Читать книгу The Gallows of Chance - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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Sir Humphrey’s habit of using his latchkey and going straight to his library, when he returned at the end of the day to Chestow Square, was responsible for the thrill of pleased surprise he experienced on the following evening. It was as though the sedate and dignified apartment had been transformed and beautified in exquisite fashion by unseen hands. Bowls of dark red roses adorned the chiffonier. A cunningly fashioned tray of deep purple violets stood upon his writing table. There were vases of arum lilies, late chrysanthemums with long-petalled blossoms, carnations and a pot of hyacinths in different parts of the room, and a flame of scarlet azalea was set in a distant corner. The perfume was so sweet as to be instantly arresting. He paused to look around him, and Louise came out of the shadows, wiping her fingers upon a towel and laughing softly.

“Am I going to be in terrible disgrace?” she asked. “Forgive me, please. Parkins begged us to come in and wait for you, and I brought you all that our hothouses could produce, from Norfolk. I could not bear to think of Parkins arranging them, and he said you might be another hour. That is the end of my excuses.”

“As though you needed any,” he protested, amazed at the thrill of pleasure which her unexpected presence had caused him. “Louise, my dear, how nice to see you.”

“You are really better?” she asked, looking earnestly into his face. “You are thinner, you know. Come and sit down. May I stay for a few minutes and talk to you? Edward has gone away but he is calling back for me.”

“May you? Why, of course.”

He pushed an easy-chair up to the fire opposite to his own, then he wandered round the room.

“There’s not a florist’s shop in London could show a more beautiful collection,” he declared. “I never saw such roses.”

“Yes, they’re beautiful,” she admitted. “You are not obliged to keep them all in here, of course. I just began to arrange them and I couldn’t help going on.”

He bent his head over the violets and turned around to find her watching him, a smile upon her lips, a pleasant light in her eyes. She had thrown aside her furs and, in her perfectly plain, dark-coloured gown, with the border of lace around her throat, she seemed to him very attractive indeed. There was something almost shy in her expression as she met his eyes.

“What will you have—tea?” he asked.

She made a little grimace.

“My dear Humphrey,” she remonstrated, “it’s past six o’clock.”

He touched the bell, summoning Parkins, who made prompt and respectful appearance. As a rule, he would have very much resented the interference of any one decorating his apartments, but he approved most heartily of Lady Louise.

“Dry cocktails,” Sir Humphrey ordered. “Shake them in the room, Parkins.”

“Very good, sir.”

With the closing of the door, she leaned forward in her chair.

“I have been so anxious to hear from your own lips about your illness,” she confided. “Please tell me. Edward did not walk you too far that last day, did he? Lester Harwood said he felt too tired to shoot next morning.”

Sir Humphrey shook his head.

“It was not that,” he assured her. “I am afraid I was run down before I came. I had been working hard and probably your keen Norfolk air after this mollycoddling atmosphere was rather too severe a change.”

“Did you feel ill on the way up?” she asked anxiously.

“Not altogether well, once or twice,” he admitted. “However, I got here. I had rather a trying interview afterwards and perhaps that upset me. Whilst we are on the subject of my illness, thank you so much, and thank Edward, if I don’t see him this evening, for all your enquiries and the flowers.”

“We felt responsible in a way,” she confessed. “I was so miserable about it that I went off to Cannes for a fortnight, as soon as I heard that you were really out of danger. I called last week on my way through London, but you were still not seeing anybody. Then I tried to settle down in Norfolk again, but didn’t feel a bit like it, so I descended upon Edward yesterday.”

“Having stripped all your greenhouses, I’m afraid,” he remarked.

Parkins came quietly into the room, followed by a second man carrying a silver tray. He handled the shaker in vigorous fashion, poured out two foaming cocktails, which he offered to Lady Louise and Sir Humphrey, and left the shaker upon the small table.

“Anything important during the day?” the latter enquired.

“Mr. Carthew has dealt with everything, sir,” Parkins reported. “He is engaged at present finishing some letters but he would like a word with you before he leaves.”

“What a blessing a good secretary is,” Sir Humphrey remarked, as he raised his glass.

“I think I should like to be your secretary,” Lady Louise confided. “I’m tired of doing nothing.”

He smiled.

“I’ve read the newspapers oftener than usual, up to the last few days,” he said. “ ‘Doing nothing’ rather amuses me! Pictures of Lady Louise Keynsham at the hunt, in the Holcombe shooting party, at the gala performance of the Opera, flying from Le Bourget en route to Cannes, playing golf at Mandelieu—”

“A rubbishy sort of life,” she interrupted. “Edward is the person I envy. He never seems to have a moment to spare; and look what a success he makes of his career.”

“I take off my hat to him,” Sir Humphrey agreed. “Other men have made great fortunes, of course, but it is not often you find any one brought up like Edward who can go straight into what they tell me was almost a declining business, and make such a huge success of it. Did you say he was calling for you this evening?”

She nodded.

“We arrived here together about an hour ago,” she explained. “When he found you would not be back until six o’clock, he took the car and went off to pay some visits. He may be back at any moment now to call for me. Do you mind if I smoke? Don’t get up. I like my own, please, and I have a briquet.”

Sir Humphrey took a cigarette himself from a box on the table by his side.

“I shall be glad to see Edward,” he acknowledged. “Something I want to ask him.”

“He felt your illness terribly,” Louise assured him, looking thoughtfully across at her host. “I don’t know why, but he seemed to think it was partly his fault—as though, if he had urged you more strongly, you might have stayed at Keynsham instead of taking that night ride.”

Sir Humphrey shook his head.

“Nothing would have induced me to stay,” he declared. “I did what I knew to be my duty in getting off to London that night, although it was a pretty ineffective proceeding.”

