The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 28

Before Tabs could say anything, he was apologizing. "That sounded rotten. I'm sorry. But you see, I didn't know the chap. It's his wife that I'm trying to find. She was married to a man named Pollock when I knew her. I was rather a pal of Pollock's, belonged to the same squadron and was shot down at the same time. I've been a prisoner in Germany.

Just got back, in fact. As you'll understand, I'm rather out of touch. I thought you'd be able to tell me whether she still lived here."

It was very damping to his ardor at this particular moment to have Maisie's matrimonial past raked up. Within the next half hour he would very possibly be asking her to be his wife. He wasn't sure that he was going to; but meeting this friend of her first husband on her doorstep didn't help him to make up his mind. He was no longer unsympathetic to the young fellow, but he was quite determined that he must be sent about his business.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "the lady you're in search of does live here. But she's not Mrs. Gervis any longer. She's married again. She's Mrs. Lockwood now."

A glint of enmity came into the stranger's eyes. "Then you're Mr.

Lockwood, perhaps?"

Tabs answered him with a note of irritation. "I'm not Mr. Lockwood.

She's a widow. Lockwood also was killed. But I really don't see why you should stop me on the pavement to ask so many questions. You can find out everything by ringing the bell."

"That's right." The young fellow stroked his mustache. "But I didn't want to do that until I had made certain. Surely you can see how embarra.s.sing---- And now this third chap's gone West, you say. Poor little Maisie, she hasn't had much luck."

It was difficult to be brusque with a man of his own cla.s.s, especially with a man so genuinely likeable. But he had to get rid of him. After having nerved himself up to the point of being at least prepared to propose to Maisie, he couldn't contemplate an evening of sharing her with a stranger and listening to the merits of her first husband.

"So you're an old friend! Well, I'm afraid she won't be free this evening. I have an appointment with her. But, if you like, I'll mention that I met you and I'll let her know that you'll call--when shall we say--to-morrow? Perhaps you'd care to give me your name----"

The young man smiled good-naturedly. "I couldn't think of troubling you to that extent."

"In that case, I'll have to ask you to excuse me. All kinds of luck to you on your return. It must be rather jolly not to be a prisoner. Good evening."

Tabs crossed the pavement and rang the bell. In order that he might afford no opportunity for further conversation, he stood with his face towards the door while he waited for it to be opened. He was very conscious that the stranger had not departed, but was hovering immediately in rear of him.

It was Porter who answered his summons. "I'm sorry, your Lords.h.i.+p, Mrs.

Lockwood is out---- No, she didn't leave any word. She's bound to be back shortly---- Why, certainly, if your Lords.h.i.+p has the time."

While she was closing the front door, he walked across the hall and let himself into the drawing-room. He went directly over to the empty fireplace and gazed up at Lady Dawn's portrait. It always seemed to challenge him--seemed to be trying to say something to him. It was almost as though it were his conscience hanging there on the wall. He had an idea that it reproached him for his silence with regard to Lord Dawn. He felt that, were he to do what his instinctive sense of justice had first urged--go to Lady Dawn and tell her that her husband had cared for her--the painted face would be no longer turned away and the stone-gray eyes no longer averted.

He was haunted by the obsession that he would never have any luck till he had vindicated the dead man's memory.

It was Maisie who had prevented him up to now--Maisie with her laughter, her breezy arguments, her short views of life, her contempt for sentiment, her sledge-hammer motto, with which she shattered the past, "I never dig up my dead." She had made him hesitant about reopening the subject. Her sister was the most beautiful woman in England. A man never knows to what boundaries a woman's jealousy spreads. He feared lest, if he persisted, she might impute to him less lofty motives than the desire to play fair by a comrade-in-arms who had gone West.

Something stirred behind him. He swung about and found himself staring into the face of the stranger who had accosted him on the pavement.

"Sargent painted it ten years ago," the stranger said. "She's not as young as that now."

"How did you get in?" Tabs demanded.

The stranger laughed boyishly. "Not too loud or you'll give the show away. I followed you. The maid raised no objection. She thought we were together--which was exactly what I intended."

"But what do you want? What right have you here?"

"Want! I know what I want. As to my right, that's problematic."

He turned his back on Tabs and commenced to move about the room, picking things up and examining them with a purposeful curiosity. He showed no fear, yet in all his movements there was a calculated stealth. Tabs watched him in amazement, wondering what he ought to do. If it came to grappling with him, unless he carried fire-arms, there was little doubt as to who would get the better of the contest. The man might be a lunatic, a blackmailer, a burglar; by his odd mode of entry, he had laid himself open to every suspicion. But he looked perfectly normal; and if he had been a burglar, he surely would have selected an opportunity when no other man was present. It was an awkward situation, this being shut up alone in a husbandless woman's house with an unknown intruder. It seemed to be an occasion for tact rather than the possible fuss of police interference.

At this moment the stranger made a discovery.

He had been examining the five silver photograph-frames, each in turn, with close attention. With his back towards Tabs he remarked, "It looks as though she hadn't forgotten him. Five reminders of his homely mug and not a solitary one of the also-rans! Numbers Two and Three couldn't have made such a deep impression." He caught his breath in a nervous shudder.

