Part 30 (1/2)
I could detect that his eyes were still gla.s.sy, but his head was erect. He seemed to flaunt his shame. And the guilty partner of his downfall drove with an affectation of easy carelessness, yet with a lift of the chin which, though barely perceptible, had all the effect of binding the prisoner to her chariot wheels; a prisoner, moreover, whom it was plain she meant to parade to the last ignominious degree.
She drove leisurely, and in the little infrequent curt turns of her head to address her companion she contrived to instill so finished an effect of boredom that she must have goaded to frenzy any matron of the North Side set who chanced to observe her, as more than one of them did.
Thrice did she halt along our main thoroughfare for bits of shopping, a mere running into of shops or to the doors of them where she could issue verbal orders, the while she surveyed her waiting and drugged captive with a certain half-veiled but good-humoured insolence. At these moments--for I took pains to overlook the shocking scene--the Honourable George followed her with eyes no longer gla.s.sed; the eyes of helpless infatuation. ”He looks at her,” Cousin Egbert had said. He had told it all and told it well. The equipage graced our street upon one paltry excuse or another for the better part of an hour, the woman being minded that none of us should longer question her supremacy over the next and eleventh Earl of Brinstead.
Not for another hour did the effects of the sensation die out among tradesmen and the street crowds. It was like waves that recede but gradually. They talked. They stopped to talk. They pa.s.sed on talking.
They hissed vivaciously; they rose to exclamations. I mean to say, there was no end of a gabbling row about it.
There was in my mind no longer any room for hesitation. The quite harshest of extreme measures must be at once adopted before all was too late. I made my way to the telegraph office. It was not a time for correspondence by post.
Afterward I had myself put through by telephone to Belknap-Jackson.
With his sensitive nature he had stopped in all day. Although still averse to appearing publicly, he now consented to meet me at my chambers late that evening.
”The whole town is seething with indignation,” he called to me. ”It was disgraceful. I shall come at ten. We rely upon you.”
Again I saw that he was concerned solely with his humiliation as a would-be host. Not yet had he divined that the deluded Honourable George might go to the unspeakable length of a matrimonial alliance with the woman who had enchained him. And as to his own disaster, he was less than accurate when he said that the whole town was seething with indignation. The members of the North Side set, to be sure, were seething furiously, but a flippant element of the baser sort was quite openly rejoicing. As at the time of that most slanderous minstrel performance, it was said that the Bohemian set had again, if I have caught the phrase, ”put a thing over upon” the North Side set. Many persons of low taste seemed quite to enjoy the dreadful affair, and the members of the Bohemian set, naturally, throughout the day had been quite coa.r.s.ely beside themselves with glee.
Little they knew, I reflected, what power I could wield nor that I had already set in motion its deadly springs. Little did the woman dream, flaunting her triumph up and down our main business thoroughfare, that one who watched her there had but to raise his hand to wrest the victim from her toils. Little did she now dream that he would stop at no half measures. I mean to say, she would never think I could bowl her out as easy as buying c.o.c.kles off a barrow.
At the hour for our conference Belknap-Jackson arrived at my chambers m.u.f.fled in an ulster and with a soft hat well over his face. I gathered that he had not wished to be observed.
”I feel that this is a crisis,” he began as he gloomily shook my hand.
”Where is our boasted twentieth-century culture if outrages like this are permitted? For the first time I understand how these Western communities have in the past resorted to mob violence. Public feeling is already running high against the creature and her unspeakable set.”
I met this outburst with the serenity of one who holds the winning cards in his hand, and begged him to be seated. Thereupon I disclosed to him the weakly, susceptible nature of the Honourable George, reciting the incidents of the typing-girl and the Brixton milliner. I added that now, as before, I should not hesitate to preserve the family honour.
”A dreadful thing, indeed,” he murmured, ”if that adventuress should trap him into a marriage. Imagine her one day a Countess of Brinstead!
But suppose the fellow prove stubborn; suppose his infatuation dulls all his finer instincts?”
I explained that the Honourable George, while he might upon the spur of the moment commit a folly, was not to be taken too seriously; that he was, I believed, quite incapable of a grand pa.s.sion. I mean to say, he always forgot them after a few days. More like a child staring into shop-windows he was, rapidly forgetting one desired object in the presence of others. I added that I had adopted the extremest measures.
Thereupon, perceiving that I had something in my sleeve, as the saying is, my caller besought me to confide in him. Without a word I handed him a copy of my cable message sent that afternoon to his lords.h.i.+p:
_”Your immediate presence required to prevent a monstrous folly.”_
He brightened as he read it.
”You actually mean to say----” he began.
”His lords.h.i.+p,” I explained, ”will at once understand the nature of what is threatened. He knows, moreover, that I would not alarm him without cause. He will come at once, and the Honourable George will be told what. His lords.h.i.+p has never failed. He tells him what perfectly, and that's quite all to it. The poor chap will be saved.”
My caller was profoundly stirred. ”Coming here--to Red Gap--his lords.h.i.+p the Earl of Brinstead--actually coming here! My G.o.d! This is wonderful!” He paused; he seemed to moisten his dry lips; he began once more, and now his voice trembled with emotion: ”He will need a place to stay; our hotel is impossible; had you thought----” He glanced at me appealingly.
”I dare say,” I replied, ”that his lords.h.i.+p will be pleased to have you put him up; you would do him quite nicely.”
”You mean it--seriously? That would be--oh, inexpressible. He would be our house guest! The Earl of Brinstead! I fancy that would silence a few of these serpent tongues that are wagging so venomously to-day!”
”But before his coming,” I insisted, ”there must be no word of his arrival. The Honourable George would know the meaning of it, and the woman, though I suspect now that she is only making a show of him, might go on to the bitter end. They must suspect nothing.”