Vision House Part 7

The "lion-look" she had seen in the man's eyes that day at sea was in them again. Poor brute at bay, caged with Severance! The girl pitied him. But things must take their course. Luckily for the success of her lie, Miss Marks was not returning with Mums. She--Marise--need only say, when the latter arrived alone, what a pity it was! Thus Samson would automatically obtain his release.

The men nodded to one another, as polite enemies must sullenly do in a woman's drawing-room. Then Severance turned to Miss Sorel with the air of sponging Garth's mean existence off the earthly slate. "I'm early,"

he explained, "because the hotel people sent me a cable to Belloc's place. I told them to do so, if one came. My Uncle Constantine Ionides is ill, and I'm afraid I shall have to go back by the first ship I can catch. I hoped to be in time for a few words with you before your friends began to drop in."

This was hard on the intruder, forced against his will to turn a "company" into a "crowd," and Marise's kind heart might have resented the slap if her mind had been free. But it was instantly preoccupied with Tony's news. He was going home! He wanted to talk with her alone.

This could mean only one thing. She supposed that he wished her to understand as much; and either he took Garth for a dunce or intended him to understand it too. It was as if he said to the bounder: "You're welcome to what you can find in your own cla.s.s: Miss Marks and her set.

But eyes down and hands off this girl. She's mine."

The hint was too broad, the position too humiliating, for Garth's temper to bear in patience. Like the caged brute in Marise's simile, he searched the bars for some way of breaking through. But he could not leave her in the lurch. Practically, she'd ordered him to "stand by,"

and he'd have to do it, unless some look of hers gave him leave to bolt.

The look did not come, however, and he could not guess that the girl was merely too absent-minded to give it. She had suddenly become as self-absorbed as a hermit-crab when he pulls every filament of himself inside his ample sh.e.l.l. As Miss Sorel questioned Severance about the telegram, Garth was left to his own resources. He felt gigantic in the small, pretty salon, where Chinese jars and ribboned pots of flowers left hardly room for a clumsy fellow like him to turn among frail chairs and tables. He knew that Severance knew how he writhed in spirit, and that Severance knew he knew. How much worse was this ordeal than a petty barrage of ginger-beer! Severance was scoring heavily now. Garth thought in dumb rage that he would give a year of life for some way to pay him back. And the girl, too! He loved her with a burning love, but at this moment the difference between love and hate was as imperceptible as that between the touch of ice and a red-hot poker. She was being very cruel.

Garth felt capable of punishing her--with Severance--if he could.

He took his hat from the table, and rubbing the wet silk with his glove, stained the yellow kid. Incidentally he made the hat worse. He wandered to a window looking over the park, and longed to jump out. In his awkward misery, the man's raw sensitiveness suffered to exaggeration.

Staring jealously at the crowd below--walking, driving, spinning past in autos--he knew the emotions of one penned at the top of a house on fire, gazing down at the safe, comfortable people free to pursue their daily business of life, and love, and work. Behind him, Marise and her friend jabbered (that was the word in his head, even for her sweet voice) as if he were invisible. Desperation seized him. He turned, and down went a stand with a statuette and the Sevres box the "Unknown" had sent Miss Sorel. It was poetic justice that _his_ gift should be the thing smashed!

Marise said "Oh!" Severance said nothing. He stood still, fingering his miniature moustache with the air of a man who expects a lackey to repair damage. Garth saw red; and if he had picked up a piece of the broken box it would have been to hurl it at the dark, sneering face. But Heaven sometimes tempers the wind to shorn lions as well as lambs: and if Providence did not order the entrance of two women at that instant, who did?

It was Mrs. Sorel who appeared and (Marise gasped) Miss Zelie Marks. Out of her sh.e.l.l in self-defence, the actress would have rushed to save this scene, as she had saved the last--somehow, anyhow! But to her bewilderment Garth took one great stride towards Miss Marks and s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand as drowning men are said to s.n.a.t.c.h at straws. "How do you do?"

he exclaimed eagerly.

"Miss Marks and Major Garth are friends," Marise rattled off to her mother. And to herself she added, "How smart of him to guess who she was! Or--did he know?"