"It's queer. Everything's queer when one's just come back. One's so changed that he could court his own wife without being recognized. You, too, were out there I should judge by the way you limp. I wonder whether you've got over the queerness yet. I haven't had time----"

From in front of the empty fireplace, Tabs interrupted him. "Look here, my dear chap, I don't want to be rude and this isn't my house; but what's your game?"

The stranger turned and smiled. His frank gray eyes were amused and friendly. "Upon my word, I haven't any game. I'm like yourself--just paying a visit."

Tabs shook his head and gazed at him fixedly. "It won't do; you know that. You're a gentleman. Gentlemen don't get into unprotected women's houses by your kind of methods."

"They don't. That's a fact." He laughed carelessly. "I suppose this is what comes of having been a prisoner in Germany. One prefers to be underhand."

"Don't you think it's time you stopped fooling?" Tabs spoke in a conversational tone without temper. "There's Mrs. Lockwood to be considered; she may be here at any moment. It's no good coming this returned prisoner trick; all the prisoners in Germany were returned shortly after the Armistice. Eight months have elapsed."

"All right. Have it your own way."

The stranger ceased to wander and sat himself down at Maisie's end of the couch. Pulling out his cigarette-case, he offered it to Tabs. "Have a gasper?---- You don't need to refuse because of Maisie. If she's the Maisie she used to be, she won't object.---- Well, if you won't, I will."

Tabs noticed that his hand trembled in holding the match. The man was a bundle of nerves; he was only maintaining this display of coolness with an effort. Whatever the purpose of his bold intrusion, it was not social, as he had pretended.

"I don't like any man to think me a liar." The man spoke slowly between puffs at his cigarette. "You think it's all bunk.u.m that I'm fresh out of Germany, but it isn't. Do you see that?" He ran his finger across the gash in his forehead. "That and the ill-treatment I received in the prison-camps made me go wuzzy. The only fact about myself that I could remember in all those years was Maisie. So it's natural that I should come to see her first. I wasn't sure of my own ident.i.ty until a month ago. I suppose I was released at the Armistice, but for seven out of the past eight months I must have wandered in rags over Central Europe.

However, all's well that ends well, and here I am."

"But you knew that she'd remarried," Tabs objected suspiciously; "you asked me if I were Gervis."

"A friend of Pollock's told me that," he explained. "Gervis was excusable. But this Lockwood fellow's the third. It's a bit thick! She certainly has been going it." He looked up suddenly. "I've been doing all the talking. What about yourself?"

Tabs crossed the room and opened one of the long French windows which led out into the rockery. The golden afternoon had faded into early evening and a refres.h.i.+ng coolness was in the air. When he came back, he seated himself at the other end of the couch. "Just to show that there's no ill-feeling, I'll accept one of your gaspers, if you'll allow me.----There's nothing for me to explain. My name is Lord Taborley and I'm a friend of Mrs. Lockwood. There's nothing else."

The stranger leaned forward. His humor left him, revealing his premature haggardness. He laid a hand on Tabs' arm and asked a question. "You're fond of her?"

Tabs eyed him in silence, trying to divine what was intended. "At any rate, you are," he said kindly; "I see it now."

"Not fond of her, I'm in love with her." The man's face softened as he made the confession. "I was in love with her when she was still the wife of Pollock. I've been through deep waters. I've had to wait for her like Jacob did for Rachel. I've lost most things--my memory, my health, my very likeness! but never for five minutes have I lost my love for her.

She was the only star in my darkness----" The words fell from him with somber sincerity. "I don't know whether you understand----"

But Tabs' thoughts had turned inwards. He was living again the englamored poignancy of the years when Terry had been for him precisely that--the only star in his darkness. The intensity of the vision was like a cry of warning rousing his sleeping idealism from its lethargy.

His present errand became a treachery to be swept aside by his refound strength. He recognized the intruder with new eyes, not as an enemy, but as a comrade--a comrade marooned on the selfsame island of loneliness and bound to him by the common experience of a kindred adversity. He was like Crusoe discovering the footprint. Here, quite close to him, was a fellow waif who had drunk deep of his own bitter sense of desertion.

With a thrill of sympathy, his heart turned to him.

"The only star in the darkness!" He repeated the stranger's words. "For most of us there's been one woman who was all of that. If she fails us----" He stifled his pessimism. "When stars fail, one waits for the morning."

"So you, too, had your woman!"

The stranger smiled and relaxed against the cus.h.i.+ons. "Foolish of me!

You can't blame me. Twice I've believed that I'd lost her. First there was Gervis and then this Lockwood. Poor devils, I cry quits on them. But when I found you so at home here, you can guess what I dreaded. And yet you'll never guess why I followed you into this house." He lit a cigarette and crossed his legs. "I didn't want you to escape me till I'd asked a question---- Has it ever entered your head that Pollock might not be dead?"

Tabs started. Then he sat very still. It was the commonplace tone in which the question had been asked that froze his blood. It was as though this man had said, "I can bring him back." For a moment he knew genuine fear--the non-physical fear which the impalpable can awake in the bravest mind. Through the open window the companionable mutter of London entered. The normality of everything on which his eyes rested did its best to rea.s.sure him--the mellow evening sunlight in the friendly room, the flowers in the rockery, the toy-boat on the pond. "I never dig up my dead." He remembered Maisie's motto. But what if the dead----

He pulled himself together. Pollock not dead! An absurd suggestion!