Part 9

While they waited for the hat and cane to be produced, Tabs made a last attempt to persuade the General to commit himself to some promised course of action. "No one would be more pleased to see you succeed than myself. I'm not trying to hamper you. Neither is Terry; but she insists that unless things are to terminate between you, she must know the truth. Frankness with Terry necessitates frankness with Ann. You'll never succeed, however great your courage, unless you start with your honor solvent. Ann's beneath you, you say--that's why you've outgrown her. It's not my business to dispute the fact. I didn't want to introduce the class view of things; but, by the same showing, you're beneath Terry. She's young to-day: through a lifetime she might outgrow _you_. She's as much your social superior as you claim to be Ann's. You've discarded Ann on the ground of inequality of rank. In your case Terry's family have a perfect right to raise the same objection."

"Not at all." The answer came like the crack of a whip. Braithwaite drew himself up with the pride of one who had moved men like pawns across the checker-board of life and death. "The two cases afford no parallel. Ann and Terry have remained in the social stations to which they were born, while I--I stand outside all such ready-made, rule of thumb classifications. By sheer impetus of personality I have lifted myself out of the rut, so that not even you, with all your omniscience, dare prophesy how far I am going or where I shall end."

It was plain that further talk would be useless. "I'm afraid I must be going," Tabs said. "I wish you very good luck. I hope we part friends. And of course you understand that I now consider myself entirely free to do my utmost to win Terry for myself."

He extended his hand. Braithwaite made no motion to take it. He held himself erect as if prepared for an affront. His tones were icy when he spoke. "Before I shake hands with you, Lord Taborley, I have to know what you mean by your utmost. With so many playing-cards out against me, I don't stand the ghost of a show unless---- Perhaps I have no right to expect it; I never asked quarter from any man. I was going to say, unless you intend to be gallant----"

Tabs pocketed his hand and turned to limp into the sunlit thunder of the Strand. "The merciful receive mercy, General. Perhaps we shall shake hands some other day. How gallant I am depends entirely upon yourself."

V

He emerged into the swollen thoroughfare, where the traffic roared and jostled like a torrent through a mountain gorge towards the broader freedom of Trafalgar Square. He turned westward, walking swiftly for the first hundred yards, rather fearing that he might be followed. Then he slowed down; swift walking made his limp too painfully obvious.

He was dissatisfied with both himself and Braithwaite. He felt as though he had gone to meet some one in a wood and had heard only the muttering of a voice and the rustle of retreating footsteps. "If I had only seen his face," he thought.

In recalling Braithwaite, he found himself picturing two persons, of both of whom he had had separate and distinct glimpses: the one the loyal man, who in years gone by had served him faithfully and shared so many of his adventures; the other the arrogant, red-tabbed superior, who had stolen his happiness without warning. It was impossible to resolve the two into one. The first he still regarded with affection. The second---- He had never allowed himself to hate any one. Hatred he held to be back of breeding--a weak man's subterfuge for acknowledging self-distrust. Because he had come so near to hating, he accused himself of censoriousness. "If I had only seen his face--the real man beneath the pretense--I might have understood and helped him," he muttered.

[Illustration: _Tabs extended his hand. Braithwaite made no motion to take it._]

And now he was going to a fresh encounter where even more sympathy would be required. It would be easy to condemn Maisie P. Lockwood. On a superficial judgment she merited nothing else. Three husbands in four and a half years, plus a risky flirtation with a married man were not the credentials of an honorable character. If he followed the advice of Sir Tobias Beddow, he would seek to assess her price at once. But he had never been accustomed to regard women in that light--as a sex whose virtue could be inflated or depressed by the increase or shrinkage of a balance at the bank. Actually he knew very little about women; riding as a knight-errant, with the wonder in his eyes of the mystery that might surprise him round the luck of any corner, he had never given himself much time to learn. His ideas about women were Tennysonian. He liked to believe that they were free from temptations, more true in their emotions, more generous in their affections, more unerring and unstained than men. He extended to them all the reverent tenderness with which he regarded his mothers memory. In this he saw nothing quixotic; to him the most hoydenish girl was a potential mother, whose body possessed a sacredness quite apart from herself as a slim, adventurous ark which would bear the future of the race across the deluge of the ages. He knew, as a matter of fact, that all women were invariably neither saints nor angels; but he clung to his chivalrous superstition as a man prays, though he receives no answers to his prayers. To the recorded cynicism of experimenters in temptation he flung back the challenge of a sadder cynic, "We're all in the gutter; but some of us are looking at the stars."

