Chapter XI

At Wynwood, in the deep of the country, Mr. Bagford's material soul went off, half-sobbing, half-uplifted, on a romantic pilgrimage. His own machine-like bachelor flat in Half Moon Street, his pseudo-ancient country cottage near the fashionable golf-links, afforded him nothing like this. Also, as nearly as he could manage it, he was quite definitely in love.

Vingie, with unconscious feminine play-acting, dramatized a very sweet and darling conception of an engaged girl. She led him prettily among all the paths and scenes where she had frivoled as a child. She wandered bareheaded through the sunshine, laying, now and then, appealing fingers on his sleeve, showing him the stables, the rose-garden, the orchards of the home farm, the peaceful sheep and cattle. She staged a perfect idyl for this hard-bitten, commercial man; she played golf simply and naturally, she challenged him on the tennis court. For dinner she added a touch of ceremony, and came down the great staircase to him with some remote touch of her storied ancestors, very fair and stately.

She made herself seem utterly pure and virginal, while he contrasted himself, stained with the mire of conflict. Behind them hovered a bemused background of Sir Charles, Lord Fordingbridge and Rupert.

Nevertheless, when Vingie had passed bedward to her girlish dreams a boundless change came over the scene. Sir Charles glanced absently at his watch.

"Shall we," he suggested, "take a final whisky-and-soda in the library?"

"An excellent idea, Charles," declared Lord Fordingbridge blandly. "I always say there's nothing like a night-cup, especially at our age. Rupert, of course, couldn't stay awake if he tried, could you, my dear fellow?"

They grouped restfully in four stalwart armchairs. Mr. Bagford, teeth clamped on his cigar, wondered why the love of a young girl could make him so regret many enjoyable episodes in his checkered past. The calm voice of Sir Charles broke gently on the silence.

"Virginia tells me," he began, "that you have decided to support our foreign policy in Jugo-Czechia. I imagine she is making a mistake, but one would like to be reassured."

"Virginia is quite right. I gave her my word to support it. That was a condition of the engagement."

"But my dear Mr. Bagford," rumbled Lord Fordingbridge, "pardon my remindin' you that in return for certain facilities I gave your correspondents in various parts of the world you undertook always to oppose my policy in every particular. Y'see, you've put me in a very distressin' position. We went a good deal further in this Jugo-Czechian matter than we really wanted to go. Afterward, in response to the clamor of the press we proposed to modify our demands. Unfortunately, my dear fellow, you haven't even squeaked, let alone clamored. The press is unanimously in our favor. I haven't been so distressed since the outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1871."

"Excuse me, sir," besought Rupert. "War was declared between France and Germany on October the sixth, 1870."

"I accept the amendment: since October the sixth, 1870," acquiesced Lord Fordingbridge.

Mr. Bagford shook his head wearily.

"To tell you the truth I had an idea she might be a spy of yours or something of the kind," he explained. "Then, finding she was not, I fell in love with her. She made my support of the government's foreign policy a condition of the engagement. There are some things in my life which I regret, but this is not one of them, and never will be. I promised Virginia to support Lord Fordingbridge's foreign policy, and I shall continue to do so, even if it drives him out of office. As a matter of fact she thought she was doing him a good turn. I didn't think. I was in love."

"My dear Mr. Bagford," said Lord Fordingbridge very solemnly, "the man who would break his word to a woman is not worthy of the name of an English gentleman."

"It is one of a gentleman's greatest handicaps," observed Sir Charles, "particularly as a lady may break hers all day and all night, and still preserve her social standing."

A strangled sound which he was totally unable to suppress burst from the throat of Rupert. He rose, murmured good night, and staggered rather than walked from the room.

"Poor lad, he's hard hit!" declared Lord Fordingbridge solemnly. "How true it is that one man's meat is another man's poison. Well, I suppose I must go hurtling to my political doom, supported by the undivided applause of the newspapers. I beg you to understand, however, Mr. Bagford, that my reprieve would be dearly bought at the price of your peace of mind. In the circumstances, if I were given the choice of victory or Westminster Abbey, I should begin instantly to discuss the form of my tombstone with the Dean and Chapter."

The firm, clean-shaven lips of Mr. Bagford curled in contempt.

