The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 24

II

As he and Terry chugged their way to Mulberry Tree Court he eyed her, sitting beside him. Would he ever get her? If he did, would she prove to be one of his really big things? All men must have thought that their wives would be the really big things in their lives before they married them. How many of them thought that six months after they were married?

There was Adair, for instance. But his wife was going to be the big thing--on that he was determined.

And yet, it wasn't very big of Terry to be using him as a stalking-horse for her love for Braithwaite; he felt morally certain that that was what she was doing. She hadn't acknowledged to having seen him, but Tabs felt instinctively that she had seen him. He also felt that within the next twenty-four hours she would be seeing him again. It was impossible for him to accuse her of clandestine meetings of which he had no proof; at the same time he was distressed by the restraint that was put upon himself. As things were, anything might happen. When it did happen, it would happen suddenly and he would be in a measure to blame.

And here again, in this luncheon with Maisie, he was being made a party to her policy of secrecy. There could be no doubt that Sir Tobias was in ignorance of her continual correspondence with Maisie.

He looked at her. How near she seemed to him and yet in reality what miles away! He could listen to her voice. He could touch her. But he could not foresee a single one of her future actions. She was remote and strange and dear. She had offered to become engaged to him, but she was no part of him. She filled him with discomfort and unrest. For the first time he dared to frame his charge against her. It was in almost the same words as the charge which she herself had brought against Braithwaite.

He could love her so that it seemed that if he did not win her, he would never be able to love any other woman; but he could not trust her. He began to question whether she had ever been the woman he had tried to think her. Perhaps she was only a dummy and his imagination had clothed her with affection. He had attributed to her adorable qualities----

When all was said, how little he really knew about her! His need of her fought with his sense of discretion. It was not dignified that a man of his position and years should allow himself to become a shuttlec.o.c.k in the hands of her capricious inexperience. Would he ever be able to bridge that gulf of years! Lady Beddow's unhappy criticism haunted him.

"He lacks ardor." Perhaps she was right; experience should marry experience and inexperience inexperience.

As they sped down the Brompton Road, they pa.s.sed the end of Honeymoon Square. In the enclosed garden among spring flowers children were still playing. Scattered here and there, under the thin shade of blossoming trees, he caught glimpses of white prams with their attendant nurses.

The little houses--his own among them--stood all a-row, shoulder to shoulder, looking intensely smiling and habitable. His imagination reconjured all the midnights they had witnessed--the home-comings under cover of darkness, the secret endearments of lovers, the m.u.f.fled laughter. Then he remembered his own dream, which he had planned to share with her. It was intolerable that it should escape conversion into reality.

It seemed little short of marvelous that she should still sit beside him. She should have vanished with the Square. Had he given her a name, he would have called her his lady in heliotrope, for she was dressed in a heliotrope gown, trimmed round the hem and throat with gray opossum and topped with a little close-fitting turban of color and fur to match.

She looked so dainty and subtly haughty, so austere in her virginal beauty, that it seemed to him he must have wronged her with his silent conjectures.

"You're more than ordinarily pretty to-day," he said.

"Am I? What you mean, I suppose, is that you like my gown. It's a new one. I'm wearing it for the first time, especially for you."

She turned her laughing face towards him, violet eyes, flushed cheeks, golden hair, white teeth--everything aflash with instant grat.i.tude. The discovery of how easily he could command her happiness touched him.

"Can I make you as merry as all that just by telling you you're beautiful?"

She compressed her lips and nodded. "It's not being told. That doesn't matter. It's being told by you."

He felt for the moment that he had recovered her--that he had bridged the gulf of the years that divided. Before anything further could be said, they were halting in Mulberry Tree Court.

III

On entering the house with the marigold-tinted curtains he had glanced round casually for any signs of Lady Dawn. After Porter had shown him into the drawing-room Terry had left him to go in search of Maisie. He walked over to the tall French-windows and found himself once more gazing out on the garden-rockery with its oval lake, its silent fountain and its toy-boat that never sailed anywhere. He made an effort to continue gazing out, for his impulse was to turn and look at the portrait over the fireplace. He tantalized himself by trying to ignore it. But it was strange the fascination that it held for him. He had the feeling that behind his back the face had changed from the profile position in which it had been painted, so that the steady stone-gray eyes were challenging his attention. At last he resisted no longer; walking over to the fireplace, he stood gazing up at it.

