The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 26

He had no sooner knocked than the door was opened by Maisie. He was slightly embarra.s.sed at being brought face to face with her thus suddenly after the last scene that they had shared. He entered in a tentative manner, only just crossing the threshold, as though he had not much time to spare.

"I called in," he apologized, "because I thought you'd like to know what happened--and to fetch Terry."

"Of course." She spoke with a cheerfulness that astonished him. "I was expecting you." With that she led the way across the hall to the drawing-room.

Carrying his hat, he followed. He clung to his hat purposely; it would serve as a reminder that he had not come to stay long. She was on the point of seating herself, when she spotted it. "Oh, how rude of me!" In the twinkling of an eye she had deprived him of it and vanished.

"Captured once more!" he thought.

During the few seconds that she was gone, he looked about him.

Everything was as it had been yesterday. A companionable fire glowed in the grate. On a table beside the couch tea was spread. Even as yesterday, the nearest chair to the couch was at least six feet away, making it necessary for any one who did not wish to appear boorish to share the couch with her. There was something else that he had noticed on entering: while he had been away she had made a complete change of toilet. She was now dressed in a filmy gown of emerald green, with shoes, stockings and buckles to match. It was a gown so _chic_ that, had he been a woman, he would have guessed at once that it was the latest from Paquin's. Inasmuch as he was a man, his sole comment was, "Plucky little thorough-bred! You don't catch her owning that she's down." The emerald shade brought out all the values of her coloring, the faint rose of her complexion, the daffodil gold of her flaxen hair. He had expected to be bored by a Magdalene repentant; instead he had found himself confronted by a challenging young Diana. His admiration went out to her for her courage.

Having come back and resettled herself on the couch, she smiled up at him through flickering lashes. "A nice frock, don't you think? Nothing like a new frock after a knock-out for restoring your self-respect."

"It's a charming frock. Where's Terry?"

She clasped her small hands about her knees, leaning her head far back so that her eyes glinted up at his languidly. Perhaps it was necessary to do that in order to see him properly. He was still standing. And yet her att.i.tude served another purpose; it called attention to the firm young lines of her bust and throat, and to the voluptuous curve of her lips, parted in patient expectancy.

"Terry!" Her voice sounded drowsy. "I forgot. I ought to have given you her message. She couldn't stop. She had another engagement."

"An engagement!" He was dumbfounded. "That's strange! She never said anything---- Are you sure she didn't invent it?"

"Certain." Maisie sat up fully awake now. "Quite positive. But she had made up her mind not to keep it till, through no fault of yours, you gave her the chance. You don't want to believe that; it sounds as though she had cheated. You don't know much about women, Lord Taborley. You don't know because you refuse to learn. You're determined, in the face of every proof to the contrary, to live and die in the faith that we're angels." She shook her finger at him. He was amused to discover that he was being scolded. "Angels! We're far from it. We're very much like you men, with this difference, that we're cowards. What you need--this may sound entirely wrong--is a good sensible woman to take you in hand, and give you a run for your money, and teach you your own value. Why, with your position and charm----"

"You must excuse my interrupting. Of course it all depends on what you mean by a run for my money. But are there many good and sensible women who are game for an adventure of that sort?"

"Heaps of them," she a.s.sured him, imitating his mock seriousness. "The more outwardly good and sensible, the more inwardly they're willing."

"Humph!" He pretended to be pondering this gem of information. And then, "But you have to own, Mrs. Lockwood, that Terry's not----"

She blocked his protest with a gay little laugh. "I make no exceptions.

Terry's exactly like the rest of us--younger and more innocent looking, no doubt, but just as imperfect. As regards this engagement of hers, she breathed no word of it until you had gone. Then she began to flirt with the idea that she might be able to keep it. At last she couldn't resist the temptation any longer. Out she came with it, that she must be going.

I'd lay a wager I could name the person with whom----"

"You'd lose your wager."

"I think not." She met the threatened tempest in his eyes with calmness.

"Would you give a name to this person?"

"Where's the good?" She shrugged her dainty shoulders. "We both know it?

Steely Jack. Isn't that what you call him?"