"So you'll take it lying down," he taunted, "owing to the traditions of the ancient name and all that sort of thing. Thank God I was born in the gutter! I'd rather die than give in. I've fought and snarled and bitten, and gone down and got up again, and gouged people's eyes, and lied, and stolen, and schemed, and in the long run I've won. Either the other man or I has got to turn up his toes if he comes up against me. This is a rough world, gentleman, and needs rough handling. How could I protect Virginia if I were prepared to chuck up the sponge at any minute for the sake of my fine feelings? When we have a son, if he shows any of this aristocratic taint, first I'll lam the hide off him and then I'll give him a job as a packer in the warehouse to cure him of soft hands."

"Have some more whisky, Mr. Bagford?" suggested Sir Charles dreamily. "I can recommend it. My father laid it down many years ago, and there isn't a headache in a hogshead of it. By the way, George, what do you fancy for the Sheffield Stakes? Personally I have an entirely open mind."

"Charles," began Vingie thoughtfully, one evening, when, having bathed away the outer grime of journalism, she delighted his eyes at dinner in his small Park Street town house, "I think to permit illusion is one of the greatest crimes, don't you?"

"I consider it a debatable point whether one should or should not destroy the fool's paradise of another person," responded Sir Charles. "By some it is maintained that only fools are happy. On the other hand the sight of some one persisting in his foolishness becomes pathetic after a time. To the intelligent there is much pathos in life, my dear Virginia."

She smiled across at him with devastating charm.

"I was thinking of Jim--Mr. Bagford, you know. Of course, Jim's all wrong. He's bearable at present because he wants to keep me in a deceived state, but his whole life has been spent having his own way. If we were married he'd treat me like an idiot child. I should never be supposed to possess a mind of my own. I think it's only fair, don't you, to show him from the first the kind of life I expect to lead? After all, if a man isn't your slave, what on earth is the use of him?"

"That," declared Sir Charles, "is very true. Man is never happy in complete freedom. He ceases to be the slave of one woman merely because he has become the slave of another. He hugs his chains, or rather his jailer. Variety in slavery is the best he can ever hope for."

"You see, Charles, I've put up the circulation of his paper, or rather shown him how to do it. I think it's time he did something for me. Jim needs bullying; so far nobody's ever done it. Don't you agree that he ought to hear the crack of the whip?"

"Be temperate in your chastisement," implored Sir Charles, much against his will. "Remember that the young are merciless by nature. After all, he is nearly as old as I am."

Vingie, nibbling a salted almond, looked at him with dove's eyes.

"My dear, you're so wonderful. You've got such breadth of mind--sympathy, and you understand. Very few people understand, Charles. Still, sometimes one must be cruel to be kind." Her teeth crunched ominously on the savory, innocent morsel.

Thus it happened that next day, at the council table in his vast room, Mr. Bagford found her cold and _distraite_.

"I agree with you that to-morrow's paper's pretty good," she said slowly. "The point is, Jim, you're neglecting me frightfully. I didn't get engaged to you simply to double your circulation for the large salary of fifteen pounds a week. You take everything and give nothing. Except for a few beastly lunches when you talk about yourself all the time I might be a typist or even a girl messenger. You haven't any imagination. It may amaze you to be told that an engaged girl expects a little romance, a love-affair, some of the perfume and bath-salts side of life."

"But, my dear----" he interrupted feebly.

"You take me about in a filthy three-year-old Rolls Royce that smells of company-promoters and shady politicians, and buy me lunch in some grill room, and talk my head off in this office, and sponge on me for ideas, and once you gave me the sort of gold wrist-watch my own maid wouldn't be found drowned with. We might--good heavens, we might be married!" stormed Vingie.

Mr. Bagford leaned back in his chair, and perspiration beaded his brow.

"I beg your pardon, Virginia," he said in a voice of awe. "Perhaps I'm not accustomed to a girl of your type. I thought you were as absorbed as I am in the paper. I should have remembered your age, and how pretty you are, and the sort of interests a young girl has."

"You'd better get a 1924 Rolls salon," commanded Vingie. "You needn't give me things; I've got all the jewelry and odds and ends I care about, but I insist on your entering into my social life. What on earth's the use of being engaged to some one nobody ever sees? Do you suppose this damned rag of yours means anything to any one who matters? My dear, they only buy it for the servants to read!"

