The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  The tiresome baccarat incident had now been unanswered rather more than a fortnight, during which interval Kit had not seen Mr. Alington. She told Jack that the mine-man was rather too much for her. Besides, she had introduced him to a hundred houses; if he could not swim for himself now, he never would. But when on the morning following this Sunday, as Kit, figuratively speaking, looked over her old letters to see what had to be done in the last week in London, she came upon the baccarat letter, and read it through again, hoping that she would feel that it had by now answered itself, for she had given it time. But though she was sedulous in taking a favourable view of this and all other matters concerning herself, she came to the disheartening conclusion that it had not. There was clearly only one of two things to be done—either give it more time and another chance to answer itself unaided, or answer it herself at once. And, as a wise and perhaps a good wife should, she determined to consult her husband about it, wishing that she had done so before.

  The confidence between the two was, in a certain well-defined area, of an intimate kind. There were, no doubt, certain things which Kit did not tell Jack, and she on her side felt that there might be developments in the Alington scheme, for instance, into which she would not be permitted to enter. She did not resent this; everyone may have his own private sitting-room, where, if one knocks, one may be refused admittance. It was wiser then not to knock, and certainly there were things in hers which it was not her intention to show Jack. But apart from these few exceptions, Kit always told Jack everything, especially if she was in difficulties.

  “It produces such peace of mind,” she had said once to Alice, “to know that no one can tell your husband worse things than he already knows about you. How some women can go on letting their husbands remain in ignorance about their bills and other indiscretions, I can’t conceive. Why, I should have to ask Jack every evening what he had learned about me during the day. And that sort of revelations come much better from oneself. It wears,” said Kit thoughtfully, “the guise of candour, and also possibly of regret.”

  The two women practised great freedom of speech with each other, and Alice replied frankly:

  “Sometimes I think you are a clever woman, Kit; at other times I feel sure I am wrong, and that you are the most abject of fools.”

  “I suppose you mean that I seem to you an abject fool now,” said Kit. “Why, please?”

  “Because you tell Jack only the things that don’t really matter. The things which if he heard from elsewhere would really make a row, you don’t tell him.”

  “Ah, but those are the things which nobody can tell him,” said Kit, with her customary quickness, and more than her usual penetration.

  This conversation occurred to her mind today, when she determined to ask his advice about the baccarat. The only question was whether it, too, came under the head of what nobody else could tell him. If it had been someone of her own set who had seen, or whom she suspected to have seen, the little faux pas of the hundred-pound counter, it would no doubt have come under the head of the things incommunicable. To Tom, Toby, Jack, Lord Comber, it would have been impossible to repeat such a thing. But one could not guess what ideas of honour a wild West Australian miner might have. To repeat such a thing about a woman was contrary to the code in use among her associates, and a good thing, too, thought Kit, strictly confining the question to the particular instance, and not confounding issues by a consideration of honour in general.

  Even after the lapse of a fortnight the thought of that evening was a smart and a mortification. Jack was going to entrust the ship of his fortunes to the wild man who sang hymns, and played a harmonium, for aught she knew, and her really laudable desire to have some hold, some handle over him, had ended in this débâcle. It was not certain, indeed, that he had seen, but Kit could not but admit that it was highly probable. After all, honesty was the best policy, and she determined to tell Jack.

  He had gone up to town by an early train, and Kit, who disliked getting up early almost as much as she disliked going to bed early, followed him later. He was out when she reached Park Lane, and it was close on lunch-time when she heard a cab drive up. Next moment the butler had announced Mr. Alington. The two looked just like brothers.

  “Good-morning, Lady Conybeare,” he said very smoothly. “Your husband asked me to lunch here, as we have some business to talk over. I was to give you a message, if he was not yet in, asking you not to wait lunch for him. He might”—Mr. Alington appeared to ponder deeply for a moment—“he might be detained.”

