The Profiteers Part 3

"I was wondering," she murmured. "You really hadn't forgotten, then?"

"I remember," he told her, "as though it were yesterday, the first time I ever saw you. I was brought into etaples. It wasn't much of a wound but it was painful. I remember seeing you in that white stone hall, in your cool Sister's dress. After the dust and horror of battle there seemed to be nothing in that wonderful hospital of yours but sunlight and white walls and soft voices. I watched your face as you listened to the details about my case--and I forgot the pain. In the morning you came to see how I was, and most mornings afterwards."

"I am glad that you remember," she murmured.

"I have forgotten nothing," he went on. "I think that those ten days of convalescence out in the gardens of your villa and down by the sea were the most wonderful days I ever spent."

"I love to hear you say so," she confessed.

"Out there," he continued, "the whole show was hideous from beginning to end, a ghastly, terrible drama, played out amongst all the accompaniments which make h.e.l.l out of earth. And yet the thing gripped. The tragedy of Ypres came and I escaped from the hospital."

"You were not fit to go. They all said that."

"I couldn't help it," he answered. "The guns were there, calling, and one forgot. I've been back to England three times since then, and each time one thought was foremost in my mind--'shall I meet Sister Josephine?'"

"But you never even made enquiries," she reminded him. "At my hospital I made it a strict rule that our names in civil life were never mentioned or divulged, but afterwards you could have found out."

He touched her left hand very lightly, lingered for a moment on her fourth finger.

"It was the ring," he said. "I knew that you were married, and somehow, knowing that, I desired to know no more. I suppose that sounds rather like a cry from Noah's Ark, but I couldn't help it. I just felt like that."

"And now you probably know a good deal about me," she remarked, with a rather sad smile. "I have been married nine years. I gather that you know my husband by name and repute."

"Your husband is a.s.sociated with a man whom I have always considered my enemy," he said.

"My husband's friends are not my friends," she rejoined, a little bitterly, "nor does he take me into his confidence as regards his business exploits."

"Then what does it matter?" he asked. "I should never have sought you out, for the reason I have given you, but since we have met you will not refuse me your friends.h.i.+p? You will let me come and see you?"

She laughed softly.

"I shall be very unhappy if you do not. Come to-morrow afternoon to tea at five o'clock. There will be no one else there, and we can talk of those times on the beach at etaples. You were rather a pessimist in those days."

"It seems ages ago," he replied. "To-day, at any rate, I feel differently. I knew when I glanced at Lady Amesbury's card this morning that something was going to happen. I went to that stupid garden party all agog for adventure."

"Am I the adventure?" she asked lightly.

He made no immediate answer, turning his head, however, and studying her with a queer, impersonal deliberation. She was wearing a smoke-coloured muslin gown and a black hat with gracefully arranged feathers. For a moment the weariness had pa.s.sed from her face and she was a very beautiful woman. Her features were delicately shaped, her eyes rather deep-set. She had a long, graceful neck, and resting upon her throat, fastened by a thin platinum chain, was a single sapphire. There was about her just that same delicate femininity, that exquisite aroma of womanliness and tender s.e.xuality which had impressed him so much upon their first meeting. She was more wonderful even than his dreams, this rather tired woman of fas.h.i.+on whose coming had been so surprising. He would have answered her question lightly but he found it impossible. A great part of his success in life had been due to his inspiration. He knew perfectly well that she was to be the adventure of his life.

"It is so restful here," she said presently, "and I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed our meeting, but alas!" she added, glancing at her watch, "you see the time--and I am dining out. We will walk to Hyde Park Corner and you must find me a cab."

He rose to his feet at once and they strolled slowly along on the least frequented footpath.

"I hope so much," she went on, "that my husband's connection with the man you dislike will not make any difference. You must meet him, of course--my husband, I mean. You will not like him and he will not understand you, but you need not see much of him. Our ways, unfortunately, have lain apart for some time."

"You have your troubles," he said quietly. "I knew it when you first began to talk to me at etaples."