She got up and walked toward the door. "I'll send you a list of engagements for the next fortnight," she ended icily. "I expect you to go with me to every one of them. I refuse to be engaged to a ghost. You needn't come down with me. The commissionaire knows how to look after a girl much better than you do. He used to be in a good regiment."

On her way out she glanced into Mr. Berriman's room.

"Pass the word for every one to be very careful," she said pleasantly. "You'll find the chief in an extremely bad temper. I've just been speaking a very little piece of my mind, and he isn't used to it yet."

There began in those days an era of suffering for Mr. Bagford. Vingie took him from great things and made him to be like a tawny tiger confined in a larger edition of a squirrel's cage, turning the petty social wheel when his mighty mind clamored for great schemes and colossal enterprises. He became like a bloodhound turned into a lady's lap dog, like a racing Sunbeam condemned to take a lady shopping.

He was to be seen at first nights and dance-clubs, barbered, tailored and groomed to a satin polish, fretting his nerves to pieces, attendant on a soulless, artificial Vingie, a mere manicured and _maquillée_ silhouette wound up to dance and chatter. One met him at drawing-room concerts given by great ladies to launch twittering Polish musicians. There came not a horse show, a flower show, a polo tournament, or a fashionable race-meeting, but he attended. He even suffered the degradation of political receptions, he who had toyed with politicians and pulled political wires these twenty years.

The Duke of Birmingham, encountering him leaning against a pillar, dull-eyed and morose, at the Marchioness of Cricklewood's banquet on the eve of the Bill for the Further Enfranchisement of Adult (Female) Persons, put up his eye-glass and said in a cultured monotone:

"Bored, what?"

To which Mr. Bagford, goaded beyond measure, made answer:

"So would you be if you had the brains of a rabbit."

"Oh, quite, quite!" responded His Grace sympathetically.

Rupert, moving amid the throng with an expression of political wisdom on his face and a broken heart throbbing in his chest, paused for a moment beside Vingie.

"You look very beautiful to-night," he said, with a lover's sad intensity of feeling.

She turned on him a flippant smile.

"I shine for my _fiancé_," she explained. "He's being schooled in the society arena to make him a good husband. Why do you look so unhappy, my very dear?"

"I'm dying of a hopeless love, and the government's dying of a hopeless foreign policy. Neither is a cheerful business for me," he answered sorrowfully.

She drifted on almost into the arms of Lord Fordingbridge, who surveyed her with a wistful smile.

"I beg you to elope with me when I am flung out of office," he said, betraying all the cheerfulness of a condemned man who catches the warder cheating him at a game of draughts. "I shall depart to the north of Scotland and write my reminiscences in the snow. The trouble is I spell so disgracefully, but I dare say I can hire some clever fellow to put in the commas and full stops afterward. I'd like a lovely companion in exile. We must ask Charles about it. I insist on asking Charles!"

On a Sunday in the sunshine Mr. Bagford's 1924 Rolls Royce salon conveyed Vingie, delicious in sports clothes, and himself to a quiet country inn where they lunched upon the kindly fruits of the earth, taking coffee subsequently in a rose-embowered summer-house all among the earwigs. As the smoke of her cigarette curled lazily roof ward, Mr. Bagford unburdened his soul.

"Virginia, dear," he began, "I've been consulting my conscience very seriously, and I have very grave doubts whether I'm fit to marry you."

Vingie, giggling internally, recognized a point in the game for which she had been playing. Outwardly grave she replied:

"My dear Jim, whatever do you mean?"

"There have been other women in my life," confessed Mr. Bagford, fixing a stern brave gaze upon the far horizon. "If you were a widow, or at least ten years older, I could overlook my past. As it is----"

He left the sentence unfinished. Sometimes it is better so.

Vingie sighed in regretful resignation.

"I suppose no man is exactly a Sir Galahad at fifty," she replied. "Still, Jim, all that's over now. After all, a girl who moves in society recognizes that men are--well, what they are. Even darling Charles has kissed several women in the course of his life. I don't suppose you've been noticeably dreadful, have you?"

Mr. Bagford shook his head.

"I remember a girl at the Hilarium Theater when I was twenty-five. That flirtation lasted six years. We fell desperately in love. I thought my pulse would never beat faster for any woman again, until I met a lady-in-waiting to the then Queen of Greece when I was special correspondent at Athens. These Greek women are terribly temperamental. One of the equerries did his best to shoot me over that."

