The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 6

It was too early to dress--not five o'clock yet. He made an estimate of the time he had to spare. If he walked across the Park to Sir Tobias Beddow's, that would take him from a half to three-quarters of an hour.

At the earliest he wouldn't have to leave the house till six-thirty. So he had the best part of two hours during which to think out his line of conduct and to dress. At dinner he would meet Terry--how would she act?

And what was the right thing for him to do as her family's trusted friend? He felt very tired. It took a tremendous lot out of one pretending to other people that one wasn't tired. He was ashamed to have to own to himself how quickly nowadays he could use up his physical reserves. For the moment there was no one to watch him; he stretched himself out at full length on the couch.

He was glad to be back in this friendly house with its narrow stairways and endearing littleness; it had been his American mother's before him.

Within its walls were the exquisite traces of a temperament and taste that had been hers. She hadn't always been a great lady; to the end of her days there had remained with her the love of small things which one finds in nun-like New England towns. There had been times when the ostentation and entertaining at Taborley House had become too much for her; this nest of refuge had been her secret--her place of retreat where she had regarnered her sincerities. She had loved the Square's old-fashioned primness, its tininess, its unchanging atmosphere of rest.

It was scarcely invaded by the strum of London. In the cloud of greenness which drifted above its communal garden, one could still listen to the country sounds of birds. At the back gray religion spoke in the tolling bell of the Parish Church; through Sabbath stillnesses one could catch the pealing of the organ in the Oratory and the mutter of worshipers at prayer. Tabs had kept the house as she had left it. It was something faithful to which to return, however much he failed in the search for his kingdom and however far he wandered.

However much he failed! This first day of freedom had been anything but successful. He felt as though every hope that he had had had been blotted out; that morning he had had no plan for the future which had not included Terry. What would be the upshot? Would Braithwaite accept his challenge to visit him? If he did, what then? He, Tabs, couldn't very well ask his ex-valet, merely because he was his ex-valet, to desist from loving the same girl. He had no doubt that Braithwaite, in his new incarnation as a General, did dare to love her. He had little doubt that Terry had shown herself at least susceptible to the glamor of his infatuation. How far had the matter gone between them? There lay the guess.

He searched back, trying to piece together phrases which would indicate the correct answer. There was her disturbing confession about having given away bits of herself, little bits of herself in wrong directions.

There was her reticence as to the ownership of the car and the way in which she had tried to prevent a meeting. There was her sympathy for Maisie's matrimonial excesses; her unnatural tolerance for Adair; her reiterated excuse for the current love-madness, that people had the right at any cost to be happy; and the eagerness with which she had seized on his own words, "to recover our lost years by violence." In the silence of his brain he heard her voice pleading, urgent with pain and underlying terror, "Don't you see why I don't condemn? I'm sorry for you, for myself, for everybody." His knowledge of the world told him that impa.s.sioned lat.i.tudinarians were most frequently found among those who had themselves offended the conventions. Whatever Terry knew or did not know, she was certainly aware that a match between herself and General Braithwaite was completely off the map and would be regarded by every one who counted as a _mesalliance_.

And what did she know? Not that Braithwaite had been a valet--most decidedly not that he had been _his_ valet; at most she suspected that they had been acquainted when Braithwaite had moved in humbler circles.

Had she been possessed of the exact truth, she would never have borrowed a car from that quarter to meet her ex-lover on his home-coming. She had been testing--trying to discover. She had scented a mystery--one for the solving of which none of the General's explanations had proved convincing. Then had come the unforeseen encounter outside the War Office and Braithwaite's falsehood, which even Terry had detected. "You mistake me. It's the first time I've had the pleasure." What was the man's game? Did he hope to erase his old ident.i.ty? Did he think----

At this point Tabs' patience broke down. "Dash it all," he muttered, "if there hadn't been a war, the fellow would have been running my bath-water at this moment."

If there hadn't been a war! But there had; and this was only one of the many preposterous situations which had resulted from it. Terry was right in at least one thing that she had said--the world was upside down and walking on its head.

As he lay there thinking, with the topmost branches of the trees in the Square weaving a tracery of green shadows against his windows, a sudden inspiration came to him. He sat up. "By Jove, I've got it. Terry's proud as Lucifer. I can stop this nonsense at any time by telling her who her lover was. Braithwaite will have to call to see me; I can force him to it. When he calls, the door will be opened by Ann. I can hold the threat over him that, if he doesn't promise to break with Terry, I'll expose him."

