The Earl of Dankmere was light-footed and graceful when paying tribute to Terpsichore; walking-stick balanced in both hands, straw hat on the back of his head, he performed in absolute silence to the rhythm of the tune running through his head, backward, forward, sideways, airy as a ballet-maiden, then off he went into the back room with a refined kick or two at the ceiling.
And there, Jessie Vining, entering the front room unexpectedly, discovered the peer executing his art before the mirror, apparently enamoured of his own grace and agility.
When he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror he stopped very suddenly and came back to find her at her desk, laughing.
For a moment he remained red and disconcerted, but the memory of the fact that he and Miss Vining were to occupy the galleries all alone — exclusive of intrusive customers — for a day or more, assuaged a slight chagrin.
“At any rate,” he said, “it is just as well that you should know me as I am, Miss Vining — with all my faults and frivolous imperfections, isn’t it?”
“Why?” asked Miss Vining.
“Why — what?” repeated the Earl, confused.
“Why should I know all your imperfections?”
He thought hard for a moment, but seemed to discover no valid reason.
“You ask such odd questions,” he protested. “Now where the deuce do you suppose Quarren has gone? I’ll bet he’s cut the traces and gone up to see those people at Witch-Hollow.”
“Perhaps,” she said, making a few erasures in her type-written folio and rewriting the blank spaces. Then she glanced over the top of the machine at his lordship, who, as it happened, was gazing at her with such peculiar intensity that it took him an appreciable moment to rouse himself and take his eyes elsewhere.
“When do you take your vacation?” he asked, carelessly.
“I am not going to take one.”
“Oh, but you ought! You’ll go stale, fade, droop — er — and all that, you know!”
“It is very kind of you to feel interested,” she said, smiling, “but I don’t expect to droop — er — and all that, you know.”
He laughed, after a moment, and so did she — a sweet, fearless, little laugh most complimentary to his lordship if he only knew it — a pretty, frank tribute to what had become a friendship — an accord born of confidence on her part, and of several other things on the part of Lord Dankmere.
It had been of slow growth at first — imperceptibly their relations had grown from a footing of distant civility to a companionship almost cordial — but not quite; for she was still shy with him at times, and he with her; and she had her moods of unresponsive reserve, and he was moody, too, at intervals.
“You don’t like me to make fun of you, do you?” she asked.
“Don’t I laugh as though I like it?”
She knitted her pretty brows: “I don’t quite know. You see you’re a British peer — which is really a very wonderful thing — —”
“Oh, come,” he said: “it really is rather a wonderful thing, but you don’t believe it.”
“Yes, I do. I stand in awe of you. When you come into the room I seem to hear trumpets sounding in the far distance — —”
“My boots squeak — —”
“Nonsense! I do hear a sort of a fairy fanfare playing ‘Hail to the Belted Earl!’”
“I wear braces — —”
“How common of you to distort my meaning! I don’t care, you may do as you like — dance break-downs and hammer the piano, but to me you will ever remain a British peer — poor but noble — —”
“Wait until we hear from that Van Dyck! You can’t call me poor then!”
She laughed, then, looking at him earnestly, involuntarily clasped her hands.
“Isn’t it perfectly wonderful,” she breathed with a happy, satisfied sigh.
“Are you really very happy about it, Miss Vining?”
“I? Why shouldn’t I be!” she said indignantly. “I’m so proud that our gallery has such a picture. I’m so proud of Mr. Quarren for discovering it — and—” she laughed— “I’m proud of you for possessing it. You see I am very impartial; I’m proud of the gallery, of everybody connected with it including myself. Shouldn’t I be?”
“We are three very perfect people,” he said gravely.
“Do you know that we really are? Mr. Quarren is wonderful, and you are — agreeable, and as for me, why when I rise in the morning and look into the glass I say to myself, ‘Who is that rather clever-looking girl who smiles at me every morning in such friendly fashion?’ And, would you believe it! — she turns out to be Jessie Vining every time!”
She was in a gay mood; she rattled away at her machine, glancing over it mischievously at him from time to time. He, having nothing to do except to look at her, did so as often as he dared.
And so they kept the light conversational shuttle-cock flying through the sunny afternoon until it drew near to tea-time. Jessie said very seriously:
“No Englishman can exist without tea. Tea is as essential to him as it is to British fiction. A microscopic examination of any novel made by a British subject will show traces of tea-leaves and curates although, as the text-books on chemistry have it, otherwise the substance of the work may be colourless, tasteless, odourless, and gaseous to the verge of the fourth dimension — —”
“If you don’t cease making game of things British and sacred,” he threatened, “I’ll try to stop you in a way that will astonish you.”
“What will you try to do?” she asked, much interested.
He looked her steadily in the eyes:
“I’ll try to turn you into a British subject. One can’t slam one’s own country.”
“How could you turn me into such an object, Lord Dankmere?”
“There’s only one way.”
