Complete works of a e w.., p.656
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 656
“Oh, she has,” Imogen said slowly. “She admires it?”
“Yes.”
“Then more than ever I beg you to take care.”
Nothing could exceed the earnestness with which Imogen spoke. We had both learnt to love Michael Crowther, queer as it must appear to anyone who remembers him when he strutted the deck of the Dagonet. But we loved him with the kind of love which one gives to a child. We did not expect his mind to work along the ordinary lines nor his heart to long for the ordinary things. And since, to fulfil a penance which no one but himself had imposed, he wanted this sapphire of Jill Leslie’s, he must have it as a child must have a toy. Otherwise there would be — yes, there, as Mr. Donald’s predecessor had said, was the rub. In the case of a child there would be a crumpled face, clenched fists, a torrent of tears and a wailing as of sea-gulls about an island of the Hebrides. In the case of Michael we could not even conjecture. We could only fear. He had said: “I dare not fail.” We knew no more than that of what was passing in his mind, but it was enough to light the way to some very dark and terrible conjectures.
“I am glad that we don’t know exactly when he is going to ask,” said Imogen as she watched him depart from the grill-room.
It was a cowardly thought. Then I was a coward, too. For I shared it whole-heartedly. I had the apprehension which one feels for a dear friend who must suffer the surgeon’s knife. I was glad not to know the moment when the patient would be stretched upon the table, or to linger in the waiting-room until the result should be announced.
Chapter 22 At the Masquerade Ball
BUT WE WERE present when the moment struck. On the last day of the month a ball for some charity was held in the Albert Hall. It was a masquerade ball, and those who attended it were bidden to dress in the Waterloo period or wear a domino. Imogen had a mind to return some of the hospitality which had been showered upon us during our engagement. So we hired a box and arranged for supper to be served in it. At three in the morning she was leaning over the edge of the box watching the throng below and she turned round and called to me:
“Martin! Come here!”
She was excited by some incident happening upon the floor. I went to her and she caught me by the arm.
“Look! Look! Do you see?”
I saw many things and many people, and amongst the things, that people dressed anyhow in the Waterloo period. I am all for liberty myself and if a warrior likes to wear plates of armour in a day of cannon-balls, by all means. Nor did I mind Henry the Eighth coming to life again and multiplying himself six times, so long as none of him tried to snatch my Imogen. I never saw such a medley of dresses. There were Greek goddesses and Sultans with scimitars; Mandarins who should have been nodding upon mantelpieces danced with girls from Alsace in satin clogs; Crusaders and Tyrolese mixed amicably with Zulus and Cossacks.
“There! There!” cried Imogen, twitching my sleeve, and looking, I perceived Letty Ransome dressed as a vivandière dancing with Thomas à Becket.
“It seems to me a very happy combination,” I said.
“No, no, darling, I don’t mean there. I mean there,” cried Imogen, as she nodded vigorously in exactly the same direction. I moved my eyes to the right and then I moved them to the left, and at last I took in the tiny point in that huge scene at which I was intended to look. I saw Jill Leslie with a man in a yellow domino. They were not dancing, nor was Jill talking. She was listening with a puckered forehead to something impossible to understand. They were standing, and every now and then they took a few steps towards us and stopped again. Once I laughed and Imogen asked:
“What’s amusing you, Martin?”
It would have taken days to explain. Jill was dressed in an impossibly dainty frock, Marie Antoinette down to her knees — or rather Madame de Lamotte — her pretty shoulders already bared for the branding, the sapphire a great blot of blue fire upon her breast, and below the knees her own slender and twinkling legs. And just at that moment she jumped up and down on her toes with her feet together and with her hands clasped, just as little Miss Diamond had done long since on the beach of Tagaung, to this same man who was so eagerly talking to her. He was wearing a yellow domino now. He had been wearing the uniform of a Captain in the Flotilla Company then. But it was he. For he had looked up and I had seen his face. Miss Diamond had been trying to detain him. Miss Sapphire was trying to understand him.
“Crowther,” I said. “Crowther at a masked ball at the Albert Hall!”
“He has chosen this time of all times — why?” Imogen asked.