"I have my troubles," she admitted. "You will understand them when you know me better. Sometimes I think they are more than I can bear. Tonight I feel inclined to make light of them. It is a great thing to have friends. I have so few."

"I am a little ambitious," he ventured. "I do not wish to take my place amongst the rank and file. I want to be something different to you in life--more than any one else. If affection and devotion count, I shall earn my place."

Her eyes were filled with tears as she gave him her hand.

"Indeed," she a.s.sured him, "you are there already. You have been there in my thoughts for so long. If you wish to keep your place, you will find very little compet.i.tion. I am rather a dull woman these days, and I have very little to give."

He smiled confidently as he stopped a taxicab and handed her in.

"May I not be the judge of that?" he begged. "Giving depends upon the recipient, you know. You have given me more happiness within this last half-hour than I have had since we parted in France."

Some instinct of her younger days brought happiness into her laugh, a provocative gleam into her soft eyes.

"You are very easily satisfied," she murmured.

He laughed back again, but though he opened his lips to speak, the words remained unsaid. Something warned him that here was a woman pa.s.sing through something like a crisis in her life, and that a single false step on his part might be fatal. He stood hat in hand and watched the taxicab turn up Park Lane.

CHAPTER III

There was a little flutter of excitement in the offices of Messrs.

Kendrick, Stone, Morgan and Company when, at a few minutes after eleven the following morning, Wingate descended from a taxicab, pushed open the swing doors of the large general office and enquired for Mr. Kendrick.

Without a moment's delay he was shown into Roger Kendrick's private room, but the little thrill caused by his entrance did not at once pa.s.s away.

It was like the visit of a general to Divisional Headquarters. Action of some sort seemed to be in the air. Ideas of big dealings already loomed large in the minds of the little army of clerks. Telephones were handled longingly. Those of the firm who were members of the Stock Exchange abandoned any work of a distracting nature and held themselves ready for a prompt rush across the street.

Even Roger Kendrick, as he shook hands with his client, was conscious of a little thrill of expectation. Wingate was a man who brought with him almost a conscious sense of power. Carefully, but not overcarefully dressed, muscular, with a frame like steel, eyes keen and bright, carrying himself like a man who knows himself and his value, John Wingate would have appeared a formidable adversary in any game in which he chose to take a hand. Whatever his present intentions were, however, he seemed in no hurry to declare himself. The two men spoke for a few minutes on outside subjects. Wingate referred to the garden party of the afternoon before, led the conversation with some skill around to the subject of Josephine Dredlinton, and listened to what the other man had to say.

"Every one is sorry for Lady Dredlinton," Kendrick p.r.o.nounced. "Why she married Dredlinton is one of the mysteries of the world. I suppose it was the fatal mistake so many good women make--the reformer's pa.s.sion.

Dredlinton's rotten to the core, though. No one could reform him, could even influence him to good to any extent. He's such a wrong 'un, to tell you the truth, that I'm surprised Phipps put him on the Board. His name is long past doing any one any good."

"Lady Dredlinton did not strike me as having altogether the air of an unhappy woman," Wingate observed tentatively.

Kendrick shrugged his shoulders.

"No fundamentally good woman is ever unhappy," he said, "or rather ever shows it. She is face to face all the time with the necessity of making the best of things for the sake of other people. Lady Dredlinton carries herself bravely, but the people who know her best never cease to feel sorry for her."

"You have those figures I sent you a wireless for?" Wingate asked, a little abruptly.

"I have them here," Kendrick replied, producing a little roll of papers from a drawer. "They want a little digesting, even by a man with a head for figures like yours. In some respects, these fellows seem to have had the most amazing luck. Unless we come to an understanding with Russia within the next month, of which there doesn't seem to me to be the slightest prospect, we shall get no wheat from there for at least another year."

"And the harvests all over eastern Europe were shocking," Wingate said, half to himself.

"It doesn't seem to me," Kendrick pointed out, "that more than driblets can be expected from anywhere, except, of course, the greatest source of all, Canada and the United States."

"You've no indication of the Government's att.i.tude, I suppose?"

Wingate asked.