The Second Latchkey Part 20

Terrified, therefore, lest he and his money should slip out of their hands, they snapped at his carelessly made offer without venturing an objection. And they realized at the same time in a way equally mysterious, and to their own surprise, that not they but Mr. and Mrs.

Nelson Smith would be master and mistress of the house in Portman Square.

If there were ever a clash between wills, Nelson Smith's would prevail over theirs.

How this impression was conveyed to their intelligence they could hardly have explained even to each other. The man was so pleasant, so careless of finances or conventionalities, that not one word or look could be treasured up against him.

"The fellow's a genius!" Annesley-Seton said to Constance, when they were talking over the latest phase of the game. And they respected him.

Lady Annesley-Seton wished to bring to town the servants, including a wonderful butler, who had been transferred for economy's sake to Valley House. This proposal, however, Nelson Smith dismissed with a few good-natured words. He had his eye upon a butler whose brother was a chauffeur.

"Besides, it wouldn't be fair to Anita," he explained. "Your servants would scorn to take orders from her, and I want her to learn the dignity of a married woman with responsibilities of her own. That's the first step toward being the perfect hostess. She's the sweetest girl in the world, but she's timid and distrustful of herself. I want her to know her own worth, and then it won't be long before everyone around her knows it."

There was no answer to this except acquiescence, which d.i.c.k and Constance were obliged to give. They did give it: the more readily because they were inclined to suspect a hidden hint, a pill between layers of jam.

If the girl had been transferred from the earth to Mars, the new conditions of life could scarcely have been more different from the old than was life in Portman Square married to Nelson Smith, from the treadmill as Mrs. Ellsworth's slave-companion. What the Portman Square experiences of the bride would have been if Knight had allowed the Annesley-Setons to begin by ruling it would be dangerous to say. But he had taken his stand; and without guessing that she owed her freedom of action to her husband's strength of will, she revelled in it with a joy so intense that it came close to pain. Sometimes, if he were within reach, she ran to find Knight, and hugged him almost fiercely, with a pa.s.sion that surprised herself.

"I'm so happy; that's all," she would explain, if he asked "What has happened?" "My soul was buried. You've brought it back to life."

When she said such things Knight smiled, and seemed glad. He would hold her to him for a minute, or kiss her hand, like an humble squire with a princess. But now and then he looked at her with a wistfulness that was like a question she could not hear because she was deaf. She never got any satisfaction, though, if she asked what the look meant.

"Oh, I don't know. I was only thinking of you," he would answer, or some other words of lover-language.

The Annesley-Setons' first move on the social chessboard was to make use of a p.a.w.n or two in the shape of "society reporters." They knew a few men and women of good birth and no money who lived by writing anonymously for the newspapers. These people were delighted to get material for a paragraph, or photographs for their editors. Connie took her new cousin to the woman photographer who was the success of the moment; and, as she said to Knight, "the rest managed itself."

Meanwhile, an application was made to the Lord Chamberlain for Mrs.

Nelson Smith's presentation by her cousin Lady Annesley-Seton at the first Court of the season. It was granted, and the bride in white and silver made her bow to their majesties. As for Knight, he laughingly refused d.i.c.k's good offices.

"No levees for me!" he said. "I've lived too long in America, and roughed it in too many queer places, to take myself seriously in knee-breeches.

Besides, they have to know about your ancestors back to the Dark Ages, don't they, or else they 'cancel' you? My father was a good man, and a gentleman, but who _his_ father was I couldn't tell to save my head. My mother was by way of being a swell; but she was a foreigner, so I can't make use of any of her 'quarterings,' even if I could count them."

Annesley was presented in February, and had by that time been settled in Portman Square long enough to have met many of her cousins' friends.

After the Court, which launched her in society, she and Knight (with a list supplied by Connie) gave a dinner-dance. The Countess de Santiago was not asked; but soon afterward there was a luncheon entirely for women, in American fashion, at which the Countess was present.

When luncheon was over, she gave a short lecture on "the Science of Palmistry" and "the Cultivation of Clairvoyant Powers." Then there was tea; and the Countess allowed herself to be consulted by the guests--the dozen most important women of Connie's acquaintance.

Annesley, though she was not able to like the Countess, was pleased with the praise lavished upon her both for her looks and her accomplishments that afternoon. She had guessed, from the beautiful woman's constrained manner when they met at a shop the day after the dinner-dance, that she was hurt because she had not been invited: though why she should expect to be asked to every entertainment which the Nelson Smiths gave, Annesley could not see.

Vaguely distressed, however, by the flash in the handsome eyes, and the curt "How do you do?" the girl appealed to Knight.

"Ought we to have had the Countess de Santiago last evening?" she asked, perching on his knee in the room at the back of the house which he had annexed as a "den."

"Certainly not," he rea.s.sured her, promptly. "All the people were howling swells. The Annesley-Setons had skimmed the topmost layer of the cream for our benefit, and the Countess would have been 'out' of it in such a set, unless she'd been telling fortunes. You can ask her when you've a crowd of women. She'll amuse them, and gather glory for herself. But I'm not going to have her encouraged to think we belong to her. We've set the woman on her feet by what we've done. Now let her learn to stand alone."

