Chapter XV

The next morning Clodagh rose imbued with new decision. During Gore's absence, things had worn a vague, even an impersonal aspect; for, like all her countrywomen, she possessed a fatally pleasant capacity for shelving the disagreeable. While Gore was absent, it had seemed so easy to meet Deerehurst on the footing he elected to maintain--the footing of calm, reassuring friendship. But now, with Gore's return, the aspect of affairs had altered. She was forced to look circumstances in the face--forced to consider her position. She might be a shelver of difficulties; but, before all things, she was a woman in love; and with the instinct that such a condition of mind engenders she had interpreted the look in Gore's eyes when the name of Deerehurst had been mentioned between them--and had recognised that it was not to be ignored.

As she dressed that morning, she mentally surveyed the courses of action that lay open to her; and with each moment of reflection, it became plainer to her understanding that only one was worthy of consideration. However difficult the task, she must make known her position to Deerehurst, and trust to his generosity to find means of helping her.

Her mind was full of this new and somewhat optimistic scheme when she came into the dining-room, where Nance was already reading her morning letters. With a slightly absorbed manner she kissed her sister and, passing round the breakfast-table, picked up her own correspondence.

In a perfunctory way she turned the envelopes over until one arrested her attention, as being intimately connected with her thoughts.

It was a letter from Deerehurst, and she tore it open hastily, skimming the contents with an eager glance.

"DEAR LITTLE LADY," it began,

"Yesterday the fates who watch over my affairs were unkind. The
afternoon was frankly a failure. But I shall claim recompense; I
shall look in upon you in your box at the Apollo at nine to-night.
A vexatious business matter calls me out of town to-day, or I
should strive to see you earlier. But at nine make me welcome.

"Always devotedly,

"DEEREHURST."

She finished reading the note, then laid it down and hurriedly picked up another letter. How annoying it was! How malicious of Chance!

The second letter proved to be from Lady Frances Hope; it was from Brittany, and reproached her extravagantly for not having written since they parted at Tuffnell. Imploring for news of her movements, it informed her that the writer, with Mrs. Bathurst and Valentine Serracauld, was on her way back to London. She followed the lines mechanically, but her mind was elsewhere. At last she threw the letter down.

"Nance!" she said suddenly.

"Darling?"

"Nance, I'm in a horrid difficulty."

Nance's high, arched eyebrows drew together in a frown of concern.

"Nothing bad?" she said. "Nothing about Walter?"

"No. Yes--yes it is. You know Walter dislikes Lord Deerehurst. Well, he was vexed at finding him here yesterday; and after he had gone I--I promised not to see him any more--I promised to break off my friendship with him."

Nance nodded, tactfully refraining from any joy in the proving of her theories.

"Yes?" she prompted softly.

"And now Lord Deerehurst writes that he will be at the Apollo to-night, and is coming round to our box at nine."

Nance pursed up her lips.

"Oh!" she said. "And you'll have to put him off?"

"That's the annoying thing. I can't. At least, not easily."

"Why?"

"Because he's going into the country to-day, and won't be back till evening."

"Send him a note. He must go home to dress before going to the theatre."

"He might dress and dine at his club."

"Write to his club as well."

Clodagh's perplexity showed itself in annoyance.

"How absurd you are, Nance! Fancy writing a man two letters asking him not to see you, and giving no explanation! It would simply bring him round here at ten to-morrow morning."

She poured herself out a cup of tea and drank it hastily.

"Life is a hateful tangle!" she said.

"No it isn't, darling, if you only had a little patience."

Clodagh made a very impatient gesture.

"You don't understand!"

"I understand one thing--that you care for Walter."

Clodagh looked up, her mutable face lit by a sudden change of expression--a sudden look of almost passionate seriousness.

"Yes, I do care for Walter," she said suddenly; "I care so much that I honestly and truly believe it would kill me if anything came between us. I have had lots of things in my life--pleasure, excitement, admiration--but I have never had happiness until now. And I won't lose it!--I can't lose it!"

The words poured forth in vehement sincerity; then, as she saw the expression on Nance's face, she gave a little laugh and put out her hand across the table.

"Dearest! I frightened you! Of course everything comes right, if one has a little patience. Let's begin breakfast properly! My head aches."

With another laugh, she pressed Nance's fingers, gathered up her scattered correspondence, and poured herself out another cup of tea.

Nance spent a long morning with her future mother-in-law, lunching with her afterwards at her hotel. Clodagh, left to herself, ordered her horse for eleven o'clock; and after two hours of recklessly swift riding in the Row, lunched alone at her club. After lunch she wrote two telegrams--one addressed to Deerehurst's London house, the other to the club he most frequented; these she handed in herself at a telegraph office, and having despatched them, drove straight home.

