The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece Part 19

"But, dearest, of course you are coming," said Milly instantly.

Their eyes were on each other now, and their faces armed and masked.

Christina measured the depth of estrangement in all that the flexible, disingenuous acquiescence hid of disappointment, bitterness, even hatred.

"Oh no, no, indeed; I think you ought to have your good-bye walk alone,"

she insisted. "He will expect it now. I'm sure he thought that you particularly wanted it to be alone."

"He couldn't have thought anything so unlikely," said Milly. "It is our good-bye walk with you."

So Christina went with them. She felt herself still trembling in every nerve from the appalling risk she had run, and ran; for which was the greater risk, that Milly should realize her guile and hate her, or that Milly and d.i.c.k should come to an understanding? She could not tell; nor where she stood; yet triumph trembled in her fear. She had succeeded.

They had not spoken together. In the park she and Milly bade d.i.c.k good-bye. d.i.c.k's train was to go in the early evening. Milly, when they reached home--and she had talked lightly if not gaily in the hansom--said that she had rather a headache. She would have her luncheon in her room and sleep through the afternoon and be fit and fresh for the play that night. Christina knew in an instant that a last desperate hope cowered beneath the affected languor and lightness; and it watched her, feverishly, like the eyes of a tracked animal creeping in an underbrush past enemies' guns. When she replied, kissing her friend tenderly, that a good rest was the best of cures for a headache and that she herself would do some shopping and go to the tea for which they were engaged, these large, sick eyes of Milly's hope and fear widened and shone with a recovered security. She wanted to be left alone that afternoon. She would not go to d.i.c.k; Christina knew her too accurately to believe that possible, and d.i.c.k had been too stupid to make it conceivable; but what Milly hoped for was a sudden illumination of d.i.c.k's stupidity; some tug of unendurable pain or surmise that would bring him back on the chance of seeing her again. Milly's logic was instinctive, but Christina believed that it was sound. d.i.c.k, she, too, felt sure of it, would come.

She lunched and then she sat at her writing-table and wrote some notes, looking out at the street, and then, when an hour approached in which a caller might appear, she went out.

It was one of the suddenly hot days in May that London sometimes offers.

It was so hot that Christina's head, as she walked slowly up Sloane Street, swam and turned, and the lines of cabs and omnibuses and carriages in the roadway, upon which she fixed her eyes, seemed to pulse and float as they went by. Three o'clock had struck. d.i.c.k, if he came, must come before five, and she must walk up and down Sloane Street for perhaps nearly two hours. If she lay in wait in the house, Milly, who no doubt was already up and dressed and waiting, would discover her. Milly, too, might be watching from the drawing-room windows. Her peril was desperate, and her safest course was to walk on the side of the street near the house where Milly could not see her. This she did, turning regularly in her little beat, indifferent to the odd spectacle she must present, and scanning the pa.s.sers-by. She had not long to wait.

Half-an-hour had not elapsed, when, in an approaching hansom, she saw the broad shoulders and perplexed yet resolute features of d.i.c.k Quentyn.

He, too, had come to final decisions on this fateful day.

Christina walked towards the hansom smiling. With her opened parasol and delicate dress of white and black she had the most unalarming and casual air. She seemed to have just stepped from her own doorway. She had held up her hand in signal, and d.i.c.k, arresting his cabman, sprang out.

Christina greeted him gaily.

"Well, this is very nice. Can you really stop and speak to me? You're not running a risk of losing your train?"

d.i.c.k hardly smiled in answer. His face showed his uncertainty, his anxiety, his trouble.

"My train? Oh no;--I've over an hour yet. Heaps of time.--In fact--I was on my way to your house. I thought I'd have a last glimpse of you and Milly. Are you just going out?"

"Just going out. And as to Milly,--it's too bad," said Christina, "but she is getting a little sleep this afternoon and particularly asked that she shouldn't be disturbed. We are going to the play to-night. You'll walk with me for a little way, though, won't you?"

There was nothing ambiguous in her words or manner. They were certainly in keeping with the situation, and poor d.i.c.k Quentyn, although he looked almost haggard, turned obediently and walked beside her. He walked silently for a little way, while Christina talked, then, as they came out into Knightsbridge, he said, suddenly;--"Mrs. Drent,--may I ask you about something?--Do you mind? Shall we go into the park for a little while?"

"Of course; of course," said Christina, kindly and mildly.

They went into the park and sat down on two chairs that faced the stream of carriages and had rhododendrons behind them. When they sat down, Christina's head swam so giddily that she feared she might be going to faint. She closed her eyes for a moment, mastering her weakness with a desperate effort. d.i.c.k did not notice her pallor. "You see," he said, leaning forward and boring small holes in the gravel with the point of his stick--"You see,--I think I must tell you--ask you for your advice--because you know Milly so much better than any one else in the world. You can tell me if I'm mistaken--or advise me what to do, you know. It's just this: I thought, when I first came home, that Milly had begun to care for me again--or, at all events, that she'd got over disliking me."

