Gambler — 13 - Part 4, Chapters 12 through 14

CHAPTER XII

Hardly conscious of her movements, Clodagh left the card-room and passed down the corridor.

Her only tangible sensations were anger and self-contempt.

The thought that Serracauld, who had seemed less than nothing in the scheme of her life--Serracauld, with whom she had laughed and jested and flirted because he was a boy and of no account--should have treated her lightly; should have presumed to kiss her, to seize her violently in his arms, was something shameful and intolerable.

The simplicity of her upbringing--the uncontaminated childhood that her country had given her--rose to confront her in this newest crisis.

Vain, frivolous, foolish she might be, but beneath the vanity, the frivolity, the folly, she was--and always had been--good, in the primitive, fundamental sense of the word.

She hurried down the corridor, and down the staircase that she had ascended so short a time before; but, reaching the ground floor, she did not turn towards the ballroom, from which the sound of the violins still floated.

Instinctively, she moved in the opposite direction, towards the quieter portion of the house in which stood the music-room.

The door of the room was closed when she reached it, and no sound came to her from within.

For a space she stood hesitating outside; then the distant murmur of talk and laughter roused her to action.

Her hesitancy fled before her distaste for companionship.

She raised her hand and noiselessly opened the door.

To enter the music-room was to enter a region of romance.

For, as the card-room upstairs suggested the world and the things of the world, this room seemed to embrace all the repose, all the dignity, all the peace that such places as Tuffnell gather unto themselves with the passage of time.

It was a long, low-ceiled room with wainscoted walls and a polished oak floor; and the first object that met the visitor's eye, was an old harpsichord, mutely eloquent of bygone days; for, with rare good taste, Lady Diana had hidden her piano behind a tapestry screen, worked many centuries ago by another lady of the house.

Even on this night of festivity, the place retained its peculiar quiet; only half a dozen candles burned in the sconces that hung upon the walls;

and the scent of lavender and dried rose-leaves lingered upon the air.

It seemed what it was--a room in which, for numberless generations, women of refinement had made music, read poetry or sung songs, while they wove about them the indescribable atmosphere of home.

And into this room Clodagh stepped, her heart burning, her mind distressed, pained, and hurt.

For an instant she paused upon the threshold, overwhelmed by the contrast between the aloofness, the graceful repose of the place, and tumult of her own thoughts; then, yielding to the spirit of peace, she closed the door resolutely and went forward into the room.

But at sound of the closing door, at sound of her dress upon the polished floor, an answering sound came from behind the tapestry screen--the noise of a chair being quietly pushed back--of some one rising to his feet.

In sudden consternation, she stopped.

For one instant she glanced behind her, contemplating flight; the next, a faint exclamation of surprise--the merest audible breath-escaped her; and her figure became motionless.

The occupant of the room came quietly round the screen; and in the uncertain light of the candles she recognised Gore.

The position was unusual; the moment was unusual.

For the first time since the night at the Palazzo Ugochini, they were entirely alone--for the first time since the night at the Palazzo Ugochini they looked at each other without the commentary of other eyes--without the atmosphere of conventional things.

Involuntarily, inevitably, their eyes met.

Clodagh looked into his; and in the contact of glances it seemed that a miracle came to pass.

By power of that magnetism that indisputably exists--the magnetism that draws certain natures irrevocably together, although circumstance and time may delay their union--she saw the gleam of comprehension, of question, of acknowledgment spring from his eyes to hers; and she knew, without the need of words, that he stood within the circle of her power, that--whether with, or against his will--his personality claimed response from hers.

She did not move; for it seemed to her, in that instant of understanding, that her life and his were mysteriously suspended.

Her heart beat extraordinarily fast, yet her mental vision was curiously clear.

By the light of her recent misgivings, by the light of her sudden confidence she seemed to see and to read herself and him with a strange and vivid clearness.

Some power, tangible yet invincibly compelling, drew them together.

In the personal scheme of things there were only two persons--he and she.

Beyond the walls of the music-room life swept forward as relentlessly, as rapidly as before; but inside the walls of the music-room there were only he and she.

Almost unconsciously she took a step towards him.

"Do you remember that night in Venice?"

she asked.

"The night you said all the things that sounded so hard, and hurt so much, and--and were so true?"

She did not know why she had spoken.

She did not know how she had framed her words.

She only knew that, exalted by the consciousness of great good within her reach, she was moved to dare greatly.

It was the moment of her life.

The moment when all social barriers of prejudice and of etiquette fell away before a tremendous self-knowledge.