At four o'clock Nance returned to the flat, to be met by the announcement that her sister had a bad headache and had gone to her own room. Full of concern, she flew along the corridor and knocked on Clodagh's door.

In a very low voice Clodagh gave her leave to enter.

She opened the door swiftly; then paused, alarmed. The blinds were drawn, and by the subdued light she saw Clodagh lying on a couch near one of the windows.

"Why, Clo! What's the matter?"

She ran forward and dropped on her knees by the couch.

Clodagh extended two rather cold hands, and took possession of Nance's warm ones.

"Nothing but a wretched headache! It will go, if I lie down all the afternoon and keep quiet to-night."

Nance looked up.

"But how can you--at the play?"

"I'm not going to the play."

"Not going?"

Clodagh drew her sister closer.

"Now, darling, don't make a fuss! If you say one word of objection, my head will get ten times worse than it is. You are just to listen, and do as I tell you. You are to telephone to Mrs. Estcoit and explain what has happened. She will do the chaperoning instead of me."

"But Walter----"

"Walter is to go with you. You are to be as nice to him as you possibly can be. Everything is to be exactly as we arranged--_exactly_ as we arranged."

She raised herself on her elbow to enforce the words.

"And what about Lord Deerehurst?"

Clodagh did not answer immediately; then, sinking back among her pillows, she spoke in a somewhat hurried voice.

"That will be all right; I--I took your advice and sent him two messages, one to Carlton House Terrace and one to his club. He won't be at the theatre."

"But if he doesn't get the message? If he comes all the same?"

"Then be polite to him. And now go, like a good child. Don't ask any more questions. Don't say anything. Let me see you when you're dressed, and I'll give you a letter for Walter. I'm afraid I can't dine with you; I'll just have something sent in here." Then, as if in sudden remorse, she put her arms about Nance's neck and drew her close to her.

"Darling, forgive me, if I seem impossible!"

At half-past eight Nance left the house, having shown herself to her sister, made a last loving inquiry as to her health, and taken possession of the note for Gore.

As she passed out of the bedroom, Clodagh threw off the fur rug that lay across her feet, and sat up with an expression of sharp attention. As the sound of the closing hall door reached her ears, she drew a little breath of excitement and rose from the couch with no appearance of her recent indisposition.

Without calling in Simonetta, she changed from the white silk wrapper she was wearing into a black walking-dress, and crossing to one of the wardrobes took out a black hat and veil.

She scarcely looked at herself, as she smoothed her hair and fastened on her hat. Beneath the enforced repression of the afternoon, there burned in her mind a certain sense of adventure--of enterprise--that turned her hot and cold. For though the Irish nature may procrastinate, it takes action with a very keen zest when once circumstance has compelled a decisive step.

Having finished her dressing, she picked up a pair of gloves, switched off the electric light, and left the room. In the corridor outside she met one of the maids; but without giving the woman time to show any surprise, she made haste to offer an explanation.

"I have forgotten to tell Miss Asshlin something of importance," she said. "I shall have to drive to the theatre and see her. Please ring for the lift. The porter will find me a cab." And without waiting to observe the effect of the somewhat disjointed statement, she passed to the hall door.

A few minutes later the hall porter had put her into a hansom, telling the cabman to drive to the Apollo Theatre.

While the cab doors were being closed, and the order given, Clodagh sat very still; and for a few minutes after they had started, she lay back in her seat, watching the familiar succession of lights and trees and indistinct massed faces that form the nightly picture between Knightsbridge and Piccadilly; but at last, as Hyde Park Corner loomed into view, she sat upright, and raising her hand, shook the roof trap.

The cabman checked the pace of his horse and, opening the little door, looked down.

"Don't mind the Apollo," she said. "Drive to Carlton House Terrace instead."

The man muttered an assent, and, wheeling his horse to the right, cut across the traffic.

Five or six minutes passed while the cab threaded its way across the Green Park, past Buckingham Palace into St. James's Park; then Clodagh gained her first close view of Deerehurst's town house. For one moment she felt daunted by the unfamiliarity of its aspect; but the next, she rallied her determination, and, stepping from the cab, paid her fare and walked resolutely across the pavement to the imposing door.

It was opened at once by a servant in very sombre and decorous livery; who, having thrown the door wide, looked at her, then looked at the cab, just wheeling away from the kerb. There was nothing uncivil in the man's glance--nothing that one could reasonably complain of--yet, to her intense annoyance, Clodagh coloured.

"Is Lord Deerehurst at home?" she asked.

The servant's eyes left the retreating cab.

