When I stood up he stood up, too, and looked down at me. "It is worth while having been a brute and a villain," he said soberly, "to hear that. I am not under arrest or going to be. The fact is that two entirely different and--if you will forgive me--nefarious schemes have been under way at the same time, and the lines crossed. You and I got tangled in them and nearly submerged. But that was not accident; it was destiny." He took my other hand.
At that absorbing moment the footman announced cautiously that the motor was at the door. It was horribly disappointing. From destiny to motor wraps is such a descent.
"Do we have to go right away?" I said.
VIII
It was just dawn when we started, one of the grey dawns that have a suggestion of pink, like a smokecoloured chiffon over a rose foundation. The rain was over, and down in the valley below us lay shadowy white lakes of mist. I threw back my head and took a great breath.
"How beautiful!" I said. And he repeated, "Beautiful!" But he looked directly at me. I had a queer, thrilly feeling in the back of my neck.
And then we were flying down the hillside we had climbed so painfully the night before, and were dipping into the mist pools. Here and there grey shadows moved under the trees and resolved them selves first into rocks and then into sheep. (My descriptions are improving.) And as we went along he told me the story.
It seems he had come back from America for a visit, and on the second day of his stay the Wimberley Romney had been stolen by an expert picture thief posing as a tourist. He had caught a glimpse of the visitor, so when the Romney was missed he started out at once on the search, taking a motor cycle. The whole countryside was roused, and three detectives came down from London. But he had an idea that he would find his man somewhere on the moor, and he had lost himself there. After a night under a rock he had found a cottage and got his bearings. But the rain kept him there. He had got as far as Harcourt Hall when another storm came up. To his surprise he found the place almost in decay, but the house open. He went in, dropped asleep in the morning-room on a divan, wakened by hearing me pass within a foot of where he lay, and followed me. When I threw my necklace at him, at first he was puzzled and amused. Later, he kept it deliberately.
The next part of his story he had secured, I think he said, by sitting on Bagsby's chest down the road, after he had escaped by means of a broken shutter from the rear room where we had locked him. Bagsby had had a puncture, and finding he had no time to go back to Ivry for Daphne and the rest, he went directly to the station. A train had just pulled out, and a man in an ulster and travelling-cap was standing on the platform. .He said, "The car for Gresham Place, sir" which is what he was to say and the gentleman climbed in. But about two miles out of town he (the passenger) had discovered he had made a mistake, and demanded to be set down. But Bagsby had his orders. He carried him to the door of the Hall on the third speed, and the rest we knew.
"Then," I cried breathlessly, "Sir George was not Sir George!"
"Far from it," he said cheerfully. "Poor old chap, what a front he put up! It seems that after he got the picture the alarm was raised too soon for him. He cut back over the country to make the railroad at Hepburn, and was overtaken by a storm. He found the Hall, crawled in through a rear window, concealed the picture there it is still rolled in that carpet in the room where we hid, and waited for the storm to cease. But hunger drove him out. The picture off his hands, he made a break for it, got to Newbury just in time to miss the train, saw the constable and a posse approaching in a machine and bristling with guns, and at that minute Bagsby said: 'Gresham Place, sir.' From that time on he was virtually our prisoner, poor chap. He fell in with the plot because he didn't know what else to do. But what a shock it must have been when Bags by dumped him back at the Hall, after he had walked six miles to get away from it."
"But you?" I exclaimed in bewilderment. "If you knew all the time--"
"I didn't. I did not recognise him until he took off his mackintosh at the lodge. After that I had two problems: to capture him without alarming you, and to prevent the old- woman constable of the country from discovering us and dragging you and Daphne and all the rest into notoriety. Thanks to your cooperation it will never be known that a Suffragette plot to kidnap the Prime Minister was foiled last night."
"Then the real Prime Minister" I could hardly speak. I was horribly disappointed. I had hitched my wagon to a star and it had turned out to be a dirt-grubbing little meteorite.