So in this matter of Maisie, he argued, she couldn't be as shallow as her history would indicate. She was Terry's friend; that, in itself, was a proof of goodness. Terry had been so anxious for him to meet and comprehend her that she had gone behind his back to prompt the appointment. Well, he would make a better job of this second interview than he had of the one that was just ended. He must approach it, at any rate, without prejudice.

While thinking these thoughts he reached Charing Cross. Already he was weary with so small an exertion. He halted, debating whether he should struggle further. Then he became aware of wounded Tommies, chiefly Overseas troops, Canadians and Australians, who from their first landing in England had chosen this quarter of a mile as their happy hunting-ground. They stood propped up against the pavement; they sat among the pigeons on the parapets of Trafalgar Square. They were laughing and chaffing, those one-legged, one-armed, derelict crusaders in their atrocious hospital uniforms. They were thousands of miles from their one and only woman; but their drawn faces grinned cheerfully and their jaws were squared in the old, invincible, obstinate determination never to admit they were down-hearted. The sight of them filled him with strength. Though he saw them only fugitively through gaps in the tide of traffic, he felt their companionship. He would always feel it--the fine, shared courage of men out of sight, who had adventured for an ideal as his companions.

He crossed the top of Whitehall, passed beneath the Admiralty Arch and entered the garnished, graveled, tree-bordered spaciousness of the Mall. His old sense returned--the confidence which the Mall always gave to him--of Empire and world-wideness. As he strolled along, he noticed a board which informed the public that, by following a certain path, one would arrive at the Passport Office. Hidden in the greenness, set down in the bed of an ornamental lake which had been drained when the terror of air raids had threatened, he made out a low-built, sprawling shed. It was like a glimpse of romance. The path which led to its doorway was the first few hundred yards along the road that ran to Rio, Fiji and Tibet. One had but to enter and the journey was commenced. The sight reminded him of something which he had forgotten; that, though every other delight failed, he still possessed the wideness of the world. He could sail away. There were islands of the sea--Stevenson's Samoa, Conrad's Malay Archipelago. If people proved disappointing, there were always the painted solitudes which human disillusions had not withered and could not defile. It was a loophole worth remembering.

Outside Buckingham Palace he made an unpremeditated surrender. A taxi was prowling along by the curb as slowly as regulations allowed. He raised his stick automatically as he caught the driver's eye. When the cab had halted, again he procrastinated with the handle of the door in his hand.

"Where to?" the driver enquired for the second time.

"To Brompton Square," he ordered uncertainly.

The cab was already moving when he changed his mind. Standing up and leaning out of the window, "No. To Chelsea," he shouted above the throbbing of the engine. Then drawing out Maisie's crumpled letter, he read from it the address.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE COMPLICATIONS OF MAISIE

I

Tabs was not very familiar with Chelsea. He had seen it from the river a score of times, red-walled, umbrageous and old-fashioned. But of the district itself he knew next to nothing, save that up to the war it had been the favorite roosting-place of short-haired women and long-haired men. He wondered whether Maisie's hair was short. He decided in the negative. To have attracted three husbands in four and a half years she must be outwardly conventional. An unconventional woman might persuade one man to marry her, but not three in such rapid succession. She probably belonged to the apparently harmless, sympathetic, sisterly, domestic type. And yet she must be something more than conventional; millions of merely conventional women lacked the prowess to anchor only one man in all the years of their life, whereas, judging by the Adair incident, Maisie had not yet completed her list of husbands. There was an undefined danger in coming into contact with such a woman, which lent this expedition to Chelsea an atmosphere of adventure.

Did she know for what purpose he was visiting her? If she did, she was a bold woman--a strategist. Her position was strengthened by his coming to her in the guise of an invited guest. Then he remembered that he had made a bargain with himself to meet her with a mind unclouded by prejudice.

He had been traveling mean thoroughfares, when suddenly the cab swung into an old-world street of dignified respectability and turned again abruptly into a tiny quadrangle of color-washed, stucco-fronted, timbered houses. In the center was a lawn, surrounded with white posts between which black painted chains hung in loops; the apparent intention was to create the illusion of a village-green. Tabs entered instantly into the spirit of the game--the littleness and childishness of the attempt at quaintness. He liked the bijou privacy of the Court, its greenness and tidiness, and the absurdity of the narrow windows which glinted at him like spectacles. But there was something that he missed.

The driver had climbed down and was opening the door. "Mulberry Tree Court, mister. I forget which number you told me; but there ain't so much of it that you're likely to lose yourself."

"But where's the mulberry tree?" Tabs asked. There was in his voice the discontent of a disappointed child.

