Читать книгу The Knave of Diamonds - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 7

The chosen corner certainly had the advantage of privacy. It was an alcove at the end of one of the long narrow passages in which the ancient hostelry abounded, and the only light it boasted filtered through a square aperture in the wall which once had held a window. Through this aperture the curious could spy into the hall below, which just then was thronged with dancers who were crowding out of the ballroom and drifting towards the refreshment-room, the entrance to which was also visible.

An ancient settee had been placed in this coign of vantage, and upon this they established themselves by mutual consent.

The man was laughing a little below his breath. "I feel like a refugee," he said.

His companion leaned her arms upon the narrow row sill and gazed downwards. "A refugee from boredom?" she suggested. "We are all that, more or less."

"I dispute that," he said at once. "It is only the bores who are ever bored."

"And I dispute that," she replied, without turning, "of necessity, in self-defence."

He leaned forward to catch the light upon her profile. "You are bored?"

She smiled faintly in the gloom. "That is why I have engaged the services of a jester."

"By Jove," he said, "I'm glad you pitched on me."

She made a slight movement of impatience. "Isn't it rather futile to say that sort of thing?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you know quite well it was not a matter of choice."

"Rather a matter of manque de mieux?" he suggested coolly.

She turned from her contemplation of the crowd below. "I am not going to contradict you," she said, "I never foster amour propre in a man. It is always a plant of hardy growth."

"'Hardy' is not the word," he declared. "Say 'rank,' and you will be nearer the mark. I fully endorse your opinion. We are a race of conceited, egotistical jackanapeses, and we all think we are going to lick creation till a pretty woman comes along and makes us dance to her piping like a row of painted marionettes. But is the pretty woman any the happier, do you think, for tumbling us thus ruthlessly off our pedestals? I sometimes wonder if the sight of the sawdust doesn't make her wish she hadn't."

The drawl in his voice was very apparent as he uttered the last sentence. His chin was propped upon his hands. He was obviously studying her with a deliberate criticism that observed and considered every detail.

But his scrutiny held without embarrassing her. She met it with no conscious effort.

"I can't bear cynicism," she told him frankly.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Cynics—real cynics—never can."

"But I am not a cynic."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes, quite sure."

"And yet you tell me that you never take the trouble to flatter the inferior male. That's conflicting evidence, you know. Are you a man-hater, by the way?"

She shivered as if at a sudden draught. "I'm not prepared to answer that question off-hand." she said.

"Very prudent of you!" he commented. "Do you know I owe you an apology?"

"I shouldn't have said so."

"No? Well, let me confess. I'm rather good at confessing. I didn't believe you just now when you said you were twenty-five. Now I do. That single streak of prudence was proof absolute and convincing."

"I usually tell the truth," she said somewhat stiffly.

"Yes, it takes a genius to lie properly. I am not so good at it myself as I should like to be. But a woman of twenty-five ought not to look like a princess of eighteen—a tired princess moreover, who ought to have been sent to bed long ago."

Her laugh had in it a note of bitterness. "You certainly are not the sort of genius you aspire to be," she said, "any more than I am a princess of eighteen."

"But you will be a queen at thirty," he said. "Hullo! Here is someone coming! Don't speak, and p'r'aps they won't discover us. They can't stay long."

He rose swiftly with the words and blocked the little spy-hole with his body. Certainly footsteps were approaching, but they ceased before they reached the alcove at the end of the passage. There was another settee midway.

"Oh, this is quite comfortable," said a woman's voice. "Here I am, Major Shirley! It's dark, isn't it, but rather a relief after the glare downstairs. What a crush it is! I am beginning to think the Hunt Ball rather a farce, for it is next to impossible to dance."

"People don't know how to dance nowadays," grumbled Major Shirley in response. "I can't stand these American antics. That young Nap Errol fairly sickens me."

"Oh, but he is a splendid dancer," protested his partner tolerantly.

"Oh course you say so," growled the Major. "All women like that horrid little whipper-snapper. I can't see what in thunder they find to attract them. I call him a downright cad myself, and I'm inclined to think him a blackguard as well. He wouldn't be tolerated if it weren't for his dollars, and they all belong to his brother, I'm told."

