Devil's Dice
“If you can’t find your friends, Stuart, I’ll give you a lift homeward. My carriage is at the corner,” Mabel said, evidently anxious to get away. “I’m going down to the Reform, to fetch Fyneshade.”
In this invitation I saw an opportunity of obtaining some further knowledge of her mysterious companion, and, after settling with my cabman, lost no time in embracing it. A few moments later the Countess’s smart victoria drew up, and entering, I took the place beside her, while Sternroyd seated himself opposite.
As we drove around Southwick Crescent in the direction of Park Lane, Mabel, in the course of conversation, let drop the fact that Gilbert, a protégé of her husband’s, was spending a few days at Eaton Square prior to returning to his studies at Oxford.
“Yes,” he drawled. “A fellow appreciates town after poring over musty volumes, as I unfortunately am compelled to do. Beastly bore!”
Then he told me he was at Balliol – my old college – and our conversation afterwards turned mainly upon dons and duns.
“I always have such jolly times with Mab – Lady Fyneshade – each time I come to town,” he said. “Whenever I go back I feel absolutely miserable.”
“Yet memories of the past are sometimes painful,” I observed, smiling. At the same time I glanced at Mabel, knowing that the strange circumstances in which we had parted at the cotton-king’s reception must still be fresh in her mind. Darting at me a swift look of inquiry, she picked at the buttons of her pearl-grey glove, laughed lightly, and exclaimed flippantly:
“We have no memories when we arrive at years of discretion. Idle memory wastes time and other things. The moments as they drop must disappear and be simply forgotten as a child forgets. Nowadays one lives only for the future, and lets the past be buried.”
“And if the past refuses to be interred?” I asked.
She started visibly, and a frown of annoyance rested for a brief moment upon her handsome countenance. I fancied, too, that her companion looked askance at me, but not waiting for either to reply, I said:
“I myself find it difficult to altogether forget. Some incidents in each of our lives are indelibly engraven upon our minds, and there are some tender memories that in our hours of melancholy we love to linger over and brood upon. At such times we find solace in solitude and sup on vain regrets.”
“That’s only when we have been in love,” the Countess laughed, patting the large pug beside her. “Gilbert has never been in love; have you, Gilbert?”
“Never,” he answered, grinning.
“With one exception,” she observed with mock gravity.
“Yourself, you mean?” he drawled, twirling his flaxen moustache and smiling.
“Certainly not,” she cried with feigned indignation. “How dare you attempt to be complimentary at my expense? No, if I remember aright there was one woman who in your eyes was a veritable angel, who – ”
“Ah!” he said gravely, in a tone quite natural and unaffected. “Yes, you are right. There was one woman.” And he sighed as if painful memories oppressed him.
One woman! Did he allude to Sybil? If so, it was apparent that Mabel must be well aware of his acquaintance with the woman I had loved. Silent I sat while the conversation quickly turned from grave to gay, as it always did when the Countess chattered.
Suddenly, as we were passing into Piccadilly, it became impressed vividly upon my mind that they were hiding some secret from me. Two prominent facts aroused within me suspicion that their conversation was being carried on in order to mislead me. The first was, that although I had asked them what had brought them to Radnor Place neither of them had given any satisfactory reply; the second was, that although Sternroyd must have been associated in some mysterious way with that silent house to which the photographs had been sent, he had made no allusion whatever to it, nor did he make any observation when he noticed my dismay at discovering it untenanted.
It was evident some secret understanding existed between them, and the more I reflected upon it the more probable did it appear that they had actually called at this house, and had only just left it when I arrived. In order to ascertain my object in visiting it, and to learn the extent of my knowledge regarding it, the Countess had greeted me with her usual gaiety, and was now carrying me triumphantly back. I had, of course, no proof; nevertheless, I had an intuition, strange and distinct, that in close concert with my dead love’s whilom friend, Sternroyd, she was playing a deep mysterious game with considerable tact and consummate ingenuity. But she was a most remarkable woman. Always brilliant and fascinating, always sparkling with wit and bubbling with humour, she was thoroughly unconventional in every respect. Society had long ago ceased to express surprise at any of her eccentric or impetuous actions. She held licence from Mother Grundy to act as, she pleased, for was she not admitted on all hands to be “the smartest woman in London?” She had a watchful confidence not only in a multitude of men, but in a multitude of things.
She dropped me outside the New Lyric Club, close to Piccadilly Circus, not, however, before she had expressed regret at Dora’s unhappiness.
