Chapter THE EIGHTH: Round the Corner (1)

I

Lady Dawn was the first to recover her composure. "Why, Terry, I thought you were in bed!"

"I was."

Terry's eyes shifted from Lady Dawn to Tabs. They were startled and misty with sleep. She seemed only half-awake. Her hand rested on the door as if ready for retreat. Her square little face was flushed; her gold, bobbed hair was flattened where it had pressed against the pillow. She was clad in a filmy negligee; her bare feet had been pushed hastily into slippers and peeped out rosily from beneath the hem. She looked immature--the way she had in days gone by when he had tiptoed to her bedside through the darkness to feel her tight little arms leap stranglingly about his neck. She had been really a tiny girl then. Why couldn't she have stayed like that always? Why need she have roused in him this torturing desire which she did nothing but rebuff?

"I was asleep. I heard voices. I thought----"

What had she thought? How much had she seen and heard? How long had she been standing there?

Tabs attempted to bridge the awkward silence. "I drove down from London." Then he added, "That was last night."

None of them had stirred. Lady Dawn advanced from the window into the pool of lamplight. "I think I know what you thought--that something was wrong. It was. I nearly fainted. If it hadn't been for Lord Taborley----But come inside. Why do you remain standing there?"

Terry stepped just across the threshold. Having closed the door, she leant against it, still holding the knob in her hand. It was plain that she was making an effort to be valiant. She looked fragile as a peeled white wand; like a flower, shy and dew-wet. Life had not yet commenced to break her. The clinging folds of her wrap emphasized her slenderness, the grace of her lines and the girlish contours of her figure.

Lady Dawn went to her and put her arm about her. "You're afraid. Of what are you afraid? Surely not of Lord Taborley? He's been telling me---- To be loved like that---- There was a time when I would have been proud."

Terry's left hand went up to her breast. Her wild violet eyes looked straight before her, seeking always the face of Tabs. They seemed to call to him. He came slowly to the table where she could see him. It was his chance. Lady Dawn was his advocate. It was the chance for which he had waited.

He was contrasting the two women before him; the one in her dainty, enviable promise and the dumb hostility of her youth; the other in the gentleness of her experience and the charity of her dearly purchased understanding. Terry, whom he had loved since she was a child, had become inscrutable. But Lady Dawn---- Was it her suffering that made him know her as he knew himself?

"I hadn't meant to intrude on you," he apologized. "I hadn't the least idea you were here. How should I have had? You disappeared without warning; at your father's house your address was refused me. Lady Dawn will bear me out that, at the very moment you entered, I was assuring her that my visit had nothing to do with you. Probably you heard."

"Nothing to do with me!" There was relief in her way of saying it. She visibly relaxed. "Then it isn't because of me at all that you're here?"

The suppressed eagerness of her question was wounding. She wanted to hear him state more positively that she had had nothing to do with his visit. Whatever she had seen before they had become aware of her, had had no power to rouse her jealousy. She could have given him no stronger proof of how absolutely he had ceased to count. He smiled bitterly. "Not because of you at all, Terry. The reason for my being here is strictly private between Lady Dawn and myself. I didn't come to worry you. You may set your mind at rest."

"Then you didn't know or even suspect----"

He laughed unhappily. "What more can I say to convince you? I haven't the least idea what you suppose I could suspect. What business is it of mine to suspect anything? And if I did, what license should I have to interfere? We're not as we once were. There are no longer any sentimental obligations that would hold us accountable to each other. You've shown me that you consider our relation ended. In the face of that, I should scarcely follow you into the country where, by all accounts, you've come to escape me. It's purely a coincidence that you find me here."

He caught Lady Dawn's eyes resting on him. They were wide and clear and interrogating. He knew what she was remembering: that it was in this room within the hour that he had said, "But I want her. I can't do without her. I want no one else." Self-ridicule tempered his spirit into sharpness. He turned again to Terry.

"Once and for all I should like to set your doubts at rest. You need have no fear that I shall ever inconvenience you. We're bound to meet from time to time, but I pledge you my word that I shall never refer to the past. You're of an age to make decisions for yourself; you've decided against me. You're acting quite within your privilege when you discard old friends. You'll wonder why I state obvious facts. I'm doing so in order that you may feel certain that I've withdrawn whatever claims I had for influencing your movements. I shall always be interested---- But as for presuming that anything that I might say or do would make the least difference to your plans, I shouldn't be so foolish----"

Breaking away from Lady Dawn, she crossed over to him. Resting her hand on his arm, she sank her voice and commenced speaking so hurriedly that he alone could make out what she said.

"I've been false and foolish. I don't need you to tell me. If you knew how miserable I've been and how I've despised myself---- But I can't help it. I go on doing things. I never used to be a beast--least of all to you; never until you wanted me to marry you. If I can act like this now, what sort of a wife---- Can't you understand? I'm trying to spare you. But I won't have you hate me, Tabs. I can't endure that. Every second that I've kept away from you, I've been wanting--not the _you_ that you are now, but the old you. Won't you start afresh, liking me the way you did when--before this happened?" She seized his hand on the impulse and pressed it to her lips. It was the humble act of a small girl. "Love me just a little. I'm not really bad. Please, please forgive me my wickedness, dear Tabs."