  This meeting was intensely annoying to Kit. She had told Jack that she had had enough of the mine-man, and it was very tiresome to have this tête-à-tête, and quite particularly disagreeable after their last meeting to see him alone. However, she put on the best face she could to the matter, and spoke with familiar geniality.

  “Oh, Jack is always late,” she said. “But why he should think it necessary to ask me not to wait for him is more than I can say. I suppose you have been imbuing him with business habits. Jack a business man! You have no idea how droll that seems to his wife, Mr. Alington. Let us lunch at once; I am so hungry. Kindly ring that bell just behind you, please.”

  Mr. Alington sat still a moment, and then rose with deliberation, but did not ring.

  “I am lucky to find you alone, Lady Conybeare,” he said, “for the truth is, there was a little matter I wanted to talk over with you.”

  Kit rose swiftly from her seat before he had finished his sentence, and rang the bell herself. It was answered immediately, and as the man came into the room, “Indeed; and what is that?” she said. “Is lunch ready, Poole? Let us go in, Mr. Alington. I am always so hungry in London and elsewhere.”

  Kit could scarcely help smiling as she spoke. She had no intention whatever of talking any little matter over with Mr. Alington, especially if it was the one she had in her mind; and she could not help feeling amused by the simplicity of the means by which she had put the stopper on the possibility of a private talk. She wished to hold no private communications with the man. She had done her part in launching him, for the convenience of Jack; she had given him to understand, or rather given other people to understand, that he was an ami de la maison, and she washed her hands of him. He was very kindly going to make Jack’s fortune in return for benefits received, but he had distinctly said that the arrangement was one of mutual advantage. It was give and take; he was on the same level as your grocer or bootmaker, except that those tradesmen gave in the hopes of eventually taking, while Mr. Alington took as he went along. At the best he was a sort of cash-down shop, and Kit did not habitually deal with such. She did not consider him dangerous, and she was so well pleased with her own adroitness that she very unwisely determined to drive her advantage home.

  So, as he followed her through the folding-doors into the dining-room, “What is the little matter you referred to?” she asked again, feeling perfectly secure in the presence of servants in the room.

  Mr. Alington closed his eyes for a moment before he took his seat, and murmured a brief grace to himself. He opened them a moment afterwards with a short sigh, and Kit’s riposte to his thrust did not seem to have ruffled or disconcerted him in the least.

  His broad butler-like face was as serene as ever.

  “It was a matter which I thought you might have preferred to discuss alone,” he said; “but as you seem to wish it, I will tell you here. The other night when I had the pleasure of playing baccarat with you, you won on a natural—”

  A flush of anger rose to Kit’s face. The man was intolerable, insolent, before the servants, too; but as he spoke she felt a sudden fear of him. He looked her full in the face with mild firmness, breaking his toast with one hand, while with the other he manipulated his macaroni on the end of his fork.

  “Stop!” said Kit, quick as the curl of a whiplash.

  But Mr. Alington did not wince.

  “You will be so kind, then, as to give me the opportunity of speaking to you privat
ely about it,” he said. “I am quite of your way of thinking. It is far better discussed so. I quite see.”

  Kit felt herself trembling. She was not accustomed to such bland brutality at the hands of anyone. She would have been scarcely more surprised if her stationer or butcher had suddenly appeared in the room, and urged the propriety of a private talk. Alington, it is true, had been to her house, had a right to consider himself a guest; but that made it even more intolerable. Apparently he had no idea of the distinction between guests and guests, and it would be a shocking thing if this were overlooked. Meantime he went on eating macaroni with a superb mastery over that elusive provender, in silence, since Kit did not reply.

