Part 79 (1/2)
”No.”
Craven was not speaking at this moment, and she felt that he was listening to them. She remembered how Beryl had hurt her and, speaking with deliberate clearness, she added:
”Garstin, the painter, has had this man, Nicolas Arabian, as a sitter for a long time, certainly for a good many weeks. And Beryl is just now intensely interested in portrait painting.”
”What--he's a model! But with a flat in Rose Tree Gardens!”
”He is evidently not an ordinary model. I believe Mr. Garstin picked him up somewhere, saw him by chance, probably at the Cafe Royal or some place of that kind, and asked him to sit.”
”Do you know him?” asked the Baron, with sharp curiosity.
”Oh, no! I have never set eyes upon him. Beryl told me.”
”Miss Van Tuyn! We all thought she was trying to keep the whole matter a secret.”
”Well, she told me quite openly. You were there, weren't you?”
She turned rather abruptly to Craven. He started.
”What? I beg your pardon. I didn't catch what you were saying.”
”He's lying!” she thought.
The Baron was addressed by his neighbour, Magdalen Dearing, whose husband he was supposed, perhaps quite wrongly, to finance, and Lady Sellingworth was left free for a conversation with Craven.
”We were speaking about Beryl,” she began.
Suddenly she felt hard, and she wanted to punish Craven, as we only wish to punish those who can make us suffer because they have made us care for them.
”It seems that--they are all saying--”
She paused. She wanted to repeat the scandalous gossip about Beryl's visit to this mystery man, Arabian, immediately after her father's death. But she could not do it. No, she could not punish him with such a dirty weapon. He was worthy of polished steel, and this would be rusty sc.r.a.p-iron.
”It's nothing but stupid gossip,” she said. ”And you and I have never dealt in that together, have we?”
”Oh, I enjoy hearing about my neighbours,” he answered, ”or I shouldn't come here.”
She felt a sharp thrust of disappointment. His voice was cold and full of detachment; the glance of his blue eyes was hard and unrelenting. She had never seen him like this till to-day.
”What are they saying about Miss Van Tuyn?” he added. ”Anything amusing?”
”No. And in any case it's not the moment to talk nonsense about her, just when she is in deep mourning.”
With an almost bitter smile she continued, after a slight hesitation:
”There is a close time for game during which the guns must be patient.
There ought to be a close time for human beings in sorrow. We ought not to fire at them all the year round.”
”What does it matter? They fire at us all the year round. The carnage is mutual.”
”Have you turned cynic?”