He stood dumbfounded and embarrassed. If they had been alone, he would have known what to do. He was at a loss to find a motive for this display of passion. Was it a ruse to get him back? He crushed the suspicion as unworthy. Then was it what she had seen that had made her possessive? Her tears fell scalding on his hands.

He drew her to him. "There, there, little Terry! You mustn't. There's nothing to cry about. There's nothing wicked in not having loved a man. It's a thing that can't be helped."

At the sign of his relenting, she threw away the last of her control. Burying her face against his coat, she clung to him. All that he could see of her was her golden head and her slight body, quivering with sobbing. Her voice reached him muffled. "But I am wicked. I've pushed you from me. If you knew---- If you did, you wouldn't touch me."

There had been no sound, yet something warned him. He looked up. The door was closing.

"Lady Dawn," he called. In his voice there was the tremor of anxiety.

On the point of vanishing, she glanced back across her shoulder. "What is it, Lord Taborley?"

The calmness of her austerity made emotion seem shallow. There was a touch of scorn in her repose.

"Won't you help?"

She smiled faintly. "I was. I was going."

"Then please don't. It's late. Both you and she must be worn out."

Like a figure of silver, she came coldly back. But there was only tenderness in her voice when she spoke. "Terry, did you hear what Lord Taborley said? He thinks he ought to be going."

Slipping her arm about the girl, she led her from him. Their footsteps died out on the turret stairs.

He waited, hoping that Lady Dawn would return. Now that she was gone, he was invaded with his old loneliness. The dead lords eyed him cynically from their canvases. Through leaded panes the moonlight fell. It seemed the sorcery of her spirit. The perfume of the rose-garden was her breath. How pale she had made his dream of Terry! How trivial she made all women look when she stood beside them! There was nothing in this gift of youth for which he had clamored. Terry's youth, had he married her, would have been his scourge. He knew at last what it was that he required at the hands of a woman--it was rest.

There was no sound. The Castle was intensely still. He lowered the wick of the lamp before he left, watched the flame splutter and waited till it sank. Tiptoeing softly down the stairs, he slipped out noiselessly into the romance of the summer's night.

II

Next morning, for the first few seconds after he had wakened, he lay wondering why he was so happy. Then he remembered.

He had never had a friendship with a woman. From the start, though he had hidden the fact from himself, his supposed friendship with Maisie had been nothing less than lazy courtship. Terry had detected that when she had said that he wouldn't have been so interested in Maisie if she hadn't been so desperately good-looking. Until this morning he had had no faith in such friendships. He had believed that their fundamental attraction, however well concealed, must always be sex. They could never be more than a pretense, in which either the man or the woman was cheating--the one being anxious to give more than friendship, the other deriving amusement from giving less. He had held that such relations between men and women were inherently dishonest, doomed to end in a clash of desire or to broaden into an honorable love affair. There was no middle course between coveting a woman and neglecting her as entirely dispensable.

But this morning his point of view was altered. He was confident that his interest in Lady Dawn was on an utterly different footing. He had never had this peacefulness of feeling for any woman. He marveled at it. He had to fight the disillusion that it might be no more than a mood. His liking for her had come to him so suddenly. Suddenness in the emotions prompted him to distrust. Yet his present contentment seemed as secure as it was incomprehensible. His new affection compensated him for all previous failures and atoned for the humiliation of every past regret.

At that word "affection" he halted himself. Was it affection that he entertained for Lady Dawn? He took a good look at the suspected word and decided that it was. But it was the affection of reverence. In owning this much he qualified his admission by insisting that his affection was totally devoid of passion. Passion in the presence of Lady Dawn looked hysteric and paltry. She inspired a serenity which had nothing to do with the physical. It was the charm of her character that entranced him. Her body scarcely figured in his thoughts; when it did, it failed to stir him. It was no more than the gracious vehicle through which the beauty of her spirit was expressed.

His paramount emotion was gratitude--gratitude that she, who was reputed to be so cold, should so instantly have unveiled herself. There was a startling purity in the frankness with which she had bared her spirit to him. It left him awed and touched. He recognized the generosity which had prompted her; she had realized his need of a woman's trust. And so she had withheld nothing that would comfort him. She had made him feel safe, the way a mother does. She had picked up the little boy that lies hidden in the heart of every man, and had folded him in her breast.

It had been shameless of her. He had not guessed that a woman could be so good.

And she had made him so finally sure of her. He felt that he could leave her and know that her protection would follow him. He could return and be equally certain that none of her understanding would have vanished. She was the first woman who had impressed him with her wisdom; the only one who had had the courage to offer him her strength.

