Strickland stared blindly out across the plain, the purpose of his visit quite forgotten. For the hint that there was a link marched exactly with the forebodings which had crept into his mind during his first evening at the bungalow.
A voice at his elbow brought him with a start out of the mist of his conjectures. Mr. Dodge had taken his keys and unlocked a safe in an inner room. He now stood again beside the table with a small pouch of black velvet in his hand.
“You will see, Colonel Strickland, that the stone is of the true pigeon-blood red and without a flaw.”
The other stones were cleared away. Mr. Dodge had the manner of some old butler who serves a claret of a rare and ancient vintage decanted without a speck of must. He drew the precious ruby, wrapped in a fold of tissue paper, from the pouch and laid it all alone on the black velvet pad, where it lay glowing like a thing alive — almost, one might say, throbbing.
From whatever angle Strickland looked at it, deep in the heart of it burned a spark of fire. It had the size of a large filbert nut and its shape, too, and it was of a purity and a depth such as Strickland had never seen before.
Mr. Dodge gazed at it in ecstasy. Strickland might have done the same but he did not wish to increase the price. Clerks and officials stood in expectation of his verdict. He gave it, but in language quite inadequate to the occasion.
“Yes, that’s about it,” he said. He took it up in the palm of his hand and turned it over with his thumb.
“What can I buy this for?”
A price was named. Strickland reflected that he had been saving money every day during his two years’ wandering.
“Very well, Mr. Dodge. I’ll give you a cheque for it now.”
He was guided into the office and seated in the director’s chair. A slip of paper worth four thousand pounds passed into the keeping of Mr. Dodge, the velvet pouch with its ruby into the hands of Colonel Strickland.
“I think,” said Mr. Dodge gallantly, “that it will add a grace even to Lady Ariadne Ferne.”
Lady Ariadne Ferne would have been called by another age the reigning toast. Wherever the picture papers of England reached, there her fame was spread. Her loveliness was as familiar as a copy of the Bible. Dull Members of Parliament excused their insignificance to their constituents by pleading that there was not room in the Press for Lady Ariadne and themselves. Not a picture gallery was complete without her portrait. No photographer could sleep at nights until he had secured from her a sitting. No advertisement of ladies’ requisites from a face cream to silk stockings had the slightest value unless it carried the approbation of her signature. She was twenty-three years old in this year and already legends clustered about her name, like the curls of her bobbed hair about her face. Stories of the crowds which her beauty collected; of her waywardness and audacity and good-nature; of the swift uptake of her mind; of the charity of her talk; of how she made with her own supple fingers the shining frocks which turned Requin’s hair grey and sent Paville to a rest-cure — true and false and half true and half false they went the round of the world. Even the Esquimaux maidens in their igloos had heard of her and hoped that they had some touch of her in their appearance.
Calumny, of course, had dug its claws into her good fame — such a fine occasion and so defenceless a victim were not to be missed. The cheaper satirists made their pittance out of her. But her outshining kindliness, her humour, the prettiest gift of mimicry in the world, and her loyalty — the loyalty of a soldier — surrounded her with a hedge of friends, conventional and unconventional, against which the arrows of calumny were powerless. Even here at Mogok on the Irawadi, John Strickland became at once a select and admirable personage, not because he bought one of the kings among rubies, but because he bought it for her.
He shook hands with Mr. Dodge and his associates.
“May we mention the ruby’s destination?” Mr.
Dodge asked.
“Yes,” Strickland replied pleasantly. “For you will in any case whether I consent or no. And I can’t blame you.”
He walked away briskly from the veranda, and to his surprise found Thorne at his elbow.
“What, still here?” he asked. He was on the top of his spirits at this moment. “Do you know, Captain Thorne, you have given me the impression during the last two days that the whole of Upper Burma would at once relapse into barbarism if you took your eyes off it for an instant! And I find you sauntering through a morning like a gentleman of leisure.”