"Have you an appointment with his lordship?"

"If he is in, Lord Deerehurst will see me. I am Mrs. Milbanke."

At the coldness of her tone, and her ready mention of her name, his manner changed, though a flicker of curiosity passed across his face.

"Are you the lady his lordship is expecting?" he said, in a different voice.

"Yes, Lord Deerehurst is expecting me."

There was a slight pause; then, with the air of one who admits a novice into inner mysteries, he stepped back, ushering her up into the spacious hall.

"Will you kindly step this way?" he said. "His lordship is in his study."

Glad that the ordeal of entering the house was over, Clodagh readily followed the man across the hall, up a wide stairs, and along a softly carpeted corridor. At the end of the passage he paused in front of a curtained door, and, pushing the curtain back, entered an unseen room.

"The lady your lordship is expecting!" she heard him say.

Then he turned quickly and threw the door open for her. An instant later, she had entered Deerehurst's room.

At the moment, her thoughts were too confused to permit of detailed observation of the room; although afterwards, when the interview had taken place, and she had time to sift reality from imagination, the scene and its central figure were destined to stand out with the accuracy of a picture that has made an indelible, if an unconscious, impression upon the observer's mind.

The room was an anomaly, viewed from a studious point of view; but the merely artistic eye would have found nothing to cavil at. It was not large, as one counts rooms in a great London house, though elsewhere it would have seemed spacious. Numberless books in costly bindings were strewn about on tables and in cases, but they were not the books of the thinker. They were the romances, the memoirs, the poems of the last half-century, but not one volume dealt with science, or even with philosophy. The walls were panelled in dark red; some beautiful lamps hung from the ceiling; and in a distant corner a large silver bowl full of crimson roses was set up, as if in homage to beauty, before an exquisitely modelled statue of Venus.

In a quick, half-comprehended flash of instinct, it came to Clodagh that she had never really seen Deerehurst until now, as he stood backgrounded by the atmosphere he himself had created. He was dressed as he had been on the night in Venice when she had first seen him. He wore the curiously cut evening clothes that he always affected, and which gave to his appearance the peculiar distinction that set him apart from other men; the diamond ring that she had noticed on that first night glittered on his hand; and, as then, the black ribbon of his eyeglass showed across his shirt front. But more clearly than in the dusk of the Venetian night she saw the long outline of his face, the peculiar artificial pallor of his skin, the cold vigilance of his eyes. And in that moment of entry a faint, indescribable hesitancy chilled her resolution. Involuntarily she halted on the threshold of the room.

But Deerehurst gave no time for her indecision to mature. As the door closed upon the servant, he came quickly forward and took the hand she mechanically offered him.

For one moment he held her fingers closely; then he lifted them and, before she could anticipate the action, pressed them to his lips.

That a man should kiss a woman's hand by way of greeting is not necessarily a significant thing. It may be a slightly ostentatious act--but it may be nothing more. Uncertain how to construe the movement, Clodagh gave a faint laugh and withdrew her fingers.

"Were you very much surprised to get my wire?"

She moved away from him into the middle of the room. Now that she put it to the test, the interview seemed infinitely more difficult than when contemplated from a distance. She felt nervous and ill at ease.

Watching her with his close, attentive look, Deerehurst drew forward a chair.

"Sit down, little lady!" he said in his thin, impassive voice.

Reassured by the formality of the action, she took the proffered seat.

"Now take off your gloves. We shall feel more at home."

Again she gave a little laugh.

"My gloves! But I must go in five minutes."

"In five minutes? When the night is so young?" He drew forward another chair, and sat down beside her.

"Do you know how glad and proud I feel?"

She looked up quickly. His tone had subtly changed.

"Lord Deerehurst," she said, "I must explain that the reason I came--the reason I came, instead of sending for you or writing----"

Deerehurst leant forward and laid his cold hands over hers.

"Let me take these off! It feels so very formal and unlike ourselves."

He began softly to open the buttons of her glove and draw it deftly from her hand.

"But you haven't listened to what I said," she objected. "I want to explain at once, so that you can understand at once----"

Before answering, he drew off the second glove and laid the two upon the table.

"Why should you explain? Have I ever been lacking in imagination?"

"No--oh no; I did not mean that!"

"Then why explain anything? Don't you think we have fenced with each other long enough?" He picked up the gloves quickly, and again laid them down. "Don't you think I can understand without explanation?"

"Understand?"

"Why you came to me to-night."

"Understand--why I came to-night?"

"I think so."

He turned and looked straight into her eyes.

At the look and the movement the blood leaped to her face; she drew back into her chair.

"And why do you think I came to-night?"

Very swiftly Deerehurst bent forward.