And this was not love. He smiled exultantly. It was nobler and infinitely more rare. Love, as he had read of it and mistaken it in his experience, was a devastating energy, greedy and devouring. It was a continual, nagging contention between self-abasement and hostility. It was a humiliating attempt on the part of a man to barter something, which was persistently undervalued, for the feminine equivalent which was as persistently hoarded. It was an amalgam of physical yearning, wounded vanity and resentment of contempt. It was egotism masquerading as altruism. It was a dancing bear lumbering at the heels of insanity. Of all the passions it was the most hypocritical--a snare-setter, a digger of pitfalls, an enemy disguised as one's dearest friend. He thanked God there was no hint of love in his new-found friendship. Like an outcast fleeing from a storm, he had blundered against the door of this woman's charity, had felt it yield beneath his touch, and had found himself immersed in the blessedness of instant and unmerited rest.

Lazily he commenced to dress. From his window he could see the Castle, perched grave and gray against the forehead of the clouds. He wondered whether she was up, how she was occupying herself, whether she was expecting him? He listened to her voice in the silence of his brain, like the far-away singing of contralto bells. He saw her still face, her slow smiling, the proud, sweet stateliness of her pacing steps. Then his thoughts went back to whether he was expected.

If he were not---- The thought chilled him. She had said nothing to encourage him to seek her afresh. What if his reappearance should cause her embarrassment--an embarrassment which she would betray by withholding herself? It was quite likely she would impute to him wrong motives. Already she might have repented of intimacies she had allowed. He had placed his arm about her. With the injustice of most women, though she had permitted it, she might be blaming him because the act had been witnessed by Terry. Terry of all persons! Having had time to reflect, she might be accusing him of gallantries. It was not so long since she had confused him with Adair. From her untypical knowledge of him she was entitled to estimate him as the kind of man to whom promiscuous caresses were a practice. He turned coward at the recollection of his daring. Last night it had been so involuntary and had seemed so natural. Why had he done it? Why had she allowed it? It had been the liberty of a plow-boy with a village-girl. There would be little room for wonder if, when next they met, she fixed a No Man's Land of pride between herself and his familiarity. She would have good reason, for their companionship would be shared by Terry. Poor little Terry, with her exaggerated sins and distorted self-accusations!

He wandered down to breakfast disturbed by these apprehensions. As the morning dragged by they took shape as facts. Towards noon he could tolerate his uncertainty no longer. He turned his steps in the direction of the Castle, having first determined, if he found himself unwelcome, to announce that the purpose of his visit was to bid good-by before setting out for London.

III

He had been shown into the turret room and supplied with the daily papers, while the same grave image who had admitted him the night before, had departed in search of her Ladyship. More to calm himself than to satisfy his curiosity, he commenced to glance through the news.

It was a disjointed world that the pages reflected--not at all the kingdom round the corner for which the war had been fought. Honor, patriotism, heroism seemed forgotten words. The old ruthless scramble of commercialism had restarted. The honesty of everybody, whether individuals, governments or nations, was being doubted. Class and race hatreds had broken loose. Strikes were pending. The Allies were allied only in name; they gnashed their teeth at one another across the council-table in Paris. The lying game of diplomacy had been revived. Poison-notes were being exchanged. The tabby-cat statesmen who had been too old to fight, were busy sowing the seeds of future wars. The politicians who had nailed mankind to the cross, were casting lots for the raiment which had survived the sacrifice. No one asked, "Is this righteousness?" The only question was, "How much of it belongs to me?" Meanwhile, the children of honester men who had died, starved by their hundreds of thousands. Mothers pressed sick babies to their milkless breasts. The mutilated, stoical with neglect, shuffled along the pavements. Fanatics of despair turned hopeful eyes to Russia where a devilment was brewing which, should it overboil, would pour destruction across five continents. No one cared.

He glanced through the window at the quiet landscape, lying green and sun-dappled against the wet, gray streak of summer sky. Was his own experience so universal? Were kingdoms perpetually round the corner, always and always out of sight?

As he again took up the paper, his eye was caught by a head-line: STEELY JACK RUNS FOR PARLIAMENT. Immediately he forgot his pessimism and became absorbed. Braithwaite had come out with the true story of his life. He was calling on the seven million men who had seen service to fight on in peace for the ideals for which they had fought in war. He insisted that if they cast their votes together as one man, they could control any election. If they combined with the patriot ex-soldiers of other nations, they could control the world. He was out to smash politics and the disastrous iniquity of political compromise. His aim was to restore the comradeship and sharing which had enabled the old front-line to stand fast. He was establishing a paper. He was speechifying. He was to hold an immense mass meeting in the Albert Hall----

Tabs laughed in sheer excitement. Here was one man at any rate who wasn't content to miss his kingdom. He might have known it. He could see Braithwaite's bleak look as clearly as if he stood before him. His instinct was to join him and say to him, in the words of the coster, "You and me was pals out there." He'd never lost an inch of trench.

"Bravo, Braithwaite!"

IV

"I beg your pardon, your Lordship."

Tabs looked up. The dignified image had returned and was standing in the doorway, with his chin thrust out and his nose at a high angle with his collar.

The man coughed deferentially. "If your Lordship will follow me----"

But at that moment he heard her calling from beneath the turret wall, "Lord Taborley!"

Jumping to his feet, he hurried to the window and leant out. She was in her riding habit, standing on the terrace above the rose-garden. "I've just got back from my morning ride. I have to visit the kennels. I was wondering whether you would accompany me."

