Part 49 (1/2)
”Whew!” Captain Bingham Wrynche gives vent to a long, piercing, dismal whistle, which so upsets a gaunt mongrel prowling vainly for garbage in the gutters of Market Square that he puts up his nose and howls in answer.
”Was that how you fell into the----” He is obviously going to say ”trap,”
but with exceeding clumsiness subst.i.tutes ”state.” And wonders at the thing having been pulled off so quietly in these days, when confounded newspapers won't let you call your soul your own.
”That's because I signed my name 'John Basil Edward Tobart,'” explains Beauvayse; ”and because the Registrar--a benevolent old c.o.c.k in a large white waistcoat, like somebody's father in a farcical comedy--wasn't sufficiently up in the Peerage to be impressed.”
”Weren't there witnesses of sorts?” hints Bingo.
”Of sorts. The housekeeper at the cottage and my man Saunders--the discreet Saunders who's with me here. And a fortnight later came the appointment,” goes on the boy. ”And--I was gladder than I cared to know at getting away. She--Lessie--meant to play her part in the 'Chiffon Girl' up to the end of the Summer Season, and then rest until ...” He does not finish the sentence.
”I suppose she's fond of you--what?” hazards Captain Bingo.
”She cares a good deal, poor girl, and was frightfully cut up at my going, and I provided for her thoroughly well, of course, though she has heaps of money of her own. And when I went to stay with my people for a night before sailing, I'd have broken the--the truth to my mother then, only something in her face corked me tight. From the moment I took the plunge, the consciousness of what a rotten a.s.s I'd been had been growin' like a s...o...b..ll. But on the voyage out”--a change comes into the weary, level voice in which Beauvayse has told his story--”I forgot to grouse, and by the time we'd lifted the Southern Cross I wasn't so much regretting what I'd done as wondering whether I should ever shoot myself because I'd done it? Up in Rhodesia I forgot. The wonderful champagne air, and the rousing hard work, the keen excitement and the tingling expectation of things that were going to happen by-and-by, that have been happening about as since October, were like pleasant drugs that keep you from thinking. I only remembered now and then, when I saw Lessie's photograph hanging on the wall of my quarters, and the portrait she had set in the back of my sovereign-case, that she and me were husband and wife.” He gives a mirthless laugh. ”It makes so little impression on a fellow's mind somehow, to mooch into a Registrar's office with a woman and answer a question or two put by a fat, middle-aged duffer who's smiling himself into creases, and give your name and say, 'No, there's no impediment,' and put on the ring and pay a fee--I believe it was seven-and-six--and take a blotchy certificate and walk out--married.”
”It never does take long, by Gad!” agrees Captain Bingo with fervour, ”to do any of the things that can't be undone again.”
”Undone ...!” Beauvayse sits up suddenly and turns his miserable, beautiful, defiant eyes full on the large, perturbed face of his listener.
”Wrynche, Wrynche! I've felt I'd gladly give my soul to be able to undo it, ever since I first set eyes on Lynette Mildare!”
Captain Bingo gives vent to another of his loud, dismal whistles. Then he gets out of his chair, large, clumsy, irate, and begins:
”I might have known it, with a chap like you. Another woman's at the bottom of all your bellowing. You're not a bit sick at having brought an outsider--a rank outsider, by Gad!--into the family stud; you're not a rap ashamed at havin' disappointed the old man's hopes of you, for you know as well as I do that when you'd done sowin' your wild oats and had your fling, you'd have come in when he rang the bell and married Lady Mary Menzies. You're not a d.a.m.ned sc.r.a.p sorry at having broken your mother's heart, though you know in the bottom of your soul that she scented this marriage in the wind, and had an interview with the Chief, and went down on her knees to him--her knees, by the Living Tinker!--to give you the chance of breakin' off an undesirable connection!”
Beauvayse is out of his chair now. ”Is that true--about my mother?” he demands, blazing.
”I'm not in the habit of lyin', Lord Beauvayse!” states Captain Bingo huffily.
”Don't fly off like a lunatic, Bingo, old man. How did you find--that--out?”
”Your cousin Townham told me.”
”d.a.m.n my cousin Townham for a dried-up, wiggy, pratin' little scandalmonger!”
Captain Bingo retorts irately:
”d.a.m.n him if you please; he's no friend of mine. As yours, what I ask you is, between man and man, how far have you gone in this fresh affair?”
Beauvayse drives his hands deep into the pockets of his patched flannels, and says, adjusting a footstool with his toe over a crack in the board-flooring, as though the operation were a delicate one upon which much depended:
”I've told her how I feel where she's concerned, and that I care for her as I never cared yet, and never shall care, for anyone else.”
The faint grin dawns again on Captain Wrynche's large, kindly, worried face.
”How many times have you met?”
”Only four or five times in all,” says Beauvayse. ”I'd set eyes on her twice before I was introduced. I couldn't rest for thinking about her. She drew me and drew me.... And when we did meet, there was no strangeness between us, even from the first minute. She just seemed waiting for what I had to own up. And when I spoke, I--I seemed to be only saying what I was meant to say.... From the beginning of the world! And you'd understand better if you'd seen her near----”
”I have seen her in the distance, walking with the Mother-Superior of the Convent. A tall, slight girl. Looks like a lady,” says Bingo, ”and has jolly hair.”
”It's the colour of dead leaves in autumn suns.h.i.+ne or a squirrel's back,”
raves the boy, ”and she's beautiful, Wrynche. My G.o.d! so beautiful that your heart stops beating when you look into her face, and nearly jumps out of your body when a fold of her gown brushes against you. And I swear there's no other woman for me in life or death!”