CHAPTER XVII
The society papers printed a paragraph which said that Lord Creedmoreand Countess Leven were going to have a week-end party at Craythew,and the list of guests included the names of Mr. Van Torp and Senoritada Cordova, 'Monsieur Konstantinos Logotheti' and Mr. Paul Griggs,after those of a number of overpoweringly smart people.
Lady Maud's brothers saw the paragraph, and the one who was in theGrenadier Guards asked the one who was in the Blues if 'the Governorwas going in for zoology or lion-taming in his old age'; but thebrother in the Blues said it was 'Maud who liked freaks of nature, andGreeks, and things, because they were so amusing to photograph.'
At all events, Lady Maud had studiously left out her brothers andsisters in making up the Craythew party, a larger one than had beenassembled there for many years; it was so large indeed that the'freaks' would not have been prominent figures at all, even if theyhad been such unusual persons as the young man in the Blues imaginedthem.
For though Lord Creedmore was not a rich peer, Craythew was a fine oldplace, and could put up at least thirty guests without crowding themand without causing that most uncomfortable condition of things inwhich people run over each other from morning to night during week-endparties in the season, when there is no hunting or shooting to keepthe men out all day. The house itself was two or three times as big asMr. Van Torp's at Oxley Paddox. It had its hall, its long drawing-roomfor dancing, its library, its breakfast-room and its morning-room, itsbilliard-room, sitting-room, and smoking-room, like many another bigEnglish country house; but it had also a picture gallery, the librarywas an historical collection that filled three good-sized rooms, andit was completed by one which had always been called the study, beyondwhich there were two little dwelling-rooms, at the end of the wing,where the librarian had lived when there had been one. For the oldlord had been a bachelor and a book lover, but the present master ofthe house, who was tremendously energetic and practical, took care ofthe books himself. Now and then, when the house was almost full, aguest was lodged in the former librarian's small apartment, and on thepresent occasion Paul Griggs was to be put there, on the ground thathe was a man of letters and must be glad to be near books, andalso because he could not be supposed to be afraid of Lady LetitiaFoxwell's ghost, which was believed to have spent the nights in thelibrary for the last hundred and fifty years, more or less, ever sincethe unhappy young girl had hanged herself there in the time of Georgethe Second, on the eve of her wedding day.
The ancient house stood more than a mile from the high road, near thefurther end of such a park as is rarely to be seen, even in beautifulDerbyshire, for the Foxwells had always loved their trees, as goodEnglishmen should, and had taken care of them. There were ancient oaksthere, descended by less than four tree-generations from Druid times;all down the long drive the great elms threw their boughs skywards;there the solemn beeches grew, the gentler ash, and the lime; therethe yews spread out their branches, and here and there the cedar ofLebanon, patriarch of all trees that bear cones, reared his royalcrown above the rest; in and out, too, amongst the great boulders thatstrewed the park, the sharp-leaved holly stood out boldly, and theexquisite white thorn, all in flower, shot up to three and four timesa man's height; below, the heather grew close and green to blossom inthe summer-time; and in the deeper, lonelier places the blackthorn andhoe ran wild, and the dog-rose in wild confusion; the alder and thegorse too, the honeysuckle and ivy, climbed up over rocks and stems;you might see a laurel now and then, and bilberry bushes by thousands,and bracken everywhere in an endless profusion of rich, dark-greenlace.
Squirrels there were, dashing across the open glades and running upthe smooth beeches and chestnut trees, as quick as light, and rabbits,dodging in and out amongst the ferns, and just showing the snow-whitepatch under their little tails as they disappeared, and now and againthe lordly deer stepping daintily and leisurely through the deep fern;all these lived in the wonderful depths of Craythew Park, and of birdsthere was no end. There were game birds and song birds, from thehandsome pheasants to the modest little partridges, the royalists andthe puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing inthe tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops asthey quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, andlittle Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms andsnails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shotdown in a great hurry from the holes in old trees where they had theirnests, and many of them came rushing from their headquarters in theruined tower by the stream to waddle about the open lawns in theirungainly fashion, vain because they were not like swallows, but couldreally walk when they chose, though they did it rather badly. Andwhere the woods ended they were lined with rhododendrons, and lilacs,and laburnum. There are even bigger parks in England than Craythew,but there is none more beautiful, none richer in all sweet and goodthings that live, none more musical with song of birds, not one thatmore deeply breathes the world's oldest poetry.