"How interesting!" murmured Vingie, looking at him with a new respect in her eyes. "Were there any more?"

"Olga Petrovskaya, at Petrograd, in 1913, when I attended the Grand Maneuvers of the Russian Army was another. I'm afraid we should actually have eloped only the grand duke returned very suddenly. The sleigh was actually at the door, and she had packed her jewels."

"What happened?" demanded Vingie eagerly.

"She unpacked them and sent the sleigh back to the stables, and I wrote a very nasty criticism of the grand duke's handling of his brigade," said Mr. Bagford with morose relish.

"But," suggested Vingie, "those are peccadilloes of the past. Surely there's been nothing lately?" Mr. Bagford shook his head.

"Actually when you came to the office I was rather deeply involved in what I believed, until I met you, was the love of my life," he answered slowly and painfully. "She is about thirty. They take things very seriously at that age. She represents the gentle, affectionate type--the primeval mother-woman, a brown-eyed, soft-voiced creature--very restful in her ways. To be quite candid, I'm afraid she may break her heart."

Vingie linked her fingers in his with a little sigh.

"Jim, you've been very wicked, haven't you! I shall have a frightful job to keep you, I suppose. I'm awfully sorry for the brown-eyed woman--thirty you said she was, didn't you?--but she'd never be happy with you even if you married her. Your soul would be always calling to mine, and she'd know, and go through hell--simply hell! I'm glad you've told me all this because it shows you're very honest." She held up an oval cheek and looked away from him. "Kiss me--just once," she ended, and obediently Mr. Bagford's lips brushed lightly her fragrant skin.

In the car as they fled homeward he sat lost in thought, hunched in his corner against the taupe upholstery. Finally he said with an air of deep regret:

"I may be compelled to visit the United States very shortly. There are rather delicate negotiations with a New York paper over a series of articles. If I have to go the voyage may do me good. Lately, since we've been going out together so much I don't get a great deal of sleep."

"Poor Jim," murmured a soothing voice. "You won't forget our list of engagements for next week, will you? and you'll hurry back to me from America if you really do go? You might travel to and from Cherbourg by air. I believe it saves quite several hours. Of course, I'll wireless to you every day. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Jim?"

"The comedy is nearly played out," she told herself in the serene calm of her Park Street bedroom, standing thoughtfully before the mirror in a suit of very inspired silk undies. "Soon I must take pity on poor Jim and release him. After all I only got engaged to save George Fordingbridge from an attack by the _Daily Tale_. I'd better find out how soon it will be safe to let Jim go. As for marrying him--poor thing, if he only knew!"

She stood meekly while Mary slipped an evening frock over her head, and went down to find a brief note from Rupert, beseeching her to lunch with him next day at the Ramillies Club. "It may be the last opportunity for some time, and you would give me very great pleasure," she read in his excessively neat handwriting.

"And what," she inquired when he smiled upon her in melancholy pleasure across a secluded table, "is the hidden mystery you hint at, Rupert, darling? You look like one who is about to take farewell of all familiar things."

"I am," answered Rupert Frack dolefully. "I shall ask you presently to come and help me choose hot-weather kit. I sail shortly for South America."

"But, my dear, in heaven's name why?"

Rupert leaned back in his chair and summed up the situation.

"The government will have to resign on the Jugo-Czechian question. You see, Fordingbridge had an understanding with--with--with the man you're engaged to, which was that the _Daily Tale_ should always oppose our foreign policy. Sometimes we like to commit ourselves too deeply, and then popular clamor in the press enables us to retreat in deference to public opinion. But you made Bagford promise not to oppose us as a condition of your engagement. Thus we were completely undone. He couldn't withdraw, and Fordingbridge quite rightly refused to wreck your--er--happiness to save his political reputation. We shall be defeated on the Debate to-morrow night. He has very kindly obtained a post for me in one of our South American Embassies as a last act of friendship. He himself will retire to Scotland to write his reminiscences."

"And I shall only have Charles left," murmured Vingie.

Rupert shook his head.

"Uncle Charles, completely dissatisfied with the turn of political events, is making a trip round the world. He feels that in a few years age will prevent further travel, and as you will be happily married he proposed to seize the present opportunity."

Vingie ate her last spoonful of ice, and spoke slowly through the locked barrier of her pearly teeth.