Instantly she leant forward. Her whole instinct was to touch him. She hadn't intended to hurt him like that. He looked so defiant, and gaunt and deserted--such a huge, scarred boy of a man. He reminded her of one of those early war-posters, in which a solitary figure was depicted, knee-deep in barbed wire, head bandaged, hurling the last of his bombs.

"Please don't be angry," she pleaded. "I was clumsy; but I was trying to help. When you helped me yesterday, you too were clumsy. You can't put on a new frock, worse luck, the way I've done, to restore your self-respect. But I do wish you'd buy a new something--a new race-horse or a new car--I don't care what as long as it would make you sw.a.n.k. A little sw.a.n.king would do you all the good in the world; it would keep Terry from knowing how much you care. Terry's not half good enough for you; one day you'll acknowledge it. Still, if you really do think you want her, you can bring her to heel any moment by putting on an indifferent air. Look how jealously she flared up at me at lunch. It makes a woman furious to see her rejections picked up as treasures by another woman. The only reason why Terry brought you here to-day was to see for herself just how deep an impression we'd made on each other."

At last she mustered the courage to touch him. Reaching out, she took his hand and drew him to her. He stood against her knees, looking down.

Her voice was tender. "Some one had to say these things to you, just as you had to say things to me that weren't altogether pleasant. So why shouldn't I to you? After all, we're both in the same box, and the box is labeled NOT WANTED. It pains me to see a man like you, wasting himself on a girl who hasn't the sense to appreciate what he's offering." She raised her eyes to his with a slow smile. "Don't mistake me, Lord Taborley, I'm not trying to secure what you're offering for myself."

He began to see the drift of her argument. Before he could formulate it, she herself had put it into words. "Can't we do a little missionary work, you and I, by appreciating each other just a little?"

Flinging prejudices to the winds, he took a place beside her on the couch. Why shouldn't he? Why should he go on conserving himself so scrupulously for a girl who didn't value his loyalty?

"I should consider it a privilege to be appreciated by you," he said gravely. "But let's start properly. How about dinner at the Berkeley?

After that, if you felt like it, we could do a theatre. Would that suit you?"

It was close on midnight when they returned to Mulberry Tree Court. Not until he was handing her out of the taxi and Porter was standing framed in the open doorway, did he remember that he'd imparted none of his important news concerning Adair.

"About Adair----" he commenced. "Or shall I put him off till to-morrow?"

"Till forever." As her feet touched the pavement, she swung around on him with laughter. They had been very happy in the last six hours. She pressed close against him. He caught the sparkle of her eyes as he stooped above her and the faint, sweet fragrance of her hair. She rested an ungloved hand on his arm. It looked dim like a large white moth that had settled there.

"I have few principles to guide me," she whispered, "but the few that I have I observe. I never dig up my dead and I never botanize on the graves of the past. Good-night. Merry dreams to you, Lord Taborley."

With the suddenness of a phantom she went from him. There were a brief few seconds while he heard the ripple of her laughter and the rustling of her dress. Then the door closed. Save for the lamps of the waiting taxi night was again eventless and dark.

VI

That evening was the first of many such adventures. His tall limping figure became a familiar sight in Mulberry Tree Court.

Very early in their friendship he took her advice and delighted her by purchasing a smart two-seater runabout which he drove himself. Sometimes it was at her door shortly after breakfast to transport her to where saddle-horses were waiting in the Park. Sometimes it would turn up about lunch-time and stand impatiently chugging while she changed into sport's clothes, after which it would dash away with her, humming contentedly, into the depths of the country. It was the magic-carpet which obeyed all her desires. After war-days, with their petrol shortages and restricted travel, it seemed more than ordinarily magic. It made emphatic as nothing else could have done, the freedom and serenity which peace had restored. The very fleetness of its obedience prompted her to urge Tabs to take her farther and ever farther afield. There were evenings when they dined within sight of the sea beneath the red roofs of Rye and started back for London across the Suss.e.x downs, driving straight into the eye of the sunset. There were afternoons when they drifted over the Chiltern hills to where the spires and domes of Oxford rise, placid as masts of a sunken ship in an encroaching sea of greenness.

But it was most frequently nearing midnight when the quiet of the secluded Court was wakened by the merry buzzing of the engine. At first it would come from far away, drowsily like the song of a belated bee.

