate made the silver on the small round table glow red.

When they weren't talking there was no sound. None of the clamor of London reached them. They might have been in a cave, far removed from everything that disturbed. And, indeed, the little piled-up rockery outside the windows, with the spring flowers blowing and the baby lake, with the toy-boat drifting on its quiet surface, rather created the illusion that this was a cave.

A restful lethargy of kindness was creeping over him. He didn't want to be at enmity with anybody, least of all with this dainty sprite of a woman with the cornflower eyes and the flaxen hair. He no longer wondered that three men in succession, weary of the mud of fighting, had come to her for rest. He could even comprehend Adair's treachery, if it had gone so far as treachery. Adair had found his wife fretful--she had always been crying and hanging round his neck. Here he had found companionship, secret laughter and forgetfulness. The world owed any woman a large debt of liberty who could give men that. Maisie was the kind of woman who could bury twenty husbands and go out next morning to meet the twenty-first. What was far more amazing, she could do it without frivolity or loss of self-respect. She lived a day at a time.

She made you feel, the moment you met her, that that was the only tolerable way of living. The excuse for her philosophy was its success.

She was an expert in happiness--so expert that she could communicate her secret without waste of words. Probably for most men words were not necessary; for them their happiness was herself.

From her end of the couch Maisie smiled at Tabs dreamily. "You're persistent when you want anything. I suppose you always get your desires?"

"The little things, yes," he replied. "But the big things--they evade me."

"You mean Terry."

She said it without change of tone or expression, with the same happy smile curling up the corners of her uncruel mouth. It was disconcerting to have his private humiliations referred to so frankly, as though they were fitting subjects for casual conversation. But, after all, he reminded himself, his business there was to discuss her equally private affairs. He was hardly in a position to resent anything she might say.

It was a duel, and she had drawn first blood. He was quick to see that her purpose in introducing Terry was to gain an advantage while she postponed the inevitable discussion of Adair.

She didn't give him a chance to reply. "I know all about you and Terry,"

she continued, "and about Braithwaite, too, for the matter of that.

Perhaps why Terry evades you is because she isn't one of your really big things. You may have mistaken her for a big thing. If she is one of your truly big things, you'll get her. You're one of the few men who get all that they desire."

It was possible that she was trying to flatter him; nevertheless, against his will, the certainty of her way of talking impressed him.

"What makes you think that I get everything that I desire?"

She laughed and snuggled closer into the cushions. "I can't put it into words. I just know by looking at you. You have the air."

"Then what makes you say that Terry may not be one of my big things?"

She glanced up at him amused. "I almost made you angry when I said that.--Do you really want to know? I said it because I don't think that she is one of your big things and, what's more, you don't think that she is either. Now I _have_ made you angry---- But you don't--not the sane you, who was and is and will be to-morrow--the you who'll outlive this disappointment."

He was at one and the same time intrigued and offended by the turn the conversation had taken. His memory groped back to the first conception he had had of this woman--the woman who tricked married men, who used scented note-paper, who interpreted thoughts before they were uttered and forestalled actions before they had been planned--the woman whom he had been instructed to buy off with a price. What was he doing discussing his love-affair with such as her?

His voice was chilling when he spoke. "It's very good of you to take such an interest in me. I ought to be gratified that you should think you know so much about me, and after so short an acquaintance--so very much more than I know about myself."

"But I don't think; I do know far more at this moment than you know about yourself." Her tones were calm and lazy, unembarra.s.sed and pleasant. The red glow of the fire glinting on the silver tea-service seemed the reflection of her cheerfulness.

"If you're so certain that you know, you might tell me," he said stiffly.

"I know---- Do you mind if I smoke?" She leant forward while he held a match to her cigarette. "I know that you're an intensely lonely man. All men have to be lonely till they're thirty if they're going to get anywhere. They have no time to spare. You've had no time to spare for women--that's why you don't understand them. Women were for you a treat in store, until the war broke. Then suddenly you discovered that you had missed the most precious thing in life. You hadn't the time to be wise in your choice, so you turned to some one young and accessible. Her youth seemed to symbolize all that you coveted at the moment; it symbolized going on forever. You weren't really in love with her as an individual; you were in love with the thought of love and youth. You won't believe it, but almost any young girl who was beautiful and willing would have served your purpose. During the terrible years you've clothed her with your own idealism. You've told yourself that it was for her that you were fighting. You've created in your heart a person she never was and hasn't it in her to become. You've thought of her as a second you, with _your_ sense of honor, _your_ pa.s.sion for unselfishness, _your_ patience and experience gained through suffering.

The ideal you've set up for her is contradictory and impossible. Youth isn't considerate, experienced, unselfish, patient. For those qualities you have to go to the middle years. I know what I'm talking about, for I've had three soldier husbands." She said it without self-reproach or self-glory--as though it were the sort of thing that might happen to any woman. "You've been finding out the kind of girl she really is since your return--the kind of girl who prefers General Braithwaite to yourself and can't discriminate between the temporary and the permanent.