She realised in that space of time that her thoughts of Gore--her attraction towards him--her reluctant admiration--had been insensibly leading up to this instant of action; that on the evening when they stood together on the terrace of the hotel at Venice, and watched the night steal in from the lagoon, it had been irrevocably written in the book of fate that they should one day look into each other's hearts--for happiness or sorrow.

"Do you remember that night in Venice?"

she said again, almost below her breath.

And in the pause that followed the whispered words, the most wonderful--the most wholly perfect--incident of her life occurred.

The voice that had power to chill or stir her, spoke her name; the hands she had believed closed to her for ever were held out towards her.

Gore came slowly forward across the shadowed room.

"I do remember," he said.

"I have never forgotten, I never shall forget."

CHAPTER XIII

Nearly three weeks had passed since the night of Lady Diana Tuffnell's dance; and Clodagh was once more occupying her London flat.

The season was long since dead; the fashionable world had betaken itself to its customary haunts; London had, in the eyes of society, become intolerable; and yet it seemed to her, as she woke each morning and looked across the park, lying under a haze of heat, that she had never known the great city until now; that she had never experienced the exhilaration that can lie in its crowded, strenuous life until now, when her own existence--her own soul seemed lifted above it on the wings of happiness.

The hours, the days, the weeks that had followed the night of Lady Diana's dance had been a chain of golden dreams, linked one to the other.

From the moment that Gore had made his confession, the face of the world had altered for her.

One overwhelming fact had coloured the universe.

The fact that he loved--that he needed her.

They had entered into no lucid explanations in the moments that had followed the confession; for men and women in love have no need of such mundane things.

With the glorious egotism of nature, they are content with the primitive consciousness that each lives and is close to the other.

Clodagh had, it is true, made some faint and deprecating allusion to the past--to Gore's first disapproval, and subsequent avoidance of her.

And he had paused in his flow of talk and looked at her with sudden seriousness.

"I have never disapproved of you," he had said.

"I have never felt it was my place to disapprove."

"But you have avoided me?"

"Never intentionally.

I have watched you; I have studied you, since we have been here together."

"And what have you seen?"

Clodagh had remembered the card-room and Serracauld--the rose garden and Deerehurst--with a quick, faint sense of fear.

But Gore had taken her hand and, with quiet courtesy, had raised it to his lips.

"I have seen--or believe I have seen--that though you may like these people, may be amused by them, may even court them, not one of them is more to you now than they were in Venice.

That is what I believe.

Am I right?"

And Clodagh--in sudden relief, in sudden gratitude for his faith--had caught his hand passionately between her own, and looked up confidently into his face.

"You are right!"

she had cried.

"Oh, you are right!

They are nothing to me!

Nothing!

--nothing!"

And Gore, moved by her vehemence, had leant forward and looked deeply into the eyes that challenged his.

"Not one of them is anything to you--in any way?"

"Not one of them is anything to me--in any way."

That had been the only moment of personal doubt or question that had obtruded itself upon the first hours of mutual comprehension.

Until more than half the programme had been danced through, and the older guests had begun to depart, they had walked together up and down the solitary paths of the old garden upon which the music-room opened--a garden where thyme and lavender and a hundred other sweet-smelling plants bordered the prim flower-beds and recalled by their scents the days when the harpsichord had tinkled out across the silence of the night.

As they paced slowly to and fro, they had made many confessions, sweet in the confessing, of thoughts and desires and doubts felt by each--when each had believed the other out of reach; and quietly, hesitatingly, eagerly they had touched upon the future, upon the days when Clodagh's mourning should be over and they could permit the world to share their secret--upon the days, still later, when their lives should no longer be separate things, but one perfect whole.

Gore was an unusual, and a very delightful lover.

The slight suggestion of reticence that marked him in ordinary life clung to him even in these intimate moments.

He gave the impression that behind his extreme quiet, his almost gentle deference of manner, lay reserves of feeling, of dignity, of strength that he himself had, perhaps, never fathomed.

And for this very reserve--this courtliness--this indescribable fineness of bearing, Clodagh felt her own nature leap forth in renewed admiration.

At last, at one o'clock, they had parted, he to smoke and pace the garden paths until the early summer dawn broke over the woods; she to wait by the open window of Nance's bedroom, with her face buried in her hands, her whole being alive and tingling with the tumult, the excitement of the joy that had come to her.

At six o'clock next morning, before any member of the house party was awake, Gore had made his way to the stables; and a few minutes later had emerged, leading two saddled horses.