For a moment he tried to pretend to himself that his interest was purely an art-interest. It was Sargent's brush-work that he was admiring. Then he smiled, as much to the portrait as to himself. "Princess Czarina Bolsheviki," he murmured, "were you really looking at me when my back was turned? Did you flash your eyes away directly I obeyed your desire?

It's the trick of every woman; but you're not like every woman, Princess Czarina Bolsheviki."

It seemed to him almost as though the woman on the canvas was about to relax her pose and quiver into life. The longer he looked, the less aloof she became and the more her serenity trembled. He felt that he knew so much about her--so very much more than he had ever been told.

There were experiences of pride and terror which were common to them both--the pride and terror of appalling heart-hunger. He knew for certain, as though those painted lips had confessed it, that he was the one man in the world who had the power to make her cry. And yet he dissociated in his mind the woman of the portrait from the woman who had slipped past him out of the night with the taunting, sideways smile of feminine triumph. The living woman could wound and disappoint; the woman of the portrait was his friend entirely.

He was startled out of the mood into which he had fallen by the sound of footsteps crossing the hall. He was not going to be discovered in that position by Maisie for a second time. He had barely recovered his place by the French window, when she and Terry entered laughing. It would have been easy to have mistaken them for sisters, with their golden heads and clear complexions. Directly he caught sight of them he guessed by the mischief in their eyes that their laughter had been at his expense. It was Terry who spoke. "Oh, Tabs, how could you? It was like a little frightened boy."

He glanced from one to the other of them for further enlightenment. "Do what? If you'll let me know, I'll tell you."

"Run away, like you did last night," Maisie explained. "I've just been describing it to Terry. There was I sitting on the couch when Di entered. The first thing she asked me was, 'Who's your new butler?' I wouldn't tell her. 'He'll be here in a minute,' I said; 'I'll introduce him to you.' We waited for about a minute and, when you didn't come, I went out into the hall. 'He's gone, Madam,' Porter told me in her most Mayfair manner. 'Gone!' I exclaimed. 'He can't have gone without saying good-by.' But I was afraid you had, so I went on to the steps and called after you. I don't know whether you heard me. When I came back into the drawing-room, Di was smiling. 'I've read about lordly butlers,' she said, 'but it's the first time I ever met one.' So there you are! You can imagine what a trouble I had to clear myself. I only downed her suspicions when I a.s.sured her that you were on the point of becoming engaged to Terry."

Instantly Terry's eyes sought his; the laughter died out of them. He shared her annoyance that Lady Dawn should have received this piece of information--Lady Dawn of all persons. He wasn't engaged to Terry. He was a long way from being engaged to her--perhaps further at this moment than since his return.

The silence that followed made Maisie aware that she had been guilty of a mistake. He suspected that she had intended to be guilty of it from the start. Nevertheless, she played the part of innocence, making her cornflower eyes eloquent with apology. "Oh, I'm afraid I've put my foot in it. But you are almost engaged, aren't you?"

Tabs laughed good-humoredly. "It's all right, Mrs. Lockwood. You didn't mean to, but you've paid me back in more than my own coin."

Porter relieved the tension at that moment by announcing that lunch was served.

When they had taken their seats in the front-room, overlooking the make-believe village-green, Terry surprised them by saying carelessly, "Oh, Maisie, you remember General Braithwaite whom we nursed in our hospital?"

Maisie looked up sharply, trying to warn her that Porter was still present. "Of course I remember him," she said. "Since then we've both met him a hundred times. I think Lord Taborley would like some bread, Porter."

But Terry wasn't to be deterred. She seemed to be taking a perverse delight in introducing the one subject on which it would have been most fitting for her to have remained silent. "Since Tabs came back we've found out all about the General. You'll never guess who he really is or was. It's difficult to say whether he is or was, now that he's demobilized."

