Chapter 10

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_ CHAPTER X

Andrew Slate, a very personable man in his spring clothes of grey tweed, took up his hat and prepared to depart. Half-past twelve had just struck by Wingate's clock, and the two men had been together since ten.

"You're a wonderful person, Wingate," Slate said, with a note of genuine admiration in his tone. "I don't believe there's another man breathing who would have had the courage to plan a coup like this."

Wingate shrugged his shoulders.

"The men who dig deep into life," he replied, as he shook hands, "are the men who take risks. I was never meant to be one of those who scratch about on the surface."

A note was slipped into his letter box as he let Slate out. He noticed the coronet on the envelope and opened it eagerly. A glance at the signature brought him disappointment. He read it slowly, with a hard smile upon his lips:

My dear Mr. Wingate,

I am writing to express to you my sincere and heartfelt regret for last night's unfortunate incident. I can do no more nor any less than to confess in plain words that I was drunk. It is a humiliating confession, but it happens to be the truth. Will you accept this apology in the spirit in which it is tendered, and wipe out the whole incident from your memory? I venture to hope and believe that you are sportsman enough to accede to my request.

Yours regretfully.

DREDLINTON.

Wingate was conscious of a feeling of disappointment as he threw the note upon the table. Open warfare was, after all, so much better. An _amende_ so complete left him with no alternative save acquiescence. Even while he was coming to this somewhat unwelcome decision, the telephone bell rang. He took off the receiver and was instantly galvanised into attention. It was Josephine speaking.

"Is that Mr. Wingate?" she asked.

"It is," he admitted. "Good morning--Josephine!"

"Quite right," she answered composedly. "That is how I like to have you call me. I am speaking for my husband. He is here by my side at the present moment."

"The mischief he is!" Wingate said. "Well?"

"My husband has desired me to intercede with you," Josephine continued, "to beg your acceptance of the apology which he has sent you this morning."

"No further word need be spoken upon the subject," Wingate replied. "Your husband has explained that he was drunk and has tendered his apology. I accept it."

There was a brief pause. Josephine was obviously repeating Wingate's decision to her husband. Then she spoke again.

"My husband desires me to thank you," she said. "He desires me to hope that you will continue to visit at the house, and that you will not allow anything he may have said to interfere between our friendship."

"Nothing that he has said or could say could interfere with that," Wingate assured her,--"at least that is my point of view."

"And mine!"

"Shall I see you to-day?" he asked.

"I hope so," she answered. "Perhaps after luncheon--"

There was a sound as though the receiver had been taken from her fingers. Dredlinton himself spoke.

"Look here, Wingate, this is Dredlinton speaking," he said. "You won't let this little affair make any difference to your call upon us on Tuesday morning?"

"Certainly not," Wingate replied. "I was thinking of writing you about that, though. I don't see any object in my coming. I think you had better let me off that visit."

"My dear fellow," Dredlinton pleaded, "if you don't come, Phipps will think it is because of last night's affair and I shall get it in the neck. I'm in disgrace enough already. Do, for heaven's sake, oblige me, there's a good chap."

Wingate hesitated for a moment.

"Very well," he assented, "I will go. Is that all?"

"That's all, thanks."

"I should like to speak to your wife again," Wingate said.

"Sorry, she's just gone out," was the rather malicious reply. "I'd have kept her for you, if I'd known. So long!"

A knocking at the door,--a rather low, suggestive knocking. Wingate knew that it was an impossibility, but he nevertheless hastened to throw it open. Miss Flossie Lane stood there, very becomingly dressed in a tailor-made costume of covert coating. She wore a hat with yellow buttercups, and she had shown a certain reticence as regards cosmetics which amounted to a tacit acknowledgment of his prejudices.

"Miss Lane!" he exclaimed.

She looked at him with wide-open eyes.

"But you were expecting me, weren't you?" she asked. "I remembered your inviting me quite well, but I couldn't remember where you said, so I thought I'd better come and fetch you. I haven't done wrong, have I?"

"Most certainly not," Wingate replied. "Come in, please. I'll ring for a cocktail and send the man down into the restaurant to engage a table."

She sank into an easy-chair and looked around her, while Wingate did as he had suggested. The sitting room, filled with trophies of curiously mixed characteristics--a Chinese idol squatting in one corner, some West African weapons above it, two very fine moose heads over a quaintly shaped fireplace, and a row of choice Japanese prints over the bookcase--was a very masculine but eminently habitable apartment. Miss Lane looked around her and approved.

