The Sorcery Club Part 45

"He was--but he's not now. He's come into money." And she explained about the fifty thousand pounds.

"I see!" Lilian Rosenberg said after a prolonged pause, "that accounts for her having just begun to care for him. Supposing there was some one who had been fond of him all along--in the days when he hadn't a halfpenny to his name, and every one else shunned him!"

"I should feel very sorry for that person," Miss Templeton said, "but setting aside the sacrifice of his happiness--it would be wrong for him to marry her if his heart was fixed elsewhere."

"Which you say it is."

"Which I am sure it is!"

"Well, supposing it is--what does it concern me? Why tell me all this?"

"Because it lies in your power to put an end to the Compact and bring about the catastrophe the Unknown threatened."

"I think you credit me with rather too much. I do not quite see how I can accomplish all this?"

"But I do," Miss Templeton said, briskly. "I believe I am right in saying Mr. Kelson is in love with you--that you can make him do pretty well anything you please. Well, all you have to do is to lead him on to propose and insist on his marrying you at once--or at all events before the expiration of the Compact. If you succeed in doing this the Compact will be broken!"

"That may be," Lilian Rosenberg exclaimed, "but where, pray, should I come in? Why on earth should I marry a man I don't care a snap for?"

"Why!" Miss Templeton replied, slowly, "why, because by marrying a man you don't care a snap for, you would save the life of a man--I am quite sure, you care a very great deal for."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE END AND "THE BEYOND"

It took Lilian Rosenberg some time to make up her mind.

"It's extraordinary," she said to herself, "how fond I am of Shiel. I used to think it an impossibility for me to be really fond of anyone.... The question is, however, am I sufficiently in love with him, to give him up to that soft little cat--Gladys Martin! If it weren't for this illness--if I could only persuade myself that he isn't as ill as Miss Whatever-her-name-is--said, I shouldn't think twice--I should let things be--but as I feel sure he is really ill--dangerously ill--and the only chance of his recovery lies in the possibility of his marrying Martin--I must deliberate. Shall I or shall I not? If it were any other woman I shouldn't so much mind--but--Gladys Martin! I can't endure her. There is one hope, however, namely--that if he marries her, he will soon tire of her--and--and come to me. What a tremendous score off her that would be! But, no! I wouldn't do that! Because--because--well there--just like my infernal luck--I love him. Could I marry him, I wonder, even if there were no Gladys Martin? It is doubtful! Yet I believe I could.

But what is the good of conceiving impossibilities! There is a Gladys Martin--and--I can never have Shiel. The only question I have to settle is--Shall she have him? Shall I marry Kelson so that Martin can marry Shiel?"

Lilian Rosenberg turned this question over in her mind for a whole day and night, sometimes arriving at one decision, sometimes at another.

In the end--very elaborately dressed, and looking daintier than she had ever done in her life, she waylaid Kelson and asked him to have tea with her.

Any pretty face, accentuated by all the allurements of a large mushroom hat and hobble skirt, was enough for Kelson; but when that face belonged to the one girl for whom, above all other girls, he had a colossal weakness, he simply could not feast his eyes enough on it.

"Have tea with you? Of course I will," he said. "But we must be careful. Hamar is about. If you walk on up the Haymarket, I'll follow in a taxi, and pick you up, directly I get to a safe distance."

"I see you are as much in awe of Mr. Hamar as ever," Lilian Rosenberg laughed. "I'm not! I've found him out--he's all talk. But do as you will--get your taxi and I'll walk on--we'll have tea in my new flat."

Kelson was so delighted he hardly knew if he stood on his head or his heels. "You are prettier than ever," he said, as the taxi-door shut and they sped away. "I declare there seems no limit to your beauty."

"Only because you're partial," she said. "I shall grow ugly one day.

Perhaps--soon." With a savage energy, she set to work to completely overcome him. With a languishing expression in her eyes--eyes, which she made use of mercilessly, without giving him a moment's respite--she watched his whole being vibrate with love and adoration.

They had hardly entered the drawing-room of her flat when he threw himself at her feet, and poured forth his worship of her in the most extravagant phrases.

