Part 21

"There are times when you remind me of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'," mused Christina. "I wonder why--oh, yes, little Eva who said such damnably true things so very truly. She died. The book had to have a happy ending anyway. Eva--Evie, I mean, I should write to your slave master and demand an explanation. I'll bet you won't, though!"

"Won't I?" Evie stiffened. "I have my self-respect to consider, Christina, and my friends. I hope Teddy hasn't read the case."

She wrote a letter, many words of which were underlined, and notes of exclamation stood up on each page like the masts of docked shipping.

Ronnie's answer was waiting for her next night.

"Will you come to the flat, Evie?"

Evie did not consult her sister; she took a lank young man into her confidence. Would he escort her and wait in the vestibule of the flats until she came out? Evie had discovered the need for a chaperon.

IX

François opened the door, and Evie walked hesitatingly into the lobby.

Ronnie was at his table and he was writing. He got up at once and came to meet her with outstretched hand.

"It was good of you to come, Evie."

She started. His voice was so changed--his expression, too. Something had come into his face that was not there before. A vitality, an eagerness, a good humor. She was startled into beginning on a personal note.

"Why, Ronnie, dear, you have changed!"

She did not recognize how far she had departed from a certain program and agenda she had drawn up. Item number one was "not to call Ronnie, 'dear'."

"Have I?" He flashed a smile at her as he pushed a chair forward and put a cushion at her back.

"Your voice even, have you had a cold?"

"No. I am getting old," he chuckled at the jest. Ronnie did not as a rule laugh at himself. "I had your letter about Lola. I thought it best that you should come. Yes, Evie, all that was in the paper was true. I know Lola."

"And she has been--all that you said, to you?"

"Yes." His voice was a little dreary. "Yes--all that."

She sat tight-lipped, trying to feel more angry than she did, ("Be very angry" was item two on the agenda).

"I'm sorry that you had to know, you are so young and these things are very shocking to a good woman. Lola has gone back to her people. Naturally, I did not wish to appear in a police court, but there was a conspiracy to send this girl to prison. A late friend of mine was in it. I had to go to the court and tell the truth."

"I think it was very fine of you," she echoed Christina's words, but was wanting in Christina's enthusiasm.

"Fine? I don't know. It was a great nuisance. I have an unpleasant feeling about courts."

He rubbed his chin; Evie saw nothing remarkable in the gesture.

"Of course, Ronnie," she began, laboring under the disadvantage of calmness, for she could not feel angry, "this makes a difference. I was prepared to sacrifice everything--my good name and what people thought about me--it was horrible of you, Ronnie--to take that girl into the country when--when you knew me. I can't forgive that, Ronnie."

He stood by his table, his white hand drumming silently.

"Did you come alone?" he asked.

She hesitated.

"No, I brought a friend. A gentleman. I used to know him when I was a child."

Ronnie looked at her searchingly. His eyes were soft and kind.

"Evie, I will tell you something. From the day I first met you I intended no good to you. When I arranged that we should go to Italy, to Palermo, I knew in my wicked mind that you would grow tired of me."

He put it that way, though he was loath to tell even so small a lie.

"Since--since I saw you last, I have been thinking of you, thinking very tenderly of you, Evie. I have always liked you; Christina and I have discussed you by the hour--"

"But you have never seen Christina until this week, Ronnie!"

Ronnie's hand went to his chin.

"Haven't I?" He was troubled. "I thought--let me say I have dreamed of these discussions. I dream a great deal nowadays. Queer ugly dreams. I woke this morning when the clock was striking nine--I felt so sad."

He seemed to forget her presence, for he did not speak for a time. He had seated himself on the edge of the desk, one polished boot swinging, and he was looking past her with an intensity of gaze that made her turn to see the thing that attracted him.

Her movement roused him, and he stammered his apologies.

Taking courage from his confusion, Evie delivered herself of the predication which she had not had the courage to rehearse.