He turned to the footman. "If you'll show me the way out to the terrace, I can find Lady Dawn myself."

She had moved farther away to where the steps led down between the rose-bushes. As he came towards her through the sunlight, she pretended not to notice him, but stood meditatively flicking the dust from the toe of her boot with her crop. Even when he joined her, she did not look up. They descended the steps in silence. When they had turned along a path, where no one could observe them, she raised her eyes. "I was afraid you had left."

He smiled, unconsciously imitating her quietness. "And I, too, was afraid. I was afraid you would not want me."

"Why not?" She stopped to pluck a bud in passing. "I should think any woman would want you."

He looked to see if she were chaffing. "Last night," he explained, "you were present when at least one woman didn't want me. That was why----"

She shot a glance at him with her honest, stone-gray eyes. Her hands started out to touch him, but she recalled them. "You must feel sorry for her," she said softly. "She's so young. I think you'll live to thank her. She'll learn that men like you don't come every day--only once in a lifetime."

Uneasily he harked back to her first statement. "Why did you fear that I had left?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "You had nothing for which to stay."

"There was you."

"Me!" She laughed wisely. "You had to say that out of politeness. In a man's world I'm of no consequence. I know how I appear in your eyes. I've been married, so I'm no longer a novelty. I'm not so young as I was; I shall be older. And then I'm a mother--you forget that, Lord Taborley. Oh no, I have no attractions to offer."

"You have friendship."

"Friendship!" She repeated the word with a shake of her head. "Men never want merely friendship; they want less or more. They want vivacity--some one who will halve their years, with whom they can sport and romp. Some one who can have babies to them--little pink babies, with squirmy toes and baldy heads. They want to begin everything afresh. They're not looking for another man's left-overs. Even in the matter of disillusionizing a woman, they want to do that for themselves. Men who've not been married, demand that a woman shall be doing everything, as they are doing it, for the first time. It's their right."

"But there's another side," he protested. "A woman who's been married has gained experience--the most dearly purchased form of knowledge, as you yourself have told me. She can be trusted not to expect the impossible. She's been over the course and knows the pitfalls. She's learnt the value of compromise. She ought to have learnt how to be kind. I think kindness is the thing that matters most. Few people are born with it. You have to have been wretched to acquire the knack of it."

"And yet you have it," she glanced sideways at him humorously, "and you haven't been married."

Realizing the drift of their conversation, he pulled himself up. He feared lest she suspected him of flirting. "You're very generous, Lady Dawn."

They had arrived at a lookout point, where a lichen-covered summerhouse stood, protected on the steeper side by a low stone wall. Below them lay the moat, green-scummed and starred with water-lilies; throbbing in the midday haze, the emerald sward of the parkland seemed to float. Against the wall she halted. "What makes you say that I'm generous?"

For all his thirty-six years, he blushed like a boy. "Because you take me seriously. After last night you might have been either amused or annoyed. The position in which I placed you was false. You thought that I'd come from London to urge Terry to marry me. When I told you that there was no one else in the world, you believed that I knew she was staying with you--that I was trying to persuade you to plead my cause. The anti-climax, after she'd surprised us, was the height of tragical absurdity. It reduced all my high-flown sentiments to farce. I wonder you were able to prevent yourself from laughing. Terry could afford such a scene; she's little more than a child. I can't. With four more years to my age I could pass for her father. No, please. I want to be hard on myself. Let me finish what I'm saying. I've only met you twice; on each occasion I've suffered a loss of dignity. The other time was when I tried to turn you away from Maisie's door. You're probably aware that since then, until Pollock's return, I've seen far more of your sister than was wise. In fact I've offered myself like a job lot. And yet there was a time when I was content to wait. I believed that one had only to be faithful and he'd find what he hoped for round some future corner. You're a proud woman, Lady Dawn. You admire strength almost cruelly. You're inhumanly infallible----"

Her eyes filled. She slipped her hand through his arm and patted it comfortingly. By the contact she was comforting herself as well. "I'm not. I wasn't infallible when I married. My pride came later to cover up my fault. I don't say it to flatter you--any woman would want you."

He gazed down at her. "How gentle you are!"

"I understand."

They strolled along in contented silence. They had trespassed far beyond the bounds of discretion. A diversion was caused when they reached the kennels. He watched her among the leaping hounds. She employed the same tactics to quiet them that she had used with himself. With a coaxing word and a caress she had them crouching at her feet. He listened to the precision of her orders and the definiteness of her enquiries.

"You'd have made a business woman," he remarked.

She laughed. "I could if I'd been forced." And then, "By the way, you're lunching with me, aren't you?"

"I'll be delighted. But, since confessions are the fashion, I may as well make a clean breast. If I had found that you were upset with what happened last night, I'd planned to tell you I was off to London."

"But you're not?"

"One doesn't run away from happiness."

He was afraid he had offended. Her expression clouded. She withdrew and walked a few paces apart. He had come almost to the point of apologizing, when she turned to him eyes that were misty--suspiciously misty for a woman who never cried. "I'm glad you had the courage to tell me, because I haven't felt so happy for---- I daren't own how long."