"Look here, Mr. Kelson," she said at length, withdrawing the hand it seemed as if he would never leave off kissing, "this is all very well; but I daresay you make love to countless other girls in this same fashion. How can I tell if you are really serious?"

"Don't I look as if I am?" he cried.

"One can never judge correctly by looks," she replied; "they are terribly deceptive. You are very emphatic in your avowals of love, but you say nothing about marriage."

"Then you do care for me! Jerusalem! How happy I should be if only I thought that!"

"Think it, then," Lilian Rosenberg said, "and let us come to an understanding. Can you afford to keep a wife--keep her, as I should expect to be kept--plenty of new dresses, jewelry, theatres, b.a.l.l.s, motors, Ascot, Henley, Cowes?"

"I reckon I could do all that," Kelson replied. "I've just over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the bank, and with this 'cure'

business, I'm taking on an average ten thousand per week. I would settle a hundred thousand on you, and make you a handsome allowance--a thousand a week--more if you wanted it."

"Well!" Lilian Rosenberg said after a slight pause, during which Kelson had again seized her hand and was kissing it convulsively, "to quote one of your Americanisms--I reckon I'll fix up with you. On one condition, however."

"And that," Kelson murmured, still kissing her feverishly.

"That we marry a week to-day!"

Kelson dropped her hand as if he had been shot. "We can't!" he cried.

"The Compact!"

"Oh, d.a.m.n the Compact!" Lilian Rosenberg said coolly. "You marry me then--or not at all!"

"You are joking--you know what the Compact means!"

"I know what you think it means. For my own part I don't see that you have the slightest reason to fear. The Unknown cannot really harm you.

All you have to do is to turn religious. Anyhow you must risk it--that is to say, if you want me."

"It will lead to a quarrel with Hamar," Kelson said desperately. "The Firm will dissolve--and I shan't get a cent more money."

"I'll be content with what you have in the bank now. We can live on the interest of fifty thousand. The hundred thousand you will, of course, settle on me at once."

He was silent. She taunted him, she ridiculed him; she at last lost her temper with him--whereupon he succ.u.mbed. The marriage should take place at a registry office within the week.

"There'll be no time for a trousseau!" he said.

"Oh, hang the trousseau!" she said. "I shall have the hundred thousand pounds. And now for a word of advice. Be sure that you do not let Hamar get any inkling of our approaching marriage, and be most careful to avoid doing anything that might arouse his suspicions. It isn't that I'm afraid of him--but I don't want rows--I'm sick to death of them!"

"You can rely on me to be careful, darling!" Kelson said, kissing her on the lips. "I'll be discretion itself," and so he meant to be. All the same--as is the case with every lover--every lover worthy of the name of lover--who loves with all the full, ripe vigour of genuine pa.s.sion, his heart played havoc with his head; and he was blind to everything save visions of his beloved. In other circ.u.mstances this would not have mattered very much, but with Hamar's lynx eyes continually watching him, it was certain to lead to disaster.

"Ed!" Hamar said to Curtis one day. "Matt's been getting into mischief. I know the symptoms well. He can't look me in the face, and every now and then, when he fancies my attention is attracted elsewhere, I catch him peeping furtively at me as if he were frightened out of his life I should ferret out some secret. It would be deplorable if now that we have got so near the end of the Compact, we should be held up by some idiotic blunder--some nonsensical love affair of his. I wonder whether it's Rosenberg or some other girl.

Will you find out?"

"How can I?" Curtis growled. "I'm not his keeper."

"I know that!" Hamar said. "Come be reasonable. You want to be a Croesus--so that you can eat and drink your head off--don't you!

Well! You will! You will be one of the three wealthiest men in the world--you will have the world at your feet, if only you stick to me for the next seven months: till we have pa.s.sed the seventh stage. If you don't--if either you or Matt deliberately quarrel with me, or marry--then, as I've dinned into your ears a thousand times, the Compact will be broken, and--not only that, but some frightful catastrophe will wipe us off. Now will you do what I ask? Come--a dinner with me every night this week, at the Piccadilly--champagne--and no vegetables!"