"Ronnie, I think we've both made a great mistake. I like you awfully. I don't think I could like a friend more. But I don't feel--well, you can see for yourself that we're not the same way of thinking. Don't imagine I'm a prude. I'm very broad-minded about that sort of thing, but you can see for yourself--"

He saw very clearly for himself and held out his hand.

"Friends?" he asked.

She experienced a thrill of one who creditably performs a great renunciation without any distress to herself.

"Friends!" she said solemnly.

Ronnie walked round to his writing chair and sat down. She found satisfaction in the tremor of the hand that opened a portfolio on his desk.

"And you're not hurt?" he asked anxiously.

"No, Ronnie."

"Thank God for that," said Ronald Morelle. He was looking in the black case: presently he pulled out half a dozen photographs and passed them across to her.

"How perfectly lovely!" she said.

"Yes; in some respects more lovely than Palermo. And there are no earthquakes and no rumblings from old Etna."

She was looking at the photographs of a white villa that seemed to be built on the side of a hill. One picture showed a riotous garden, another a lawn with great shady trees and deep basket chairs.

"That is my house at Beaulieu," said Ronnie, "I want you to help me with that."

She looked at him, ready to reprove.

"Your mother is the very woman to run that house and the garden was made for Christina."

Her mouth opened.

"Not you!" she gasped, "you aren't the man who wants a housekeeper. Oh, Ronnie!"

"I haven't photographs of the Palermo villa. I have sent for some. An ideal place for a honeymoon, Evie."

He came round to the back of her chair and dropped his hand on her shoulder lightly.

"When you marry a nice man, you shall go there for your honeymoon. God love you!"

She took his hand and laid it against her cheek.

For the fraction of a second--

"I like Beaulieu, Ronnie, the house is a beauty--perhaps if I hurried I could go there before mother."

In the hall below Mr. Teddy Williams discussed Canada with the hall porter. It was one of the two subjects in which he was completely interested.

The other came down by the elevator, importantly, and they went out into Knightsbridge together.

"I've been a long time, Teddy," she snuggled her arm in his, "but--well, first of all, my answer is 'Yes'."

He paused, and in the view of revolted passersby, kissed her.

"And--and, Teddy, we'll go to Beaulieu afterwards. Mr. Morelle has promised to let us have his house."

"Isn't that grand!" said Teddy. "We've got a town called Beaulieu in Saskatchewan."

X

"Wasn't it just like Christina not to get excited with the great news? But really Evie was to blame, because she kept the greater news to the last.

"I can't believe it. That young man who called on Christina? I really can't believe it," said Mrs. Colebrook, who could, and did, believe it.

"Why don't you yell, Chris!" demanded her indignant sister.

"I am yelling," said Christina placidly. "I've been yelling longer than you, for I knew that it was Ronnie's house when the letter came."

But the announcement of Evie's engagement had an electrifying effect.

"That is the first time I have ever seen Christina cry," said Mrs. Colebrook with melancholy satisfaction. "There's a lot more in Christina than people think. If she'd only showed a little more nice feeling over poor Mr. Sault, I'd have liked it better. But you can't expect everything in these days, girls being what they are. Well, Evie, you're the first to go. I don't suppose Christina will ever marry. She's too hard. Canada won't seem so far if I'm in Bolo, Boole--whatever they call it."

Evie was sitting with her mother in the kitchen; from Christina's room came crooning.

"My dear, oh my dear, Have ye come from the west--"

"Why Christina sings those old-fashioned songs when she knows 'Swanee' and 'The Bull Dog Patrol'--'Bull Frog', is it?--I can't understand."

A rat-tat at the door made Evie jump.

Mrs. Colebrook's eyes went to the faded face of a clock on the mantelshelf. Allowing for day to day variation, to which the timepiece was subject, she made it out to be past eleven.

"Don't open the door," she said. "It may be those Haggins; they've been fighting all day."

Evie went to the door.

"Who is there?"

"Beryl Merville."