Captain Thorne made a surprising answer.
“Perhaps, sir, you will thank me for my idleness.”
Strickland was silenced at once. Thorne meant at last to unlock his tight-closed lips. But he would do it at his own time and in his own cautious way. There would be a slow output of level and uninteresting phrases, beneath which Strickland must discover for himself what he could. He did not seek to persuade, but walked back across the area of old diggings without a question.
At a corner of the road Thorne stopped.
“Do you see that bungalow?” he asked, pointing up a narrow lane.
“Yes.”
“That’s mine. Let’s go in and have a cocktail,” he said, much in the tone which Mr. Wemmick once used when he saw a particular church. “Hallo! There’s a church! Let’s go in!”
“Certainly,” answered Strickland. “I should like a cocktail.”
He was led into a sitting-room with a light wallpaper against which hung photographs of groups — nothing but groups of men who had done something and were celebrating it by being photographed, or who were going to do something and on that account had to be photographed all together, too. There was a group of an Oxford eight, of a football team, of a polo team, of the officers of a battalion, of a shooting party in the porch of a country house, of a cricket eleven. An oar was hung high up near the ceiling. Cups stood upon various bureaux and cabinets. One side of the room was occupied by a book-case filled with an astounding variety of books. Mr. Pepys kept company with the last thing in American detective novels. Daniel Defoe rubbed shoulders with Captain Marryat.
“I’ll leave you for a moment whilst I mix the cocktails,” said Thorne. He placed a box of cigarettes, an ash-tray and a match-stand on a small table at the end of the chintz-covered Chesterfield sofa. Strickland seated himself obediently and lit a cigarette. In the doorway Thorne turned back.
“By the way, you might care to look at some of these papers.”
He was very careless and indifferent both in his words and his movements, so indifferent indeed that the indifference was intentional. He gathered together some papers, the weekly editions of The Times, Punch, Life, and on the top of them all he placed the latest copy of The Gossip, a paper famous for its printing, its admirable letterpress and its photographs. These he laid beside Strickland.
“They are probably more recent than any you have seen,” he said, and he went out of the room.
Strickland took up The Gossip, as he was meant to do. He turned over leaf after leaf until he was halfway through. Then he sat very still with the paper open upon his knees at a page of photographs, until once more Thorne reappeared within the room.
Thorne carried a tray on which stood a couple of glasses filled with a brownish drink.
“It’s a Bacardi with a dash of grenadine,” he said, and as he held out the tray his eyes dropped to the open page. “You haven’t taken much time to discover that!” he added.
“Not even as much time as you allowed me for its discovery,” Strickland returned quietly as he took his glass.
“That” was a photograph of the Club enclosure during a race meeting at Gatwick. It was a day of storm, but the rain had stopped when the picture was taken. On the lawn in the foreground, two slim-legged girls wearing raincoats buttoned up to their chins were represented. Each of them held a pencil and a race-card, and both looked extremely serious and woebegone. Underneath the photograph was printed: “Lady Ariadne Ferne (right) and Corinne, the famous dancer (left), at Gatwick Race
s.”
“Well,” Thorne admitted. “Yes — that is what I invited you here to see. What do you think of it?”
“It’s an excellent portrait of Lady Ariadne,” Strickland replied.
“And besides?”
“Besides? I think that those two poor girls have not had that information straight from the manger, without which racing becomes almost a gamble.”
“And besides?” Captain Thorne insisted.
John Strickland laid the paper on the sofa at his side.
“Besides? Yes,” he said deliberately, “I read in that picture that the world of England has grown a little more generous in its sympathies, and a little wider in its outlook and a great deal wiser in its recognition of people who make their own way than it was in — shall we say 1914? But that’s not all. I don’t need to recognise, for I have always known, that Lady Ariadne has many friends in many different walks of life; and amongst those friends I beg you, Captain Thorne, to remember that I count myself one. But however strange and — let us be frank! — inappropriate those friends may seem to you quartered in this little self-centred nook, they all have an invaluable thing in common — the staunchness of Lady Ariadne’s friendship.”