She was quick to detect the note of bitterness in his tone and she changed the conversation.

“Every one missed you the last two shoots, and at dinner time we always drank to your recovery,” she confided. “We got a thousand pheasants from the two home beats the last day, leaving off shooting hens altogether an hour before lunch. Edward was awfully bucked.... I hope you are going to take care of yourself now, Humphrey. You look tired, you know. You’re not going out this evening, I hope?”

“Parkins and Carthew see to that,” he answered, smiling. “A cutlet, a glass of claret, one of those wonderful peaches I see on the chiffonier, and bed at half-past nine for me. No chance of your staying and looking after me, I suppose?”

She shook her head regretfully.

“It’s the Wardley House dinner and ball to-night,” she reminded him. “I’m booked to dance with Royalty, and when that thrill is over, I see a very dull evening before me. Don’t talk if it makes you tired. This is such a delightfully restful atmosphere I believe I could go to sleep.”

He looked lazily across at her, full of content and appreciation of the perfect picture she made, with her slender body almost voluptuously relaxed, her fearlessly displayed legs delicately clad in the newest shade of grey silk and the patent shoes well cut to display her arched instep.

“You are terribly good-looking, Louise,” he said. “No wonder you are so much the vogue. I look down the second column of the Times every day, expecting to see that ‘a marriage has been arranged’, et cetera.”

“Do you want me to get married?” she asked.

“I should have a perfectly unreasonable and dog-in-the-mangerish hatred of your fiancé,” he confessed, with a sudden disturbing reflection that the speech which he had started lightly enough was the sober truth.

She smiled as though gratified. Her lips, as they parted, became fuller and more vivid curves of scarlet. Her smile seemed to be coming also from her deeply shaded eyes.

“You lovable person,” she murmured.

She caught sight of his disappointed frown and glanced over her shoulder. Parkins had entered the room.

“Lord Edward Keynsham,” he announced.

Keynsham crossed the floor with extended hands, the vigorous and boyish personification of splendid manhood. He had been paying formal calls, and his town clothes showed off to the fullest advantage his fine muscular figure. He came up to Sir Humphrey with outstretched hands and a delightful smile upon his face.

“Humphrey, old man, this is wonderful,” he exclaimed. “Don’t move. I forbid it! I will bring this chair up. What’s that I see—a cocktail shaker? Parkins,” he added, looking around, “you’re going to bring me a glass, aren’t you? We must drink to your master’s recovery.”

“If your lordship will allow me, I will replenish the shaker,” Parkins said respectfully. “This has been here some few minutes.”

It was an easy and pleasant little trio, composed of people who evidently liked one another. Keynsham seemed almost as delighted as his sister to welcome Rossiter back. He gossiped and told news of their mutual friends until the replenished cocktail shaker arrived, then he drank to his host’s renewed health with his hand upon his shoulder, a thrill of earnestness in his tone.

“I cannot tell you, Humphrey,” he said, “how we all felt about your being taken ill like that directly you had left us. Do set my mind at rest—I didn’t give you too much to do that last day, did I? You would walk that outside drive, you know. I told you the Lindsay boy would do it.”

“I was only pleasantly tired,” was the emphatic reply. “It was not that—as I was telling Louise. I was pretty well run down before I came. I ought really to have lain on my back for two or three days. And then—”

“Yes?” Keynsham asked.

Sir Humphrey did not finish his sentence.

“By-the-by,” he enquired, “I was going to ask you something. Just a question about that car your people hired for me. Do you know where they got it from?”

Keynsham puckered his brows for a moment in thought.

“Well, I can’t say exactly,” he admitted. “Grover generally rings up his friend at Fakenham, and then if they haven’t anything, they send to Norwich. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, was there? You didn’t have a breakdown or anything of that sort?”

“No, there was no breakdown. We got to London all right. Still, I should like to know where the car came from. Perhaps later on we may talk about it.”

“You’re making me curious,” Lord Edward confessed.

“Well, there was a little incident,” Rossiter confided. “It is nothing I’m going to talk about at the moment, but you may hear of it again.”

“I will find out for you,” Louise promised. “I’m going down to Norfolk to-morrow for a few days, and I will ask Grover.”

“Good girl,” her brother said, lighting a cigarette from the box which his host had pushed towards him. “I have no memory for that sort of thing. I shall always think it was the greatest pity in the world, Humphrey, that you hurried away. No miracle happened, you see, after all. That poor fellow Brandt was for it.”

Sir Humphrey drained the contents of his glass.

“Yes,” he agreed, “Brandt was hung.”

“I wonder, have you seen Katherine since?” Keynsham enquired. “I hope it’s not an impertinent question. One simply does not know what to do about it.”

“Yes, I have seen her,” Sir Humphrey admitted. “Of course, it has been a terrible blow, but she’s facing the situation.”

Louise blew out a little cloud of smoke.

“Why do you talk about that terrible subject?” she protested. “Edward, do try and get Humphrey to promise to come and spend Easter with us. I know it’s dreary enough at this time of the year, but spring in some of the sheltered parts of Keynsham is wonderful, Humphrey. You shall pick the first violets from our hedges on the south side of the park and you will never want to look at these conservatory grown ones I brought you to-day.”

“I’ll come—if I can get away,” Sir Humphrey promised.

Louise glanced at the clock and reluctantly rose to her feet.

“I will even promise you,” Keynsham said, as he followed his sister’s example and shook his host warmly by the hand, “that if you don’t bring a car down, I will send you up in my own special Hispano-Suiza.”

“You shall have a choice of that,” Louise intervened, “or my Bentley.”

“I have a great weakness,” Sir Humphrey confessed, as he thrilled with the caress of Louise’s fingers, “for riding in a Bentley.”