"His grandchildren at Gresham Place took measles and they telegraphed him not to come."
There was silence for a moment. We were both thinking. Then:
"I am sure you managed it all very nicely," I conceded, "and I am very grateful now that you saved my necklace and and all that. But if you think you captured him without alarming me you are mistaken. I shall never, never be the same person again. And as for the reward, I don't want it. I shall give it to Daphne for The Cause."
He looked around at me quickly. "To take my place," I amended. "I don't really care anything about voting, and, anyhow, I should never do it properly. They will welcome the money in my place, although doesn't it really belong to you?"
"I have already three rewards," he said, looking straight ahead. "The revolver which you emptied for fear our friend might shoot me, the limp little ball that is your handkerchief in my breast pocket, and this hour that belongs to me the dawn, the empty world, and you sharing it all with me. Do you know," he went on, "that Daphne has seventeen pictures of you, and that I used to say I was going to marry you? There was one in very short skirts and long, white--"
"Mercy!" I broke in. "What is that over there?" The mist had parted like a curtain, and on a lower road we saw, moving slowly, a strange procession. We stopped the machine and watched. Daphne was leading. She had the tail of her pink velvet gown thrown up over her shoulders and she was in her stocking feet. She carried her slippers dejectedly in her hand and she was ploughing along without ever troubling to seek a path. Behind her trailed the others. Most of them limped: all were mud-stained and dishevelled. An early sun-ray touched Violet tand showed her wrapped, toga- fashion, in the hall banner. The red letters of "Votes for Women" ran around her diagonally like the stripes of a barberpole. Poppy was trailing listlessly at the end of the procession, her gown abandoned to its fate and sweeping two yards behind her; a ribbon fillet with a blue satin rose that had nestled above her ear had become dislodged and the rose now hung dispiritedly at the back of her neck. Her short hair was all out of curl and lay matted in very straight little strands over her head.
And bringing up the tail of the procession kicking viciously at Poppy's blue satin train in front of him came Bagsby, a sheepish Bagsby loaded down with the hamper, a pail, a broom and a doubleburner lamp with green shades. Even as he watched he took a hasty look ahead at the plodding back of his mistress, raised the lamp aloft and flung it against a stone. The crash was colossal, but not one head was turned to see the cause. They struggled along, sunk in deep bitterness and gloom.
And so they passed across our perspective, unseeing, unheeding, and the mists of the valley claimed them again.
The man beside me turned to me, his hands on the wheel. "Are you sorry you are not with them?" he asked gently. But I cowered back in my wraps and shook my head. "Take me home," I implored, "and please don't look at me again. If they all look like that I must be unspeakable!"
"We will get there ahead and wait for them together," he said. "And tonight I shall bring Thad and Blanche over to meet you. You you won't mind seeing me again so soon?"
"Oh, no," I said hastily. "It it is hours until evening."
"It will seem like eternities," he reflected.
"Yes, it will," I said.
(For it would to me, and if a man likes you and you like him, why not let him know it? And if he liked me the way I looked then, what would he think when he saw me clothed properly and in my right mind?)
He leaned over and kissed my hands as they lay in my lap. "Bless
you!" he said. "I suppose you couldn't possibly wear that gown? Will you have to throw it away?"
"No," I announced, "I am going to lay it away. I--I may use it some time."
"How?" He was as curious as a child. "Are you going to make a banner of it, with gold fringe all round and 'Votes for Women' embroidered on it?"
"No!" I said decisively.
SAUCE FOR THE GANDER
IT was on a Thursday evening that Basil Ward came to Poppy's house at Lancaster Gate. We had been very glum at dinner, with Poppy staring through me with her fork half raised, and dabs of powder around her eyes so I wouldn't know she had been crying. Vivian's place was laid, but of course he was not there. And after dinner we went up to the drawing room, and Poppy worked at the kitchen clock.
