A Safety Match Part 26

"Before breakfast, I doubt."

"Yes, as a matter of fact I had just come in from a run and was sitting down to it. He asked if he might have some: and after that he offered me--_ME!_--this grand billet. Of course I jumped at it--who wouldn't, to be with a man like that?--and I have been with him ever since."

"Well," said Mrs Carfrae, "you should know more of the creature than most folk. What is your unbia.s.sed opinion of him?"

"I think he is the greatest man that ever lived," said the boy simply.

"Hmph! As a matter of fact, he has less sense than anybody I ever knew," replied the old lady calmly. "Still, you are ent.i.tled to your opinion. I need not trouble you with an account of _my_ first meeting with him: it occurred a long time ago. But--wheel me a little nearer the sun, laddie: this corner is a thing too shady--it may interest you to know that he would have been my son-in-law to-day, had it not been--" she paused for a moment, very slightly--"for the uncertainty of human life. And that is why I take something more than a pa.s.sing interest in the doings of that slim-bodied, brown-eyed, tow-headed hempie that he married on. And that brings me to the point. Laddie, those two are getting over-far apart, and it must be _stopped_!"

"Yes, but how?" inquired Carthew dismally. "I understand that entering a lions' den just before dinner-time is wisdom itself compared with interfering between husband and wife."

A quiver pa.s.sed through Elspeth Carfrae's frail body, and she straightened herself in her chair.

"I am a havering and doited old woman," she announced with great decision, "and no one takes any notice of what I say or do. But I tell you this. So long as my old heart beats and my old blood runs, I shall be perfectly willing to face every single lion in the Zoo, gin it will bring a moment's happiness to Johnny Carr. The lad deserves a good wife. Once he nearly got one--the best and fairest in all the world--but G.o.d decided otherwise. Now he has got another: I know her: she has the right stuff in her. And when I leave this hotel next week I am going to take her with me, in her right mind, and deliver her to her man!"

The old lady concluded her intimation with tremendous vigour. Carthew sat regarding her with a mixture of reverence and apprehension.

"You are going to--to speak to her about it?" he asked.

"I am," replied Mrs Carfrae, with vigour.

"I would do anything," said Carthew awkwardly, "to put things right between those two. But supposing you make your attempt, Mrs Carfrae, and--and fail, won't it make matters worse?"

"Much," said Mrs Carfrae calmly. "If I interfere, unsuccessfully, I doubt if either of them will ever speak to me again. That is the usual and proper fate of busybodies. But--I am going to risk it!... Run me back to my sitting-room now, and call Janet. I hear your friends yattering out there in the verandah. They will be through with Algiers."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

JIM CARTHEW.

But our two conspirators were fated, for all practical purposes, to exchange _roles_.

The following evening Daphne and Carthew found themselves sitting together in the hotel garden after dinner. A great moon shone from a velvety African sky; the scented breeze rustled in the palms; and the music of the band drifted to their ears in intermittent waves.

It was one of those nights which touch the imagination and stir the emotions--a night upon which human nature expands to its utmost limits. A night upon which pa.s.sion awakes, and long-cherished secrets are whispered into suddenly receptive ears. Also a night upon which the devil stalks abroad. Dido resided a few miles from this spot. It was probably a night like this that made the Fourth Book of the aeneid worth writing.

If Dido failed to resist such environment, what of Daphne? She was young; she was intensely susceptible to such things as moons.h.i.+ne and soft music; and, disguise the fact from herself as she might, she was lonely. It is not altogether surprising that, as she surveyed this silent comely youth who lolled beside her eyeing the glittering Mediterranean in stolid abstraction, she should unconsciously have acquiesced in the first of the dismal prognostications of that splenetic but clear-sighted baronet, Sir Arthur Hilton. Jim Carthew had occupied Daphne's thoughts a good deal of late, and to-night she felt suddenly conscious of a desire to flirt with him.

"Cigarette, please!" she commanded.

Carthew silently handed her his case, and allowed her to select and light her own cigarette--a prodigal waste of opportunity, as any professional philanderer could have told her.

"A penny for your thoughts!" continued Daphne pertly.

Carthew, struck by a peculiar note in her voice, turned and looked at her. He was met by a provocative glance. There was a brief silence.

Then he said gravely--

"I don't think you are quite cut out for that sort of thing, Lady Carr."

Daphne, feeling as if she had received a whip-lash in the face, stared at him, white with anger. Then she rose stiffly from her seat and moved towards the hotel. Carthew did not stir.

"Don't go," he said. "We may as well have this out."

Daphne stood irresolute. Then curiosity got the better of virtuous indignation, and she sat down again.