Tabs recognized the blaze of recklessness in her eyes, like the glare of lighted windows after nightfall from which the curtains have been suddenly thrown back. He had seen that look in her eyes at the hunt when, in disobedience to shouted warnings, she had looked back across her shoulder challengingly before taking an audacious jump. There was in her expression the fear of the thing she was about to do and the panic of determination to get it done. He attempted to turn her aside from the danger by slipping in quietly, "I don't think I'd discuss the General at this moment."

"At this moment!" she flashed back with a scared smile. The sound of her own voice seemed to clap spurs to her excitement. "Why not at this moment, dear Tabs? Everything comes out sooner or later. If there's going to be any spreading of gossip, one takes the sting out of it by being the first to spread it. Besides, you oughtn't to mind. You ought to feel most frightfully bucked."

"Nevertheless, I don't think I'd say it."

Then he held his breath for, paying no heed to him, she had turned to Maisie. "You mustn't laugh, but it's too good to keep to oneself.

Before he was a General, what do you think he did for a living? He used to clean Lord Taborley's boots. You don't believe it, but it's a fact.

Daddy's terribly grim with me over it. Of course it was _infra dig_ to go footing all over town with your best friend's valet. But how was I to know that he'd been that? Daddy says I ought to have sensed it, if I'd had any sort of a social instinct. But here's the funniest thing of all, the way we made the discovery. I'd invited him to dine at our house on the very night that Tabs was Daddy's guest. I'll never forget your faces, Tabs, when Daddy introduced the two of you." She commenced to pantomime the scene with forced gayety; then she pretended to become aware for the first time that they weren't joining in her laughter.

"What's wrong? You look as solemn as a funeral. Don't you find it amusing?"

Porter was leaving the room. Maisie waited till the door had closed.

Then, "You didn't intend it to be amusing. Why on earth did you say all this before her?"

Under the rebuke Terry's face flushed defiance. She was near to tears, but she contrived to go on smiling. "When I want all the world to know anything that's private, I mention it before servants. It always works."

"But----" Maisie was at a loss to find a motive for such indiscretion.

She glanced helplessly at Tabs. "But," she objected, "surely you don't want all the world to know about this, Terry? You and the General have been such good pals, and---- I have to say it, even though Lord Taborley is present: there were a great number of your friends who were rather afraid----"

"Then they won't have to be afraid any longer," Terry cut in with icy sweetness. "When it's reported to the General that I've told this story, he won't have to be rather afraid either. It'll set all his doubts at rest."

Tabs had sat puzzled and horrified while she had been talking.

Everything that he could remember about her was gentle; it wasn't like her to be cruel. Now at last he realized that it was for his sake that she was being cruel--far more cruel to herself than to any one else. She had so little faith in her strength to break with Braithwaite that she was building up a protective wall of contempt by the spread of this damaging story. If Braithwaite heard it, she might well hope to rouse his hatred and save herself further effort.

From across the table her eyes sought his in appeal; his answered hers with intuitive comprehension. But his mind was stunned with apprehension at the discovery that her pa.s.sion for this man meant so much that his hate would be a lighter burden than his love.

Maisie turned to Tabs with veiled disdain. "I suppose it was you who told her this, Lord Taborley?"

He paid her scant attention and continued looking at Terry. "On the contrary." He spoke with unruffled urbanity. "It was General Braithwaite--Steely Jack as he was nicknamed in the Army. He never lost an inch of trench, so they say. Like your own first husband, Mrs.

Lockwood, he's most to be feared when every one else would have given up hoping. Like myself, though he doesn't know it, he's a round-the-corner person. Curious, Terry, that you should have attracted two round-the-corner admirers! It makes one almost believe that you're a round-the-corner person yourself."

He had said it without consciousness of magnanimity. There was nothing magnanimous about stating the truth according to his code of honor. He was seeing the bleak look that would come into Braithwaite's face should he hear of this happening. He was wondering whether Braithwaite possessed the insight into feminine strategy not to take offense, but to interpret it as surrender.