Then it would gather in volume and grow more lively, till it panted round the little village-green and quavered into silence in front of Maisie's door. Porter, with the gold light of the hall behind her, would always be there on the threshold to receive her mistress. It was difficult to guess what Porter thought. There were impromptu jaunts to theaters and dances. Porter had seen many gay beginnings and tearful endings. Her face was immobile and respectful at whatever hour he called.

It was a curious friendship that had developed between them--a friendship which lived from hand to mouth, which had the appearance of being more than a friendship, in which nothing was premeditated. Nothing could be premeditated so far as he was concerned. Terry had first call on all his leisure--not that she availed herself of it very often; nevertheless, he held himself in readiness to break every engagement for her. Maisie was his consolation prize when Terry had failed. Maisie was not deceived as to the spare-man place that she held in his affections. She was painfully aware that at any moment their friendship might end as abruptly as it had started. On either side it was based on a common need for kindness, a common tenderness and a common desire for protection from loneliness. In a sense they were each a subst.i.tute for something postponed and more satisfying. While he was making up to her for the loss of Adair, she was trying to save him from the rashness of committing himself too fatally to Terry. They were altruists, actuated by self-interested motives.

And yet it was a friendship not untinged by enmity. His enmity was awakened when she became too possessive in the demands which she made and especially when she let fall criticisms, however mild, concerning Terry. These occurrences set him thinking of the other casuals who had ventured on her doorstep, not meaning to stay, and had ended by hanging up their hats in her hall. Her enmity was roused by the courteous circ.u.mspection of his behavior. He never admitted her to the privacy of his inmost thoughts. He could be gay and gallant and bountifully generous, but he never permitted her to peep beneath the surface. He addressed her invariably as Mrs. Lockwood. The use of her surname held her at arm's length. She longed most frightfully to hear him call her by the name that was less safe. She denied to herself that she wanted him to make love to her; at the same time she was disappointed at the persistency with which he held her off. She liked to believe that, if he had made love to her, she would have rebuffed him. She rehea.r.s.ed many times the indignant words with which she would have set him in his place; she would have reminded him that it was for Reggie Pollock she was waiting--as though he were not dead, but only round the corner. To her chagrin Tabs never gave her the least incentive to employ them.

He saw her never more and frequently less than once a day. There was a week at a stretch when he saw nothing of her. She bridged these tedious intervals of expecting by the length of her telephone conversations.

Whenever he stayed away for long, she tortured herself with suspicions that his courtship of Terry had begun to prosper. If he returned debonair and smiling, she felt confirmed in these suspicions. He was most dear to her when he returned in an under-mood of distress. She knew then that she was necessary; to be necessary was the pa.s.sion of her heart. Then she would become gay and tender and mothering--an altogether sweeter, gentler and more self-effacing Maisie.

Whither were they drifting--toward marriage or only toward infatuation?

If you had asked Tabs, he would have replied promptly, "Toward neither."

He had promised to tide her over the dull spots. She had advised him to take a course of education in his own value in order that he might increase his worth to Terry. She had told him that he ought to let some good sensible woman take him in hand and give him a run for his money.

They had accepted each other at their word--that was all.

At the same time he knew that that was not all. He knew that if there was one thing more irritating to her than being addressed as Mrs.

Lockwood, it was his way of treating her as if she were good and sensible. Most women would feel affronted at hearing themselves spoken of as anything other than sensible and good. Good and sensible women are the pillars of society, but they are not usually regarded as attractive companions for joyous excursions in two-seater runabouts.

Neither of them was entirely insensitive to the conjectures that their sudden intimacy had given rise to in the minds of onlookers. They were both too well-known and were seen together in too many different places to avoid the breath of gossip--even of scandal. Men were scarce after the wholesale butchery of the war, especially bachelors of Lord Taborley's cla.s.s. Had he only had the conceit to know it, he had returned to London a strong favorite for the season's matrimonial sweepstakes. More than one anxious mother of unappropriated daughters had set him down for preference on her list of eligibles. When invitations poured in on him and were politely regretted, there was consternation and puzzlement. The puzzlement vanished when the explanation was whispered across a hundred dinner-tables, "Haven't you heard? It's Maisie Lockwood."

Then would follow details of how they had been seen at sundry theaters, at half-a-dozen fashionable hotels and riding together in the Park.

"She mounted on one of Lord Taborley's horses of course."