The secretary's cheeks were stained carnation, and she was handsomer in an instant than Marise had thought she could be in a year. Her black eyes were twinkling. Did she guess that she was a p.a.w.n in a game, and had she so keen a sense of humour as to laugh? Marise was more interested than ever in this young woman: and Mrs. Sorel, not knowing the plot of the play, was yet warned by her famous "instinct" that something queer, something dangerous, was in the air.

She was a woman who prided herself on presence of mind. Marise hadn't expected her secretary to return, therefore it seemed unlikely she would have encouraged the Bounder to wait for Miss Marks. And as for that, why was the Bounder here? Being here, the further he could be kept from Marise and Severance the better. She herself had no time to weave spells for him. Miss Marks must do that, and take him away with her when she went. Without appearing to pause after Marise's announcement, Mary Sorel smiled at Miss Marks. "Talk to Major Garth, my dear," she patronised, "while I explain to my daughter why we tore back in such a rush."

Zelie Marks took the lady at her word, and drew her "friend" apart. By the remotest window the two halted, standing confidentially close, the girl looking up at the man, the man looking down at the girl. As the conversation was now only of Valinski's dress designs, not Severance's plans, Marise had a sub-eyelash glance or so to spare for the couple.

Well, certainly Samson was a creditable actor, or else....

"They were all so lovely I dared not choose," Mums was expatiating. "I said to Miss Marks, 'Suppose we run back in the taxi and let my daughter select? Or, she may want to order more than one of the gowns.' So I slipped the designs back into the portfolio Mr. Valinski had taken them from, and asked permission to borrow the lot. Lord Severance must tell us which he prefers. He's such a good judge! And Miss Marks can carry back the portfolio, with a note from me to Valinski, when she goes."

The three heads--Tony's glossy black, Marise Sorel's glittering gold, her mother's a rich, expensive brown--bent together above a trio of water-colour sketches. Under cover of selection Severance whispered: "I have some bad news. Marise knows it. But I've got to have a talk with you both before I leave this room. I can't bear suspense. For heaven's sake get rid of people as early as you can."

"Must talk to them both.... Couldn't bear suspense!" The woman agreed with the girl in thinking there was but one interpretation for this!

"I'll do my best," murmured Mrs. Sorel, and resolved to begin the good work by bustling Miss Marks and Major Garth off the moment the tea-gown business was finished. In the midst, however, Mrs. Dunstan Belloc breezed in with her pretty sister and Belloc's millionaire backer. Mary Sorel moved to meet them with the manner she had copied from Tony's great-aunt, the d.u.c.h.ess of Crownderby. So doing, she slipped Valinski's portfolio into her daughter's hands with an und.u.c.h.ess-like, "Hurry up and choose, and have done with it!"

Somehow, Marise had not the proper new-dress thrill this afternoon. She languidly decided on a cla.s.sic design which Severance liked, and Valinski had named "Galatea."

"Put the others back in the portfolio, please, Tony," she said. "I must go and help Mums"--but the microbe of accidents was running amok in the Sorels' salon. Tony dropped the book, and the Pole's designs fluttered about the room. Everybody squealed and began picking up papers. One had fallen on the remains of the Sevres box, as if to hide the wreckage.

Garth was nearest the scene of his own disaster. He stooped. Marise seized the chance for a word with him. She stooped also. Each grasped the sketch, which came face uppermost; and under their eyes was the design for the blue and silver gown sent by the Unknown.

Zoyo Valinski had made that dress, then, and sacrificed an advertis.e.m.e.nt to keep Garth's secret! Zoyo Valinski lived in the house with Miss Marks, and was recommended by her. H'm! H'm!

These thoughts jostled each other in the brain of Marise, and brought in their train another. Naturally Garth had not been shocked at her fib. He didn't know it was a fib! The surprise was only that Miss Sorel had hit on the truth and used it so glibly.

"That Marks girl helped him choose the things," she told herself. And she was as much annoyed as puzzled. She wished to fling at Garth: "You sent her to our hotel manager to ask for my work. Why, she's simply spying on me, for you!"

But she said nothing of the sort. Indeed, she had no time. Seeing Marise and the Bounder together, Mary Sorel flew to part them. "Miss Marks wants me to say she'll be ready to go in a few minutes," the anxious lady encouraged Garth. "She's been captured by Mrs. Belloc. It seems she did secretarial work for her once. Come, and I'll introduce you. I've just told Mrs. Belloc that you are _the_ V.C."