In the drive he had been joined by Clodagh, dressed in her riding habit, and fresh and buoyant as on the first morning when she had ridden alone through the great gates, and had dreamed of his coming to Tuffnell.

No companionship can be more delightful than that of two people wholly occupied with each other, who ride together on a summer morning.

To Clodagh, the frank happiness of that stolen ride--the intoxicating sense of reality conveyed by Gore's glance, as she met it in the searching sunlight, had been things that possessed no parallel.

Her natural, spontaneous capacity for joy had wakened within her like a flood of light.

The misgivings--the dark hours--the feverish artificiality of the past months had been dispersed as if by magic.

She had become as a child who, by the fervour of its own delight, sheds delight upon all around.

And so it had been with the days that had elapsed before their departure from Buckinghamshire.

They had met as often as chance would permit; but, with the exception of the first stolen ride, they had arranged no more secret meetings.

And to Clodagh the half-furtive, ever-expectant existence had been fraught with new pleasure.

To talk and laugh with others, to watch Gore do likewise, and all the while to know that, unseen by any eyes, unsuspected by those around them, their lives were linked together--their thoughts belonged to each other--was a source of intense excitement, of unending joy.

To Nance alone did she confide her secret; and here lay another source of happiness.

For every night, when the house party had retired, when Simonetta had been dismissed, and the house given over to the great sheltering stillness of the country, the sisters had exchanged such confidences as all women love--talking of their hopes, their fears, their pasts, their futures, in the half-reluctant, half-eager confessions that the dark suggests.

Then at last these days of mystery and possibility had come to an end.

Gore had received a letter from his mother asking him to join her in Scotland; and almost at the same hour had come a cablegram from Pierce Estcoit saying that he, with his mother and sister, had sailed for England a fortnight earlier than they had at first intended.

So bidding good-bye to the Tuffnells, to her fellow guests, and to Gore, Clodagh had returned to London.

And now, a fortnight later, she and Nance were driving homeward through the park in the warmth of an early afternoon.

The morning had been devoted to the preparation of Nance's trousseau--a matter which, in these days, claimed absorbed attention; and, later, the sisters had lunched together at one of the restaurants.

The day--or at least the earlier portion of it--had been a complete success.

But now, as Clodagh's motor car sped along under the canopy of trees, already whitened with summer dust, a cloud seemed to have fallen upon the sisters' gaiety.

Clodagh lay back in her corner, looking straight in front of her; Nance sat stiffly upright, her face flushed, her head held at an aggressive angle.

At last, unable to maintain the silence longer, she turned and looked at her sister.

"It--it seems to me so stupid!"

she said.

Clodagh took up a parasol that lay beside her, and opened it with a little jerk.

"Was it my fault that he lunched at 'Prince's'?

Was it my fault that he sat at the table next to ours?

You know perfectly well that I don't care where he lunches--or whether he ever lunches----" Nance maintained her rigid attitude.

"I wonder if he is of that opinion," she said dryly.

Clodagh flushed suddenly.

"It is you who are being stupid!

Lord Deerehurst is one of my best friends.

It's impossible to treat him rudely when we chance to meet."

Nance gave a little angry laugh.

"When you chance to meet!"

she repeated with immense scorn.

Then she turned afresh and looked at her sister.

"Do you think engaged people ought to have best friends?

I wonder what Pierce would say if I were to get flowers and books and things every day----" Clodagh shut her parasol sharply.

"How can you, Nance!

Books and flowers and things everyday!

Four times Lord Deerehurst has sent me flowers since we came back to town."

"And how many times has he written to you?

And how many times has he called?

And why did he come back to town from Tuffnell, instead of going to France with Mr. Serracauld?"

Clodagh looked away across the park.

"He had business in town."

"Business!

Was it business that brought him to the flat at nine o'clock the second day after we arrived--and that made you ride with him?

Oh, Clo, I wonder, when you think of Walter, that you're--you're not ashamed!"

She brought the last word forth with a little gasp.

For a moment Clodagh's face was suffused with red.

"I do not need anybody to tell me how I should care for Walter," she said, after a moment's pause.

At the low, hurt tone, Nance's antagonistic attitude suddenly deserted her.

The expression of her face changed, her figure unbent.

"Clo!

Clo!

I was a wretch!

--I was a wretch!

Forgive me!