On entering the Castle, she left him while she went to change for lunch. As he waited, he reminded himself that in a handful of seconds he would be meeting Terry. The anticipation provided him with none of the old elation. With what ecstasy he used to watch for her in days gone by, as though the world was reborn when she stood before him! Far from feeling ecstasy, he was filled with uneasiness. Her presence would recall to him his failure and would mock something beautiful that had commenced in his life. What that something was he hadn't estimated. All he knew was that, with the coming of Lady Dawn, every one of his problems had mysteriously found settlement. He was no longer humiliated. He was once more sure of his direction. He felt unreasonably strong and triumphant, as though the goal of his striving was in sight. His old dread of growing middle-aged impressed him as puerile. Whatever his age, she would always keep pace with him. She was the same age as he was. Had he been younger or older, he might have missed her or gone by her with unseeing eyes.

When he entered the room in which lunch was served, he found that Lady Dawn was alone. Glancing at the table, he perceived with surprise that only two covers had been laid. She read the question in his eyes and answered it.

"Terry's away. I forgot to tell you. She had an early breakfast and motored into Gloucester before I was up. The car's come back without her. She's sent no word as to when or how she proposes to return."

"Something urgent?" he asked casually.

"More likely shopping. A woman's shopping's always urgent. I'm no wiser than you are. The first I heard about her going was when I was informed she had gone."

He relapsed into thought. It wasn't difficult to conjecture the reason for Terry's errand. She'd been no more anxious to meet him just at present than he had been to meet her. She'd taken the day off in the hope that by nightfall he would have departed.

Another solution occurred to him. "Did she ever mention to you a General Braithwaite?"

Lady Dawn met his eyes with a hint of warning. Listeners were present. "I believe she did," she admitted discouragingly.

"The only reason why I asked was that his name's in the morning papers. She may have seen it before she started. If so, it might explain----"

"John will know." Lady Dawn turned to the footman. "Did Miss Beddow read the papers, John, this morning before she left?"

"She did, my Lady. It was after she had read them that she ordered the car."

"Then that's it." Tabs dismissed the subject as unworthy of further discussing. "She went to Gloucester to hurry off a telegram of congratulation. Braithwaite's had a stroke of luck."

"If that is all," Lady Dawn smiled mischievously, "I wonder that she didn't come back in the car. A telegram can be dispatched in five minutes."

From then on, the threat of Terry's return hung over them, urging them to make the most of their respite. Everything that had started between them was so new and uncertain. No time-limit had been set to Tabs' visit; his original reason for coming to Dawn Castle was exhausted. There was no sufficiently plausible excuse for prolonging his stay in the village longer. A little absence, a little carelessness of forgetting, a few new interests and who could say but that this sudden need of each other, which had rushed them together with such compelling impulse, might not subside as unaccountably as it had occurred. In both their hearts this dread was present--this distrust of the permanency of their emotions. If they parted, they might meet again to find the magic irrecoverable.

After lunch they retired to the room in the turret. She chose her favorite chair by the window and sat there sewing, with her work-basket at her feet. He sat opposite, watching the busy occupation of her hands. He noticed that many of the garments which she mended belonged to the small boy whom he had seen in the rose-garden.

She looked up. "I always do everything for Eric."

It was later, when tea was being served, that the small boy himself peered in on them. Tabs caught his jealous eyes peering round the doorway. "Won't you come and talk to me?"

But the child ran away, despite his mother's coaxings, and refused to divulge his place of hiding.

She apologized. "He's not quite eight yet--the only sweetheart I have." Later she said, "I've been thinking of what we talked last night--I mean his father. Would it be too far-fetched to believe that it was really he and not your imagination, that piloted us together?"

"Not far-fetched at all. I'm sure of it. He wanted us to meet that I might tell you----"

"What?" She bent forward, folding her hands in her lap and watching him searchingly. "Not about his heroism; he'd take that for granted. Not that he'd loved me; we both knew it. Not anything self-pitying or weak that would rouse my regret----"

"You know." His assertion was almost a question. "Somehow he's got his message across to you."

She lowered her eyes and resumed her sewing. "I couldn't sleep last night. I lay awake puzzling and remembering--remembering the long waste of years, the loneliness and the love that had turned to bitterness. And now, when ordinarily there would be no chance to make amends, he sends you to me, speaking through your lips and taking possession of your thoughts. He's trying to do something for me--something that will blot out my past for me, as his sacrifice has blotted out his past for him. Something comforting and tender----"

The seconds ticked by. If she had guessed the dead man's desire, she refused to put it into words. The silence grew painful.

Tabs looked at his watch. It was nearer six than five. He rose reluctantly. "I suppose I should be going."

"But you're staying in the village to-night?"

"I hadn't intended. There'll be moonlight. I was planning to be in London by morning."

"Don't do that. You'll make me think you're afraid of meeting Terry. Dine with me to-night."

She had risen. Her gesture was almost one of pleading. He smiled tenderly and took her hand. "Your wishes are mine. I'll run down to the inn and dress."

By the time he returned it was nearly seven. She met him with ill-concealed trouble. "Terry's not back. It's strange. You see I'm responsible for her. And----"

The footman entered with a letter. "For your Lordship."