"This is quite the nicest flat in the Court," she declared, "and I've been in so many of them. How did you find time to furnish it like this? I thought that you'd only just arrived from America."

"I come to London often enough to keep this little suite here," he explained. "I had it even through the war. Sometimes I lend it to a friend. I am one of those domestic people," he added with a smile, "who like to have a home of some sort to come to at the end of a journey."

"You're much too nice to live alone," she ventured.

"Well, you see, your sex has decreed that I shall up to the present," he remarked. "Here come the cocktails. I hope that yours won't be too dry. Where will you lunch--the restaurant or the grillroom?"

"The grillroom," she decided, after a moment's reflection. "We can go and sit out in the foyer afterwards and have our coffee."

The cocktails and Wingate's choice of a table were alike approved. Wingate himself, as soon as he had recovered from the bland assurance with which his guest had manufactured her invitation, devoted himself with a somewhat hard light in his eyes to the task of entertaining her. The whole gamut of her attractions was let loose for his benefit. He represented to her the one desirable thing, difficult of attainment, perhaps, but worth the effort. Soft glances and words hinting at tenderness, sighs and half-spoken appeals were all made to serve their obvious purpose. If Wingate's responses were a little artificial, he still made no attempt to hurry through the meal. He seemed perfectly content to consider the attractions which his companion heaped into the shop window of her being. Once she almost amused him, and he found himself for a few seconds contemplating her with some glimmering of the thought which she was so anxious to instil into his brain. After all, a companion like this was soothing, made no demands, filled a pleasant enough place in the broken ways of life, provided one had no other aspirations. And then the thought passed from him,--forever.

They took their coffee and liqueurs in the foyer. Flossie, perfectly satisfied with her companion and her progress with him, chattered gaily away with scarcely a pause, and Wingate, after his first resentment at her coming had passed, found a certain relief in sitting and listening to her equable flow of nonsense. By and by, however, she came very near annoying him.

"You know Lady Dredlinton very well, don't you Mr. Wingate?" she asked, a little abruptly.

His answer was marked with a warning note of stiffness.

"Lady Dredlinton," he repeated. "I know her, certainly. I was at her hospital at Etaples."

"Every one says that she is charming," the young lady continued, with a side glance at him. "Pity she can't keep that wicked husband of hers a little more under control. You know, Mr. Wingate," she confided, "he has asked me to supper four or five times but I have never cared about going with him quite alone. A girl has to be so careful in my position. Don't you agree with me?"

"I suppose so," he answered indifferently.

"Dear old 'Dredful,' as Lord Fanleighton used to call him, can be very amusing sometimes, but he hasn't the best reputation, and of course he's terrible when he's drunk, as he was last night. I do so like nice men," she sighed, "and there are scarcely any left. One seems to have lost all one's friends in the war," she went on reminiscently, her large blue eyes veiled with sadness. "It makes one feel very lonely sometimes."

Wingate scarcely heard her. His eyes were fixed upon the two men walking up the carpeted way from the restaurant. One was Peter Phipps, the other Lord Dredlinton. Flossie Lane, seeking to discover the cause of her companion's abstraction, glanced in the same direction and recognised them at once.

"Why here is Lord Dredlinton!" she exclaimed. "And Mr. Peter Phipps! He is rather a dear person, Mr. Phipps, you know, although you don't like him."

"Is he!" Wingate observed grimly.

"They are coming to speak to us," the young lady went on, shaking her skirts a little and glancing into the mirror which she had just drawn from her bag. "What a bother!"

Lord Dredlinton, more dignified than usual but if possible still more unpleasant, threaded his way between the chairs and paused before the two, followed, a few spaces behind, by Phipps.

"Hullo, Flossie!" the former exclaimed. "How are you, Wingate? You got my letter?"

"I received your letter and also your telephone message," Wingate replied stiffly. "So far as I am concerned, the matter, as I told you, is at an end."

"That's all right, then.--Flossie," Dredlinton continued, looking reproachfully at the young woman whose hand he was still holding, "I told you last night that you ought to know better. You should confine your attentions to the black sheep of the world, like me. Dear me!" he went on, standing a little on one side so as not to conceal Wingate. "My wife, apparently, has been lunching here. Wingate, shall we form a screen in front of you, or are you content to be toppled from your pedestal?"