We heard Basil coming up the stairs, and Poppy went quite pale. The alarm on the clock went off just then, too, and for a minute we both thought we'd been blown up.
Basil stood in the doorway he's very good-looking, Basil, especially when he is excited. And he was excited now. Poppy rose and stared at him. It was very dramatic.
"Well?" she said.
"Fm deucedly sorry, Poppy," said Basil. "He absolutely refuses. He says he'll stay. Says he likes it. It's extremely quiet. He wants his pens and some paper sent over has an idea for the new book."
Poppy's color came back in two spots in her cheeks.
"So he likes it!" she observed. "Very well. Then that's settled." She turned to me. "You've heard Basil, Madge, and you've heard me. That's all there is to it."
Poppy is very excitable, and as long as she had the clock in her hand Basil stayed near the door. Now, however, she put it down, and Basil came in.
"You and Vivian are a pair of young geese," he said to Poppy. "It's a horrible place."
"Vivian likes it."
"You are going to let him stay?"
"I didn't make the law. You men make these laws. Now try living up to them. When women have the vote--"
But Basil headed her off. He dropped his voice.
"That isn't the worst, Mrs. Viv," he said slowly. "He's gone on a hunger strike!"
I'd been in England for six months visiting Daphne Delaney, who is my cousin. But visiting Daphne had been hard work. She is so earnest. One started out to go shopping with her, and ended up on a counter in Harrod's demanding of a mob of women hunting bargains in one-and-six kids (gloves) why they were sheep.
"Sheep!" she would say, eyeing them scornfully.
"Silly sheep who do nothing but bleat with but one occupation, or reason for living, to cover your backs!"
Then two or three stately gentlemen in frock-coats would pull her down, and I would try to pretend I was not with her.
Now I believe in Suffrage. I own a house back home in America. Father gave it to me so I could dress myself out of the rent. (But between plumbers and taxes and a baby with a hammer, which ruined the paint, I never get much. Mother has to help.) The first thing I knew, the men voted to pave the street in front of the old thing, and I had to give up a rose-coloured charmeuse and pass over a check. But that isn't all. The minute the street was paved, some more men came along and raised my taxes because the street was improved! So I paid two hundred dollars to have my taxes raised! Just wait!
That made me strong for Suffrage. And of course there are a lot of other things. But I'm not militant. You know as well as I do that it's coming. The American men are just doing what father does at Christmas time. For about a month beforehand he talks about hard times, and not seeing his way clear and all that. And on Christmas morning he comes down stairs awfully glum, with one hand behind him. He looks perfectly miserable, but he's really having the time of his life. We always play up. We kiss him and tell him never to mind; maybe he can do it next year. And we're always awfully surprised when he brings his hand around with checks for every body, bigger than they'd expected.
(That's the way with Suffrage in America. The men are holding off, and having a good time doing it. But they'll hand it over pretty soon, with bells on. The American man always gives his womenkind what they want, if they want it hard enough. Only he's holding off a little, so they'll appreciate it when they get it.)
It was after the affair of the Prime Minister that I left Daphne. We kidnapped him, you remember, only it turned out to be someone else, and Violet Harcourt-Standish got in awfully wrong and had to go to the Riviera. I really did not wish to kidnap him, but the thing came up at tea at Daphne's one day, and one hates to stay out of things.
Poppy was going on a motor trip just then, and when she asked me to go along, I agreed. I was spending a Sunday with her.
"I'm not running away, Madge," she explained. "But I'm stony broke, and that's the truth. I'll have to get back to work."
"You can't work in the motor."
Poppy paints, and makes a lot of money mural decorations, you know, panels for public buildings, and all that sort of thing.
"I want sea, sea with mist over it, and rocks. And a cave--"
"Caves are damp. There are plenty of hotels."
"A cave," she said, examining her cigarette dream ily, "with the sea coming in against a setting sun, and the spray every color in the world. I think it's Tintagel, Madge."
Poppy is terribly pretty, and this is her story, not mine.