"I think, little lady, that you came because you know that a man cannot be played with for ever. And because, being a very proud woman, you will not say in so many words, 'I give you leave to love me!' Dear little Clodagh!" He suddenly put out his hand towards hers. "It has all been very delightful--your reticence and your innocence. But we both know that such pretty things are perishable."

Clodagh sat perfectly still. She did not attempt to withdraw her hand; she did not attempt to rise. She sat watching him as if fascinated, while a hundred recollections of looks, of words, of insinuations directed against her and him by Lady Frances Hope--by Rose Bathurst--by other women of their set--strayed in nightmare fashion across her mind.

Deerehurst sat watching her, his hand holding hers, his eyes steadily reading her face. Then suddenly he gave a short laugh and leant back in his chair.

"Little actress!" he said.

The words, but more than the words the tone in which they were spoken, roused her. She rose incontinently to her feet, a sudden memory of Serracauld and the card-room at Tuffnell sweeping across her mind.

"Lord Deerehurst," she said breathlessly, "there is some terrible mistake. You utterly, utterly misunderstand."

It was Deerehurst's turn to show emotion. For the first time in her knowledge of him, the mask of impassivity dropped from his face; his cold eyes gleamed unpleasantly.

"And how, little lady? I am not often accused of misreading men--and women."

"You think----" She paused, unable to find the words she needed. She felt like one who has inadvertently stepped upon shifting sands, where the ground had seemed most secure.

"You think----" she began again.

But she got no further. With a silent movement, Deerehurst laid his hand upon her arm.

"Don't you think we have fenced long enough? Don't you think I have been extraordinarily patient?"

Clodagh turned very cold.

"Patient?" she said indistinctly.

He drew her suddenly closer to him; and before she could resist, he had kissed her hair, her lips, her neck.

"Yes, patient, because I have never before asked for this. Because I have been content to kiss your hand, when I might long ago----" He bent over her again. But something in the white face and wild eyes that confronted him arrested him. He drew back and looked at her.

"Come!" he said. "The play is over! Give me a kiss of your own accord."

Clodagh said nothing. Terror mastered her.

"Come! Give me a kiss!"

She lay almost passive in his embrace, her lips parted, her eyes fixed on his.

He gave another short laugh, half indulgent, half triumphant.

"What a little saint! Come! Show me why you came to me to-night! Be human! Be what you know you are!"

Clodagh made no answer; but he felt her sway a little in his arms.

"What is it?" he asked sharply. Selfish annoyance was written on his face, though he asked the question solicitously.

"I feel faint," she said--"a little faint."

"Faint? Nonsense! It will pass. Rest for a moment." Without ceremony, he half lifted her across the room to a couch that stood between the fireplace and the door.

"Poor little girl! Don't be frightened! It will pass in a minute. Is there anything you would like?"

Clodagh opened her eyes.

"A little water, I think," she said in a tremulous voice.

His face cleared.

"Or some champagne! Nothing would pick you up like a glass of champagne. Why did I not think of it before? Lie perfectly still! We will have some champagne in one moment."

With the possibilities held out by the idea he turned eagerly from the couch, and crossed the room to the electric bell that was placed beside his desk.

But, quick as lightning, the instant his back was turned, Clodagh was on her feet. With a movement so swift and silent that only fear could have inspired it, she slipped to the door, opened it, and was speeding down the long corridor to the stairs.

The house was silent. The upper portion seemed darker than when she had arrived. The hall alone lay brightly lighted--a place of hope and promise, figuring the world outside--the good wholesome world lying suddenly within her reach.

She ran down the broad stairs, indifferent to the fact that the servant who had admitted her had risen from a seat near the door, and was looking at her in frank surprise. Her ears were strained to catch any sound from upstairs, her eyes were on the door.

As she hurried across the hall, the man came forward.

"Do you require a cab, madam?" he asked a little doubtfully.

"No. Just open the door!"

Still with a shade of uncertainty he obeyed, and at the same instant Deerehurst's voice sounded from the head of the stairs.

What he said--whether he addressed her or the servant--Clodagh never knew. At the mere sound of his high, thin tones she went blindly forward through the open door.

As she passed down the steps, a cab wheeled round the corner of Carlton House Terrace. Instinctively she looked towards it, still animated by the desire for flight. But the next instant she looked away again, realising that it already held a fare, and that there was luggage on the roof.

In the perturbation of the moment she failed to see, what was infinitely more material, that the occupant of the cab was Valentine Serracauld; that he had leant forward in sudden, eager curiosity as she passed down the steps of the house to which he was driving; and that, as she turned her head in his direction, he had drawn quickly back into the shadow of his seat.