"There never was no mulberry tree," the man replied in all seriousness.

"Well, if there isn't a mulberry tree," Tabs laughed, "I suppose we must make shift to do without it."

The man frowned and justified himself grumblingly. "It ain't my bloomin' fault. I've done nothin' with yer bloomin' tree."

"I suppose not," said Tabs as if the matter were still in doubt.

Feeling in his pocket he paid what was owing and watched the cab move off. Even at this last moment he was half-minded to retreat. What business was it of his to interfere in another man's love-affair? He looked stealthily round the Court to see if eyes were watching. All the windows were empty; nothing stirred. The fact that he was not watched reassured him. He glanced at the number on the nearest door, discovered in which direction the numbers ran and decided that his must be the house conspicuous for its marigold-tinted curtains, standing retiringly in the farthest corner.

Once again he hesitated. Should he or should he not? The old nursery-rhyme came wandering into his head with its innocent lilt of jolliness:

"Here we go round the mulberry-bush, The mulberry-bush, the mulberry-bush; Here we go round the mulberry-bush, So early in the morning."

"And so we do," he murmured. "Let's take a chance."

II

The door--an apple-green door--was opened by a maid as trim as Ann. Was Mrs. Lockwood in? She would enquire. "And your name, please, sir?--Lord Taborley! Certainly."

She left him waiting in the hall, while she went to make her fictional enquiries. He was as sure that they were fictional as if he had glanced into the room upstairs where Maisie was making a last anxious inspection before her mirror. So the pretense was to be that he had called casually and had scarcely been expected.

He tried to learn something of Maisie from the appearance of her hall. It was speckless. Everything in it shone with intense cleanliness and polish. He had noticed the same gleam about the windows, brasses and very doorstep before he had entered. He had noticed it again about the maid who had admitted him. It sent Maisie up very much in his estimation. It almost explained to him how she had managed to get three husbands. Men never know why they fall in love with a woman; more often than not they mistake tidiness for beauty. "If you can't be beautiful, be clean," Maisie's hall seemed to say; "if you can be both, you're invincible." Maisie was invincible, as her conquests proved. This first glimpse of her belongings showed that she loved cleanliness. By a jump in his logic Tabs began to suspect that she must be beautiful.

He had pursued his observations thus far, when he heard a door discreetly closed overhead and the starchy rustling of the maid returning.

"If your Lordship will step into the drawing-room, Madam will be down in a moment."

He found himself in a long artistic room, feminine to a degree, exquisitely restful and yet broad-minded with signs of selection and travel. It was furnished according to no particular period. There was an Italian chest of drawers inlaid with ivory, a Dutch marquetry secrétaire, some Louis XVIth chairs, a mirror of old Venetian glass, bronzes, snuff-boxes, specimens of china, odd bits of beaten silver, knick-knacks of all sorts, lying scattered about with apparent carelessness. A fire was burning in the grate. Tea was set out on a table beside a companionable couch. Through French windows the smallest of gardens shone bravely, a-blow with bulb flowers planted in crevices of a rockery, at the foot of which lay an oval pond and a silent fountain. As though to emphasize the game of littleness, a toy-boat floated on the pond's surface.

"Not the woman I had imagined," was his unspoken thought; "not the wily adventuress! But if she's not, then what----"

In an attempt to satisfy his curiosity, he commenced to inspect the room in detail. The first thing he discovered was that all the silver frames, which stood about, contained photographs of the same man. It struck him as an odd exhibition of faithfulness on the part of a woman who had had so many husbands. He counted the photographs; there were no less than five of them, recording the same face from varying angles.

"Which of them, is he," he asked himself, "Pollock, Gervis, or Lockwood? But he mayn't be any of them. Perhaps he's a possible fourth--the latest. If so, here's hoping, for he shuts out Adair."

He turned towards the couch, intending to sit down. As he turned, his gaze encountered an oil-painting hanging above the mantelpiece.

"By George! How did I manage to miss that?"

He stared at it with intense interest--almost with a sense of shock. Somewhere--he could not determine where--he had seen that face before.

The picture was a half-length portrait of a woman. There was something extraordinarily queenly and at the same time patient in her attitude. Her hands, which were out of sight, seemed to be folded. She was seated, leaning forward; her head was turned towards the right, so that her face appeared in profile. She was in extremely low evening-dress of an aquamarine shade, flowered with gold. Her shoulders were sickle-shaped and gleamed like the half-crescent of a young moon. From her throat, which was full and white, hung a splendid string of tan-colored pearls. But it was the slope of her jaw, the way her ears set back, and the rounded strength of her head that gave to her that peculiarly alert beauty. Her dark hair was drawn from off her forehead, making clear in her features an expression of calm challenge. She was a woman who had lived and not always happily. Her calmness was the quiet of almost painful self-control. And her age---- With her atmosphere of experience, it was certainly over thirty. She was not the woman to put back the hands of time for any man.

