The Master Mummer Part 24

"None," Mr. Grooten answered.

"Your interest, then?"

Mr. Grooten remained silent. He sat in his chair, very still and very quiet. Yet in his eyes there shone for a moment something which seemed to bring into the little room the shadow of great things. Mabane and I both felt it. We had the sense of having been left behind. The little man in his chair seemed to have been lifted out of our reach into the mightier world of pa.s.sion and suffering and self-conquest.

"I loved her mother," he said softly. "I was the man whom her mother loved."

There was a silence between us then. We had no more to say. We were at that moment his bounden slaves. But by some evil chance, after a lengthened pause, he continued--

"I, alas, could do little for the child. Yet when I heard that harm was threatened to her through that scamp Delahaye, I crossed the ocean at an hour's notice. I saved her from him. He deserved his fate, but I am no murderer by profession, and the shock unnerved me for a time. Then----"

"Hush!" Mabane cried.

I sprang to the door. It had been thrust about a foot open. From outside came the sound of angry voices, followed by a moment's silence. Then a quick, shrill cry of triumph.

"Let me in. Oh, you shall not stop me now. I am going to see the man who boasts of being my husband's murderer!"

It was the voice of Lady Delahaye. She was already upon the threshold. I sprang to the table and saw her coming. Already she was behind the screen, stealing into the room, her head thrust forward, her lips parted, a peculiar glitter in her eyes. For a moment I stood rigid. The sight of her fascinated me--there was something so wholly animal-like in the stealthy triumph of her tiptoe approach. I recovered myself just in time. One more step, a turn of her head, and she would have seen Grooten. My finger pressed down the catch of the lamp, and a sudden darkness filled the room.

She stopped short. Her fierce little cry of anger told me exactly where she was. I stepped forward and caught her wrists firmly. Then I faced where I knew Grooten was still sitting. I could see the red end of his cigarette still in his mouth.

"Leave the room at once," I said. "You can push the screen on one side, and you are within a yard of the door then. Please do exactly as I say, and don't reply."

"Let go my hands, sir! Arnold, how dare you! Let me go, or I'll scream the place down. Mr. Mabane, you will not permit this?" she cried, in a fury.

Mabane closed the door through which Grooten had already issued, and I heard the key turn in the lock. I released Lady Delahaye's hands, and she sprang away from me. As the flame from the lamp which Allan had just rekindled gained in power we saw her, still shaking the handle, but with her back now against the wall turned to face us. She was calmer than I had expected, but it was a terrible look which she flashed upon us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: She was calmer than I had expected, but it was a terrible look which she flashed upon us.]

"In how many minutes," she asked, "may I be released?"

Allan whispered in my ear.

"In five minutes, Lady Delahaye," I said. "I regret very much the necessity for keeping you at all. May I offer you a chair?"

"You may offer me nothing, sir, except your silence," she answered swiftly.

She meant it too. I know the signs of anger in a woman's face as well as most men, and they were written there plainly enough. So for a most uncomfortable period of time we waited there until Allan, after a glance at his watch, went and opened the door. She pa.s.sed out without remark, but from the threshold outside she turned and looked at me.

"I warned you once before, Arnold Greatson," she said, "that you were meddling with greater concerns than you knew of, and that harm would come to you for it. Now you have chosen to shield a murderer, and to use your strength upon a woman. These things will not go unforgotten!"

Mabane closed the door, and threw himself into an easy chair.

"For two easy-going sort of fellows, Arnold," he said to me, "we seem to be making a lot of enemies. Don't you think it would be a good idea if we drew stumps for a bit?"

"Meaning?" I asked.

"Roseleys!"

"We'll go to-morrow," I declared.

CHAPTER V

"I have never seen anything like this," Isobel said softly. I looked up from the writing-pad on my knee, and she met my glance with a smile of contrition.

"Ah," she said. "I forgot that I must not talk. Indeed, I did not mean to, but--look!"

I followed her eyes.

"Well," I said, "tell me what you see."

"There are so many beautiful things," she murmured. "Do you see how thick and green the gra.s.s is in the meadows there? How the quaker gra.s.ses glimmer?--you call them so, do you not?--and how those yellow cowslips shine like gold? What a world of colour it all seems. London is so grey and cold, and here--look at the sea, and the sky, with all those dear little fleecy white clouds, and the pink and white of all those wild roses wound in and out of the hedges. Oh, Arnold, it is all beautiful!"

"Even without a motor-car!" I remarked.

She looked at me a little resentfully.

"Motoring is very delightful," she said, "although you do not like it.

Of course, it would be nice if Arthur were here!"

She looked away from me seawards, and I found myself studying her expression with an interest which had something more in it than mere curiosity. At odd times lately I had fancied that I could see it coming.

To-day, for the first time, I was sure. The smooth transparency of childhood, the unrestrained but almost animal play of features and eyes, reproducing with photographic accuracy every small emotion and joy--these things were pa.s.sing away. Even before her time the child was seeking knowledge. As she sat there, with her steadfast eyes fixed upon the smooth blue line where sea and sky met, who could tell what thoughts were pa.s.sing in her mind? Not I, not Mabane, nor any of us into whose care she had come. Only I knew that she saw new things, that the rush of a more complex and stronger life was already troubling her, the sweet pangs of its birth were already tugging at her heartstrings. My pencil rested idly in my fingers, my eyes, like hers, sought that distant line, beyond which lies ever the world of one's own creation. What did she see there, I wondered? Never again should I be able to ask with the full certainty of knowing all that was in her mind. The time had come for delicate reserves, the time when the child of yesterday, with the first faint notes of a new and wonderful song stealing into her heart, must fence her new modesty around with many sweet elusions and barriers, fairy creations to be swept aside later on in one glad moment--by the one chosen person. There was a coldness in my heart when I realized that the time had come even for the child who had tripped so lightly into our lives so short a time ago, to pa.s.s away from us into that other and more complex world. It was the decree of s.e.x, nature's immutable law, sundering playfellows, severing friendships, driving its unwilling victims into opposite corners of the world, with all the pitilessness of natural law. Nevertheless, the thought of these things as I looked at Isobel made me sad. She was young indeed for these days to come, for the shadows to steal into her eyes, and the song of trouble to grow in her heart.

"Tell me," I asked softly, "what you see beyond that blue line."

"I can tell you more easily," she said, glancing down with a faint smile at my empty pages, "what I see by my side--a very lazy man. And," she continued, crumpling a little ball of heather in her fingers and throwing it with unerring aim at Allan, "another one over there!"

"My picture," Allan protested, "is finished."

"Nonsense!" she exclaimed, preparing to rise, but he waved her back.

"In my mind," he added. "Don't misunderstand me. The casual and ignorant observer glancing just now at my canvas might come to the same conclusion as you--a conclusion, by-the-bye, entirely erroneous. I will admit that my canvas is unspoilt. Nevertheless, my picture is painted."

She looked across at him reproachfully.

"Allan, how dare you!" she exclaimed. "Only Arnold has the right to be subtle. I have always regarded you as a straightforward and honest person. Don't disappoint me."

"St. Andrew forbid it!" Allan declared. "My meaning is painfully simple.

I build up my picture first in my mind. Its transmission to canvas is purely mechanical. Here goes!"

He took up his palette, and in a few moments was hard at work. Isobel pointed downwards to my writing-pad.

"Can you too match Allan's excuse?" she asked. "Is your story already written?"

I shook my head.