It's only that, knowing Walter is coming back to-morrow, knowing that he hates Lord Deerehurst, and seeing you allow him to go everywhere that you go---- Oh, Clo, I can't properly explain, but sometimes I have felt--afraid.

Walter is so--so honourable himself."

Clodagh put out her hand and laid it for a moment upon her sister's. "When one loves like I do, Nance," she said, "one simply doesn't _see_ anybody but the person that one cares for.

Other people don't count--other people don't exist!"

Nance looked down at the hand still resting upon her own.

"Perhaps not," she said wisely, "but the point is that the person one cares for may not be quite so blind."

Clodagh withdrew her hand.

"You mean that Walter might imagine--you mean that Walter might be _jealous_ of Lord Deerehurst?"

"I do mean that."

With a sudden gesture of amusement, Clodagh threw up her head and laughed.

Then almost as suddenly her face became grave.

"Nance!"

she said in a new voice.

Very sharply Nance turned.

"Yes?"

But Clodagh's mood had veered once more.

"Nothing, darling!"

she said--"nothing!

Here we are at home!

Aren't you longing for a nice, cool room and a cup of tea?"

CHAPTER XIV

The fragmentary quarrel between the sisters was very suggestive.

Nance's anger, and Clodagh's irritable repudiation of her advice, had each been fraught with its own significance.

For, much as the former might busy herself in the happiness of her own engagement and the preparations for her marriage, she could not blind herself to the fact that Clodagh was acting, if not with genuine folly, at least with something that might readily be mistaken for it; and much as the latter might resent a criticism of her action, she could not mentally deny that possibly the criticism was justified.

Yet, when the matter came to be sifted, it was hard to say exactly the point to which exception could reasonably be taken.

Undoubtedly Deerehurst did obtrude himself with curious--with almost intimate--frequency into the plans of each day; but then the intrusion was so natural--so simple--so subtle, if one might use so extreme a word.

If London is large in one sense, it is socially as small as any other capital; and the man who wishes to seek the society of a member of his own set finds his way rendered very easy.

And in all matters of tact and subtlety Deerehurst was an adept.

If, in Nance's eyes, his comings and goings were things to cavil at, he knew exactly how to arrange them for Clodagh's consideration, so that the gift of a bunch of flowers--the offer of seats at a theatre--the loan of a horse--or the retailing of an amusing bit of gossip seemed the merest courtesies from one friend to another.

For in one fact lay his advantage--the fact of a really great favour, secretly given and secretly accepted, in comparison with which all trivial civilities became as nothing.

Not that he ever pressed this advantage home.

He was far too wise to allude to it by look or word.

But the very passivity of his attitude served to fix the consciousness of his generosity deeper in Clodagh's mind.

Not that the knowledge of it galled her; she was too exultantly happy in her own life to be hampered by any debt.

But the knowledge of its existence was there--unconsciously bearing upon her ideas and her actions.

On the morning following her return from Tufinell, a faint thrill of surprise and uneasiness had touched her when her eyes had fallen upon a big square envelope, bearing a black coronet, that lay amongst her letters on the breakfast table.

And another remembrance of Venice had caused her fingers to tremble slightly as she tore the letter open.

But at the first line her face had cleared--her confidence in life and in herself had flowed back in full tide.

There was not a word in the letter that Gore himself might not have read.

So great had been her relief, that a new wave of kindly feeling for Deerehurst had awakened in her mind; and when, on the following morning, he had joined her in her early ride, she had received him with friendly warmth.

And from that, things had drifted, until Deerehurst's presence--Deerehurst's discreet, deferential, amusing personality--had become a factor in the day's routine.

The Estcoits had arrived from America, and, with their advent, she had been compelled to see less of Nance; the majority of her friends had already left town, so that even had she desired the old existence, amusements and occupations were less easy to find than they had been a month ago.

There was, of course, her daily letter from Gore--the most precious thing in her existence--and there was also her daily letter to him.

But even a woman in love cannot read and write--or even dream--all day; and in the intervals of idleness there invariably seemed to be--Deerehurst.

But now at last the day had arrived upon which Gore was to return to London.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon; the hot summer air was beating upon the green-and-white sunblinds of the flat; and Nance was standing at a table in the window, arranging a bowl of heliotrope, when Clodagh opened the door of the drawing-room.

She was dressed in her riding habit; her riding crop was under one arm;

and as she came forward into the room she was drawing off a pair of chamois gloves.

"He hasn't come?"

she asked quickly.

"Oh, I'm so glad!

I was terrified that that last gallop might have made me late!

How lovely life is!"