Innocent for a few moments of his meaning she smilingly and derisively defied him. Then, of a sudden, startled into immobility, the smile froze on her lips.
At the swift change in her expression his own features were slowly and not unbecomingly suffused.
Then, incredulous, and a little nervous, she rose to prepare the tea; and he sprang up to bring the folding table.
The ceremony passed almost in silence; neither he nor she made the effort to return to the lighter, gayer vein. When they spoke at all it was on some matter connected with business; and her voice seemed to him listless, almost tired.
Which was natural enough, for the heat had been trying, and, in spite of the open windows, no breath of coolness stirred the curtains.
So the last minutes of the afternoon passed but the sunshine still reddened the cornices of the houses across the street when she rose to put away the tea-things.
A little later she pinned on her hat and moved toward the front door with a friendly nod to him in silent adieu.
“Will you let me walk home with you?” he said.
“I — think — not, this evening.”
“Were you going anywhere?”
She paused, her gloved hand on the knob, and he came up to her, slowly.
“Were you?” he repeated.
“No.”
“Then — don’t you care to let me walk with you?”
She seemed to be thinking; her head was a trifle lowered.
He said: “Before you go there is something I wanted to tell you” — she made an involuntary movement and the door opened and hung ajar letting in the lively music of a street-organ. Then he leaned over and quietly closed the door.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’m taking an unwarrantable liberty by interfering in your affairs without consulting you.”
She looked up at him, surprised.
“It happened yesterday about this hour,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Do you remember that you went home about three o’clock instead of waiting until this hour as usual?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is what occurred. I left the gallery at this same hour
. Ahead of me descending the steps was a young girl who had just delivered a business letter to Mr. Quarren. As she set foot on the pavement a footman attached to an automobile drawn up across the street touched his cap to her and said: ‘Beg pardon, Miss Vining, I am Mr. Sprowl’s man. Mr. Sprowl would like to see you at the Café Cammargue. The car is waiting.’”
Miss Vining’s colour faded; she stared at Dankmere with widening eyes, and he dropped his hands into his coat-pockets and returned her gaze.
“I don’t understand you,” she said in a low voice.
“Neither did the young girl addressed by the footman. Neither did I. But I was interested. So I said to the footman: ‘Bring around your car. I shall have to explain about Miss Vining to Mr. Sprowl.’”
“What!” she said breathlessly.
“That’s where I interfered, Miss Vining. And the footman looked doubtful, too, but he signalled the chauffeur.... And so I went to the Café Cammargue — —”
He hesitated, looking at her white and distressed face, then continued coolly:
“Sprowl seemed surprised to see me. He was waiting in a private room.... He’s looking rather badly these days.... We talked a few minutes — —”
Pale, angry, every sense of modesty and reserve outraged, the girl faced him, small head erect:
“You went there to — to discuss me with that man!”
He was silent. She turned suddenly and tried to open the door, but he held it closed.
“I did it because I cared for you enough to do it,” he said. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you suppose I know that kind of man?”
“It — it was not your business—” she faltered, twisting blindly at the door-knob. “Let me go — please — —”
“I made it my business.... And that man understood that I was making it my business. And he won’t attempt to annoy you again.... Can you forgive me?”
She turned on him excitedly, her eyes flashing with tears, but the impetuous words of protest died on her lips as her eyes encountered his.
“It was because I love you,” he said. And, as he spoke, there was about the man a quiet dignity and distinction that silenced her — something of which she may have had vague glimpses at wide intervals in their acquaintances — something which at times she suspected might lie latent in unknown corners of his character. Now it suddenly confronted her; and she recognised it and stood before him without a word to say.
It mended matters a little when he smiled, and the familiar friend reappeared beside her; but she still felt strange and shy; and wondering, half fearfully, she let him lift her gloved hands and stand, holding them, looking into her eyes.
“You know what I am,” he said. “I have nothing to say about myself. But I love you very dearly.... I loved before, once, and married. And she died.... After that I didn’t behave very well — until I knew you.... It is really in me to be a decent husband — if you can care for me.... And I don’t think we’re likely to starve — —”
“I — it isn’t that,” she said, flushing scarlet.
“What?”
“What you have ... I could only care for — what you are.”
“Can you do that?”
But her calm had vanished, and, head bent and averted, she was attempting to withdraw her hands — and might have freed herself entirely if it had not been for his arm around her.
This new and disconcerting phase of the case brought her so suddenly face to face with him that it frightened her; and he let her go, and followed her back to the empty gallery where she sank down at her desk, resting her arms on the covered type-machine, and buried her quivering face in them.
It was excusable. Such things don’t usually happen to typewriters and stenographers although they have happened to barmaids.
When he had been talking eloquently and otherwise for a long time Jessie Vining lifted her pale, tear-stained face from her arms; and his lordship dropped rather gracefully on his knees beside her, and she looked down at him very solemnly and wistfully.
