Part 23 (1/2)
Mary flushed, locking her hands together nervously, with a trace of pa.s.sion.
”It was ridiculous! intolerable! He had no right----!”
Lady Garnett bent forward, taking her hand.
”Forgive me, _cherie_! I did not mean to annoy you.... You can imagine how glad we were to see you,” she added, with a sudden turn to Rainham. ”It was charming of you to call so soon; you could hardly have expected to find us.”
”You must not give me too much credit. I happened to be quite near, in Harley Street. I could not pa.s.s without inquiring.”
”Ah, well,” she said, ”since you are here----”
She was looking absently away from him into an antique, silver basket which lay on the little table by her side, in which were miscellaneous trifles, odd pieces of lace, thimbles which she never used, a broken fan, a box of chocolates.
”Mary, my dear,” she said quickly, ”I am so stupid! The old _bonbonniere_, with the brilliants? I must have left it on my dressing-table, or somewhere. That new housemaid--we really know nothing about her--it would be such a temptation. Would you mind----”
”Is this----” Rainham began, and stopped short.
Lady Garnett's brilliant eyes, and a little admonitory gesture of one hand, restrained him. When the girl had shut the door behind her, the elder lady turned to him with a quaint smile.
”Is that it? Of course it is, my friend. You are singularly obtuse: a woman would have seen through me at once.”
”I beg your pardon,” said Rainham, somewhat mystified. ”You mean it was a pretext?”
”It was for you that I made it,” she replied with dignity. ”What was it you came to say?”
The other was silent for a moment, cogitating. When he looked up at last, meeting her eyes, it was with something like a s.h.i.+ver, in a tone of genuine dismay, that he remarked:
”Dear lady, there are times when you terrify me. You see too much.
It is not--no, it is not human. I had meant to tell you nothing.”
He stopped short, lowering his voice, and looking from the depths of his low chair into the red fire.
”It is not necessary, Philip,” she continued presently, ”that you should tell me; only, if you will be so secret, you should wear smoked gla.s.ses. Your eyes were so speaking that I was afraid--yes, afraid--when you came into the room. They looked haunted; they had the air of having seen a ghost!”
”It was a very respectable ghost,” he said grimly, ”with a frock-coat and a bald head. You know Sir Egbert, I suppose?”
”Only by name. I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke of Harley Street. Does he send you South again?”
”No,” said Rainham shortly; ”he thinks it would be inexpedient--that was his phrase, inexpedient--in an hotel, you know, and all that....
I was obliged to him, because in any case it would have been inconvenient to me to be abroad this year. I suppose, though, that if it would have done me any good I should have gone; but I have a great deal to arrange.”
He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these arrangements--the disposal of his business. He had systematically neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to the dogs. So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so much; but Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely. He had accepted an offer to manage the works of a firm of North-Country s.h.i.+pbuilders; he was to shake the dust of Blackpool from off his feet in a very few months, and would probably make his fortune. And as he himself was not equal to bearing his incubus alone, he had put it in the market. A brand new company had bought it--that is to say, they had made him an offer--a ridiculously inadequate one, he was told, but which he was determined to accept; at any rate, it would leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon, for the rest of his life. The legal preliminaries were now being settled: they appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the dock-gates were shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so far as he saw, be losing money; that was a consolation.
He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered that he spoke to deaf ears. The old lady for once was inattentive: she had sat screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan while he unburdened himself, and she began now with a certain hesitation:
”My pretext, Philip! When I said that I made it for you it was only half true. In effect, my dear, I had something to tell you--something disagreeable.”
”Concerning me?” he asked.
”Certainly,” she said--”something I have heard.”