"Ah! He is a charming man. Such a pity he is a cripple!"

"He would probably be as insufferable as Nap if he weren't," rejoined the Major gloomily. "I can't think what the County are coming to. They will accept anybody nowadays, it seems to me. I even met that little bounder at the Rifle Club the other day. Heaven knows how he got in. Dollars again, I suppose, confound his audacity!"

His partner made a slight movement of uneasiness. "I wonder where he is. I haven't seen him for some time. I hope he isn't anywhere within earshot."

"Not he! He is stowed away in some corner well out of the way with his latest conquest. He won't turn up again this evening. He never does when once he goes to earth—the wily young fox."

"Who is his latest conquest, I wonder?" mused the woman. "I thought it was Mrs. Damer. But I have just seen her dancing with young Waring."

"Mrs. Damer! Why, that was the day before yesterday!" The Major laughed unpleasantly. "'Anyone for a change, but no one for long,' is his motto. The fellow is an infernal bounder through and through. He will get a sound hiding one of these days, and serve him jolly well right, say I!"

"My dear Major, how you hate him! Anyone would think he had tried to flirt with Violet."

"He'd better," growled the Major.

There came a slight sound from the darkness of the alcove, as though someone faintly chuckled.

"What's that?" asked the woman's voice nervously.

"Nothing—nothing!" said the Major testily. "Somebody laughing in the hall. I wonder where my wife is. I shall clear out soon. I'm tired of this show. Haven't had a decent dance all the evening. Shouldn't think you have either. They ought to build a Town Hall in this place, and do the thing properly."

"There is some talk of it, you know. Now that there is a millionaire in the neighbourhood it really might be done. The Carfaxes would help too, I am sure. Sir Giles is very open-handed."

"Drunken beast!" commented the Major. "A pretty spectacle he has been making of himself to-night. He is sitting in a corner of the refreshment-room now absolutely incapable. He reached the noisy stage very early in the evening. I am not sure that he even came sober."

"No! Isn't it too pitiful for words? That young wife of his! I can't think how she endures it. It must be positive martyrdom."

"Lady Carfax is a fool!" said the Major crossly. "I can't stand these martyrs. If she leads a dog's life it's her own fault. She's a fool to put up with it."

"Perhaps she can't help herself," pleaded the woman.

"Stuff and nonsense! No woman need be the slave of a drunken sot like that. It's a downright offence to me to be in the same room with the fellow. He always reeks of drink. And she has, or professes to have, a certain amount of refinement. Not much, I dare say. She was nothing but his bailiff's daughter, you know, and people of that class don't generally suffer from an exaggerated sense of duty. She probably sticks to the man because she wants to keep in with the County. I don't like the woman, never did. Her airs and graces always rub me up wrong way. Why couldn't Sir Giles have married in his own set? He probably wouldn't be so fond of the whiskey bottle now if he had."

"I must say I like Lady Carfax," broke in the woman with decision. "Whatever her origin, that queenliness of hers is not assumed. I believe her to be intensely reserved, and, perhaps for that very reason, I have a genuine admiration for her."

"My dear Mrs. Randal, you'd find points to admire in a wax candle," grunted the Major. "She always makes me think of one; pale and pure and saintly—I can't stand the type. Let's go downstairs and find Violet."

"Oh, not saintly, I think," protested Mrs. Randal charitably. "Saintly people are so uninteresting."

The Major laughed. He was already on his feet.

"Probably not—probably not. But a show of saintliness is more than enough to frighten me away. A woman who can't understand a wink I invariably strike forthwith off my visiting-list."

"How cruel of you!" laughed Mrs. Randal. They were already moving away down the corridor. Her voice receded as they went. "But I can't understand any man daring to wink at Lady Carfax; I can't, indeed."

"That's just what I complain about," grumbled Major Shirley. "Those wax-candle sort of women never see a joke. What fools they are to leave the place in darkness like this! Can you see where you are going?"

"Yes, we are just at the head of the stairs. It is rather foolish as you say. People might hurt themselves."

"Of course they might. Infernally dangerous. I shall complain."

The voices fell away into distance; the band in the ballroom struck up again, and the woman on the settee in the alcove sat up and prepared to rise.

"Suppose we go down now," she said.

