Читать книгу The Books of Bart - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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AGATHA came at Fay’s invitation, without thinking that the visit was likely to have any far-reaching effect upon her life. On her way, she went into Golightly’s and bought a big bunch of Maréchal Niel roses, telling the obliging tradesman to send the bill to her. After all, she thought, if she had to be civil to Fay, there was no reason in the world why Bart should not pay.

The women kissed one another affectionately; Fay was of the kissing sort, more so than Agatha, and Mrs. Tamarand produced her flowers.

“For me? How delightful!” Fay buried her face in the fragrant roses.

“They’ve just come up from Mentone—Harold Tirrell is staying there.”

“How good of him,” murmured Fay, and furtively removed the Golightly label, which she knew as well as Agatha, from one of the flower stems. “It is very curious that you should have mentioned Mr. Tirrell—I asked you to come this afternoon because I wanted to have a real long chat with you about that young man.”

“With me—why on earth——?”

Fay shrugged her pretty shoulders. It was one of the few tricks she had picked up from her cousin.

“Let us have tea, shall we?” She crossed to the bell and rang it. Tea was laid, and they were alone again in an incredibly short space of time. Things happened like that in the Foreman ménage. There was not a better trained staff of servants anywhere in London than that which Fay ruled.

The two talked of many things, as, for instance, the extraordinary embarrassments of the coal strike; of taxi-cab drivers and their incivility; of plays and the unsuitability of certain actors to their parts. Then suddenly Fay came to her subject.

“You know of course that Harold is a very old friend of mine!”

Agatha smiled.

“I have reason to know that—he is never tired of talking about you—in fact, I met him at this house, did I not?”

“I rather think you did,” said Fay slowly. “Bartholomew introduced him to you, I think. You see, I’ve known Harold—oh, ever so many years. We were good friends when we were children—it would hardly be fair to Harold to tell you how long ago.”

“You were nearly engaged to him, weren’t you?” asked Mrs. Tamarand calmly.

In many ways she was better trained than Fay; knew all the tricks of fence, could give an inviting parry that would lure the inexperienced to doom; but Fay, younger in years, was not exactly inexperienced. Bart was a wonderful fencing master.

“No, I was not engaged to him,” smiled Fay, “but I might easily have been. It would have been a dreadful mistake from every point of view, and more particularly in view of developments. I was only nineteen at the time. You see, Harold is a man who is impressionable—in a nice way.”

Mrs. Tamarand bowed her head wisely.

“He was not in love with me—but he is——”

Fay hesitated, looking at the other seriously.

“He is——” encouraged Agatha.

“He is in love with you.” Fay finished the sentence awkwardly.

A flush, the faintest shade of pink in Agatha’s cheeks, and that to her annoyance. She had a curious consciousness of disloyalty to this girl. She felt that Fay had the right to be indignant with her, because she had deserted, or even contemplated the desertion of, Bartholomew. Most curious of all, she was perfectly satisfied in her mind that some such desertion had been under her consideration.

“Well?” she asked jerkily. “Why—why shouldn’t he—after all——”

“Why not, indeed?” smiled Fay, at her sweetest; her gentle eyes fixed somewhat urgently on her visitor’s face; “a most excellent match—only——”

She knit her brows and bunched herself in her chair. She was sitting forward, an elbow on her crossed knees, her chin on the palm of her hand.

“Only?”

“Only——” Again Fay hesitated. “You see, dear, I am in rather a quandary—I am quite fond of Harold and I like you immensely, and I don’t know whom I’d rather see happily married than you two nice people—but what about Bart?”

The eye above the palmed chin—above the resting elbow—flashed straight in Agatha’s direction and there was nothing to give her a lead. It was just a perfectly blank and expressionless stare. Mrs. Tamarand might be excused if she floundered, but she did not need excuse.

“Exactly—why—Bart?” she asked, with a little drawl. She spoke slowly because she was searching in her little bag for her handkerchief. Her search was without haste and without evidence of agitation. She found it, and dabbed her nose in a most unromantic way, then she replaced the handkerchief in the bag with great exactness, lingered for a moment, her hand speculatively touching the gold top of a little hair-pin case, as though the question of Bart had subsidiary, or, at most, equal importance with the question of her personal appearance at the moment.

“Exactly why Bart?” she repeated.

Fay was in no haste to explain. She was monstrously deliberate.