It was half an hour before the man's martyrdom was ended. The worst had been suffered at the beginning, when he was the third in a reluctant trio. But it was all bad enough. He was as well suited to this jewel-box of a salon as a bull is to a china shop, and he had done nearly as much damage. He didn't know what to say to Mrs. Belloc or her smart, chattering friends, and they didn't know what to say to him. Even a Victoria Cross couldn't excuse such taste in clothes as his! The big fellow's necktie was a scream; his gloves (no other man kept on gloves!) a yell; and his boots--literally--a squeak. That was the description of him which Mrs. Belloc planned for the entertainment of her husband, and Garth saw it developing behind her eyes.

"Give me the trenches!" he thought, when at last Miss Marks wriggled free of the actor-manager's wife. He still hated Marise as much as he loved her. Yet when he said "Good-bye" he did not mean it for farewell.

He determined ferociously that he would see her again. "Next time," he resolved, "I won't knock over any tables. I'll turn them. I'll turn the tables my way perhaps, and against that d.a.m.ned pig of an earl!"

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT THE STAR SAID

"Thank Heaven she's gone, and it's ten minutes past!" fervently sighed Mrs. Sorel, as the door closed behind a guest she had kissed warmly on both cheeks. "Celine, 'phone down and tell them not to send anyone else up, no matter who. We needn't be 'at home' a second after six."

She and Marise and Severance now had the sitting-room to themselves. The girl, who had been too busy feeding others to eat anything herself, selected a macaroon from a half-empty dish and nibbled it prettily.

Severance regarded the charming creature with clouded eyes, wondering how much appet.i.te their talk would leave her.

"How dear of you to stay and see us through!" cooed Mary, as if she had not known Severance's impatience equal to her own. She did this to lead up to her own tactful exit; and the mere male swallowed her bait without suspicion.

"See you through?" he echoed. "Why, I've been hanging on by my eyelids, waiting for my chance with you and Marise."

"Unless it's something you need me for," the chaperon said sweetly, "perhaps I might leave you to Marise's tender mercies. I'm a little tired----"

"I do need you," Severance a.s.sured her. "I don't dare to say what I've got to say to Marise alone. If I did, she might misunderstand. I can't risk that. Mrs. Sorel, this talk means everything to me. You're my friend. Promise _you_ won't misunderstand."

Mary Sorel retained a fixed, kind smile; but she had a sickly sensation under her Empire waistband, as if something inside had melted and then cooled. She glanced at Marise, to judge if the girl had been in any way prepared for this queer outbreak. No, evidently not! The blue eyes looked large and suddenly scared. Marise stopped eating the macaroon, and, going slowly to the table, she laid the nibbled remnant on somebody else's plate.

"Why, of course I'll stop," Mary said. "I'm not so tired as to desert you when you flatter me like that."

"I'm not flattering, I'm depending on you." Never before, in her acquaintance with him, had the voice of Severance betrayed such agitation. Mary braced herself against a blow; but the melting thing inside began to congeal like cold candle-grease. Her knees felt like water. Still smiling, she sank rather than sat on a sofa, and held up her hand to Marise.

"If Lord Severance has a confession to make, we'd better sit together in judgment," she proposed. "We'll be kind judges, and this shall be our throne."

"Call it an appeal--a prayer--not a confession," Severance said. "If I'd ever prayed to G.o.d as I'm going to pray to you both, maybe I'd not be in the fix I'm in now."

"One would think you were afraid of us!" quavered Marise.

"I am," he admitted. "I was never in such a blue funk in my life. My legs are like poached eggs without toast."

The girl laughed nervously. "You'd better sit down," she advised.

"I couldn't to save my life. Might as well ask a chap on the rack to sing 'Araby.'"

"You're really frightening us!" Mary's tone was shrill. "Have Bolsheviks blown up your family castles? Have you lost all your money? Aren't you the true heir to the t.i.tle?"

"I'm the heir right enough," Severance took her seriously. "And I haven't got any money--worth calling money. There's the rub! Marise, you know I love you?"