Lady Maud went out on foot that afternoon and met Van Torp in thedrive, half a mile from the house. He came in his motor car with MissMore and Ida, who was to go back after tea. It was by no means thefirst time that they had been at Craythew; the little girl lovednature, and understood by intuition much that would have escaped anormal child. It was her greatest delight to come over in the motorand spend two or three hours in the park, and when none of the familywere in the country she was always free to come and go, with MissMore, as she pleased.
Lady Maud kissed her kindly and shook hands with her teacher beforethe car went on to leave Mr. Van Torp's things at the house. Then thetwo walked slowly along the road, and neither spoke for some time, norlooked at the other, but both kept their eyes on the ground beforethem, as if expecting something.
Mr. Van Torp's hands were in his pockets, his soft straw hat waspushed rather far back on his sandy head, and as he walked he breathedan American tune between his teeth, raising one side of his upper lipto let the faint sound pass freely without turning itself into a realwhistle. It is rather a Yankee trick, and is particularly offensive tosome people, but Lady Maud did not mind it at all, though she heard itdistinctly. It always meant that Mr. Van Torp was in deep thought, andshe guessed that, just then, he was thinking more about her than ofhimself. In his pocket he held in his right hand a small envelopewhich he meant to bring out presently and give to her, where nobodywould be likely to see them.
Presently, when the motor had turned to the left, far up the longdrive, he raised his eyes and looked about him. He had the sight of aman who has lived in the wilderness, and not only sees, but knows howto see, which is a very different thing. Having satisfied himself, hewithdrew the envelope and held it out to his companion.
'I thought you might just as well have some more money,' he said, 'soI brought you some. I may want to sail any minute. I don't know. Yes,you'd better take it.'
Lady Maud had looked up quickly and had hesitated to receive theenvelope, but when he finished speaking she took it quickly andslipped it into the opening of her long glove, pushing it down tillit lay in the palm of her hand. She fastened the buttons before shespoke.
'How thoughtful you always are for me!'
She unconsciously used the very words with which she had thanked himin Hare Court the last time he had given her money. The tone told himhow deeply grateful she was.
'Well,' he said in answer, 'as far as that goes, it's for youyourself, as much as if I didn't know where it went; and if I'mobliged to sail suddenly I don't want you to be out of yourreckoning.'
'You're much too good, Rufus. Do you really mean that you may have togo back at once, to defend yourself?'
'No, not exactly that. But business is business, and somebodyresponsible has got to be there, since poor old Bamberger has gonecrazy and come abroad to stay--apparently.'
'Crazy?'
'Well, he behaves like it, anyway. I'm beginning to be sorry for thatman. I'm in earnest. You mayn't believe it, but I really am. Kind ofunnatural, is
n't it, for me to be sorry for people?'
He looked steadily at Lady Maud for a moment, then smiled faintly,looked away, and began to blow his little tune through his teethagain.
'You were sorry for little Ida,' suggested Lady Maud.
'That's different. I--I liked her mother a good deal, and when thechild was turned adrift I sort of looked after her. Anybody'd do that,I expect.'
'And you're sorry for me, in a way,' said Lady Maud.
'You're different, too. You're my friend. I suppose you're about theonly one I've got, too. We can't complain of being crowded out ofdoors by our friends, either of us, can we? Besides, I shouldn't putit in that way, or call it being sorry, exactly. It's another kind offeeling I have. I'd like to undo your life and make it over again foryou, the right way, so that you'd be happy. I can do a great deal, butall the cursed nickel in the world won't bring back the--' he checkedhimself suddenly, shutting his hard lips with an audible clack, andlooking down. 'I beg your pardon, my dear,' he said in a low voice, amoment later.
For he had been very near to speaking of the dead, and he feltinstinctively that the rough speech, however kindly meant, would havepained her, and perhaps had already hurt her a little. But as shelooked down, too, her hand gently touched the sleeve of his coat totell him that there was nothing to forgive.
'He knows,' she said, more softly than sadly. 'Where he is, they knowabout us--when we try to do right.'
'And you haven't only tried,' Van Torp answered quietly, 'you've doneit.'
'Have I?' It sounded as if she asked the question of herself, or ofsome one to whom she appealed in her heart. 'I often wonder,' sheadded thoughtfully.
'You needn't worry,' said her companion, more cheerily than he had yetspoken. 'Do you want to know why I think you needn't fuss about yourconscience and your soul, and things?'
He smiled now, and so did she, but more at the words he used than atthe question itself.
'Yes,' she said. 'I should like to know why.'
'It's a pretty good sign for a lady's soul when a lot of poorcreatures bless her every minute of their lives for fishing them outof the mud and landing them in a decent life. Come, isn't it now? Youknow it is. That's all. No further argument's necessary. The jury issatisfied and the verdict is that you needn't fuss. So that's that,and let's talk about something else.'
'I'm not so sure,' Lady Maud answered. 'Is it right to bribe people todo right? Sometimes it has seemed very like that!'
'I don't set up to be an expert in morality,' retorted Van Torp, 'butif money, properly used, can prevent murder, I guess that's betterthan letting the murder be committed. You must allow that. Thesame way with other crimes, isn't it? And so on, down to meremisdemeanours, till you come to ordinary morality. Now what have yougot to say? If it isn't much better for the people themselves to leaddecent lives just for money's sake, it's certainly much betterfor everybody else that they should. That appears to me to beunanswerable. You didn't start in with the idea of making those poorthings just like you, I suppose. You can't train a cart-horse to winthe Derby. Yet all their nonsense about equality rests on the theorythat you can. You can't make a good judge out of a criminal, nomatter how the criminal repents of his crimes. He's not been born theintellectual equal of the man who's born to judge him. His mind isbiassed. Perhaps he's a degenerate--everything one isn't oneself iscalled degenerate nowadays. It helps things, I suppose. And you can'texpect to collect a lot of poor wretches together and manufacturefirst-class Magdalens out of ninety-nine per cent of them, becauseyou're the one that needs no repentance, can you? I forget whether theBible says it was ninety-nine who did or ninety-nine who didn't,but you'll understand my drift, I daresay. It's logic, if it isn'tScripture. All right. As long as you can stop the evil, without doingwrong yourself, you're bringing about a good result. So don't fuss.See?'
'Yes, I see!' Lady Maud smiled. 'But it's your money that does it!'
'That's nothing,' Van Torp said, as if he disliked the subject.
He changed it effectually by speaking of his own present intentionsand explaining to his friend what he meant to do.
His point of view seemed to be that Bamberger was quite mad since hisdaughter's death, and had built up a sensational but clumsy case, withthe help of the man Feist, whose evidence, as a confirmed dipsomaniac,would be all but worthless. It was possible, Van Torp said, that MissBamberger had been killed; in fact, Griggs' evidence alone wouldalmost prove it. But the chances were a thousand to one that she hadbeen killed by a maniac. Such murders were not so uncommon as LadyMaud might think. The police in all countries know how many casesoccur which can be explained only on that theory, and how diabolicallyingenious madmen are in covering their tracks.
Lady Maud believed all he told her, and had perfect faith in hisinnocence, but she knew instinctively that he was not telling her all;and the certainty that he was keeping back something made her nervous.
In due time the other guests came; each in turn met Mr. Van Torp soonafter arriving, if not at the moment when they entered the house; andthey shook hands with him, and almost all knew why he was there, butthose who did not were soon told by the others.
The fact of having been asked to a country house for the expresspurpose of being shown by ocular demonstration that something is 'allright' which has been very generally said or thought to be all wrong,does not generally contribute to the light-heartedness of suchparties. Moreover, the very young element was hardly represented, andthere was a dearth of those sprightly boys and girls who think it theacme of delicate wit to shut up an aunt in the ice-box and throw thebilliard-table out of the window. Neither Lady Maud nor her fatherliked what Mr. Van Torp called a 'circus'; and besides, the modernyouths and maids who delight in practical jokes were not the peoplewhose good opinion about the millionaire it was desired to obtain, orto strengthen, as the case might be. The guests, far from being whatLady Maud's brothers called a menagerie, were for the most part of thegraver sort whose approval weighs in proportion as they are themselvessocial heavyweights. There was the Leader of the House, there werea couple of members of the Cabinet, there was the Master of theFoxhounds, there was the bishop of the diocese, and there was one ofthe big Derbyshire landowners; there was an ex-governor-generalof something, an ex-ambassador to the United States, and a famousgeneral; there was a Hebrew financier of London, and Logotheti, theGreek financier from Paris, who were regarded as colleagues of VanTorp, the American financier; there was the scientific peer who haddined at the Turkish Embassy with Lady Maud, there was the peer whosehorse had just won the Derby, and there was the peer who knew Germanand was looked upon as the coming man in the Upper House. Many hadtheir wives with them, and some had lost their wives or could notbring them; but very few were looking for a wife, and there were noyoung women looking for husbands, since the Senorita da Cordova wasapparently not to be reckoned with those.
Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep myreaders in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a littlecuriosity left. Therefore I shall not narrate in detail what happenedon Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just what mighthave been expected to happen at a week-end party during the seasonwhen there is nothing in the world to do but to play golf, tennis, orcroquet, or to ride or drive all day, and to work hard at bridge allthe evening; for that is what it has come to.
Everything went very well till Sunday night, and most of the peopleformed a much better opinion of Mr. Van Torp than those who had latelyread about him in the newspapers might have thought possible. TheCabinet Ministers talked politics with him and found him sound--foran American; the M.F.H. saw him ride, and felt for him exactly thesympathy which a Don Cossack, a cowboy, and a Bedouin might feel foreach other if they met on horseback, and which needs no expression inwords; and the three distinguished peers liked him at once, because hewas not at all impressed by their social greatness, but was verymuch interested in what they had to say respectively about science,horse-breeding, and Herr Bebel. The great
London financier, and he,and Monsieur Logotheti exchanged casual remarks which all the men whowere interested in politics referred to mysterious loans that mustaffect the armaments of the combined powers and the peace of Europe.
Mr. Van Torp kept away from the Primadonna, and she watched himcuriously, a good deal surprised to see that most of the othersliked him better than she had expected. She was rather agreeablydisappointed, too, at the reception she herself met with LordCreedmore spoke of her only as 'Miss Donne, the daughter of his oldestfriend,' and every one treated her accordingly. No one even mentionedher profession, and possibly some of the guests did not quite realisethat she was the famous Cordova. Lady Maud never suggested that sheshould sing, and Lord Creedmore detested music. The old piano in thelong drawing-room was hardly ever opened. It had been placed there inVictorian days when 'a little music' was the rule, and since the happyabolition of that form of terror it had been left where it stood, andwas tuned once a year, in case anybody should want a dance when therewere young people in the house.
A girl might as well master the Assyrian language in order to composehymns to Tiglath-Pileser as learn to play the piano nowadays, butbridge is played at children's parties; let us not speak ill of theBridge that has carried us over.
Margaret was not out of her element; on the contrary, she at firsthad the sensation of finding herself amongst rather grave and notuncongenial English people, not so very different from those with whomshe had spent her early girlhood at Oxford. It was not strange to her,but it was no longer familiar, and she missed the surroundings towhich she had grown accustomed. Hitherto, when she had been asked tojoin such parties, there had been at least a few of those personswho are supposed to delight especially in the society of sopranos,actresses, and lionesses generally; but none of them were at Craythew.She was suddenly transported back into regions where nobody seemed tocare a straw whether she could sing or not, where nobody flatteredher, and no one suggested that it would be amusing and instructiveto make a trip to Spain together, or that a charming little kioskat Therapia was at her disposal whenever she chose to visit theBosphorus.