“What has occurred?” I asked concernedly.
“Oh! there has been a terrible upset at home about Jack Bethune,” she answered. “I’ve done my level best with Ma, but she absolutely forbids Jack to pay his addresses to Dora.”
“Because, as you have already told me, she wants her to marry a man she can never love,” I said gravely.
“Yes,” she said hurriedly. “But here’s your club. Captain Bethune is certain to tell you all about it. Goodbye! I shall be at Lady Hillingdon’s to-morrow night, then we’ll resume our chat.”
“Good-bye!” I said, alighting and grasping her hand; then as the commissionaire swung the club door open her companion raised his hat and the carriage was driven rapidly away.
Chapter Eight
Secret Understanding
Idle memory shortens life, or shortens the sense of life, by linking the immediate past clingingly to the present. In this may be found one of the reasons for the length of time in our juvenile days and the brevity of the time that succeeds. The child forgets, habitually, gayly, and constantly. Would that I had never acquired the habit of recall!
Jack, in a well-worn velvet lounge coat, was seated at his writing-table absorbed in his work when I entered, a couple of hours after I had left Mabel. His small den, lined with books, contained but little furniture beyond the big oak writing-table in the window, a heavy old-fashioned horse-hair couch, and several easy-chairs. Littered with newspapers, books, magazines, and those minor worries of an author’s life, press-cuttings, the apartment was nevertheless snug, the bright fire and the green-shaded reading-lamp giving it a cosy appearance.
“Halloa, old chap!” he cried, throwing down his pen gayly and rising to grip my hand. “So glad you’ve looked in. Have a weed?” and as we seated ourselves before the fire he pushed the box towards me.
“I met Mabel to-day,” I said at last, after we had been chatting and smoking for some minutes.
“Did you? Well? What’s the latest fad? Teas for poor children, bicycling, golf, old silver, or what?”
“She’s much concerned regarding Dora,” I answered. “And she has hinted that there are strained relations between Dora’s mother and yourself. I’ve come to hear all about it.”
He hesitated, tugging thoughtfully at his moustache.
“There’s not very much to tell,” he replied, rather bitterly. “The old lady won’t hear of our marriage. When I mentioned it yesterday she went absolutely purple with rage, and forbade me to enter her house again, or hold any further communication with the woman I love.”
“Which you will disregard, eh? Have you seen Dora to-day?”
“No. I’ve been waiting at home all day expecting a note, but none has arrived,” he said disappointedly; adding, “Yet, after all, there is no disguising the fact, old chap, that I really haven’t enough money to marry a girl like Dora, and perhaps the sooner I recognise the truth and give up all hope of marriage, the better for us both.”
“No, no. Don’t take such a gloomy view, Jack,” I said sympathetically. “Dora loves you, doesn’t she?”
“Yes. You know well enough that I absolutely adore her,” he answered with deep earnestness.
I had known long ago that his avowed intention had been never to marry. Until he became noted as a novelist his periods of life in town had been few and fleeting. Not that he felt awkward or ill at ease in society; his name was a passport, while his well-bred ease always insured him a flattering welcome; but for the most part Society had no charm for him. Sometimes, when among his most intimate friends, he would give the reins to his high spirits, and then, gayest of the gay, he would have smoothed the brow of Remorse itself. Private theatricals, dinner-parties, dances, or tennis-matches, he was head and front of everything. Then suddenly he would receive orders to remove with his regiment to another town, and good-bye to all frivolity – he was a cavalry officer again, and no engagement had power to keep him.
If he ever made any impression on the fair sex, he had remained unscathed himself until a few months ago, and the eagerness with which he obeyed each call to duty had been proof of the unfettered state of his heart. His ardent love for his profession was, he used to be fond of declaring, incompatible with domestic life. “The first requisite for a good officer,” he had told me dozens of times, “is absolute freedom from all ties;” but now, having entered the profession of letters and having discovered the power of the pen, he had paid Dora Stretton a chivalrous attention that had developed into ardent and passionate devotion. She was his goddess; he worshipped at her shrine.
“Well, having received the maternal congé, what do you intend doing?” I inquired after a long silence.
“What can I do?” he asked despondently, gazing sadly into the fire. “I love her with all my heart and soul, as you are aware, yet what can I do?”
“Why, marry her all the same,” cried a musical voice gayly, and as we both jumped up, startled, we were surprised to find Dora herself standing in the doorway, laughing at our discomfiture.
“You!” cried Jack, gladly rushing forward and grasping her hand. “How did you get in?”
