The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 30

She never cried. How often Maisie had insisted on her sister's abstinence from tears, as though it was something monstrous that summed up all her character! He would have felt far more comfortable in visiting her if he had been a.s.sured that she sometimes cried.

As he turned into Brompton Square, he thought he caught the door of his house in the act of closing. He might have been mistaken. It was dark under the shadow of the trees. Quite possibly it had been the door of a neighbor's house. Nevertheless, he hugged the curb as he drove so that he might scan the face of any one on the pavement. Forty yards from his doorstep, at a point where things were darkest, a man pa.s.sed him. He was a tall man and walked with the erectness of one who had been a soldier.

The way in which he carried himself and strode was extraordinarily reminiscent. Tabs slowed down and looked back; the man moved straight ahead, without hesitancy or sign of recognition. It couldn't be Braithwaite; Ann's vicinity was the least likely place in which to find him.

As Tabs let himself into his house, he found Ann in the hall. "Was there some one here to see me?" he asked.

"There's been no one to see your Lordship," Ann replied respectfully.

He scarcely knew what prompted him to say it. Perhaps it was the healthy neatness of her appearance--the extreme orderliness of her quiet. "Ann, you're the sanest creature I meet anywhere. You've the pluck of one in a million."

She turned to him a face that was flushing and eyes that were unusually bright. "It's good of your Lordship. Your Lordship is always kind."

"No, Ann, only human. I know what you've been through and I'm glad you're getting over it---- I have to be away to-night. I shall need some supper. While you're preparing it, I'll pack."

On the way upstairs he telephoned the garage to send for his car and to return it within the hour. Then he climbed the last flight to his bedroom.

While he packed, he kept pausing and knitting his brows. A ridiculous conviction was forming in his mind. "It couldn't have been," he a.s.sured himself. Yet the more he recalled the man on the pavement the more certain he was that he had been Steely Jack. But what motive could Braithwaite have had for calling and why should Ann try to hide the fact that he had called? He had lost trace of him utterly since that day when he had handed him Terry's ultimatum at the Savoy. Since then Terry and he had had many meetings, he did not doubt. Braithwaite's influence clung to her like her shadow. But if he was so in love with Terry, the more reason why he should steer clear of Ann. To have called at Brompton Square would have been asking for a cloudburst. It couldn't have been Braithwaite. And yet----

And then there was Ann. Since that day when the General's portrait had appeared in the papers, she had given up watching for letters marked, "On His Majesty's Service." She had made no further enquiries as to how his Lordship's friend at the War Office was progressing. Her silence told its story; she had learned the truth. In what spirit she had accepted the truth Tabs had no means of guessing. Lady Hamilton, the little maid-of-all-work, had been the beloved of Nelson. Ann was not without her precedent. But the maid-of-all-work had become Lady Hamilton before the Admiral had set eyes on her. Steely Jack was a General, while Ann was still a servant. Her claims would not meet with much applause if they were brought before a jury.

To all appearance she had resigned herself to the inevitable. Tabs was frankly surprised at her magnanimity and fort.i.tude. About her fort.i.tude there could be no question, but concerning her magnanimity he was not a little skeptical. More than once he had caught her singing as she went about her work. She didn't get all the words correctly; she sang them with improvisions, filling in the gaps where her memory failed.

Throughout the war the song had been sung to men on leave at the Alhambra by the heroine who acted the revengeful part of _Tootsie_:

"Some day I'll make you love me.

Some day you'll call me 'Dear'.

You'll feel so lonely And want me only; I'm sure you'll want me near.

I know you can't forget me, Though, dear, for years you'll try.

I'll make you miss me And want to kiss me, Bye and bye."

She was a mystery. If she were playing a game, it was a game the intentions of which he could not fathom. The man whom he had pa.s.sed on the pavement could not have been Braithwaite. Common-sense insisted on that.

