December Love Part 33

"Yes, I am Alick Craven. Who is it, please?"

"Don't you know?"

"One minute! Is it--I'm afraid I don't."

"Beryl Van Tuyn."

"Of course! I knew the voice at once, but somehow I couldn't place it.

How are you, Miss Van Tuyn?"

"Dangerously well."

"That's splendid."

"And you?"

"I'm what dull people call very fit and cheery."

"How dreadful! Now, tell me--are you engaged to-night? I'm sure you aren't, because I want you to take me to dine at the _Bella Napoli_.

We agreed to tell each other when we were free. So I take you at your word."

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry!"

"What?"

"I'm ever so sorry."

"Why?"

"I have a dinner engagement to-night."

"What a bore! But surely you can get out of it?"

"I'm afraid not. No, really I can't."

"Send an excuse! Say you are ill."

"I can't honestly. It's--it's rather important. Besides, the fact is, I'm the host."

"Oh!"

The timbre of Miss Van Tuyn's voice changed slightly at this crisis in the conversation.

"Oh--if you're the host, of course. . . . You really _are_ the host?"

"Yes, I really am. So you see!"

"No, but I hear and understand. Never mind. Ask me another night."

"Yes--that's it. Another night. Thank you so much. By the way, does the living bronze--"

"What? The living what?"

"Bronze! . . . The living bronze--"

"Oh, yes. Well, what about it?"

"Does it wear petticoats or trousers?"

"Trousers."

"Then I think I rather hate it."

"You--"

But at this point the exchange intervened. Then something happened; and then Craven heard a voice saying:

"No, darling! It's the teeth--the teeth on the left-hand side. You know when we were at the Carlton I was in agony. Tell Annie not to--"

It was useless to persist. Besides, he did not want to. So he put up the receiver. Almost immediately afterwards he was rung up by Lady Sellingworth, hung on the edge of disappointment for an instant, and then was caught back into happiness.

When he finally left the telephone and went to his bedroom to change his clothes, but not to "dress," he thanked G.o.d for having clinched matters so swiftly. Lady Sellingworth had certainly meant to let him down. Some instinct had told him what to say to her to make her change her mind.

At least, he supposed so. For she had abruptly changed her mind after hearing of Miss Van Tuyn's invitation. But why had she meant to give up the dinner? What had happened between his exit from her house and her ringing him up? For he could not believe in the excuse of ill-health put forward by her. He was puzzled. Women certainly were difficult to understand. But it was all right now. His audacity--for he thought it rather audacious of him to have asked Lady Sellingworth to dine alone with him at the _Bella Napoli_--was going to be rewarded. As he changed his clothes he hummed to himself:

"_O Napoli! Bella Napoli_!"

At Claridge's meanwhile Miss Van Tuyn was not humming. As she came away from the telephone she felt in a very bad temper. Things were not going well for her just now in London, and she was accustomed to things going well. As in Craven's letter, so just now at the telephone, she had been aware of resistance, of a distinct holding back from her influence.

This was a rare experience for her, and she resented it. She believed Craven's excuse for not dining with her. It was incredible that a young man who had nothing to do would refuse to pa.s.s an evening in her company. No; he was engaged. But she had felt at the telephone that he was not sorry he was engaged; she still felt it. He was going to do something which he preferred doing to dining with her. The tell-tale line showed itself in her low white forehead.

f.a.n.n.y Cronin had gone to bed; otherwise they might have dined downstairs in the restaurant, where they would have been sure of meeting people whom Miss Van Tuyn knew. She did not choose to go down and dine alone.

A lonely dinner followed by a lonely evening upstairs did not appeal to her; for a moment, like Lady Sellingworth in Berkeley Square, she felt the oppression of solitude. She went to the window of her sitting-room, drew the curtain back, pulled aside the blind, and looked out. The night was going to be fine; the sky was clear and starry; the London outside drew her. For a moment she thought of telephoning to Garstin to come out somewhere and dine with her. He was rude to her, seldom paid her a compliment, and never made love to her. But he was famous and interesting. They could always get on in a tete-a-tete conversation. And then there was now that link between them of the living bronze and her plan with which Garstin was connected. She meant to know that man; she meant it more strongly now that Craven was behaving so strangely. She dropped the blind, drew the curtains forward, went to the fire, and lit a cigarette.

