The Profiteers Part 18

"Throw your coat down anywhere, Miss Baldwin," Wingate invited, as he ushered that young lady into his rooms soon after eleven o'clock on the following evening. "Now what can I give you? There are some sandwiches here--ham and pate-de-foie-gras, I think. Whisky and soda or some hock?"

"A pate sandwich and some plain soda water, please," Sarah replied, taking off the long motoring coat which concealed her evening clothes. "I have been fined for everything except disorderly driving--daren't risk that. Thanks!" she went on. "What ripping sandwiches! And quite a good play, wasn't it?"

"I am glad you enjoyed it."

"It was a swindle Josephine not turning up," Sarah continued, as she stretched herself out in Wingate's easy-chair. "Domestic ructions again, I suppose. How I do hate that husband of hers!"

"It was disappointing," he admitted.

There was a brief pause, during which Sarah finished her sandwiches and lit a cigarette.

"Wilshaw seems to be having a little trouble with the outside porter,"

her host remarked presently.

"It must cost him at least half a sovereign every time I leave the cab,"

Sarah sighed.

"How much do you make a week out of your driving, if it isn't too personal a question?" he enquired.

"It depends upon how much Jimmy's got."

"Is he your only client, then?"

"He very seldom gives me a chance of another. Once or twice I've refused to be engaged by the day, but he sends his man around to the garage and I find him sitting in the cab when I arrive."

Wingate laughed softly. She looked up at him with twinkling eyes.

"I believe you're making fun of my profession," she complained.

"Not at all, but I was wondering whether it wouldn't be cheaper for you to marry Jimmy, as you call him."

"We have spoken about it once or twice," she admitted. "The worst of it is, I don't think the cab would support two."

"Is Wilshaw so badly off?"

"His money is tied up until he is twenty-eight," Sarah explained. "I think that his father must have known how he was going to turn out.

Jimmy promised that he would never antic.i.p.ate it, and the dear old thing keeps his word. We shall be married on his twenty-eighth birthday, all right, unless his mother does the decent thing before."

"Has she money?" Wingate asked.

"Plenty--but she hasn't much confidence in Jimmy. I think she shows signs of wavering lately, though. Perhaps his latest idea--he's going into the City to-morrow, you know--may bring her around.--Mr. Wingate!"

"Well?"

"You're rather a dear old thing, you know," she said, "although you're so serious."

"And you're quite nice," he admitted, "although you're such an incorrigible little flirt."

"How do you know?" she laughed. "You never give me a chance of showing what I can do in that direction."

"Too old, my dear young lady," her host lamented, as he mixed himself a whisky and soda.

"Rubbis.h.!.+" she scoffed. "Too much in love with some one else, I believe."

"These are too strenuous days for that sort of thing," he rejoined, "except for children like you and Mr. Wilshaw."

"I don't know so much about that," she objected. "The world has never gone so queerly that people haven't remembered to go on loving and be made love to. Look at the war marriages."

"Yes--and the war divorces," he reminded her.

"Brute!" she exclaimed, with a little grimace.

"Why 'brute'?" he protested. "You can't deny them. Some of these marriages were genuine enough, of course. Others were simply the result of a sort of amorous hysteria. Affected every one in those days just like a germ."

"John Wingate!"

"Yes?"

"Don't try to be cynical."

"I'm not."

"You are," she persisted. "There isn't a man breathing who has a more wonderful capacity for caring than you. You hide your feelings from most people. Are you very angry with me for having guessed? I have, you know."

Wingate paused in the act of lighting a cigarette.

"What's that?"

"I think I have a sort of second sight in such matters, especially as regards people in whom I am interested," Sarah continued, "and if there is one woman in the world whom I really adore, and for whom I am heartily sorry, it is Josephine Dredlinton."

"She has a rotten time," was Wingate's terse comment.

"Very few people know how rotten," Sarah went on. "She has lost nearly all her own relations in the war, her husband has spent the greater part of her fortune, flaunted his affairs with various actresses in the face of all London, s.h.i.+lly-shallied through the war as a recruiting officer, or on any odd job that kept him safely at home, and now he openly a.s.sociates with a little company of men in the City who are out to make money any old way they can get hold of it."

"Lord Dredlinton is a bad lot," Wingate acquiesced.

"And Josephine is an angel," Sarah declared warmly. "If I were a man--"

"Well, you're not," he interrupted.

"If I were a man," she went on, laying her hand upon his, "I wouldn't let Josephine live out these best days of her life in sorrow. I wouldn't have her insulted and peered at, every hour of her life. I wouldn't see her living in torture, when all the time she has such a wonderful capacity for life and love. Do you know what I'd do, Mr. Wingate?"

"What would you do?" he asked.

"I'd take her away! I wouldn't care about anybody else or anything. If the world didn't approve, I'd make a little world of my own and put her in it. You're quite strong enough."

He looked through the walls of the room, for a minute.