Evie opened the door and admitted the girl. Outside she glimpsed the tail lamps of a car.

"You are Evie, aren't you?" Beryl was breathless. "Have you any idea where I can find Ronnie?"

"Is that Beryl?"

It was Christina's voice; she came down in her dressing gown.

"I want to find Ronnie--I have been to his flat, he is not at home. I must see him."

She was wild with fear, Christina saw that; something had happened which had thrown her off her balance and had driven her, frantic, to Ronnie Morelle.

"Come up to my room, Beryl," she said gently.

Mrs. Colebrook looked at Evie as the sound of a closing door came down.

"It looks to me like a scandal," she said profoundly.

Evie said nothing. She was wondering whether she ought not to have been indignant at the suggestion that she knew the whereabouts of Ronnie Morelle. She wished she knew Beryl better--then she might have been asked upstairs to share the secret. After all, she knew Ronnie better than anybody.

"Perhaps I am better out of it, Mother," she said. "I am not sure that Teddy would like me to be mixed up in other people's affairs."

Christina pushed the trembling girl on to the bed.

"Sit down, Beryl. What is wrong?"

Beryl's lips were quivering.

"I must see Ronnie--oh, Christina, I'm just cornered. That man--Talbot, I think his name is, he is a friend of Ronnie's, has written to father--the letter came by hand, marked 'Urgent', whilst daddy was out, and I opened it."

She fumbled in her bag and produced a folded sheet and Christina read:

"_Dear Dr. Merville_: I think it is only right that you should know that your daughter spent a night at Ronald Morelle's flat.

"Miss Merville, at Morelle's suggestion, told you that she had been to a ball at Albert Hall. I can prove that she was never at the Albert Hall that night. I feel it is my duty to tell you this, and I expect you to inform Mr. Steppe, who, I understand, is engaged to your daughter."

"How did he know?"

Beryl shook her head wearily.

"Ronald told him--about the ball. When the elevator was going down, the morning I left the flat, I saw a man walking up the stairs. He must have seen me. Ronnie told me the night before that Jeremiah Talbot was coming to breakfast with him. I just saw him as the lift passed him--he had stopped on the landing below Ronnie's and probably recognized me. Christina, what am I to do? Father mustn't know. It seems ever so much more important to me now."

"When do you marry, Beryl?"

"The day after tomorrow. I know Ronnie has quarreled with this man. I read that story in the newspapers. It was splendid of Ronnie, splendid. It was a revelation to me."

Christina bit her lip in thought.

"I will see Ronnie--tonight. No, I will go alone. I have been resting all day. You must go home. Have you brought your car? Good. I will borrow it. Give me the letter."

Beryl protested, but the girl was firm.

"You must not go--perhaps I am wrong about Ronnie, but I don't think so. Sir John Maxton has the same mad dream."

"What do you mean?"

Christina smiled. "One day I will tell you."

The vision of her daughter dressed for going out temporarily deprived Mrs. Colebrook of speech. Before she could frame adequate comment, Christina was gone.

She dropped Beryl at her house and drove to Knightsbridge. The porter was not sure whether Mr. Morelle was in or out. It was his duty to be uncertain. He took her up to Ronnie's floor and waited until the door opened.

"My dear, what brings you here at this hour?"

He had been out, he told her. A Royal Society lecture on Einstein's Theory had been absorbing. He was so full of the subject, so alive, so boyish in his interest that for a while he forgot the hour and the obvious urgency of her call.

"I love lectures," he laughed, "but you know that. Do you remember how I was so late last night that your mother locked me out--no, not your mother--it must have been François." He frowned heavily. "How curious that I should confuse François with your dear mother."

She listened eagerly, delightedly, forgetting, too, the matter that brought her. The phenomenon had no terror for her, tremendous though it was. He was the first to recall himself to the present.

"From Beryl?" he said quickly, "what is wrong?"

She handed him the letter and he read it carefully.