"Are you sure?" Then Tabs recollected. "Yes, of course. I left my address with Ann."

As he took the letter he scanned the handwriting. "Odd!" When the man had left, he turned to Lady Dawn. "It's from her. Did you guess?"

V

"But why should she be writing when she'll be seeing you any minute?"

Tabs squared his lips. He began to feel the stirring of a storm of anxiety. "Perhaps, because she doesn't intend to be seeing me any minute." He looked at the postmark. It had been mailed at eleven o'clock that morning in Gloucester. He tore the envelope and commenced to read. Before he had read far, he turned with a worried expression to Lady Dawn. "This concerns you as well." She came and stood beside his elbow. They glanced through the pages together. It was written on commercial note-paper of _The New Inn_, Gloucester, and ran:

DEAREST TABS:

I love you very much--just as much as ever. I always want you to feel
sure of that. But my love isn't the kind you've asked for. It never
can be. Because of this there are so many things that I've not been
able to tell you--so I've been avoiding and deceiving you ever since
you came back. I know I've not been honorable. A promise once given
ought to be sacred; I gave you my promise that I would marry you. But
that's all I could do for you now--just marry you; I couldn't give
you the other things you would have a right to expect. I ought to
have said, the other things you have earned and deserved more than
any man. So, though I married you, I should still be robbing you,
which would be even more treacherous than not fulfilling a promise.

That I'm in love with General Braithwaite is no news to you. Love may
not be the proper word. At least I'm so infatuated with him that
there's no room in my heart for any other man. Do you remember that
night in March, when you dined with us and asked my father for my
hand, and next morning early I came round in a panic to your house? I
didn't dare tell you all my trouble. The General had urged me to
elope with him. I _wish, wish, wish_ that I had. I should be his now
and sure of him. By delaying and suspecting I've all but lost him.

I always knew that he would be a big man--as big after the war as he
was while it lasted. What this morning's papers say about him proves
it. So for all these reasons and because I can't bear to face you at
the Castle, I'm taking my fate in my hands. Please tell Lady Dawn
that I shan't be back and excuse me in any way you can. I'm only
carrying one small bag; she can send the rest of my things after me.

There's one request I have to make--that neither of you will notify
my father till at least twenty-four hours have elapsed. All my future
happiness may depend on your granting this request. It's the last
favor I shall ever ask you.

And now, my very dear Tabs, almost my brother, if this hurts you,
please take revenge by bundling me out of your mind. I was never your
equal, never worthy of you, though you placed me on a pedestal that
was far above you. Comfort yourself by believing that if you'd
married me, you would have found this out. What a wretched quitter I
appear in my own eyes after all you suffered in the trenches, to have
reserved this worse suffering for you, when your life has been spared
and you had counted on me for happiness. My entire body's not worth
your little finger. And yet how good you've always been to me--

You'll get a better woman than I am. I think I already know who
she'll be; if I'm right, I shall be so very glad.

I feel so humble--so apologetic. It's such a different ending from
the one we dreamt when I saw you off on the troop-train with my hair
all blowy down my back. There's nothing gained by recalling that. I
meant so well by you; you've always been so much to me, my dearest,
loyal Tabs.

Even though you despise me, I still insist on signing myself,

Your ever affectionate

TERRY.

"I'm sorry." It was Lady Dawn.

He shook himself. He was so raw that even her sympathy almost wounded. "Don't pity me. It's she we've got to help. What's to be done?"

"Done! I haven't thought. What can we----"

"We can follow her and bring her back. We've got to--and we haven't much time. You must have read between the lines what her letter meant. After having turned Braithwaite down, she's gone off to beg him to elope with her. When a girl puts herself at a man's mercy like that, there's no knowing how he'll act. The chances are that, whatever he does, it won't be honorable. We're got to prevent her, not only for her own sake, but for his sake as well. He's just started on a great career; if this story leaks out, he'll be smashed. They'll both be smashed, for that matter. If she'd give him time to marry her honestly, it wouldn't matter whether her family had consented. But she doesn't intend to--that's why she's asked us to keep quiet for twenty-four hours. What we've got to do is not to stop her from marrying him--no one cares about that; but to catch her before she runs off with him."

"But we don't know where----"

"No, we don't." He spoke rapidly. "But we can find out. Ann can tell us. Ann's a maid in my house; she was practically engaged to him when he was my valet. Now that I look back, I'm sure she's known everything from the start and has seen this coming. We can get Braithwaite's address from her; when we know that, we shall have laid our hands on Terry."

While he had been speaking, Lady Dawn had been rummaging through her desk. He went and bent over her, his hands on her shoulders. She was fingering a time-table. She looked up at him with her head leant back. "There's no train--nothing that will reach London till morning."

"Then we must motor."

Her face was still raised to his. She spoke softly. "_We!_ You say _we_ every time. Do you mean---- What do you mean, Lord Taborley?"

His intensity relaxed. Flushing with confusion, he stared down at the whiteness of her breast, the queenliness of her, her graying hair and her expectant, tender mouth. "I want you to come with me. I ought to have asked you properly. I've been taking you for granted and ordering you about."