"It can't be of Maisie," he thought, and yet he hoped. "But it can't be of her," he insisted. "This woman is remote and uncapturable. She's done with passion. She's tasted life to the full and the taste was bitter. She has nothing left but her unquenchable pride, with which she tortures herself: her pride not to submit, not to cry out, to stand always at bay. That's all she has, unless----" And then, speaking aloud in his effort to remember, "I know her. I'm positive. And yet----"

The door behind him opened. "This is nice of you, Lord Taborley.--Ah, you were looking at Di! Most men do that when they visit me. I ought to be jealous. But a word of warning; looking is as far as any of them get."

Tabs found himself shaking hands with a woman who shared the features of the woman in the portrait, but who differed from her in that she was fair, lacked her alluring remoteness and had much more of youth to her credit. Whereas the woman in the portrait looked uncapturable, Maisie's charm lay in her accessibility--the genial promise she held out of being willing and even eager to surrender. Her every tone and gesture proclaimed her anxiety to find this world a pleasant place--her determination to make it pleasant and to be gay under every circumstance.

She was as little, flawless and gleaming as her house. More than half her good looks were due to the immaculate care which she bestowed on her body--the whiteness of her teeth, the fineness of her well-kept hands, the brilliant clearness of her complexion, the wavy smoothness of her abundant flaxen hair which had been brushed and brushed until it shone and glinted like raw gold in sunshine. She would have looked almost too perfect to be genuine, had it not been for her vivid health. She was so dainty in her fragility that one longed and yet scarcely dared to touch her.

The moment she had spoken Tabs had recognized that nothing that she had done or might do could obscure her atmosphere of breeding. He had met men like that, whose sense of race, even when they were at the lowest depths, had kept them superior to their environment. A pale woman of spun silk and gossamer, with cornflower eyes and lips like parted poppy-petals! This woman could be kind to the point of folly--so kind that her folly would appear almost virtue. She was a woman who, though she might love too often, would love so much that to her much would always be forgiven.

"I must apologize," Tabs spoke gently, "for having been found staring at your picture."

He did not know it, but men always spoke gently to Maisie. It was her air of trust and helplessness that did it, her tender trick of creating in each man the belief that she relied peculiarly on him for protection--all of which was totally at variance with the masterly efficiency with which she ran both herself and her house.

"I was staring at your picture," Tabs continued, "because I thought I recognized----"

"I daresay you did," Maisie interrupted. "Though you may not have met her, her face is forever in the papers. Among the family she's known as the Princess Czarina Bolsheviki----"

"She looks it. But is she a princess?"

Maisie laughed. "Not yet, but it won't be her fault if she isn't. It'll have to be a prince next time. If she marries again, she'll stoop to nothing less. Look at the way she carries her head; she almost feels the weight of her coronet already. But she says she's had enough of marriage. We've all said that. Poor dear Di, she misses a lot of fun by her exclusiveness. If I only had half her wealth----"

She evidently wanted Tabs to ask her what she would do with it. Her eyes grew round with spendthrift promises of jolliness, if ever such wealth should come within reach of her tiny, managing hands. She looked as mischievously covetous as a magpie while she waited for him to put the obvious question.

But Tabs wasn't interested in the obvious. He stuck to his enquiry. "What you've told me doesn't help me to recall her," he said. "Who is she? It's most annoying to recognize a face and not to be able to place it against any background."

Maisie pretended to pout. "You're like all the rest of them; you come to see me and do nothing but talk of her. I'd have hidden her in the attic long ago, only she's by Sargent. She's too beautiful for hiding, and then no one can afford to hide her Sargent under a bushel in these hard times."

"And still you've not told me," Tabs reproached her.

III

"Wouldn't we be more comfortable sitting down?" Maisie slid between the couch and the tea-table, making herself comfortable against a pile of cushions. When Tabs looked round for a seat, he discovered the strategy of the arrangement of the furniture. The nearest available chair to Maisie was at least four yards away; to have selected it would have been to have isolated himself. He would have had to have hailed her ridiculously across the room's breadth. It was plainly intended that he should challenge fate and share the couch, just as Pollock, Gervis, Lockwood, Adair and so many others had done before him.