Her companion moved away from the little window as one coming out of a reverie. "Our gallant Major Shirley seems somewhat disgruntled tonight," he said. "Do you know him?"

"Yes, I know him." Her words fell with icy precision.

"So do I." The man's tone was one of sheer amusement. "I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Rifle Club the other day. Someone introduced us. It was great fun. If there were a little more light, I would show you what he looked like. For some reason he wasn't pleased. Do you really want to go downstairs though? It is much nicer here."

She had risen. They were facing one another in the twilight. "Yes," she said, and though still quiet her voice was not altogether even. "I want to go, please."

"Mayn't I tell you something first?" he said.

She stood silent, evidently waiting for his communication.

"It's not of paramount importance," he said. "But I think you may as well know it for your present edification and future guidance. Madam, I am that wicked, wanton, wily fox, that whipper-snapper, that unmitigated bounder—Nap Errol!"

He made the announcement with supreme complacence. It was evident that he felt not the faintest anxiety as to how she would receive it. There was even a certain careless hauteur about him as though the qualities he thus frankly enumerated were to him a source of pride.

She heard him with no sign of astonishment. "I knew it," she said quietly. "I have known you by sight for some time."

"And you were not afraid to speak to such a dangerous scoundrel?" he said.

"You don't strike me as being very formidable," she answered. "Moreover, if you remember, it was you who spoke first."

"To be sure," he said. "It was all of a piece with my habitual confounded audacity. Shall I tell you something more? I wonder whether I dare."

"Wait!" she said imperatively. "It is my turn to tell you something, though it is more than possible that you know it already. Mr. Errol, I am—Lady Carfax!"

He bowed low. "I did know," he said, in a tone from which all hint of banter had departed. "But I thank you none the less for telling me. I much doubted if you would. And that brings me to my second—or is it my third?—confession. I did not take you for Mrs. Damer in the card-room a little while ago. I took you for no one but yourself. No man of ordinary intelligence could do otherwise. But I had been wanting to make your acquaintance all the evening, and no one would be kind enough to present me. So I took the first opportunity that occurred, trusting to the end to justify the means."

"But why have you told me?" she said.

"Because I think you are a woman who appreciates the truth."

"I am," she said. "But I do not often hear it as I have heard it to-night"

He put out his hand to her impulsively. "Say, Lady Carfax, let me go and kick that old scandal-monger into the middle of next week!"

Involuntarily almost she gave her hand in return. "No, you mustn't," she said, laughing faintly. "The fault was ours. You know the ancient adage about listeners. We deserved it all."

"Don't talk about deserts!" he exclaimed, with unexpected vehemence. "He doesn't deserve to have a whole bone left in his body for speaking of you so. Neither do I for suffering it in my presence!"

She freed her hand gently. "You could not have done otherwise. Believe me, I am not altogether sorry that you were with me when it happened. It is just as well that you should know the truth, and I could not have told it you myself. Come, shall we go down?"

"Wait a minute!" he said. "Let me know how I stand with you first. Have you decided to pass over that lie of mine, or are you going to cut me next time we meet?"

"I shall not cut you," she said.

"You are going to acknowledge me then with the coldest of nods, which is even more damnable," he returned, with gloomy conviction.

She hesitated for an instant. Then, "Mr. Errol," she said gently, "will you believe me when I say that, however I treat you in the future, that lie of yours will in no way influence me? You have helped me much more than you realise by your trifling to-night. I am not sure that you meant to do so. But I am grateful to you all the same."

"Then we are friends?" said Nap, quickly.

"Yes, we are friends; but it is very unlikely that we shall meet again. I cannot invite you to call."

"And you won't call either on my mother?" he asked.

"I am afraid not."

He was silent a moment. Then, "So let it be!" he said. "But I fancy we shall meet again notwithstanding. So au revoir, Lady Carfax! Can you find your own way down?"

She understood in an instant the motive that prompted the question, and the impulse to express her appreciation of it would not be denied. She extended her hand with an assumption of royal graciousness that did not cloak her gratitude. "Good-bye, Sir Jester!" she said.

He took her fingers gallantly upon his sleeve and touched them with his lips. "Farewell to your most gracious majesty!" he responded.