IV

While he was at supper she gave him no chance to question her. "I'm motoring down to Dawn Castle," he told her. "I've left the address on my desk. Don't forward any letters till you hear from me. I don't suppose that I shall be there for more than a day. To tell the truth," he glanced up smiling at her seriousness, "I haven't been invited."

Ann refused to be lured off her perch of reticence. She set before him the dish she was carrying. "I'm sure wherever your Lordship goes there's a welcome."

He felt that he was being reproved. He had been conscious of her silent criticism from the moment he had announced that he would be away for the night. He respected Ann and was anxious for her good opinion. She was by long odds the most honorable woman of his acquaintance and the best, because she was the kindest. He had had the feeling throughout the past two months that there was very little that had happened inside his brain that had escaped her. She had disapproved of Maisie. She had shown no enthusiasm for Terry. She had been aware of his dangers when he himself was disguising them with excuses. All this he knew though no word had been exchanged. She had observed in all her dealings with him the decorum to be expected from a high-cla.s.s servant. And yet she was his trusted friend, whose virtues compelled his admiration and whose loyalty commanded his affection. She thought ahead for him and smoothed his path. Her sense of responsibility was as tender as a sister's. Her humility lent it a touch of pathos. He looked up to her as men instinctively look up to good women in whatever grade of society they find them. The silent knowledge which each had of the other formed a bond of sympathy, the more delicate because it was unuttered.

He said, "Long ago--it must have been before the war--I gave you tickets to see Peter Pan."

"It wasn't to me your Lordship gave them. It was to Braithwaite."

"Was it?" He held her eyes, striving to peer behind their curtained windows. It was the first time that that name had been mentioned between them in casual conversation. "You're right. It comes back to me now. It was the Christmas of 1913 that he took you. Do you remember the fairy who was dying? There was only one way of keeping her alive. Peter Pan had to make the children in the audience promise that they believed in fairies. When they did that, she got well. That's why I'm going to Dawn Castle to-night."

Ann ceased abruptly from what she was doing and stared at her master in concern. He laughed mischievously. "Wrong again, Ann; I've not taken leave of my senses. Two hours ago I made the same mistake. There was a man who asked me whether I believed that Mrs. Lockwood's first husband, who was killed at the Front, would return. While I was wondering how long it would be before he'd grow violent, he proved to me that he was her first husband. So I'm believing in fairies."

A secret happiness lit up her face. "Deep down beneath our doubts, most of us believe in fairies, I think, your Lordship." With a shy smile she left him.

The purring of an engine warned him that the car had returned and was waiting. He could hear Ann in the hall, handing out his bags. He had finished his supper; he might as well be off. As he drove out of the Square, he looked back; she was standing on the steps, gazing after him.

He had the restless certainty, now that it was too late, that she had had a secret which, at the last moment, she would have given the world to have shared with him.

V

Of that night journey in after years he remembered only the deep peace and the ecstasy. He was doing something at last that was right; though why it was right, he would have found it hard to explain. He encountered none of the difficulties he had antic.i.p.ated in picking up his direction.

He flew unswervingly to the mark like a bullet traveling a predestined path. The first sixty miles were familiar; Maisie had covered them with him on many occasions. By every law of emotion each landmark should have stirred some poignant memory, some fresh wistfulness of regret. The fact was that he hardly gave her a thought. When he did, it was only to wish her luck and to congratulate himself on his escape.

Having pa.s.sed through Oxford lying blanched in moonlight, he climbed out of the Thames valley, striking through uplands across the wold to Burford. From then on all memories were left behind; he had become an explorer in an unknown country.

Everything was sleeping. How trustfully it slept! Trees were hooded like extinguished candles. Flowers throughout the fields clasped their faces in their hands. Birds, like fluffy b.a.l.l.s, drowsed on branches. Stars alone were wakeful. They stooped to watch him with intent, companionable glances. Now and then he had to halt to flash his torch on a sign-post or to consult his map. For the most part he took chances and guessed.

Night engulfed him, rushed past him, broke over him. He was like a ship thrusting forward into a trackless ocean.