"I think," she said, "men are the most pure and holy fools in all creation. If you'd only told me, if you hadn't gone about mumbling your silly mumbo-jumbo, and being mysterious in smoking-rooms, and saying to one another: 'Hush! Here comes the poor girl! We must keep it from her at any cost!' I could have saved you long ago. As it is I have just time. Do you suppose I want to marry that impossible man, Rupert? Do you imagine I had any intention of marrying him? I merely toyed with him for the sake, as I thought, of George. This comes of George trying to play a double game. I'm not surprised, but that Charles should be deceived grieves me."

"I fail to see what you can do," responded Rupert heavily.

"I shall prevent you wasting money on hot-weather kit. Take me in your car to the _Daily Tale_ instantly."

"But how----" he began.

Vingie stamped her slender foot.

"Do I sit here and lecture to you on journalism, or do I not? 'From information which only now reaches us'--the leader writer will say. For heaven's sake hurry. There's such a thing as time, my dear man."

In the vast room of Mr. Bagford her delicious frock struck a pleasant note of charm. She walked slowly across the terrific sea of carpet in which he sat enisled and placed a hand affectionately on his arm.

"I am sailing for New York next week in the _Aquitania_," he began, but she halted him with a gesture.

"You needn't, Jim," she said gently. "I've seen you fretting at your chains for weeks. I'll let you off on one condition. You must come out with a violent attack on Lord Fordingbridge to-morrow morning, otherwise he'll be defeated in the debate on Jugo-Czechia to-morrow evening. I've just been told the curious situation between you and him. I thought I was helping him, and you let me make a fool of myself. That, my dear Jim, is unforgivable. Unless the attack to-morrow morning is perfectly scurrilous you will be compelled to marry me and keep me for life."

A wan yet happy smile spread slowly over the face of Mr. Bagford. "Naturally, this breaking of our engagement is a great blow to me," he murmured. "Still you know best, Virginia; I will give Lord Fordingbridge the splash column and write the leader myself. Nobody else would dare to be sufficiently unpleasant."

At midnight after the debate on Jugo-Czechia, Lord Fordingbridge supped at Sir Charles' house. Vingie ministered to him with her own slender hands, which first he kissed in the old-time manner.

"My laurel-wreath is a little awry," he confessed, "but I have escaped the wilderness. We carried the day by a very narrow majority thanks entirely to you, my dear Virginia. This morning's _Daily Tale_ was marvelous--marvelous. I am almost thinking of a libel action against them."

"My dear, why did you let me put you in such danger? Why didn't you trust me?" she murmured, pouring champagne into his glass.

Lord Fordingbridge sipped reverently.

"A wonderful wine!" he declared, glancing respectfully at Sir Charles. "It gives me strength to confess. Y'see, my dear, I would have explained the whole thing long ago, but Rupert wouldn't let me. He's a trifle more fond of you than you imagine, and this engagement of yours--from the most worthy motives I admit--positively lacerated him. So what does he do but get out the Machiavellian scheme of letting you continue in ignorance. 'The change, when it comes, will be so dramatic we shall win hands down,' says Rupert.

"'But how can you guarantee to put everything right at the last moment?' says I.

"'Leave it to me!' says Rupert."

Lord Fordingbridge moistened his parched lips, and continued:

"That little story he told you at luncheon yesterday wasn't quite accurate. I'm not writing my reminiscences, Charles isn't going round the world, and Rupert doesn't sail for South America. But your action on hearing it, my dear Virginia--masterly, Napoleonic, indescribable. The government owes you a debt of gratitude it can never repay."

The smile hovering round Vingie's mouth might have graced the lips of Torquemada at the grilling of a heretic.

"I will give you an opportunity to try," she observed sweetly. "You shall lend me Rupert to-morrow afternoon. I would like him to return in person the gold wristlet watch which Mr. Bagford gave me while we were engaged. I understand these young men of the Foreign Office pride themselves on their tact."

Sir Charles poured her a glass of champagne and came forward.

"You and I, Virginia, are still bachelors," he said with triumph, "Let us drink to our freedom. Long may it last!"

With a superb gesture Vingie drained the golden wine, cast the glass on the floor, and crushed it beneath her heel.

"Amen, Charles," she replied fervently. "You needn't look so alarmed. It isn't one of our best glasses."