He went across to his writing-table, selected a pen and wrote:--

_General Braithwaite, The War Office, Whitehall, London.

Sir:

I shall be pleased to see you any time to-morrow at my house in Brompton Square, which you know so well. The matter which we have to discuss is urgent.

Yours truly, Taborley._

He addressed the envelope, sealed it and rang the bell. When Ann appeared, he handed it to her. "Please see that it's posted immediately."

He had done something decisive. For the time being he felt happier.

"Nothing like getting a thing off your chest!" He took a bath and, having slipped into his dressing-gown, commenced to shave. Between these acts he whistled s.n.a.t.c.hes of street-songs to prove to himself his genuine light-heartedness. It was while he was drying his razor that he started on the wrong air. Where had he heard it? Oh, yes, the sunlit street, the children dancing and a voice at his side murmuring the words of the refrain, "Apres la Guerre, there'll be a good time everywhere."

The old argument commenced again, but with a new justice. "What have I really got against this chap? To rise from a private to a General is no crime; it's to his credit. We all had his chance and some of us had more influence; yet he got there."

He tried to eliminate his own desires and wounded pride from the problem. For five years he had been nothing and had been glad to be nothing, that the cause which he believed to be righteous might triumph by his self-effacement. What sickness of soul had overtaken him that, on this, his first day of freedom, he had immediately surrendered to this orgy of outrageous selfishness? It was Terry that mattered and only Terry. The stronghold of her happiness was threatened by Braithwaite's lie. There was a kingdom for everybody, his old theory. As for himself, if he had been mistaken and his kingdom was not Terry, then he must press on, for it lay further up the road round some newer turning.

Meanwhile, at whatever cost to himself he must rescue Terry's happiness.

His heroic state of mind lasted no longer than it takes to set down. He was demanding too much of his exhausted capacity for self-abnegation. He was starving for her. His old hunger to win her swept over him ravenously. Only by winning her could his lost youth be regained.

III

He had almost completed dressing when there came a tap at the door.

Finishing what he was doing in front of the mirror, he answered, "Yes, what is it, Ann?"

"Before you go, I should like to speak with your Lordship."

"Is it important? I've not got too much time."

"It's--it's something to do with myself."

"All right. Half a second."

On opening the door, he saw at once that her face was disturbed.

"What is it?"

"It's something to do with him, sir."

"With whom?"

"With Braithwaite."

It was evident that for Ann there was only one _him_ in the world.

"Well, what of him?"

Ann commenced speaking slowly. Under the stress of her nervousness she forgot the correct demeanor for a high-cla.s.s parlor-maid and became a country girl, twisting the corner of her white, starched ap.r.o.n in her hands.

"I was noticing the address on that letter your Lordship gave me to post." Tabs thought quickly, "Hullo, we're in for it. That was foolish of me. She's put two and two together."

But Ann rea.s.sured him in her next sentence. "It was to a General at the War Office and I was thinking that he might help. Braithwaite and I had an understanding. I'm not saying we were engaged; we weren't. We didn't tell anybody. But we'd made up our minds to get married if he ever came back. If I'd been engaged to him, I'd have a right to make enquiries; but now, in most people's eyes, I was nothing to him. That's--that's the hardest part of it. You see, sir, he was never reported dead or missing or anything. I just stopped hearing from him. So I thought that if this General was your Lordship's friend----"

Tabs' brain had been working. He already had a plan. "You thought that I might persuade him to use his influence to have the records searched?"

She glanced up hopefully. "That's what I was thinking. Would he do it for your Lordship? I don't know how to set about things myself. It's this--this," she almost broke down, "this uncertainty that's a-killing of me. Sister knows about her man, but I----"

Tabs saw the redness of sleeplessness in her eyes; it was true--the uncertainty was killing her. "Don't upset yourself by talking about it,"

he said kindly. "I'll write to the General and post my request on my way out."

He had supposed he had dismissed her and had seated himself at his desk.

A sound behind him warned him; he looked across his shoulder to find her still hovering in the doorway.

She answered his unspoken question as to why she was delaying. "Aren't there any particulars that your Lordship ought to have? Things like his regimental number, and his birthday, and where he was born, and all that? And wouldn't this help?"

"What's that?"

She pulled out from her ap.r.o.n-pocket an envelope. "It's one of his letters. If the General was to see it, he'd know I had the right."

"May I glance through it?"

Tabs unfolded the scribbled sheets of paper. They were torn from an Army note-book.

_"My darling Ann: