CHAPTER XXVII.
AN INTERIM REPORT.
Though maid to a lady accounted very fine, Suzanne, in presence ofbeauty unadorned, was a simple and kind-hearted enthusiast in her art.Before lunch-time next day she had done so well for Amaryllis out ofLady Elizabeth Bruffin's wardrobe, that she declared, with conviction tofill up the gap in evidence, "_que mademoiselle n'a jamais pu paraitreplus seduisante, plus pimpante qu'aujourd'hui_."
"How can she know that?" asked Amaryllis laughing.
"Because nothing possible could be, you pretty creature," said LadyElizabeth, glowing with pleasure in the success of her nursing and inthe quality of Dick Bellamy's conquest.
She had, indeed, good reason: eleven hours' sleep, with redundanthappiness and bodily health as elastic as a child's, had made Amaryllisscarcely more delightful to her new friends' eyes than to her own. Foron this Sunday morning she looked into her glass for the first timethrough a man's eyes.
In spite of her beauty, however, and of her joy in the man who was tosee and praise it, there was yet in her heart a pricking as ofconscience.
In the night there had come to her, for the first time since Dick hadsaved her from the Dutchwoman and her knife, the memory of RandalBellamy; of his kindness, of his favour with her father and of his lovefor herself.
She did not now feel as she had felt in his study before she fellasleep; she did not even define the feeling which had then made hertears flow; and she understood, with the memory of Dick's kisses on herface, that Randal was not wounded as Dick would have been in losing her.
She had not wronged Randal, nor had she any sense of wrong-doing; for tolove Dick was a natural thing to do--and a wise thing. It was even apraiseworthy deed: for that this wonderful Dick of all men should gowithout any smallest thing which he desired, would have been wickedindeed.
The sting was this: Randal did not yet know that she was Dick's, norDick that Randal would have had her his own. And she believed that itwould hurt Randal less in the end to learn the tremendous news from hermouth than from her father's, Dick's or Lady Elizabeth's; and from LadyElizabeth she knew she could not keep it long, having a suspicion, even,that she knew it already.
She must see Randal before Dick should come to her. She must tell Randalthe most wonderful and most inevitable thing of that terrible andglorious yesterday. And Randal must decide whether Dick was to know whatRandal had asked and offered. And if Dick was to know, Randal mustdecide by whom, and when.
If Randal wished it hidden, she could never tell it--not even to Dick.
For Amaryllis, even before she had "put her hair up," had learned tohate the woman who tries to hide her nakedness with a belt of scalps.
As these thoughts ran through her head, Amaryllis frowned between hereyebrows.
"A fly in the ointment, after all?" asked Lady Elizabeth, smiling sothat one knew there was none in hers.
"Only something I remembered. I want----"
"Won't ask, shan't have," said Lady Elizabeth.
"Will Sir Randal Bellamy be here to lunch?" asked the girl.
"I hope so, my dear. He's with Dick--or was--sitting on the bed to keephim down till the doctor came. He's like a hen with one chick over thatbrother of his."
And Lady Elizabeth Bruffin laughed.
"I think it's--it's beautiful," said Amaryllis, with a shade ofindignation in her voice.
"Yes--quite. That's why I laughed."
"I know," replied the girl, unwrinkling her forehead. "I often want tolaugh for that." And then, after a moment's pause, she added: "Please, Iwant to speak to Sir Randal for a moment, before lunch."
"You shall. Heroines must have things made smooth for them, mustn'tthey, at the end of the book?"
And she took the girl, fresh from Suzanne's finishing touches, toGeorge's study.
"George won't be coming in for half an hour, dear," she said. "There areheaps of papers and books, but no looking-glass. So you'll be able toforget your pretty self for a few minutes."
And off went the fairy godmother--to meet Sir Randal Bellamy on thestairs.
"But you're staying to lunch," she expostulated.
"If you say so, of course I am," said Randal.
"I've left Amaryllis in George's study. She wants you to see I havelooked after her as well as if she'd been at home with her father andyou."
She passed him, but turned two steps above.
"I wish you'd seen Dr. Caldegard looking at her fast asleep in bed lastnight," she said in a low voice, very tender. "It was a picture--thekind one keeps."
"Yes," said Randal. "I was in the other room, you know, looking atmine."
And he went down the stair, wondering how a woman he had seen last nightfor the first time had managed to get that sentimental speech out ofhim.
Amaryllis rose as he entered, and almost ran to meet him.
"Oh, Randal!" she cried.
He had known his gentle doom on the Friday; and her "Randal," _toutcourt_, sealed it, for never had she used his name so to him before. Itcame now, he knew, not in his own right, but through Dick.
In a single emotion, he was sorry and glad--more glad, he told himself,than sorry. For the sadness seemed to have been with him a long time,while the joy was new.
A little while she babbled of the trouble and pain she had given them.
"You and poor dad! If only I could have yelled out in time!"
"To get a knife in you, my dear--no, it's been all just right. Why, weshould never have got the Dope of the Gods back, without you."
And when she laughed, he told her how her father had growled: "Oh, damnthe Ambrotox!" and how he had lectured the potentate on nervousexhaustion.
But when a little silence fell between them, Amaryllis took a deepbreath and plunged, saying in a half-stifled voice, "I want to tell yousomething."
"Tell away, child," he replied, smiling benignantly on her, though hisheart beat heavily, telling him her tale beforehand.
"It's--it's Dick," she said, and broke down.
"Dick?" he responded. "Of course it's Dick--and Dick it is going to be;Dick for breakfast, Dick for lunch, and Dick for dinner."
"Yes," said Amaryllis, tears running at last, but voice steady. "Dickfor ever, I think. It feels like that, Randal dear."
"If it depends on him it will be," said Dick's brother.
"If it depends on me, it shall be," answered the girl.
"Then what's the dear silly child crying for?" he asked.
"I--I don't know," she replied weakly.
"That's a dear silly little lie--you know as well as I do. Althoughyou've been perfectly honest with me, you have a dear silly feeling thatthe things which have happened so suddenly have been unfair to me. WhenI spoke to you last, my dear, you were surer than ever that you'd neverwant me. You didn't know why you were surer than ever--because you wereafraid to look and see. Young women all, I suppose, have a moment whenthey _won't_ look into that dear silly cupboard. But I looked at theblind door of it, and I--well, I guessed what was inside."
The tears would not stop. There was no sobbing nor convulsion of throator breath. They just ran out in tribute to the man's goodness.
But Randal explained them with a difference.
"The tears from your left eye come tumbling out over the edge of thewell of your kindness for me," he said. "You would like me to haveeverything I want. But you know that Dick must have everything that youare. So there it is. But the tears out of your dear silly right eye aresilly sham jewels, sparkling with dear injured vanity. You're afraid Ishall somehow think you played a crooked little game with me. I don't."
The silly little handkerchief was getting the best of it.
"When you've quite turned that silly tap off," he went on, "I'll tellyou something else."
He got up and walked away from her, looked at two prints which he didnot see, lit a cigarette which he could not taste, and came back to apale-faced, dry-eyed Amaryllis--a girl with a smile on her face that wasa woman's smile.
"Tel
l me that other thing," she said.
"I don't suppose that it'll be altogether news to you, any more thanyours was to me. But it's this: For a good long time I resistedyou--just and only because the more I admired you, the more I couldn'thelp thinking that Dick ought to have his chance--what I knew was one ofthe great chances. Then I got weak, and last Wednesday I tried to grabmine, before he'd even had a look in. I felt mean--and I couldn't stopmyself. That afternoon he came, and--well, as it turned out, saved mefrom the agonies of gout. I always get it, when I've done anything offcolour."
"You!" said Amaryllis. "D'you know what he told me, the day we drove toOxford?"
"Some silly yarn."
"A dear story, not a bit silly. He said he daren't admire a gun or abook or a horse of yours, for fear you'd force it on him. Said it was amercy of Providence that your size and shape permitted him to admireyour coats and trousers."
"Well," asked Randal, "doesn't he deserve the best of everything?"
"Oh, yes!" declared the girl eagerly.
"This time," said Bellamy, "he's getting it. And it's God's truth, mydear, that it makes me unspeakably happy."
Amaryllis put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
And then George came in with _The Sunday Telegram_.
"Raid on a West-End Flat!" he grumbled. "Nice, respectable lot you are,getting me mixed up with a thing like this!" And he read out:
"'In consequence of information which has come into the hands of thepolice----' and all the usual jabber. And the placards are screaming'Secret Dope Factories' all over this moral city. 'World-wideOrganisation to be Broken Up.' 'Five Leaders Arrested.' They'll begetting me and Betsy into the witness-box."
"Come off it, George," said Dick from the doorway. "You and Liz aren'tgoing to get boomed in this stunt. Put your money into pars about youryacht and your stables, if the 'Palatial Home' gadget's wearing thin."
His smile was almost straight again, Amaryllis thought, and there waslittle sign upon him of what he had been through, except the patch ofblack plaster on his left cheek, and the accentuated limp with which hecame across the room to her.
"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed. "What a lovely coat!"
"That's just what I was going to say about you," he answered, taking herhand. "We look a bit different, don't we?"
"Sent me in a cab, as if I were his valet," said Randal, "to fetch hisnewest and purplest raiment from his beastly little flat."
"Nothing like it," said George, "to take the taste of savagery out ofthe mouth. If the proletariat would only dress for dinner every night,we shouldn't have any labour troubles. The Nationalisation of theDinner-jacket would be death to the Agitator. They say Abe Grinnel isdrafting a bill to make it illegal."
Lady Elizabeth came in with Caldegard. Amaryllis soon had her father atone end of the room in a subdued conversation of which the hostess hadlittle difficulty in guessing the subject. The two brothers, sheobserved, had come together at the other end, and were looking out ofthe window across the park. She took George discreetly away from his ownroom.
Of yesterday Randal and Dick had already talked much that morning; butof that adventure which he accounted the greatest, Dick had saidnothing.
"Amaryllis has told me," said Randal.
"I'm glad," said Dick. "It didn't come easy to start the subject. I'mnot used to it yet."
"Neither of you could have done better," said the elder brother. "Icongratulate you, dear boy. And I want to give you--to make you apresent of a thing that isn't mine--couldn't have been mine, anyhow.But, all the same, I give it you."
"Thanks," replied the younger. "But what the devil d'you mean?"
Randal looked at him.
"You don't mean--you----" began Dick, and stopped short, shocked byconviction.
"Yes, I do. And I don't think I should ever have let you know it, Dick,but that it doesn't seem comfortable for a girl to carry about with hereven a little thing like that which she can't speak of to her husband.So now you know. And there is a way of giving even what one could notwithhold. She's perfect, Dick."
"Like the giver," said his brother.
And it was to Randal also that he owed the few minutes which he was ableto get alone with Amaryllis before lunch.
He went up to Caldegard.
"Have you heard Bruffin describe Dick's solo on the dinner-bells--lastnight, you know? Well come and see if he's in the hall now," he said,and dragged the old man away.
Left alone together,
"It's like a dream," said Amaryllis; and, "Which!" asked Dick.
"Yesterday," said the girl, peering at his calm face.
"It's this that's like dreaming, to me," he answered. "When you're awakeyou make things happen. When you're asleep, things have the best ofit--make you follow their lead. Yesterday, Amaryllis, I was some bloke,because I was useful to you. If I'd had time to think, I'd have thoughtvery strong beer of myself. But now I'm--oh, a giddy little strangerthat's taken the wrong turning and got in among the Birds of Paradise."
And he touched gingerly the sleeve of her frock,
"Lady Elizabeth's," she said. "You score. Dick. You've got your own, andthey fit."
"Do I fit?" asked Dick.
"You don't really mean you feel strange and lost in _this_ dream, doyou?" she asked a little anxiously.
"I don't mean I feel strange in civilised life. That's only a variationon savagery--a mere matter of degree--and I like it well enough. I cantalk the language, dear child, when I'm in the country. But you are mynew life, and I'm--well, dazzled, let's call it. Yesterday I had tofetch you home and see that you didn't get hurt. Now, I've got to makeyou happier every day for the next fifty odd years. It's a tall order,and there's lots to do. I ought to begin."
"You began when you found me crying in Randal's study, Dick."
"Oh, it's easy to make people less wretched," he objected. "That's whyyesterday was, on the whole, a success. But--are you happy?"
"Awfully! Oh, just awfully!" murmured Amaryllis.
"There it is!" sighed Dick, with the humour which she knew already forthe natural shell of some wise little kernel. "And I've got to give you,as you give me, the keen edge of appetite for all the world and for allthe people that play about in it. The stuff's all there, but----"
"Why, Dick, it's the same thing, after all, as yesterday. You saved mefrom beasts and from fear and from myself. You made me laugh, and youmade me love--even made me love Tod, and poor Pepe, and the bees, andthe round-faced girl in the cottage they bumbled round; and 'Opeful'Arry; and you brought me home to a fairy godmother. If you could do allthat in a day, Dick, just think what a lot of laughing and loving you'llbe able to dig out of fifty years. And I won't let you off. Wake up,Dick. There's no dreaming about it all."
So they woke up together.
At the lunch-table, Amaryllis looked round her, and felt the last of hertroubles was over.
Randal showed, she thought, a face more serene and contented than shehad ever before seen him wear.
During the earlier part of the meal the talk went to and fro over thetrack of what George rashly called the _Amarylliad_.
Randal told him the word was falsely constructed, _Iliad, Odyssey_ and_Aeneid_ being, he said, syncopated adjectival forms derived from theirrespective substantive stems.
"Ours," said George, "has been a rag-time Dunciad."
And when the coffee and George's elbows were on the table, and four ofhis irresistible cigars alight:
"And us," he said, "not to get one little puff out of it all!"
"Advertisement," said Randal, "is the false dawn of fame. You, Mr.Bruffin, do not, I believe, need it, and will certainly not get it outof the Dope Drama. Miss Caldegard and my brother, who are likely to geta great deal, will hate it."
Amaryllis flushed a little at the coupling of names, but faced itbravely.
Her father drew a crumpled newspaper from his pocket.
"'Mysterious Murders near Millsborough,'" he read out. "'Injured Man inEmpty House. Bearded
Man Stabbed in Lonely Wood. Dead Chinaman onDeserted Roman Road. Abandoned Automobile.'"
"Inquests!" said George.
"Horrid!" said Amaryllis.
"Rescued Damsel!" said Lady Elizabeth.
"Scientist's Daughter Abducted!" cackled Caldegard.
"Lightning Pursuit by Gallant Airman!" boomed George.
"Dope Gang Baffled!" chuckled Randal. "And we understand that theinteresting heroine will shortly reward----"
Lady Elizabeth shot a keen glance at Amaryllis and Amaryllis answered itboldly.
"Oh, of course!" she said.
George, having caught the look, seized upon the words.
"I wish to propose the health," he said, himself raising his glass, "ofMiss Caldegard, coupling it with that of my ancient friend andfellow-filibuster, Limping Dick."
When four on their feet had toasted the two sitting, Randal spokeseriously.
"The inquests are likely to begin about Wednesday next," he said. "Ifyou two children get yourselves neatly married on Monday, you will bepursued by _subp[oe]nas_ to the Isle of Wight, say, and able to show upand get your evidence begun at least at the second sitting, about a weeklater. There'll be a paragraph or two before that, and by the time theevidence is reported, you'll be a settled married couple, and theromance will have evaporated."
"Oh, Randal!" said the girl reproachfully.
"Evaporated from the print and paper, dear child," he explainedpaternally. "Take my advice, and you'll just about break the hearts ofthe reporters."
"Amaryllis and I," said Lady Elizabeth, rising, "will withdraw and holdcounsel. An interim report will be issued at tea."
THE END.
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