She came quickly across the room; and, linking her arm in Nance's, buried her face in the heliotrope.

"How lovely life is!

And summer!

And flowers!

Do you know, the sun to-day made me long for Orristown.

Think of it all, Nance!

Burke and Hannah, and Polly and the dogs!

Oh, we must all go there together--you and I, and Pierce and Walter----" She paused suddenly and looked at her sister.

"Nance!

You're cross!"

Nance refused to look up.

"Nance, you're cross!"

Her voice was less sure--less confident.

Nance caught the tone of hesitancy, and turned quickly round.

"I wish Walter had driven through the park ten minutes ago," she said.

"I do--I really, really do."

Clodagh's face flamed, and she drew away from her sister.

"And I wish----" she began hotly.

Then she paused.

The door of the drawing-room was thrown open; and Gore was announced.

For one instant, Clodagh stood hesitating with a new and charming diffidence; the next, all thoughts of self were blotted out by the consciousness of his presence--his bright, strong presence, typified by his frank eyes, his clear, healthy skin, his close-cropped fair hair.

With a little exclamation of greeting, she hurried towards him.

In quick, warm response, he took both her hands.

"Well!"

he said--"well!

It's good to see you!

How splendid you look!

And Nance, too!"

He turned to the window with quiet cordiality.

"Can Nance find time to shake hands with a mere Englishman?"

Nance laid down the bunch of heliotrope she was still holding.

And at the same moment, Clodagh looked round impulsively.

"Nance and I were quarrelling," she said.

"Quarrelling!

What on earth about?"

Gore looked amusedly from one to the other.

"Oh, about----" But Nance interrupted by stepping quickly forward.

"About nothing!"

she said hastily.

"How are you, Walter?

I'm so glad to see you!

But I must wash my hands before I even try to talk.

Heliotrope is much stickier than you'd think."

She looked down at her fingers, then laughed and moved across the room.

But as Gore hurried forward to open the door for her, she glanced up into his face with an almost serious look.

"I'm so glad you have come back!"

she whispered.

"Make up to her for the time you've been away!"

Gore's feelings were very pleasant, very protective, as he closed the door and turned back into the room.

He was too essentially an Englishman to be very demonstrative; but the leaven of sentiment that so often lies in the English character had always held a place in his nature.

In confessing his love to Clodagh--in acknowledging that love to himself--he had indisputably swept aside some difficulties--difficulties born of inherent prejudice, of a certain stiff-necked distrust of what he had begun by criticising.

But they had been thrust aside.

He had acknowledged himself stirred to the depths of nature by something brilliant and vivid in her personality.

He had made his choice.

His whole expression, his whole bearing, was attractive as he came towards her; he seemed to carry about him a breath of the country--the clean, open spaces of the country.

And her heart gave a throb of pride and satisfaction, of complete, ungrudging admiration, as he took her hands again and drew her to him.

"Well!"

he said fondly--"well!

Have you really missed me as much as your letters said?"

For a moment she remained silent, drinking in the joy of his presence.

"Won't you tell me?"

"In a moment--in one moment.

Oh, Walter, the heavenly rest of knowing that you care!"

Then suddenly shaking off her seriousness, she drew away from him, looking up into his face with eyes that shone strangely.

"I'm not crying, Walter!"

she exclaimed.

"I'm only--frantically happy!"

She gave a little gasp, followed by a little laugh.

And Gore, carried away by her charm, by the unconscious flattery of her words, caught her suddenly in his arms, and, bending his face to hers, kissed her passionately.

At last they drew apart, laughing; and Clodagh moved across the room to the open window, and sat down upon the low sill.

A second or two later, he followed her.

"Well!

And so the fiance is perfection?"

he said smilingly.

"Little Nance looks very happy."

He seated himself on the edge of the table, strewn with the _debris_ of the heliotrope.

Clodagh glanced up, pleased and interested.

"Yes, Pierce is charming," she said eagerly.

"And so are his mother and sister.

I told you, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"We dined with them at the Carlton last night.

And they're coming here to tea this afternoon.

I know you'll love them.

Mrs. Estcoit has the most fascinating----" But Gore made a rueful face.

"To-day!"

he said.

"Oh, you might have given me the first day!"

Clodagh laughed happily.

"How greedy of you!

This is to be a family party."

Gore smiled.

"And Nance was decorating the room for the sacrifice?"

He idly gathered the stalks and leaves of the heliotrope into a little heap.

The action was purely mechanical, purely inadvertent.