You're disappointed in her. You've discovered already that she isn't the woman you thought you were loving. You're now only pretending that you still care for her because life would be too empty without your dream and because the right woman, for whom you've already renewed your search, hasn't yet turned up. Somewhere inside you at this moment your sane self is endorsing every word that I'm saying as true."

"That's not so." His contradiction was spoken fiercely.

"But it is so," the sweet voice persisted. "You yourself have tacitly owned it."

"How?"

There was the sharpness of alarm in his way of asking. Her a.s.surance had startled him out of his brief anger.

She laughed softly. "I think we might have tea; it'll restore our serenity. There's nothing like employing your hands when you want to keep from losing your temper. A woman learns that, even when she's only been married once. When she's been married three times," the cornflower eyes became suddenly innocent, "she knows everything.--Will you touch the bell? It'll save me getting up.--How, you ask. How do I know that you've already renewed your searching? To a man who's as head over heels in love as you profess to be all women, except the one woman, however beautiful, ought to be hanks of hair and bags of bones. I read your thoughts when I caught you gazing at my sister's portrait. You were saying to yourself, 'What if she's the woman!' And you're even sufficiently detached in your affections to acknowledge attraction in a horrid little pestering, too-much-married person like myself."

IV

It was lucky that the maid selected that moment for answering the bell.

Things were getting uncomfortably personal. Tabs had the idea that Maisie had been talking against time till she should hear the footsteps of her reenforcements. As the maid entered, she turned towards her with the brightness of relief.

"That's splendid of you, Porter. You guessed what we wanted.--Porter always guesses what I want, Lord Taborley; she's my second self. And Porter can tell your fortune from the cards--can't you, Porter? Only she never reads the cards on a Sunday; she says it brings bad luck. If you come here often, you must try her.--You might take that dish from her.--Thanks awfully. There's room for it here on this corner of the tray."

Tabs smiled inwardly while he did his awkward best to make himself useful. He might know very little about women, but he knew intuitively quite a lot about this particular woman. He knew that Porter had guessed nothing, because nothing had been left to chance. He knew it as surely as he had known what Maisie had been doing in front of her mirror while he had been kept waiting. He knew that long before his arrival every detail of his reception had been prepared and planned, and that Porter had been instructed. The whole morning had been spent in dusting, sweeping, polishing and making ready the various dishes of dainty cakes and neatly-cut sandwiches which were being spread before him. He was certain that the kindly patronage of Maisie's way of addressing Porter was another part of the conspiracy.

Curiously enough it was Porter who made him like and trust her more than he had done as yet. Porter's eyes, when they rested on her mistress, embraced her with a slavish worship; when they rested on him, they warned and dared him. He had the feeling that the man who made Maisie cry was likely to feel a knife in his back. Maisie must be good to be able to call forth such fanatical loyalty from a humble woman. He began to be infected by this atmosphere of idolatry. And yet----

What was Maisie's object in belittling his love for Terry? What did she hope to gain by it? He hardly dared allow himself to suspect; thinking in her presence was like speaking aloud. She heard unspoken words as plainly as those that were uttered. But the suspicion would not be suppressed. Had she formed the audacious plan of winning him for herself? And this despite her three previous marriages, despite her knowledge of why he had visited her, despite his knowledge of Adair!

Quick as a flash her eyes turned on him with a scarcely perceptible shake of her head. The door clicked discreetly as Porter left them. It was like clearing a ring for the second round. The dangerous intimacy, half tender, half inimical, returned.

"There's no harm in being pleasant," her voice was musical and pleading, "however unpleasant the circ.u.mstances which have thrown us together.

Taking tea with me doesn't set up any social obligation. You won't have to know me again or anything like that. Now that we understand each other---- How do you like your tea? Is it two lumps?"

With the tongs poised ready to pounce, she waited for him to tell her.

But he didn't tell her; he smiled inscrutably. He wasn't sure at what he was smiling. Perhaps it was that he was happy--happy in a worldly-wise fashion that he had never been with Terry. He could say anything to this woman and it wouldn't shock her--there was comfort in that.

But she had scared up a doubt in his mind that he might have mistaken his kingdom. Perhaps the recovery of youth wasn't everything. There were things very precious in themselves, which were well lost under certain circ.u.mstances. Maisie's youth, for instance. She was far more enchanting now than she could ever have been as a girl. In losing her youth she had gained in sympathy; it was that that made her understand him so well. In a wife you wanted more than youth--the knowledge of a companion. It began to dawn on him that there might be truth in what she had said.

Perhaps once again she had known him better than he knew himself. He had been with her less than an hour. He didn't completely trust her, and yet here was this astounding fact: by reason of her experience there were things he could say to her that he would never dream of saying to the girl whom he believed he loved best. And Adair, he, too----

"You hadn't expected that things would be like this," she was saying, "just you and I, sitting like old friends and drinking tea together.

You'd nerved yourself up for a vulgar row. I know---- Well, since you won't tell me how many lumps, I'll give you two."