“Bart is a queer fellow.” She uttered the words in a tone which suggested at once conviction and wonder; it was as though the queerness of Bart had only just occurred to her and explained everything; she paused, as though to fit the explanation to his previously inexplicable conduct. “Bart is a very queer man.” She made her indictment even stronger. “He has a trick of assuming proprietary rights; I think it comes from too much imperial thinking. I am nervous whenever he sees a national treasure that he may not like it and give it away to somebody; he has a disconcerting habit of extending his despotism to his friends—I am so afraid——”

Another effective pause.

“That he regards one of his friends as his personal property,” suggested Agatha a little impatiently. “In fact, to put as blunt an edge upon the situation as possible, that Bart will not give me up?”

Fay slightly shifted her position and said she was afraid not. She said this with such a calm matter-of-factness that Agatha gasped.

“You see, dear Bart is so peculiar,” she explained. “Of course, it’s absurd and monstrous, but when he has put the mark of the lion upon anything, the jackals must not presume—you know.”

Agatha was dimly aware that the whole tendency of this discussion was uncomplimentary to herself, yet, for the life of her, she could find no phrase to which she could take exception. Nor yet any tone in the other’s voice which would offer an opening for protest. Fay was sympathetic, and Fay would be a very useful force if the question of Harold ever became a serious one; she would need a friend at court then, and instantly endowed Bart’s ward with an authority and an influence which she had hitherto denied her.

“I think I understand what you mean,” Agatha said, nodding her head. “It would hurt me if Bartholomew thought unkindly of me—you see, we have been such rare good pals. He is requiring, but since his requirements take a form which affect little more than one’s patience and forbearance, I have cheerfully paid the price.”

“And yet I think I would not advise you to consider Bart’s feelings in the matter,” Fay went on.

“You must consider yourself and you must consider Harold. You see, it isn’t what you are to-day, or what your immediate prospects are, or how perfectly satisfied you are—you have to imagine that ten years have passed and you have reached the age of—whatever age you will be. Only a woman who is settled can afford to postpone the future. It must be awfully nice having a friend like Bart, but Bart is—well, he’s Bart! A dear man, but somewhat undependable; and who, really, my dear Agatha, is distinctly not the man to centre one’s future upon.”

Her dark eyes examined Mrs. Tamarand very thoroughly, from her aigrette-plumed hat to her suède boots, but she conducted her scrutiny with such an agreeable and approving smile that only a churlish woman might resent the inspection.

“So you think——” invited Agatha. The girl was seven years her junior, but there was something very old and compelling about Fay.

“I think you should marry Harold—you will be Lady Tirrell one of these days and the mistress of a very nice house in Park Lane almost immediately, and half your daily worries will evaporate.” A sudden suspicion shot through Mrs. Tamarand’s mind, and Fay felt the chill of the unspoken doubt, and correctly analysed it.

“It doesn’t matter to me, so far as my personal comfort is concerned, whether you follow my advice or not,” she said carelessly. “I don’t want you to feel that I think your friendship for Bart is in any way injurious or annoying to me—because it isn’t. It is true that Bart will be furious if you marry Harold, and will probably never forgive you. No, my dear, I have no interest in this save your welfare and Harold’s wishes. What interest have I in Bart? In a year we shall be parted, and his ridiculous guardianship at an end. Frankly, we aren’t terrifically great friends—nor enemies for the matter of that.”

Here was crux in the life of Agatha Tamarand. With a little feeling of dismay, Fay recognized that her decision contained something of moment and significance for her also. Suppose Agatha declined the advice offered; suppose she retailed the story of this interview to Bartholomew on his return? Her own position would be strengthened by such a refusal, and a judiciously narrated account thereof—Agatha could tell a story to her own credit with greater force and subtlety than any other human being Fay had ever known. With a sense of panic Fay told herself she had not foreseen, nor allowed for the contingency. She had allowed her pleasant malice to lead her seriously astray. It was dawning upon her that this woman who sat cogitating the possibilities she had urged, was something more to Bart than she had realized. That she was a solid and important factor in his life, one not lightly to be disturbed. And yet, she asked herself, would Bart be shocked from his complacency? She wanted to see him shocked once ... but——

“There is certainly much in what you have said,” Agatha broke in upon her thoughts. “I must not allow my friendship with Bart to blind me to your wisdom, dear; Harold wants me—I know—it is an awfully painful position to be in—about Bart, I mean—but I am sure it would be the best thing to do—I’m in rather a false position too——”

She took her leave that afternoon a little disjointedly, having made up her mind, and being just a wee bit fearful of the consequences.

Fay, who saw her ideas bearing fruit, was not as happy with her success as she might have been. She was not afraid of Bart—he irritated her, that was all. And it was not his slackness or his instability that irritated her. What was it? She found it difficult to analyse her resentment.