“I forbade your woman to announce me, because I wanted to surprise you,” she laughed. “But I – I had no idea that Mr Ridgeway was with you. She ought to have told me,” she added, blushing.
“I’m surely not such a formidable person, am I?” I asked.
“Well, no,” she answered. Then looking round the little book-lined room rather timidly, she said, “I don’t know that I ought to have come here, but I wanted to see Jack. I’m supposed to be at Mabel’s, dining. I drove there in the brougham, and then came along here in a cab.”
“Won’t you sit down?” her lover asked. “Now you are here we must try and make you as cosy as possible, providing you’ll excuse the Bohemianism of my quarters.”
“Why apologise, Jack?” she asked, as he unclasped her cape, revealing her handsome dinner-dress cut a trifle décolleté. “If Ma will not let us meet openly, then we must see each other surreptitiously.”
“Well spoken,” I exclaimed, laughing, and when she had seated herself in Jack’s armchair, with her little satin shoes placed coquettishly upon the fender, she told us how she had ingeniously arranged with her sister to return to Eaton Square in a cab, and then drive home in the carriage, as if she had been spending the whole evening with Mabel.
We laughed, and as I sat gazing at her, memories of Sybil, the woman I had loved and lost, crowded upon me. Even though Lady Stretton’s consent was withheld, they were nevertheless happy in each other’s love. The love-look upon their faces told me how intense was the passion between them, and I envied my friend his happiness. Dora was indeed as charming to the sight as eyes could desire. Her bare shoulders, well set-off by her black bespangled dress trimmed with pale-green chiffon, were a trifle narrow, but that lent her a childish grace, and it was the one fault that could be found with her; all the rest was perfect, and the greatest charm of all that, unlike her sister, she was totally unconscious of her loveliness.
In the warm atmosphere of their love and confidence their characters had unfolded, and they had learned to know one another perfectly. Jack, although he held a world-wide reputation for keen analysis of character on paper, had been amazed at all the delicate susceptibilities cherished in Dora’s heart, at the freshness and innocent pleasures of which it was capable, and not a little at the vein of malicious fun he had wholly unsuspected.
I sat silent while they chatted, reflecting upon the strange discovery of the photograph of my lost love, and the more remarkable encounter that afternoon, I had called on Jack for the purpose of making a clean breast of the whole affair, but Dora’s arrival precluded me from so doing. My sorrow, however, lost none of its bitterness by keeping, and I resolved to return to him on the morrow, show him the portraits, and ask his advice.
Jack had been admiring her gown, and the conversation had turned upon the evergreen topic of dress. But she spoke with the air of a philosopher rather than of a Society girl.
“Everyday life needs all the romance that can be crowded into it,” she said. “Dress, in my opinion, is a duty to ourselves and to others – is a piece of altruism unsoured by sacrifice, a joy so long as it may last to wearer and beholder, doing good openly nor blushing to find itself famous.”
“Your view is certainly correct,” I said, smiling at her sedate little speech. “You are a pretty woman, and without committing yourself to affectation or eccentricity, you may choose the mode that shall best become you, whether born of Worth’s imagination or founded on some picturesque tradition. You may be severe or splendid, avenante or rococo, with equal impunity.”
“Really you are awfully complimentary, Mr Ridgeway,” she answered, with just the faintest blush of modesty. “You are such a flatterer that one never knows whether you are in earnest.”
“I’m quite in earnest, I assure you,” I said. “Your dresses always suit you admirably. On any other woman they would look dowdy.”
“I quite endorse Stuart’s opinion,” said Jack with enthusiasm. “In writing it is often my misfortune to be compelled to describe feminine habiliments, therefore I’ve tried to study them a little. It seems to me that the ball-dress may be festal, the dinner-dress majestic, and the outdoor frock combine the virtues of both; but romance must always centre in the tea-gown. Before the advent of the tea-gown, the indoor state of woman was innocent of comfort and beggared of poetry.”
“Yes,” she replied, clasping her hands behind her head and looking up at him with her soft brown eyes, “the tea-gown is always ingenuous in sentiment and not wanting in charm, even though its hues may be odious or sickly. Once it was looked upon with disfavour as a garment too graceful to be respectable, and stern parents, I believe, forbade its use. But time, taste, and the sense of fitness have put Puritanism to shame, and the useful tea-gown; bears witness now to our proficiency in the long-lost art of living.”
Her reference to stern parents caused me to refer to what Mabel had told me regarding the attitude of her mother.
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