"How terrible!" he said in a hushed voice, "how appallingly terrible! He says she is marrying Steppe! That can't be true, either. It would be grotesque--"

She was on the point of telling him that the marriage was due for the second day, when he went abruptly into his room. He returned, carrying his overcoat, which he put on as he talked.

"The past can only be patched," he said, "and seldom patched to look like new. Omar crystallizes its irrevocability in his great stanza. We can no more 'shatter it to bits,' than 'remould it nearer to our heart's desire.'"

"Ronnie, Beryl is to be married the day after tomorrow."

"Indeed?"

He looked at her with a half smile and then at the clock. It was a minute past midnight.

"Tomorrow?"

She nodded.

"Where are you going?"

"To see Talbot. He acted according to his lights. You can't expect a cockerel to sing like a lark. There is no sense in getting angry because things do not behave unnaturally. I made him feel very badly toward me yesterday. I think he can be adjusted. Some problems can be solved: some must be scrapped. Have you a car--Beryl's--good. Will you drop me in Curzon Street?"

She asked him no further questions and when in the car he held her hand in his, she felt beautifully peaceful and content.

"Good night, Christina. I will see Beryl tomorrow."

He closed the car door softly and she saw him knocking at No. 703 as she drove away.

The door was opened almost immediately.

"Is Mr. Talbot in, Brien?"

The butler stared.

"Why--why, yes, Mr. Morelle," he stammered.

He had not waited at table these past two days without discovering that Ronald Morelle was a name to be mentioned to the accompaniment of blasphemous et ceteras.

"He is in bed. I was just locking up. Does he expect you, Mr. Morelle?"

"No," said Ronnie. "All right, Brien, I know my way up."

He left an apprehensive servant standing irresolutely in the hall.

Jeremiah was not in bed. He was in his dressing gown before a mirror and his face was mottled with patches of gray mud--a cosmetic designed to remove wrinkles from tired eyes.

Ronnie he saw reflected in the mirror.

"What--what the devil do you want?" he demanded hollowly. "What are you doing?"

"Locking the door," said Ronnie, and threw the key on to the pillow of a four-poster bed.

"Damn you--open that door--you sneaking cad!"

Mr. Talbot experienced a difficulty in breathing, his voice was a little beyond his control. Also the plaster at the corner of his mouth made articulation difficult.

"I've come to see you on rather a pressing matter," said Ronnie evenly. "You wrote a letter to Dr. Merville making a very serious charge against my friend, Miss Merville. I do not complain and I certainly do not intend abusing you. I may kill you: that is very likely. I hope it will not be necessary. If you shout or make a noise, I shall certainly kill you, because, as you will see, being an intelligent man, I cannot afford to let you live until your servants come."

Mr. Talbot sat down suddenly, a comical figure, the more so since the dried mud about his eyes and the corner of his mouth made it impossible that he should express his intense fear. As it was, he spoke with difficulty and without opening his mouth wider than the mud allowed.

"You shall pay for thish, Morelle--vy God!"

"I want you to write me a letter which I shall give to Miss Merville apologizing for your insulting note to the doctor--"

With a gurgle of rage, Talbot sprang at him. Ronnie half turned and struck twice.

The butler heard the thud of a falling body; it shook the house. Still he hesitated.

"Get up," said Ronnie. "I am afraid I have dislocated your beauty spots, Jerry, but you'll be able to talk more freely."

Mr. Talbot nursed his jaw, but continued to sit on the floor. His jaw was aching and his head was going round and round. But he was an intelligent man.

When he did get up he opened a writing bureau and, at Ronnie's dictation, wrote.

"Thank you, Jerry," Ronnie pocketed the letter. "Perhaps when I have gone you will regret having written and will complain to the police; you may even write a worse letter to the doctor--who hasn't seen your first epistle, by the way. I must risk that. If you do, I shall certainly destroy you. I shall be sorry because--well, because I don't think you deserve death. You can be adjusted. Most people can. Will you put a stamp on the envelope, Jerry?"