The paleness of dawn was in the sky as he neared Gloucester. When he entered, its roofs and towers were precipices of gold and fire, straining up to the New Jerusalem which floated in the clouds. The streets of the ancient city had a mystic look, white and hushed and tenantless. But already the cheeky sparrows were about, scandal-mongering beneath the eaves with an unholy disregard for the awe by which they were surrounded.

He left Gloucester in a southwesterly direction. In fields the hay was lying cut. A largesse of dew had been scattered through the hedgerows like loot from the treasure-chests of emperors. Larks were battling up, striving to sing against the very bars of heaven. Every fragrance and sound was a messenger, guaranteeing happiness.

Round a bend in the road he came across a cl.u.s.ter of thatched cottages, their white walls gleaming incandescent in the morning sunshine. Beyond them lay a parkland, from the edge of which rose a wooded knoll, crowned by a moated castle. The next mile-stone warned him that it was the village of Dawn he was approaching.

VI

All day he had waited--a lazy summer day, drowsy with the hum of bees and heavy with the perfume of cottage flowers. On entering the village he had put up at _The Dawn Arms_, an old-fashioned hunting hostel which owed its prosperity to the fame of the Dawn foxhounds. Having bathed and breakfasted, he had started off to leave his card on Lady Dawn. Arriving at the Castle, he had been informed that her Ladyship had left early that morning and was not expected back till early evening. He had filled in the morning by sleeping and the afternoon by joining a band of sight-seeing trippers who had driven over from Gloucester in gayly-painted chars-a-bancs.

With a spice of amus.e.m.e.nt, he had paid his shilling for admission at the wooden booth outside the Castle gate and had found himself herded with a crowd of affectionately inclined young women and young men who perspired freely--the latter for the sake of greater comfort had removed their coats and knotted handkerchiefs about their throats. In good time a decrepit ex-butler had appeared to act as guide and had led the excursionists over the Norman part of the ruins. He had shown them the dungeons, the room in which a prince had been murdered and the havoc wrought upon the walls by Cromwellian cannon. The ever recurring theme of his trembling narrative was the prowess and the splendor of the Dawns. He was like a weak-voiced cricket chirping in the sunshine. His stories of bygone lords, who had died in rebellions and crusades, were too ancient to grip the imagination. At first his veneration for the race which he served inspired an outward show of respect on the part of his hearers. But soon, in straggling twos and threes, they lagged behind to explore and pluck wall-flowers from the crannies. Girls, feeling the pressure of lovers' arms about their waists, giggled shrilly. They wandered off to shady nooks in the gra.s.s-grown ramparts where woolly sheep looked up somnolently to watch them.

To the few who remained the old man mumbled on. It was the n.o.bility of the late Lord Dawn that he was now recounting--the daring horseman he had been, the deviltry of him, the l.u.s.t of life he had had, the greatness of his possessions and how he had foregone all this beauty to be hammered into the defilement of the trenches like a rat, cornered in a sewer.

"Visitors are not allowed in the part of the Castle that is inhabited.

But, since her Ladyship's away----"

Unlocking a door, he led them through a tunnel to a grilled gate, through the bars of which they saw the Castle's terraced rose-gardens, falling away steeply in a cascade of petals to a water-lilied, green-sc.u.mmed moat which encircled the stronghold like a necklace of jade. Beside the water's edge a fair-haired boy in a white sailor suit was deeply absorbed in sailing a boat.

"His little Lordship," the old man whispered.

"But I didn't know---- How old?" Tabs questioned.

"Eight years, sir, come December."

Long after he had returned to the inn, the picture of the little boy remained with him. This discovery that Lord Dawn had left a son made him the more certain of the justice of his errand.

The azure and emerald of late afternoon drifted into the ensanguined gold of sunset. The long-tarrying twilight had already settled when a messenger arrived, bearing a note. It was from her Ladyship, regretting her absence and saying that she would be happy to receive a visit from Lord Taborley that evening or at any time that was convenient.

VII