  The dining-room was one of the most charming rooms in London, rather dark, as dining-rooms should be, the walls of a sober, self-tint green, and bare but for some half-dozen small pictures of the Barbizon school, which, if alienable, would long ago have been alienated to supply the chronic scarcity of money in the Conybeare establishment. They were wonderful examples, but Kit hated them, since they could not be sold. “They make me feel like a man on a desert island with millions of gold sovereigns and no food,” she had said once. The chairs were all armed, and upholstered in green brocade, and the thick Ispahan carpet made noiseless the feet of those “who stand and wait.” Partly this, partly the distraction of her thoughts, brought it about that red mullets were at Kit’s elbow a full ten seconds unperceived. She could not make up her mind what to do. She bitterly repented having said “Stop!” just now to Alington, for the vehemence of her interjection gave herself away. She had practically admitted that something had occurred on the night they played baccarat which she earnestly desired not to have discussed in public. A fool could have seen that, and with all her distaste for the man she did not put this label to him. And with odiously familiar deference he had agreed with her; he had assumed the right of discussing things with her in private.

  Again, she could not quarrel with him. Conybeare’s application to business, his early visits to the City, his frequent conferences with Alington, his unexampled preoccupation, all showed for certain that there were great issues at stake, for he would not give himself such trouble for a few five-pound notes. All this passed through her mind very rapidly, and at the end of ten seconds she leaned back in her chair, saw the red mullets, and took two of them.

  “Yes, you are quite right,” she said; “we will talk of it afterwards. Ah, here is Jack! Morning, Jack!”

  Jack nodded to her and Alington, and took his seat.

  “You have heard the news, Kit?” he asked.

  “Lots; but which?”

  “Toby is engaged to Miss Murchison. The Crœsum told me in the train this morning. She is coming to see you this afternoon.”

  Kit for the moment forgot her other worries.

  “Oh, how delightful!” she cried. “Dear Toby! And Lily is most charming, and so pretty! Do you know her, Mr. Alington?”

  “I have met her at your house, I think. And an heiress, is she not?”

  “I believe she has a little money,” said Kit. “One has heard people say so. But mere gossip, perhaps.”

  Jack laughed low and noiselessly.

  “That will be so pleasant for Toby,” he observed, “if it is true.”

  Kit sighed.

  “What a pity that it is not the custom for a bride to settle money on her husband’s brother, Jack!” she said.

  “Yes, or give it in order to escape death duties. What opportunities for unusual kindness some people have!”

  “Well, it is charming, anyhow,” said Kit. “I noticed they went for a stroll in the punt yesterday afternoon, which I thought promising. A punt is so often a matrimonial agency. You aren’t afraid of tipping it up like an ordinary boat. You proposed to me in a racing pair, or something skittish—do you remember, Jack?—and I said I’d do anything in the world if you would only row straight to shore. And you kept me to it. Hardly fair, was it, Mr. Alington?”

  Mr. Alington smiled like an elderly clergyman at a school feast, and his smile was suggestive of his liking to see young people happy.

  “I wonder the Matrimonial News doesn’t keep a few punts for the use of clients,” went on Kit, in nervous anxiety to get lunch over as quickly as possible. She had made up her mind about Alington in the last half-minute or so, and was desirous of getting a word with him, her intention being to deny his charge point-blank, and in turn accuse him. “Punts and evening hymns do wonders with people who can’t quite make up their minds to propose.”

  Mr. Alington looked mildly interested at this surprising information, and he appeared to be weighing it carefully as he ate his quail before giving it his support.

  “They might keep a small choir and a harmonium as well,” went on Kit. “I believe all the respectable middle-class go to evening church on Sunday and sing hymns very loud out of one book, and propose to each other afterwards. Dear Toby, how happy he will be! How nice—how exceedingly nice!” she murmured sympathetically.

  Alington and Kit had by this time finished lunch, and she rose.

  “I can’t stop and see you eat, Jack,” she said. “Come, Mr. Alington; we will go and have coffee, and Jack will join us.”

  On these hot July days Kit often sat in the inner hall, which was cooler than the drawing-room. It was a charming place of palms and parquetry, with furniture at angles, and a general atmosphere of coolness and sequestered corners. Coffee came immediately with cigarettes, and Kit took one. Mr. Alington, however, explained that except on Sundays he did not allow himself to smoke till after dinner.