She remained very still, gazing directly up into his troubled eyes. He thought she was judging him. At last she whispered, "Don't be sad. I like you to order me."

VI

They had all night before them. If they left the Castle by ten, they could be in Brompton Square by five in the morning. Nothing would be gained by arriving earlier.

Now that the first shock was over, they went into dinner as if nothing had happened. In the long, dim banqueting-hall there were only the two of them. They sat close together at the illuminated high-table like castaways, marooned on an island, in an ocean of brooding shadows. While they dined they conversed in lowered voices to prevent their plans from being overheard. It was decided to take Lady Dawn's Rolls Royce and to leave the runabout behind. The reason acknowledged was that it would be more dependable. The reason unmentioned was that the presence of a chauffeur would lend an air of much needed propriety.

Gradually as they talked, the seriousness of their errand dropped from sight; their journey took on the complexion of an adventure. Its unconvention clothed it with romance. How unconventional it was they realized when Lady Dawn gave the butler orders concerning her departure. He was an old man, rigid with tradition, who, having served the family for three generations, had acquired the aristocratic bearing of his masters.

"At ten o'clock, your Ladyship. To where? To London! That's a long journey to take at night. And the car will call at the inn first to pick up his Lordship's luggage. Oh, I see, my Lady. I thought at first that your Ladyship was going."

"I am," she corrected with quiet dignity. "Lord Taborley and I are going on an errand of great importance. I don't want this talked about. You understand? And who'll be driving? Witherall! Then warn Witherall to keep silent."

When the butler had withdrawn, she turned to Tabs. "I'm breaking all my precedents for you. I couldn't have told him, if I hadn't had you to keep me in countenance. He looked so shocked that he made me feel as if it were you and I, instead of Terry, who were doing the eloping. I'm sure that's what he thought. There'll be gossip. I shall have to pay the piper; but I'm too happy to-night to look ahead."

"It hadn't occurred to me----" Tabs hesitated. "I've been unpardonably inconsiderate. I see it now--you'll be what they call compromised. In that case, it will be wiser----"

"It won't." She bent towards him laughing. Her pearls, nestling in the white cleft of her bosom, gleamed dully, shaken by her quiet merriment. In the short time that he had known her, she had become extraordinarily girlish--almost girlish enough to put back the hands of time for the proper man. "It won't. It won't be wiser. It's never wiser to turn your back on happiness. I'd dare anything to-night. You've invited me; you can't wriggle out."

"If that's how you feel----" He checked himself. Her mischief warned him. Instinctively he knew that she was about to ask precisely how he thought she felt. He cancelled what he had intended saying and substituted, "It's an ill-wind that blows nobody any good. And it's poor Terry we have to thank for this chance of being together a little longer!"

"Is it a chance? You're not bored? You do want me?"

He raised his eyes slowly. Her pain had startled him. Up to that moment he hadn't been awake to how utterly he had come to want her. For an instant he had a glimpse of the emptiness of life, should he find himself deprived of her comradeship.

"You didn't need to ask me that!" he said quietly. "And now it's my turn to be inquisitive. Does it make you glad to hear me own that I want you?"

He watched her color rise. It was like the elfin tiptoeing of her spirit behind the white transparent walls of her flesh. It climbed the smooth ascent of her breast, passed up the columned tower of her throat and stared out at him excitedly in the brightness of her eyes.

"Men don't ask things like that," she said reproachfully, "at least, only when they're flirting. I sometimes think---- Don't treat me like all the others who were before me."

"What others?"

She held his gaze. "The emotional women and silly girls---- You must have been loved very often, Lord Taborley."

To have defended himself against her tender jealousy would have been futile. She was plainly anxious to believe her accusation. Perhaps it flattered her a little. Perhaps it lent him an added touch of glamor. He was wondering how he should satisfy her. He could remember no hearts that his fascination had broken. He could rake up absolutely---- She was speaking again.

"And yet I'm glad you compelled me to tell you that I wanted you. You're making me do things that I never did before in my life. I'm supposed to be a cold woman. You'll find people who'll say that I'm remote and domineering. I've only one big affection--my little boy. For your sake I'm leaving him alone to-night."

"For mine?"

"For whose else?"

"I thought for Terry's."

Her lips parted. The laughter died in her eyes. "In your heart you knew better."

Then he left her and went down to the inn to pack his bag.

VII

He had paid his bill. His luggage had been carried downstairs. There was still a full quarter of an hour to wait. He sat in his bedroom smoking furiously. Before he met her again, he wanted to know precisely what had happened to himself--and, perhaps, to her.

He was filled with self-distrust. His newly discovered propensity for falling in love was genuinely alarming. It wasted his time, upset his plans and robbed him of his mental vigor. It made him a rudderless ship at the mercy of any chance winds of sentiment. Up to less than three months ago the solitary woman in his life had been Terry. Throughout the war, while the masculine world had been making an amorous idiot of itself, he had kept his head clear and gone straight. Things had come to a pretty pass if now, when normality was returning and the excuse for running wild was out-of-date, he should start on his emotional escapades. His love for Terry had been deep-rooted. His fondness for Maisie had been the attempt of a starved heart to satisfy its craving with a substitute. But where was this pursuit of substitutes to end? If it went much further he would gain for himself the reputation of being a limpet who attached himself to any chance rock of feminine amiability. The kind of woman he cared to associate with would avoid him. If ever he were to fall in love again, his attentions would be so shop-worn that----

If ever he were to fall in love again! Within the last twenty-four hours his irresponsible heart had committed this disastrous folly for a third time.