Wingate met the ill-natured sneer indifferently. He even smiled as Phipps, standing on the outside of the little circle, also altered his position. It was clearly the intention of both that Josephine should realise the situation. Attracted by a gesture from her husband, she glanced across at them. For a single moment she half hesitated. There was a queer look in her eyes, a look of surprise mingled even with pain. Then she flashed a brilliant smile upon Wingate, ignored her husband and Phipps, and passed on.

"Cut!" Lord Dredlinton exclaimed, with mock dismay. "Cut, my friend Phipps! Me, her husband, and you, her dear friend! Really, it's a most uncomfortable thing to have a disapproving wife going about to the same restaurants and places. Let us go and sulk in a corner, Phipps, and leave this little comedy here to develop. Farewell, faithless Flossie! Wingate," he concluded, shaking his head gravely, "you have disappointed me."

They passed on. The young lady tossed her head angrily.

"There are times," she announced, "when I hate Lord Dredlinton. I don't know any one who can say such horrid things without being actually rude. I'm sure his wife looks much too good for him," she added generously.

Wingate's nerves were all on edge. He glanced at his watch and rose regretfully to his feet.

"I am afraid," he said, as he led the way towards the exit, "that I must go back to work. Thank you so much for coming and taking pity upon a lonely man, Miss Lane."

"You can have all that sort of pity you like," she whispered.

"Then I shall certainly make demands upon it," he assured her, as they parted at the door.

He found himself presently back in the cool and pleasantly austere surroundings of his sitting room and threw himself into an easy-chair drawn up in front of the wide-flung windows. A strong breeze, against which a flight of seagulls leaned, was stirring the trees in the Embankment Gardens and ruffling the surface of the water. The pall of smoke eastward seemed here and there cloven by a wind-swept avenue of clearer spaces. He felt a sudden and passionate distaste for his recent environment,--the faint perfume which had crept out from the girl's hair and face as she had leaned towards him, the brushing of her clothes against his, the daring exposure of silk stocking, the continual flirtatious appeal of her eyes and lips. He felt himself in revolt against even that faint instinct of toleration which her prettiness and at times subtle advances had kindled in him. He let his thoughts rest upon the more wonderful things which smouldered in his brain and leaped like fire through his veins when he dared to think of them. The room seemed suddenly purified, made fit for her presence.

"I am sure that Mr. Wingate will see me if he is alone," he heard a familiar voice say.

He sprang to his feet, realising in those few moments into what paradise his thoughts had been climbing, and greeted Lady Dredlinton.

Josephine accepted the easy-chair which he wheeled up for her and glanced around the room critically.

"Just what I expected," she murmured. "A nice healthy man's room, without too much furniture, and with plenty of books. You are wondering why I came, of course."

"I am too content with the good fortune which brought you to find time for wonder," he replied.

"You'll laugh at me when I tell you," she warned him.

"You needn't tell me at all unless you like. You are here. That is enough for me."

She shook her head.

"I am putting myself in the confessional," she declared. "I was leaving the place with a disagreeable taste in my mouth. At the last moment, even as I was stepping into a taxicab, I turned back. I went instead to the desk and boldly asked for the number of your suite. I want that taste removed, please."

"Tell me how I can do it in the quickest possible manner," he begged.

She turned and looked at him, enquiringly at first, then with a delightful little smile which relieved all the tenseness of her expression.

"By assuring me that you are not going to emulate, in however innocent a fashion, my husband's exploits in the musical comedy world."

He leaned over her chair, took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.

"Honestly," he asked, "do you need any assurance?"

"That is the funny part of it," she laughed. "Since I am here, since I have seen you, I don't feel that I do, but downstairs I had quite a horrid little pain."

"You will never have occasion to feel it again," he told her. "I met Miss Flossie Lane last night for the first time at the supper party to which Roger Kendrick took me. I was placed next to her, and somehow or other she seems to have convinced herself that I invited her to lunch to-day."

"And you?"

"To be perfectly honest I can't remember having done anything of the sort. However, what was I to do?"

"What you did, of course. That is finished. Now tell me about that supper party. What happened? Was Dredlinton really rude to you?"

"Your husband was drunk," Wingate answered. "He was rude to everybody."

"And what was the end of it?"

"I carried him out of the room and locked him up," he told her.

She laughed softly.

"I can see you doing it," she declared. "Are you as strong as you look, Mr. John Wingate?"

"I am certainly strong enough to carry you away and lock you up if you don't call me John," he replied.