There was only Logotheti to remind her of her everyday life,for Griggs did not do so at all; he belonged much more to the'atmosphere,' and though she knew that he had loved in his youth awoman who had a beautiful voice, he understood nothing of music andnever talked about it. As for Lady Maud, Margaret saw much less of herthan she had expected; the hostess was manifestly preoccupied, andwas, moreover, obliged to give more of her time to her guests thanwould have been necessary if they had been of the younger generationor if the season had been winter.
Margaret noticed in herself a new phase of change with regard toLogotheti, and she did not like it at all: he had become necessary toher, and yet she was secretly a little ashamed of him. In that templeof respectability where she found herself, in such 'a cloister ofsocial pillars' as Logotheti called the party, he was a discordantfigure. She was haunted by a painful doubt that if he had not been avery important financier some of those quiet middle-aged Englishmenmight have thought him a 'bounder,' because of his ruby pin, hissummer-lightning waistcoats, and his almond-shaped eyes. It was veryunpleasant to be so strongly drawn to a man whom such people probablythought a trifle 'off.'
It irritated her to be obliged to admit that the London financier, whowas a professed and professing Hebrew, was in appearance an Englishgentleman, whereas Konstantinos Logotheti, with a pedigree ofChristian and not unpersecuted Fanariote ancestors, that went back toByzantine times without the least suspicion of any Semitic marriage,might have been taken for a Jew in Lombard Street, and certainly wouldhave been thought one in Berlin. A man whose eyes suggested darkalmonds need not cover himself with jewellery and adorn himselfin naming colours, Margaret thought; and she resented his way ofdressing, much more than ever before. Lady Maud had called him exotic,and Margaret could not forget that. By 'exotic' she was sure that herfriend meant something like vulgar, though Lady Maud said she likedhim.
But the events that happened at Craythew on Sunday evening threw suchinsignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out thetrue character of the chief actors, amongst whom Margaret veryunexpectedly found herself.
It was late in the afternoon after a really cloudless June day, andshe had been for a long ramble in the park with Lord Creedmore, whohad talked to her about her father and the old Oxford days, till allher present life seemed to be a mere dream; and she could not realise,as she went up to her room, that she was to go back to London onthe morrow, to the theatre, to rehearsals, to Pompeo Stromboli,Schreiermeyer, and the public.
She met Logotheti in the gallery that ran round two sides of the hall,and they both stopped and leaned over the balustrade to talk a little.
'It has been very pleasant,' she said thoughtfully. 'I'm sorry it'sover so soon.'
'Whenever you are inclined to lead this sort of life,' Logothetianswered with a laugh, 'you need only drop me a line. You shall havea beautiful old house and a big park and a perfect colonnade ofrespectabilities--and I'll promise not to be a bore.'
Margaret looked at him earnestly for some seconds, and then asked avery unexpected and frivolous question, because she simply could nothelp it.
'Where did you get that tie?'
The question was strongly emphasised, for it meant much more to herjust then than he could possibly have guessed; perhaps it meantsomething which was affecting her whole life. He laughed carelessly.
'It's better to dress like Solomon in all his glory than to be takenfor a Levantine gambler,' he answered. 'In the days when I wassimple-minded, a foreigner in a fur coat and an eyeglass once stoppedme in the Boulevard des Italiens and asked if I could give him theaddress of any house where a roulette-table was kept! After that Itook to jewels and dress!'
Margaret wondered why she could not help liking him; and by sheerforce of habit she thought that he would make a very good-lookingstage Romeo.
While she was thinking of that and smiling in spite of his tie, theold clock in the hall below chimed the hour, and it was a quarter toseven; and at the same moment three men were getting out of a trainthat had stopped at the Craythew station, three miles from LordCreedmore's gate.