The rebuke would have sounded like pedantry but for the simple sincerity of tone with which it was delivered. But Captain Thorne stood his ground. He, too, was in earnest.
“I wish definitely not to offend you, Colonel Strickland,” he began. “If such an intention had been in my mind, I should certainly not have invited you into my house for the purpose of gratifying it. But I have seen you pay a great price for a very valuable jewel. I must therefore think that the welfare of the lady to whom you mean to offer it is of great value to you.”
Between both these men the screen of pretence was now down.
“It is,” Strickland agreed.
Thorne’s nod of the head implied thanks for Strickland’s openness, as much as agreement with his words. “Very well, then! I break through the reservations which my duty puts upon me. I tell you frankly that if Maung H’la had stood in the dock in England, as I think he should have done, Corinne, the famous dancer, would have stood beside him.”
At once Strickland was on his feet, his face pale in despite of its sunburn, his hands clenched. For a moment or two he looked steadily at Thorne. There was no anger in his eyes, only an overwhelming fear. The tiger-man of the jungle, Maung H’la, Corinne the dancer, Ariadne Ferne! It was her, then, that the tremendous event was to menace. No wonder, he thought, that every nerve of him, from his first night at Mogok, had cried “Danger!”
“Can you tell me no more?” he asked.
“I have already told you more than I should,” replied Thorne.
Yet after all he did bring himself to add to what he had said. Strickland had already hired a motor-car to take him back to Thabeikyin in time to go that night on board the steamer running south to Mandalay. After lunching at the bungalow, he packed his servants and his luggage into the tonneau of the car and took his seat beside the driver. But Mogok was still in sight when Thorne stepped out on to the road, and held up his hand. As the car stopped Thorne went up to Strickland’s side. He was confused and guilty.
“I should like things to go well with you, sir,” he said, fingering the stubble of his moustache to cover his embarrassment. “So when you get back to England, you might look up the inquest upon Mrs. Elizabeth Clutter.”
He stood back quickly and waved to the chauffeur to proceed. As the car started again, Strickland reached out a hand the more warmly to thank his informant. But Thorne merely saluted, standing at attention the while, the junior before his superior officer. The ease and friendliness of Strickland had made an overpowering appeal to this shy and formal man. But his conscience was already upbraiding him for allowing his sympathy to out-range his discretion. No more of it, however It was safer to salute than to risk a handshake.
The motor-car climbed the great pass and turned and twisted along the jungle road with the apes playing in the dust in front of it. But Strickland had no eyes for the wondrous scene. He pictured himself as a sailor at a capstan lifting slowly link after link of a heavy chain out of the dark water and wondering what dread mystery was rising nearer and nearer to the light of day.
VI. ARIADNE HERSELF
STRICKLAND TRAVELLED FROM Plymouth to London on an evening towards the end of March; and the next morning, without waiting to answer even one of the letters piled upon his table, he put the ruby into his pocket and walked quickly to his club. The gipsy finds a good share of his pleasure in the first aspect of the town to which he returns, and if the town is London his pleasure is enormously increased. The women and girls with their bright frocks and lovely faces, their slender elegance, their curiously attractive air of impertinence, as though each one knew that she was the unquestioned proprietor of the town and all its suburbs, their rose-coloured legs, the whole shining, cultivated look of them, make on this first day each one of them a miracle to him. There are friends to be met haphazard on the footways, astonishing news to be gathered about other friends, gossip to be exchanged, entertainments to be planned. But on this morning, though the sun was bright, the air brisk, and Bond Street a parade, Strickland hardly stopped to exchange a word with anyone. And more than once he crossed the road when he saw a loquacious friend approaching. His business at his club would brook no delay.
