Part 43 (2/2)

”Crikey!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

It was all that he could say.

”And there's one more thing, young feller me lad,” added Keggs earnestly, ”don't you ever grow up to be such a fat'ead as our friend Percy. Don't forget I warned you.”

CHAPTER 23.

Life is like some crazy machine that is always going either too slow or too fast. From the cradle to the grave we alternate between the Sarga.s.so Sea and the rapids--forever either becalmed or storm-tossed. It seemed to Maud, as she looked across the dinner-table in order to make sure for the twentieth time that it really was George Bevan who sat opposite her, that, after months in which nothing whatever had happened, she was now living through a period when everything was happening at once. Life, from being a broken-down machine, had suddenly begun to race.

To the orderly routine that stretched back to the time when she had been hurried home in disgrace from Wales there had succeeded a mad whirl of events, to which the miracle of tonight had come as a fitting climax. She had not begun to dress for dinner till somewhat late, and had consequently entered the drawing-room just as Keggs was announcing that the meal was ready. She had received her first shock when the love-sick Plummer, emerging from a mixed crowd of relatives and friends, had informed her that he was to take her in.

She had not expected Plummer to be there, though he lived in the neighbourhood. Plummer, at their last meeting, had stated his intention of going abroad for a bit to mend his bruised heart: and it was a little disconcerting to a sensitive girl to find her victim popping up again like this. She did not know that, as far as Plummer was concerned, the whole affair was to be considered opened again. To Plummer, a.n.a.lysing the girl's motives in refusing him, there had come the idea that there was Another, and that this other must be Reggie Byng. From the first he had always looked upon Reggie as his worst rival. And now Reggie had bolted with the Faraday girl, leaving Maud in excellent condition, so it seemed to Plummer, to console herself with a worthier man. Plummer knew all about the Rebound and the part it plays in the affairs of the heart. His own breach-of-promise case two years earlier had been entirely due to the fact that the refusal of the youngest Devenish girl to marry him had caused him to rebound into the dangerous society of the second girl from the O.P. end of the first row in the ”Summertime is Kissing-time” number in the Alhambra revue. He had come to the castle tonight gloomy, but not without hope.

Maud's second shock eclipsed the first entirely. No notification had been given to her either by her father or by Percy of the proposed extension of the hand of hospitality to George, and the sight of him standing there talking to her aunt Caroline made her momentarily dizzy. Life, which for several days had had all the properties now of a dream, now of a nightmare, became more unreal than ever. She could conceive no explanation of George's presence.

He could not be there--that was all there was to it; yet there undoubtedly he was. Her manner, as she accompanied Plummer down the stairs, took on such a dazed sweetness that her escort felt that in coming there that night he had done the wisest act of a lifetime studded but spa.r.s.ely with wise acts. It seemed to Plummer that this girl had softened towards him. Certainly something had changed her.

He could not know that she was merely wondering if she was awake.

George, meanwhile, across the table, was also having a little difficulty in adjusting his faculties to the progress of events. He had given up trying to imagine why he had been invited to this dinner, and was now endeavouring to find some theory which would square with the fact of Billie Dore being at the castle. At precisely this hour Billie, by rights, should have been putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches on her make-up in a second-floor dressing-room at the Regal. Yet there she sat, very much at her ease in this aristocratic company, so quietly and un.o.btrusively dressed in some black stuff that at first he had scarcely recognized her. She was talking to the Bishop...

The voice of Keggs at his elbow broke in on his reverie.

”Sherry or 'ock, sir?”

George could not have explained why this reminder of the butler's presence should have made him feel better, but it did. There was something solid and tranquilizing about Keggs. He had noticed it before. For the first time the sensation of having been smitten over the head with some blunt instrument began to abate. It was as if Keggs by the mere intonation of his voice had said, ”All this no doubt seems very strange and unusual to you, but feel no alarm!

I am here!”

George began to sit up and take notice. A cloud seemed to have cleared from his brain. He found himself looking on his fellow-diners as individuals rather than as a confused ma.s.s. The prophet Daniel, after the initial embarra.s.sment of finding himself in the society of the lions had pa.s.sed away, must have experienced a somewhat similar sensation.

He began to sort these people out and label them. There had been introductions in the drawing-room, but they had left him with a bewildered sense of having heard somebody recite a page from Burke's peerage. Not since that day in the free library in London, when he had dived into that fascinating volume in order to discover Maud's ident.i.ty, had he undergone such a rain of t.i.tles. He now took stock, to ascertain how many of these people he could identify.

The stock-taking was an absolute failure. Of all those present the only individuals he could swear to were his own personal little playmates with whom he had sported in other surroundings. There was Lord Belpher, for instance, eyeing him with a hostility that could hardly be called veiled. There was Lord Marshmoreton at the head of the table, listening glumly to the conversation of a stout woman with a pearl necklace, but who was that woman? Was it Lady Jane Allenby or Lady Edith Wade-Beverly or Lady Patricia Fowles? And who, above all, was the pie-faced fellow with the moustache talking to Maud?

He sought a.s.sistance from the girl he had taken in to dinner. She appeared, as far as he could ascertain from a short acquaintance, to be an amiable little thing. She was small and young and fluffy, and he had caught enough of her name at the moment of introduction to gather that she was plain ”Miss” Something--a fact which seemed to him to draw them together.

”I wish you would tell me who some of these people are,” he said, as she turned from talking to the man on her other-side. ”Who is the man over there?”

”Which man?”

”The one talking to Lady Maud. The fellow whose face ought to be shuffled and dealt again.”

”That's my brother.”

That held George during the soup.

”I'm sorry about your brother,” he said rallying with the fish.

”That's very sweet of you.”

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