"Will you kindly tell me," she said, "what you mean by talking in that way?"

Carthew's honest eyes lingered on her face in a manner which she could not fathom. Did the man love her, or was he pitying her, or was he merely indulging in sarcastic reflections at her expense? Whatever his motives, he had a knack of compelling attention.

Presently he began to speak.

"I wonder," he said, as if talking to himself, "why men and women are made as they are? Why does A love B, while B wors.h.i.+ps C, who cares for no one in the world but himself? And why does D insist on confusing things still further by not quite knowing what he--she--wants? I wonder! They say there is enough money spent in charity every year to supply the needs of every poor person living, but so much is misapplied that many have to go without. I think it is the same with human affection. There is so much true love going about in this world--enough to keep all of us well-nourished and contented. But what a lot of it goes to waste! There is so much overlapping! _Why_, I wonder? It is a difficult business, Life, Daphne."

He had never called her Daphne before, but neither of them seemed to notice the familiarity.

"We're a contrary crew, we mortals," he continued presently. "Here we are, you and I, sitting in the moons.h.i.+ne inaugurating a flirtation, though neither of us cares a snap for the other--in that way. Why, I wonder? I think it is partly due to pride--wounded pride. You are angry with your husband----"

Daphne, who was methodically picking her cigarette to pieces, looked up indignantly.

"I'm _not_!" she said hotly.

"Oh yes, you are," replied Carthew. "You think you are not, but you are. You try to believe that you are merely indifferent to him, but you are not. As for me, I am angry too--piqued--furious--jealous--raging--I admit it--with a girl whom I dislike intensely. The more I see of her the more selfish, affected, shallow, unwomanly I see her to be. And yet--I _love_ her! Why? Why? Why? People tell me she is heartless, soulless, sordid, greedy, vulgar--everything, in fact. Sometimes I feel they are right. Still--" he dropped his head into his hands and continued doggedly--"what difference does that make to _me_? I love her!... She cared for me once, too. She told me so--and she meant it! Perhaps if I had been a little more patient with her I might have kept her, and--and helped her a bit. Perhaps that was what I was sent into the world for--to make things easier for Nina. I could have done so much for her, too. I could have made a woman of her. She has her soft side: I know: I have seen it. No other man can say that. Meanwhile," he continued with a whimsical smile, "I am trying to solace myself by allowing you to flirt with me----"

Daphne drew her breath sharply.

"And you are not very good at it," concluded Carthew unexpectedly.

"You are very candid," said Daphne frigidly.

"Yes, but I speak truth. You are not good at it. Flirtation is a crooked business, and you are straight, _mon amie_. But wounded pride is not the only thing that has drawn us here together. Something else is responsible. We are both craving for sympathy. 'A fellow-feeling,'

you know! I know all about _you_," he continued quickly, as Daphne's lips parted. "You are by way of being a neglected wife; and since Nina has informed me that she has told you all about _me_, I suppose you regard me as a bit of a derelict too. Well, we have forgathered. What is going to happen next?"

Daphne was silent. She certainly did not know what was going to happen next. Her ideas on all subjects were a little jumbled at this moment.

Presently Carthew continued--

"We came together," he said gently, "just when each of us required a little companions.h.i.+p and sympathy; and we got it. I think our chance encounter on the highway of life has been a very profitable one. But it has served its turn. Our roads diverge again. We must part company, little comrade."

"Why?"

Daphne spoke this time in a tremulous whisper. A great wave of loneliness was surging up towards her.

"Because," said Carthew's deep voice, "it is the only thing to do.

Think what may happen if we travel on together too far. At present we are safe. I love some one else, and so do--and you are angry with some one else, let us say. Supposing, since the girl I love does not love me any more--supposing I ceased to love her? It seems hopeless, incredible, I admit; but it might conceivably happen. And supposing you gave up being angry with--some one else, and became indifferent to him, where might we not find ourselves? Our sheet-anchor--our platonic sheet-anchor--would be gone. And sooner than send you adrift among cross-currents, little Daphne, I prefer to forgo the only friends.h.i.+p in this world that I really value. You are too delicate and too fragrant to be tarnished by common gossip, so I am going away to-morrow. Let us say good-bye now--you beautiful thing!"

Daphne looked up at him in amazement. But there was no pa.s.sion in his face--only an infinite tenderness. To him she was simply a woman--one of the rarest and fairest of her s.e.x, perhaps, but still simply a woman--whom to succour, without expectation or desire of reward, was the merest courtesy on the part of any knight worthy of the name. This was a man! Daphne bowed her head, wondering dimly and scornfully at the insensate folly of Nina Tallentyre.