He found with relief the morning-room quite empty, and gathering together the latest of the social papers, he sat himself down seriously to study them. Experience had long since taught him that even after a short absence abroad there was no more necessary preliminary to a call upon Lady Ariadne Ferne. For she was almost certain, in the meanwhile, to have done something startling, if not outrageous, which he would be expected to know and to accept as the perfectly normal and correct thing for her to do. Never had he reason so to congratulate himself upon his prudence, as he had this morning. For he found very quickly two items. The first of them nearly took his breath away, and he was prepared for that. The second robbed that fine March day of all its sunlight.
The first appeared on a page devoted to theatrical gossip — as thus:
“I am able exclusively to make an announcement of unusual interest. Sonia, the Witch, ‘the light opera by Walter Rosen which has been running for two years at the Volkstheater’ in Vienna, is to be produced at the Rubicon Theatre. The event, however, will not take place until later on in July or early in August. The part of Sonia will be taken by Lady Ariadne Ferne.”
Strickland turned quickly to the other papers. By some amazing chance, every contributor of theatrical gossip had exclusively the same lollipop to offer to its public. There was a unanimity about them which could not be set aside. The statement, besides, had a certain amount of reason on its side. The Earldom of Browden had year by year declined in prosperity since its great days towards the end of the eighteenth century. The war of 1914 had very nearly given it its finishing blow. The present Earl, whose daughter Ariadne was, taxed up to the ears and then rated over the top of his head, was crippled besides by a couple of huge country palaces which no one would buy, a vast estate of agricultural land, and long-established traditions of generosity which it was almost impossible to him to forego. Strickland accepted the statement as true.
“She is certainly living up to her form,” he said to himself with a chuckle; and then his amusement died altogether away.
Another paragraph had caught his eye. For a moment he was stunned. Then he raced through the other papers, folded them neatly and laid them aside. Almost every one of them had the same story to tell, hinted at here, joked about there, openly stated somewhere else.
“The rumour so widely spread that an interesting engagement would shortly be announced, is now confirmed. Certain family objections which at one time threatened to be serious, have now been withdrawn. The two parties are Lady Ariadne Ferne and the rising young barrister and politician, Mr. Julian Ransome. Mr. Ransome’s speeches upon the future r
elations of the Dominions and the Mother Country have secured for him the ear of the House of Commons and the interest of his political leaders.”
In the crash of Strickland’s hopes even the forebodings which had so occupied his thoughts at Mogok, and had hurried him across India to catch a steamer at Bombay, that he might reach England the sooner, were quite forgotten. He sat for an hour in that silent and empty room, upbraiding himself for his folly in ever going away. At times he strove to disbelieve the truth of all these hints and statements. If Ariadne was intending to marry Julian Ransome, would she also be arranging to play the leading part in a musical comedy from Vienna? Your answer, of course, would be “No,” unless you knew Ariadne Ferne. In that case — well, in that case, the only thing to do was to go yourself and ask her. She would reply without any evasions or pretences. And it was better to know — even if the knowledge sent you wandering again into the lone corners of the earth. Strickland took his hat down from the peg and walked out across St. James’s Square to the big Browden house at a corner of Park Lane.
He was led at once, as if he had been expected, up a succession of interminable staircases, and at the very top of the house was ushered into a high, long room. Strickland never entered that room but lie was surprised by it. One expected bewildering colours, a medley of ornaments and furniture, a dominant note of jazz. Instead one found oneself in a room in which Jane Austen might have written her books, so polished was the floor, so sparse the furniture, so chaste the decorations. One or two modern comforts broke the severity — a huge divan with a mass of cushions, a deep arm-chair, a grand piano, and some fine engravings of Morland upon the white distempered walls. Ariadne, her fair head bandaged with a handkerchief of gipsy hues, was ruefully watching some pungent decoction boil in a silver kettle over a spirit lamp. She sprang up as Strickland entered the room and greeted him with both her hands.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 61