"That's a sweet frock," I said. "Did you hear that man to-day, when you were speaking at the Monument? He said, 'Bless its pretty 'eart'--"
Poppy's hair is the softest, straightest hair you ever saw, and her nose is short and childish. Her eyes are soft, too, and her profile is so helpless that the bobbies help her across the streets. But her full face is full of character.
"Was he in front of me?" she demanded.
"At the side."
We both understood. It was her profile again. She fell back in her chair and sighed.
"If you could address the House of Lords in profile," I said, "you'd get the vote."
"That's rot, you know," she retorted. But she coloured. She knew and she knew I knew that her new photographs were profile ones. And we both knew, too, that they were taken because Vivian Harcourt had demanded a picture.
"You're not doing the right thing, Poppy," I accused her. "For one day in the week that Viv sees you, there are six days for him to look at that picture."
"He isn't obliged to look at it at all."
"So long as women beg the question like that," I said severely, "just so long do they postpone serious consideration for the Cause."
She leaned back and laughed rather rudely. The English can be very rude sometimes. They call it frankness.
"The ridiculous thing about you is that you don't know anything about the Cause," she said. "With you, it's a fad. It's the only thing you can't have, So you^want it, little Madge. With some of us it's well, I can't talk about it."
It made me furious. The idea of dedicating your life to a thing, and then being accused--
"I think enough of the Cause to stand out all day in a broiling sun," I snapped, "and be burnt to a cinder. Didn't I pass out your wretched literature for hours and make six shillings?"
"Don't call it wretched literature," she said gently. "But now think a minute. If it came to a show down your own expression, isn't it a question between one of these men who are so mad about you, Basil or any of the others and the Cause, which would it be?"
"Both," I replied promptly.
She laughed again.
"You delightful little hypocrite!" she cried. "A Compromise, then! Not victory, but a truce! Oh, martyr to the Cause!"
"And you?'
"The Cause," she said, and turned, fullface to me.
Well, of course that was Poppy's affair. I believe in living up to one's conviction, and all that. But when you think of the lengths to which she car ried her conviction, and the horrible situation that developed, it seems an exceedingly selfish theory of life. I believe in diplomatic compromise.
(I wrote the whole conversation that night to father, and he cabled a reply. He
generally cables, being very busy. He said, "Life is a series of compromises. Who is Basil?")
Well, we got started at last. Poppy left in a raging temper over something or other a bill before the house, I think. I was so busy getting packed that I forgot what it was, if I ever knew and hardly spoke for twenty miles. But at Guildford she recovered her temper. It was the time of the Assizes, and the Sheriff was lunching at our hotel. His gilt coach was at the door, with a footman in wig and plush, white stockings and buckles, and a most magnificent coachman. Poppy's eyes narrowed. She pointed to the footman's ornamented legs.
"The great babies!" she said. "How a man loves to dress! Government, is it? Eighteenth century costumes and mediaeval laws! Government in gold lace and a cocked hat! Law in its majesty, Madge, with common sense and common justice in rags.
That can vote, while you and I--" she stopped for breath.
The footman's calves twitched, but he looked straight ahead.
I got her into the building somehow or other. She looked quite calm, except that she was breathing hard. I confess that I thought she was ashamed of herself; I reminded her that she had promised to be quiet on this trip, and I told her, as firmly as I could, that it wasn't proper to make fun of a man's legs.
She powdered her nose and looked penitent and distractingly pretty.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It's this parade of au thority that gets on my nerves, and this glittering show of half the people ruling all the people."
When she came back from ordering the luncheon she was smiling. I thought it was all over. * (I am telling this incident, not because it belongs to the story, but because it sheds a light on Poppy's character, and perhaps explains what came later.)
"Luncheon!" she said, cheerfully, "with straw berries as big as a teacup, and clotted cream."
I think my mind was on the clotted cream, for I followed her past one dining-room to a second, a long, low room, full of men. She pushed me in ahead.
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 414