"Care for you? Dislike you?" Christina murmured vaguely. "Oh--I don't think it was ever that--of late years--since you'd so tactfully and charmingly understood and made everything so easy for her."

"No. Yes; it seemed she'd particularly got over it," d.i.c.k, rather puzzled, a.s.sented. "And I mean, by caring, that she seemed so happy when I was there--at first, happier than I'd ever known her."

"She can dare to be happy with you now, you see; just because you have made her so secure."

"So secure?"

"Yes," Christina met his eyes. "So sure that you'll never ask anything of her, make anything difficult for her again."

d.i.c.k Quentyn grew red. "I never did do that, as far as I remember, after I understood."

"That is what Milly so deeply appreciates," Christina returned.

There was a little silence after this and Christina, in it, controlled her breaths from trembling. Then d.i.c.k, groping painfully among his impressions, put forward another. "She did mind, very much, my being in danger last winter; you told me that. She was worried, really worried about me?"

Like a hurried, jangling bell somewhere in the background of her mind Christina, as she, too, gathered together her impressions and memories, seemed to hear a reiterated "No lies; above all, no lies." But he had put the weapon into her hand, and though she felt as if she held it lifted above some innocent life, it fell relentlessly.

"Did I say that Milly was worried about you? It was hardly that, I think; though, of course, she was glad to see you out of danger. Of course she was glad; how could anyone so gentle-hearted as Milly not be?

But if you ask me what she did feel, I must tell you the truth. You want the truth, don't you? It is much better--for you and for Milly, isn't it, that there should be no misunderstandings?"--d.i.c.k nodded--his eyes fixed on her. "What Milly said, in the winter, when we had news of your danger,--was that it was rather dreadful to realize that if you were killed it would hardly affect her more than the death of any of the men who had come to tea with us the day before."

The knife had fallen and her victim, after a moment, turned dazed eyes away from her. "Milly said that? About me?"

"I was shocked," Christina murmured. She heard, as if from a far distance, the strange, hushed quality of her voice. Her own blood seemed to have been arrested.

"She wouldn't have minded more than that?"

"She said, when I reproached her, that I could only expect her to be solemn, not sorry, over the death of a man for whom she had no affection, a man she had almost hated. Mr. Quentyn, I am so grieved for you. Of course, she doesn't hate you now; but I am afraid you have allowed yourself false hopes about Milly."

d.i.c.k, now, had risen to his feet and, facing her as she sat, he gazed over her head at the rhododendrons. "I wonder why she wanted me to come for a walk this morning. Yes, I did have false hopes. I thought that meant something. I've thought that all sorts of little things might mean something."

"Milly is so sweet and kind when she feels no pressure, no alarm. I thought, for a moment last night, that she meant you to have the walk alone. But as soon as you were gone she insisted on my coming with you.

I've tried to help you, Mr. Quentyn. I've given you every chance. But there isn't any chance." It was well to do it thoroughly.

There was bewilderment and humiliation--at last humiliation--on d.i.c.k's face; but of incredulity not a trace. "I know how kind you've been," he said. "I've felt it."

Christina, now, had also risen. A dart of keenest pity, even admiration, went through her, horridly painful. "I am so dreadfully sorry," she murmured. "I had to tell you--since you asked me;--I didn't want you to hurt Milly--and yourself--uselessly."

"I know. I perfectly understand," said d.i.c.k.

They walked in silence to Albert Gate, and there, as they paused in farewell, Christina suddenly, seizing his arm and speaking in a hurried whisper, said: "You have been splendid. I can't tell you how I feel it.

If I can ever--at any time--do anything----" It was the truth, yet the falseness of such speech, from her to him, appalled her while she spoke.

Her voice trailed off. "Forgive me. Good-bye--" she said.

They grasped each other's hands and d.i.c.k, as she broke away, saw that the tears were running down her face.

CHAPTER III

CHRISTINA

He was gone. She had triumphed. And only pain and horror, as if for the innocent life she had taken, were about her. No joy, no triumph, in having s.n.a.t.c.hed Milly from degradation.

At the thought of Milly the fear that drove upon her was so intense that it induced a curious lightness of head. She was uplifted and upheld above her own fear. The unnatural buoyancy became almost a lightness of heart. All was over. If she were a criminal she must profit by her crime and shelter herself from suspicion. They would be happy--of course they would be happy again--she and Milly. "Love begets love. Love begets love." She heard herself muttering the words almost gaily, like an incantation, as she walked down Sloane Street.

When she crossed the street and looked up at the house she saw that Milly was standing at the drawing-room window looking down at her.

Something in Milly's att.i.tude there, in her beautiful dress and in her unsmiling gaze, suggested to Christina the thought of a captive princess watching the approach of some evil enchantress. Milly--her prisoner--her victim! Her darling Milly!--She beat away the black vision.

She went slowly upstairs and came slowly into the drawing-room. Milly had turned from the window and, with the same hard, unsmiling gaze, stood and watched her enter. Christina sank into a chair.