It was shockingly late when they closed the gallery that evening. And their mode of homeward progress was stranger still, for instead of a tram or of the taxi which Lord Dankmere occasionally prevailed upon her to accept, they drifted homeward on a pink cloud through the light-shot streets of Ascalon.
CHAPTER XVI
To the solitary and replete pike, lying motionless in shadow, no still-bait within reach is interesting. But the slightest movement in his vicinity of anything helpless instantly rivets his attention; any creature apparently in distress arouses him to direct and lightning action whether he be gorged or not — even, perhaps, while he is still gashed raw with the punishment for his last attempt.
So it was with Langly Sprowl. He had come into town, sullen, restless, still fretting with checked desire. Within him a dull rage burned; he was ready to injure, ready for anything to distract his mind which, however, had not given up for a moment the dogged determination to recover the ground he had lost with perhaps the only woman in the world he had ever really cared for.
Yet, he was the kind of man who does not know what real love is. That understanding had not been born in him, and he had not acquired it. He was totally incapable of anything except that fierce passion which is aroused by obstacles when in pursuit of whatever evinces a desire to escape.
It was that way with him when, by accident, he saw and recognised Jessie Vining one evening leaving the Dankmere Galleries. And Langly Sprowl never denied himself anything that seemed incapable of self-defence.
He stopped his car and got out and spoke to her, very civilly, and with a sort of kindly frankness which he sometimes used with convincing effect. She refused the proffered car to take her to her destination, but could not very well avoid his escort; and their encounter ended by her accepting his explanations and his extended hand, perplexed, unwilling to misjudge him, but thankful when he departed.
After that he continued to meet her occasionally and walk home with her.
Then he sent his footman and the car for her; and drew Lord Dankmere out of the grab-bag, to his infinite annoyance. Worse, Dankmere had struck him with an impact so terrific that it had knocked him senseless across the table in a private dining-room of the Café Cammargue, where he presently woke up with a most amazing eye to find the terrified proprietor and staff playing Samaritan.
In various papers annoying paragraphs concerning him had begun to appear — hints of how matters stood between him and Mary Ledwith, ugly innuendo, veiled rumours of the breach between him and his aunt consequent upon his untenable position vis-à-vis Mrs. Ledwith.
Until Dankmere had inconvenienced his features he had walked downtown to his office every day, lank, long-legged, sleek head held erect, hatchet face pointed straight in front of him, his restless eyes encountering everybody’s but seeing nobody unless directly saluted.
Now, his right eye rivalling a thunder-cloud in tints, he drove one of his racing cars as fast as he dared, swinging through Westchester or scurrying about Long Island. Occasionally he went aboard the Yulan, but a burning restlessness kept him moving; and at last he returned to South Linden in a cold but deadly rage, determined to win back the chances which he supposed he had thrown away in the very moment of victory.
Strelsa Leeds had now taken up her abode in her quaint little house; he learned that immediately; and that evening he went over and came upon her moving about in the dusky garden, so intent on inspecting her flowers that he was within a pace of her before she turned her head and saw him.
“Strelsa,” he said, “can we not be friends again? I ask no more than that.”
Too surprised and annoyed to reply she merely gazed at him. And, because, for the first time in his life, perhaps, he really felt every word he uttered, he spoke now with a certain simplicity and self-control that sounded unusual to her ears — so noticeably unlike what she knew of him that it commanded her unwilling attention.
For his unpardonable brutality and violence he asked forgiven
ess, promising to serve her faithfully and in friendship for the privilege of attempting to win back her respect and regard. He asked only that.
He said that he scarcely knew what to do with his life without the hope of recovering her respect and esteem; he asked for a beggar’s chance, begged for it with a candour and naïveté almost boyish — so directly to the point tended every instinct in him to recover through caution and patience what he had lost through carelessness and a violence which still astonished him.
The Bermuda lilies were in bloom and Strelsa stood near them, listening to him, touching the tall stalks absently at intervals. And while she listened she became more conscious still of the great change in herself — of her altered attitude toward so much in life that once had seemed to her important. After he had ceased she still stood pensively among the lilies, gray eyes brooding. At length, looking up, she said very quietly:
“Why do you care for my friendship, Langly? I am not the kind of woman you think me — not even the kind I once thought myself. To me friendship is no light thing either to ask for or to give. It means more to me than it once did; and I give it very seldom, and sparingly, and to very, very few. But toward everybody I am gently disposed — because, I am much happier than I ever have been in all my life.... Is not my good will sufficient for any possible relation between you and me?”
“Then you are no longer angry with me?”
“No — no longer angry.”
“Can we be friends again? Can you really forgive me, Strelsa?”
“Why — yes, I could do that.... But, Langly, what have you and I in common as a basis for friendship? What have we ever had in common? Except when we encounter each other by hazard, why should we ever meet at all?”
“You have not pardoned me, Strelsa,” he said patiently.
“Does that really make any difference to you? It doesn’t to me. It is only because I never think of you that it would be an effort to forgive you. I’ll make that effort if you wish, but really, Langly, I never think about you at all.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 613