He smiled cynically, as though he were two separate persons, one of whom was cool and calculating, while the other was improvident and scape-grace. How Lady Dawn would despise him, were he to reveal to her the stupid commotion of his mind! His excuse for blundering his way into her privacy had been sufficiently fantastic: that her late husband was employing his living brain to communicate with her from the dead. It must have strained her credulity to the breaking-point. If on top of this he were to propose to her, what possible conclusions could she draw? Either that in order to gain her intimacy, he had perpetrated a cruel fraud; or else that he was so lacking in humor as to believe that Lord Dawn, from beyond the grave, was arranging for his wife's second marriage. The drollery of a dead husband acting match-maker made him smile. In the middle of his smiling he pulled himself up. Why not? Why shouldn't a husband who had wrecked his wife's happiness, try to repair the damage, if that were possible, when through death he had attained a kinder knowledge? The Roman Church prayed to the dead whom it canonized. There were thousands of parents, wives, sweethearts, bereft by the war, who were asserting that their longing had bridged the gulf and penetrated----

He shook himself, as though to struggle free from an invisible assailant. Hallucinations! All these so-called spiritualistic manifestations were the result of over-taxed imagination. To stick to facts was the only safe course; and these were the facts in his case. He had approached Lady Dawn as a matter of duty to tell her the truth about a husband whom she had not known at his best. She had misinterpreted his motive and had believed that he had come to confess to her his own failure. She had been thrown off her guard, had dropped her mask of stoicism and had lavished on him a reckless kindness. But other women had been reckless to him in their kindness. Terry had: so had Maisie. Women's kindness had caused his present predicament--their kindness, plus his awkward knack of valuing their kindness at more than its face worth. He had learnt his lesson. Never again would he be lured into the net of feminine fickleness. When he felt the temptation rising, he would suppress and ignore it; at any rate he would ignore it until the woman, who was rousing his affection, had declared her intentions beyond any chance of mistaking.

And Lady Dawn? She was in a class by herself. He held her sacred. The mere thought that she should ever fall in love with him was impertinence. To talk cheap sentiment would be insulting. It would cause him to lose her friendship--a loss which he could not bear to contemplate. It would be taking a mean advantage of a situation created for an entirely different purpose.---- And yet, dare he trust himself, now that he was in love with her, in the intimate aloneness of a long night drive to London?

He rose to his feet disgusted. If this was the loss of self-control that peace had brought, better a thousand times the rigors of the sacrifice that was ended. Out there he had been strong; here he was a sick dog, licking his sores and whimpering at his own shadow. Self-pity had wrought this wholesale impotence--an impotence which was infecting the entire world. While individuals and nations had thought only of others, they had been valiant; they had raced in generous competition, clean-limbed as athletes, towards the tape, where endeavor ends and eternity commences. And now this lethargy, this cowardice--this monstrous fat of quaking emotion!

A memory flashed back on him--an afternoon in March when he had been obsessed by a similar discontent. It had happened in the Mall, after his interview with Braithwaite and just before his introduction to Maisie. He had come across a sign-board which had announced that, by following a certain path, one would arrive at the Passport Office. That narrow track, vanishing into the bushy greenness, had seemed to him the first five hundred yards of the road that led to world-wideness and freedom. At the end of it lay Samoa, Tibet, the Malay Archipelago--jeweled seas and painted solitudes which human disillusions could not wither. Instantly his will concentrated. By following that road he could become lean-souled again. By reseeking hardships, he could recover his lost discipline. The idea held him spellbound. It meant escape. It meant a return to monasticism. Then and there he determined that he would commence his preliminary enquiries to-morrow.

Going to the window, he leant out. The quaint village street was sleeping. The night was so still that, it scarcely breathed; it lay like a tired child in the firm white arms of the moonlight. Coming smoothly to a halt before the hostel was a powerful car. It was a landaulet and the hood was lowered. Lady Dawn must have altered her plans at the last moment; instead of sending for him, she had come herself! Catching sight of him, she waved her hand. His heart became quiet. Like the night without, his being was flooded with a drifting whiteness that robbed the darkness of its terror.

VIII

As he stood by the side of the car talking to her while his bag was being stowed away, her manner was chillingly conventional. It was so conventional that it bordered on the unfriendly. About the unfriendliness of the chauffeur there could be no doubt. The elaborate care with which he tucked the robe about her Ladyship had a distinct air of alert possessiveness.

When Tabs had taken his place beside her and the village was left behind, she relaxed and laughed softly. "Such a trouble I've had! They all disapproved of our expedition--I mean the servants. Their eyes accused me of---- Perhaps it's better not to be explicit. But that was why I called for you, instead of letting you come to the Castle. Did you notice anything queer about Witherall?"