At the street door: "Perhaps you will lose your job because you have admitted me, Brien. If that happens, will you come to me, please?"

The dazed butler said he would.

Ronnie stopped at a pillar box to post the letter and walked home.

XI

Jan Steppe was an early riser. He was up at six; at seven o'clock he was at his desk with the contents of the morning newspapers completely digested. By the time most people were sleepily inquiring the state of the weather, he had dealt with his correspondence and had prepared his daily plan.

In view of his early departure from London he had cleared off such arrears of work as there was. It was very little, for his method did not admit of an accumulation of unsettled affairs. A man not easily troubled, he had been of late considerably perturbed by the erratic behavior of certain stocks. He had every reason to be satisfied on the whole, because a miracle had happened. Klein River Diamonds had soared to an unbelievable price. A new pipe had been discovered on the property and the shares had jumped to one hundred and twelve, which would have been a fortunate development for Dr. Merville who once held a large parcel, had not Steppe purchased his entire holding at fifteen. He did this before the news was made public that the pipe had been located. Before Steppe himself knew--as he swore, sitting within a yard of the code telegram from his South African agent that had brought him the news twenty-four hours before it was published. So that the doctor was in this position: he owed money to Steppe for shares which had made Steppe a profit.

Ronnie had had a large holding. He was deputy chairman of the company. The day following the execution of Ambrose Sault, Steppe sent him a peremptory note enclosing a transfer and a cheque. Ronnie put cheque and transfer away in a drawer and did not read the letter. For some extraordinary reason on that day he could not read easily. Letters frightened him and he had to summon all his will power to examine them. Nearly a week passed before he got over this strange repugnance to the written word.

In the meantime Jan Steppe had not seen his lieutenant. He never doubted that the transfer, signed and sealed, was registered in the books of the company. Ronnie was obedient: had signed transfers by the score without question.

On this morning of March, Mr. Steppe was delayed in the conduct of his business by the tardy arrival of the mail. There had been a heavy fog in the early hours and letter distribution had been delayed, so that it was well after half-past eight before the mail came to him.

Almost the first letter he opened was one from the secretary of Klein River. He read and growled. The writer was sorry that he could not carry out the definite instructions which he had received. Apparently Mr. Steppe was under a misapprehension. No shares held by Mr. Morelle had been transferred. There was a postscript in the secretary's handwriting:

"I have reason to believe that Mr. Morelle has been selling your stocks very heavily. He is certainly the principal operator in the attack upon Midwell Tractions which you complained about yesterday."

Jan Steppe, dropping the letter, pushed his chair back from the desk. A thousand shares in Klein River were at issue, he could not afford to tear bullheaded at Ronnie Morelle. So this was the bear--the seller of stock! Ronnie had done something like this before, and had been warned. Steppe let his fury cool before he got Merville on the wire. When, in answer to the summons, Merville arrived, Steppe was pacing the floor, his hands deep in his trousers pockets.

"Huh, Merville? Seen Ronald Morelle lately?"

"No: he hasn't been to the house for a very long time."

"Hasn't, huh? Like him?"

The doctor hesitated.

"Not particularly: he is a distant cousin of mine. You know that."

Steppe nodded. He was holding himself in check and the effort was a strain.

"He's selling Midwell Tractions: you know that?" he mimicked savagely. "I'll break him, Merville! Smash him! The cur, the crafty cur!"

He gained the upper hand of his tumultuous rage after a while.

"That doesn't matter. But I sent him a cheque and a transfer--one minute!"

He seized the telephone and shouted a number.

"Yes, Steppe. Has a cheque been passed through payable to Ronald Morelle--I'll give you the number if you wait."

He jerked out a drawer, found the stub of a cheque book and turned the counterfoil.

"There? March seventeenth. Cheque number L.V. 971842."

He waited at the telephone, scowling absentmindedly at the doctor.

"Huh? It hasn't been presented--all right."

He smashed the receiver down on the hook.