The ladies' luncheon was a direct consequence of this speech; but complete as was the Countess's success, Annesley felt that she was not satisfied: that it would take more than a luncheon party of which she was the heroine to content the Countess, now that Nelson Smith and his bride had a house and a circle in London.

Occasionally, when she was giving an "At Home," or a dinner, Annesley consulted Knight. "Shall we ask the Countess?" was her query, and the first time she did this he answered with another question: "Do you want her for your own pleasure? Do you like her better than you did?"

Annesley had to say "no" to this catechizing, whereupon Knight briefly disposed of the subject. "That settles it. We won't have her."

And so, during the next few weeks, the Countess de Santiago (who had moved from the Savoy Hotel into a charming, furnished flat in Cadogan Gardens) came to Portman Square only for one luncheon and two or three receptions.

By this time, however, she had made friends of her own, and if she had cared to accept a professional status she might have raked in a small fortune from her seances. She would not take money, however, preferring social recognition; but gifts were pressed upon her by those who, though grateful and admiring, did not care for the obligation to admit the Countess into their intimacy.

She took the rings and bracelets and pendants, and flowers and fruit, and bon-bons and books, because they were given in such a way that it would have been ungracious to refuse. But the givers were the very women whose bosom friend she would have liked to seem, in the sight of the world: a d.u.c.h.ess, a countess, or a woman distinguished above her sisters for some reason.

She worked to gain favour, and when she had any personal triumph without direct aid from Portman Square, she put on an air of superiority over Annesley when they met. If she suffered a gentle snub, she hid the smart, but secretly brooded, blaming Mrs. Nelson Smith because she was asked to their house only for big parties, or when she was wanted to amuse their friends.

She blamed Nelson, too; but, womanlike, blamed Annesley more. Sometimes she determined to put out a claw and draw blood from both, but changed her mind, remembering that to do them harm she must harm herself.

Once it occurred to her to form a separate, secret alliance with Constance Annesley-Seton. There were reasons why that might have suited her, and she began one day to feel her ground when Connie had telephoned, and had come to her flat for advice from the crystal. She had "seen things" which she thought Lady Annesley-Seton would like her to see, and when the seance was ended in a friendly talk, the Countess de Santiago begged Constance to call her Madalena. "You are my _first_ real friend in England!" she said.

"Except my cousin Anne," Connie amended, with a sharp glance from the green-gray eyes to see whether "Madalena" were "working up to anything."

"Oh, I can't count _her_!" said the Countess. "She doesn't like me. She wouldn't have me come near her if it weren't for her husband. I am quick to feel things. You, I believe, really _do_ like me a little, so I can speak freely to you. And you _know_ you can to me."

But Constance, in the slang of her girlhood days, "wasn't taking any."

She was afraid that Madalena was trying to draw her into finding fault with her host and hostess, in order to repeat what she said, with embroideries, to Nelson Smith or Annesley. She was not a woman to be caught by the subtleties of another; and in dread of compromising herself did the Countess de Santiago an injustice. If she had ventured any disparaging remarks of "Cousin Anne," they would not have been repeated.

The season began early and brilliantly that year, for the weather was springlike, even in February; and people were ready to enjoy everything.

The one blot on the general brightness was a series of robberies.

Something happened on an average of every ten or twelve days, and always in an unexpected quarter, where the police were not looking.

Among the first to suffer were Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith. The Portman Square house was broken into, the thief entering a window of the "den"

on the ground floor, and making a clean sweep of all the jewellery Knight and Annesley owned except her engagement ring, the string of pearls which had been her lover's wedding gift, and the wonderful blue diamond on its thin gold chain. These things she wore by night as well as day; but a gold-chain bag, a magnificent double rope of pearls, a diamond dog-collar, several rings, brooches, and bangles which Knight had given her since their marriage, all went.

His pearl studs, his watch (a present out of Annesley's allowance, h.o.a.rded for the purpose), and a collection of jewelled scarf-pins shared the fate of his wife's treasures.

Unfortunately, a great deal of the Annesley-Seton family silver went at the same time, regretted by Knight far beyond his own losses. d.i.c.k was inclined to be solemn over such a haul, but Constance laughed.

"Who cares?" she said. "We've no children, and for my part I'm as pleased as Punch that your horrid old third cousins will come into less when we're swept off the board. Meanwhile, we get the insurance money for 'loss of use' again. It's simply splendid. And that dear Nelson Smith insists on buying the best Sheffield plate to replace what's gone. It's handsomer than the real!"

Neither she nor d.i.c.k lost any jewellery, though they possessed a little with which they had not had the courage to part. And this seemed mysterious to Constance. She wondered over it: and remembering how the Countess de Santiago had prophesied another robbery for them, telephoned to ask if she'd be "a darling, and look again in her crystal."

Madalena telephoned back: "I'll expect you this afternoon at four o'clock."

CHAPTER XIV

THE TEST

Madalena had meant to go out that afternoon, but she changed her mind and stopped at home. "I know what you've come for," she said, as she kept Connie's hand in hers. It was an effective way she had, as if contact with a person helped her to read the condition of that person's mind.

"Do you really?" exclaimed Constance. "Why, I--but you mean you've guessed what has hap----"

"It's not guessing, it's _seeing_," answered the Countess. "I'm in one of my psychic moods to-day. A prophecy of mine has come true?"