"John, then," she said. "I don't mind calling you John. I like it. How fortunate," she went on lazily, "that we really did get to know one another well in those days at Etaples. It saves one from all those twinges one feels about sudden friendships, for you know, after all, in a way, nothing at Etaples counted. You were just the most charming of my patients, and the most interesting, but still a patient. Here, you simply walk into my life and take me by storm. You make a very foolish woman of me. If I had to say to myself, 'Why, I have known him less than a week!' it would hurt my pride horribly."

"Blessed little bit of shell that found a temporary shelter in my arm!" he exclaimed. "All the same, I feel just as you do. Out there, for all your graciousness, you were something sacred, something far away."

"And here?" she whispered.

"Shall I tell you?" he asked, with a sudden fire in his eyes.

"For heaven's sake, no!" she begged, thrusting out her hands. "I'm afraid to think--afraid of actual thoughts. Don't let us give form to anything. Let me be content to just feel this new warmth in my life."

She leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. A little tug came snorting up the river. Even the roar of the traffic over Waterloo Bridge seemed muffled and disintegrated by the breeze which swept on its way through the rustling lime trees.

"You are wonderfully situated here," she went on. "I don't believe it is London at all. It rests me more than any place I have been in for a long time, and yet--at the same time--I think that it is going to make me sad."

"Sad? But why?" he asked anxiously.

"Because it seems like one of the stopping places--where one steps off to think, you know. I don't want to think. I have had nine such miserable years. All through the war there was one's work, one's hospital, the excitement of the gigantic struggle. And now everything seems flat. One struggles on without incentive. One lives without hope."

"We weren't meant to do that," he protested.

"Only those of us who have thrown our lives away," she went on wearily. "You see, I thought Henry was different. I thought he only wanted a little understanding, a little kindness. I made a mistake."

"Life is too wonderful a thing," he insisted, "to lose the glory of it for one mistake."

"I am on the rocks," she sighed, "now and always. If I were made like your little luncheon friend, it might be different. I suppose I should spread my wings and settle down upon another planet. But I can't. I am differently made. I am not proud of it. I wish I weren't. It wouldn't all seem so hard then, I am still young, you know, really," she added, with a note of rebellion in her tone.

"How young?"

"Thirty-one."

"Nowadays, that is youth," he declared confidently, "and youth means hope."

"Sometimes," she admitted a little listlessly, "I have dared to feel hope. I have felt it more than ever since you came. I don't know why, but there it is."

He turned his head and looked at her, appraisingly yet with reverence. No measure of despair could alter the fact that she was a very beautiful woman. Her slimness never lost its meed of elegance. The pallor of her cheeks, which might have seemed like an inheritance of fragility, was counteracted by the softness of her skin and the healthy colour of her curving lips. She bore his scrutiny so impersonally, with such sweet and challenging interest, that he persisted in it. Her brown hair was almost troublesome in its prodigality. There were little curls about her neck which defied restraint. Her cool muslin gown, even to his untutored perceptions, revealed a distinction which the first dressmaker in London had endorsed. She spoke the words of lifelessness, yet she possessed everything which men desire.

"The tragedy with you," he pronounced, "is the absence of affection in your life."

"Do you think that I haven't the power for caring?" she asked quietly.

"I think that you have had no one to care for," he answered. "I think there has been no one to care for you in the way you wanted--but those days are over."

For the first time she showed some signs of that faint and growing uneasiness in his presence which brought with it a peculiar and nameless joy. Her eyes failed to meet the challenge of his. She glanced at the clock and changed the subject abruptly.

"Do you know that I have been here all this time," she reminded him, "and we have not said a word about our campaign."

"There is a great deal connected with it, or rather my side of it," he declared, "which I shall never tell you."

"You trust me?" she asked a little timidly, "You don't think that I should betray you to my husband?"

He laughed the idea to scorn.

"It isn't that," he assured her. "The machinery I have knocked into shape is crude in its way, but the lives and liberty of those underneath depend upon its workings."

"It sounds mysterious," she confessed.

"If you say that it is to be an alliance, Josephine," he decided, "it shall be. I need your help enormously, but you must make up your mind, before you say the last word, to run a certain measure of risk."

"What risk is there for me to run?" she asked, with a smile of confidence. "What measure of unhappiness could be crowded into my life which is not already there? I insist upon it--John--that you accept me as an ally without any more hesitation."

He bent and kissed her hands.

"This, then, is final," he said. "Within the next twenty-four hours you will be ready if necessary?"

"I am ready now--any time--always," she promised him. _

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