  “I find a little abstinence very helpful,” he gave as his modest excuse.

  The servants withdrew, and Kit began playing with her subject.

  “I am afraid you thought me very abrupt at lunch,” she said, “but I have a great objection to discussing matters, which it is conceivable might be better kept private, before servants, and when you mentioned baccarat I thought it better to stop you, even at the risk of seeming very brusque. You will hardly believe it, Mr. Alington”—here her voice sank to a low confidential murmur—“you will hardly believe it, but only a few weeks ago I saw a man cheat at baccarat at a friend’s house. Very distressing, was it not? I talked it over with a friend, and we found it most difficult to decide what to do. That sort of thing might so easily get about; it is so dangerous to speak before servants.”

  “I think you talked it over with Lady Haslemere?” remarked Mr. Alington.

  Kit was stirring her coffee and smiling sweetly. She was getting on beautifully. But at these words and their peculiarly calm delivery her hand stopped stirring, and her smile faded.

  “I think also you agreed to ask the suspect to play again, in order to watch him,” went on the impassive butler. “Was it not so, Lady Conybeare? And I think the suspect was none other than myself.”

  Kit put down her coffee-cup and leaned back in her chair. The thing had gone wrong; she had meant to have got first innings on the subject of baccarat cheating, and she was rather afraid she was clean bowled. Quick as she was, she could not see her answer. Mr. Alington did not, however, look at her, nor did he pause longer than was necessary to sip his coffee.

  “Your tactics were a little open, a little obvious, Lady Conybeare, if you will allow me to say so,” he went on. “Delicious coffee! You exchanged so many glances with Lady Haslemere, and then looked up at me, that I could not fail to see you were watching for something. No man, I expect, likes to be suspected of so very paltry a crime as cheating at baccarat—a crime so hopelessly void of any grandeur—and no man, I am sure, likes a trap being laid for him by those whom he is entitled to consider his friends. And before I go on to the point I have in my mind I should like to say a word about this.”

  He cleared his throat and sipped his coffee again.

  “What you and Lady Haslemere saw,” he went on—“did your husband suspect me too? It does not matter—what you saw was this: I had declared a natural, and you saw me, as you th
ought, push a fifty-pound counter over the line. Was that not so?”

  “There is no question of ‘thought,’” said Kit, whom a sense of danger made the more incautious; “we saw you do it.”

  “Quite true. If you had observed a little more closely, you would have seen something else. Now, I ask you, the few times we have played baccarat together, did you ever see me fail to stake?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Quite so. If you had looked at the table a moment before, you would have seen I had nothing staked. What happened was this: I had staked four ten-pound counters and two fives; then, seeing that I had no more smaller ones, I withdrew them to substitute one fifty for them. At that moment I received my cards, and, taking them up I forgot for the moment to substitute my fifty. I looked at the cards, declared the natural, and you saw me push forward the fifty-pound counter quite openly, and, so you thought, clumsily. It never occurred to me for a moment there was any need of an explanation.”

  Kit’s anger and alarm was growing on her.

  “Very clumsily,” she said; “we all saw it.”

  “It was stupid of me, no doubt, not to have explained at the time,” he said, “but really I had no idea the company was so suspicious.”

  He paused for a moment, and his mild temper was roused at the thought of Kit’s behaviour.

  “But perhaps people are right to be suspicious,” he added, with a raised intonation.

  The shot went home, and Kit’s face grew a shade paler. But she could not conceivably show that she knew what he meant, for that would be to accuse herself. Instead, she put all the insolence her voice would hold into her reply.

  “And what proof have I of the truth of what you say?” she asked, fighting desperately on this battle-ground of her adversary’s choosing.

  “The fact that I say it,” said Mr. Alington. “Also, there is corroborative evidence if I choose to adduce it. I showed you the other night, meaning merely to give you a hint, that, had I wanted, I could have cheated very neatly. Is it credible, then, even supposing that I am one of those people who cheat, that I should have done it so clumsily?”