Part 38 (1/2)
”Her ladys.h.i.+p, sir--Lady Tynemouth.”
Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said quietly:
”Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You've forgotten me often enough in that time, but you've never forgotten yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon.... I shall allow you a small pension. Show her ladys.h.i.+p in.”
Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room.
”Seven-and-six a week, I suppose,” he said to himself as he went down the stairs. ”Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy.”
With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its antipodes.
Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand.
”Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I ought to be.”
”I am sure you are,” answered Stafford, drily.
”Well, if you don't know, Ian, who does? I've put my head in the lion's mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped once,” she rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green leather-chair.
”n.o.body would believe it; but there it is. The world couldn't think that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or that I would pay for the candle without burning it.”
”On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them.”
She laughed happily. ”Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after Gleg's icy welcome.”
He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines of Swinburne, alive with cynicism:
”And the worst and the best of this is, That neither is most to blame If she has forgotten my kisses, And I have forgotten her name.”
Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. ”I should probably be able to endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny past,” she rejoined, with mock pathos. ”That's the worst of our friends.h.i.+p, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian Stafford--not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle.”
”'On the point of a needle,'” Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth.
”The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good deal,”
he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: ”Do you remember Mr.
Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?”
”Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly by--guess whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as he called it.”
”Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to make a needle-point dipped in it deadly.”
”I don't believe it a bit, but--”
Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress--she was all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. ”But tell me,” she added, presently--”for it's one of the reasons why I'm here now--what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are not out, and you were there, of course, and gave evidence, I suppose.
Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've never seen you look so pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You don't mind that from an old friend, do you? You look terribly ill, just when you should look so well.”
”Why should I look so well?” He gazed at her steadily. Had she any glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine had sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, ”More was lost at Mohacksfield.”
”Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they say.
It makes me so proud to be your friend--even your neglected, if not quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such splendid work for England, and that now you can have anything you want. The ball is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a morning-glory, and not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it only the reaction after all you've done?”