She wondered where Craven was dining. At some delightful restaurant with someone he liked very much. She was quite sure of that; or--perhaps he had told her a lie! Perhaps he was dining at Number 18A, Berkeley Square! Suddenly she felt certain that she had hit on the truth. That was it! He was dining in Berkeley Square with Adela Sellingworth.

They were going to have another evening together. Possessed by this conviction, and acting on an almost fierce impulse--for her vanity was now suffering severely--she went again to the telephone and rang up Lady Sellingworth. When she was put through, and heard the characteristic husky voice of her so-called friend at the other end of the line, she begged Lady Sellingworth to come and dine at Claridge's that night and have a quiet talk over things. As she had expected, she got a refusal. Lady Sellingworth was engaged. Miss Van Tuyn, with a discreet half-question, half-expression of disappointment, elicited the fact that Lady Sellingworth was dining out, not having people at home. The conversation concluded at both ends with charming expressions of regret, and promises to be together as soon as was humanly possible.

Again Miss Van Tuyn believed an excuse; again her instinct told her that she had invited someone to dine who was glad to be engaged. There was only one explanation of the two happy refusals. She was now absolutely positive that Lady Sellingworth and Craven were going to dine together, and not in Berkeley Square, and Craven was going to be the host, as he had said. He had invited Lady Sellingworth to go out and dine somewhere alone with him, and she had consented to do so. Where would they go? She thought of the _Bella Napoli_. It was very unlikely that they would meet anyone there whom they both knew, and they had met at the _Bella Napoli_. Perhaps they--or perhaps _she_--had romantic recollections connected with it! Perhaps they had arranged the other evening to dine there again--and without Beryl Van Tuyn this time! If so, the intervention at the telephone must have seemed an ironic stroke to them both.

For a moment Miss Van Tuyn's injured vanity made her feel as if they were involved in a plot directed against her and her happiness, as if they had both behaved abominably to her. She had always been so charming to Lady Sellingworth, had always praised her, had taken her part, had even had quite a cult for her! It was very disgusting. It showed Miss Van Tuyn how right she had been in generally cultivating men instead of women. For, of course, Craven could not get out of things with an experienced rusee woman of the world like Adela Sellingworth. Women of that type always knew how to "corner" a man, especially if he were young and had decent instincts. Poor Craven!

But at the telephone Miss Van Tuyn had felt that Craven was glad to be engaged that evening, that he was looking forward to something.

After sitting still for a few minutes, always with the tell-tale line in her forehead, Miss Van Tuyn got up with an air of purpose. She went to a door at the end of the sitting-room, opened it, crossed a lobby, opened double doors, and entered a bedroom in which a large, mild-looking woman, with square cheeks, chestnut-coloured smooth hair, large, chestnut-coloured eyes under badly painted eyebrows, and a mouth with teeth that suggested a very kind and well-meaning rabbit, was lying in bed with a cup and a pot of camomile tea beside her, and Bourget's "_Mensonges_" in her hand. This was f.a.n.n.y Cronin, originally from Philadelphia, but now largely French in a simple and unpretending way.

The painted eyebrows must not be taken as evidence against her. They were the only artificiality of which Miss Cronin was guilty; and as an unkind fate had absolutely denied her any eyebrows of her own, she had conceived it only decent to supply their place.

"I've got back to '_Mensonges_,' Beryl," she said, as she saw Miss Van Tuyn. "After all, there's nothing like it. It bites right into one, even on a third reading."

"Dear old f.a.n.n.y! I'm so glad you're being bitten into. I know how you love it, and I'm not going to disturb you. I only came to tell you that I'm going out this evening, and may possibly come back late."

"I hope you will enjoy yourself, dear, and meet pleasant people."