It did seem unreasonable. Yet without a doubt he had Jill’s attention.
“He has some queer reason at the back of his head,” I answered, and, remembering a word he had dropped here and there: “This was a date he had planned.”
They came to a halt just beneath our box. I leaned over, but there was such a hubbub of voices that not one word of what Crowther was saying rose as high as our ears. Something of real significance occurred, however, for we saw Jill lift the blot of blue fire from her breast and look at it, and from it to Michael. And then a fisherman or an ice — anyway, a Neapolitan, ran forward to claim her for a dance. She nodded her head and had actually started to dance. But she stopped, and running to Michael laid a hand upon his arm. She spoke a few quick words, waved her hand at him with a smile, and was off with her partner across the floor. Imogen leaned over the edge of the balcony.
“Michael!”
In a momentary lull her voice reached to him, and he looked up.
“Come up, Michael,” and she gave the number of our box. Neither of us dared to put a question to him when he did come. Was that parting smile of Jill’s a consolation or a promise, or a vague encouragement to hope? Michael for a time gave us no enlightenment. He sat, his chin propped upon his hand, his eyes roaming over the fantastic scene, and every now and again his breath catching in his throat as though he saw — what? The white spire of his pagoda across that foam of dancers, or death stalking amidst them with his scythe.
Imogen filled a glass of champagne and took it to him. He smiled and put it aside.
Imogen thrust her small face forward — and I knew that Michael was going to add an extra life or two to his tally, however earnestly he might resist.
“Drink it!” said Imogen. She took the glass and put it into Michael’s hand.
“It’s a sin,” he answered.
“Commit it!” said Imogen.
“I disobey the Law,” he pleaded.
“Well, I get fined for leaving my car about,” said Imogen. “Drink!”
Michael looked at the glass winking invitingly in his hand, and looked at Imogen, and his face broke up in a smile.
“Imogen, here’s your very good health.” And he drank the glass dry. A little colour came into his face and the tension of his body relaxed.
“Now, Michael, we want your news,” said Imogen, and she took a seat beside him.
“There isn’t any,” Michael returned. “But there will be to-morrow. I don’t think Jill Leslie understood what I meant quite. I mean I don’t think she understood the reason why I made a petition so unusual.”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” I interrupted. “I was watching you both from this box.”
“It was my fault,” Michael continued. “When you have had for a long time one idea in your head, you begin to think other people are familiar with it. You leave out the necessary details. I expect that writing a book must be always presenting that sort of difficulty.”
“But Jill didn’t turn you down?” Imogen asked anxiously.
“No!” Michael returned. “But she couldn’t hear me out. There was too much noise and too much whirl for her to give her attention. I can understand that, can’t you?”
“What I can’t understand is why you ever chose a time and a place like this,” said Imogen.
“Perhaps I was wrong,” Michael replied slowly. “But I thought, to-night she will be at her happiest. She has her success, her love, all this colour and light and gaiety, and she’ll look a picture in her pretty frock and know it and she is kind. With all that dark hard time just behind her, within reach of her memory, she’ll be in the most likely mood.”
“What’s the result then?” asked Imogen.
“She said that I was to call upon her to-morrow afternoon at half-past three and she would have no one there. I wonder whether — —” And all his fears came back upon him and he looked from one to the other of us, his eyes as wistful as a dog’s.
“Where does Jill live now?” Imogen asked.
“She has for the moment one of the small flats in the Semiramis Court.”
“Very well,” Imogen continued. “You shall lunch with us at half-past one at the Semiramis Grill Room.”
“Wait a moment,” said I. “Let me look at my diary!”
“Darling,” Imogen observed gently, “don’t be absurd! Michael will lunch with us at half-past one at the Semiramis Grill. Afterwards, at half-past three o’clock, you might go up with Michael to Jill’s flat, and I’m quite sure that your tact will tell you at once whether you may stay and help Michael or not.”
Michael stood up with every expression of relief upon his face.
“That’s what I wanted desperately. Thank you!”
He shook us warmly by the hand and went off. I looked grimly at Imogen.
“Coward!” I said.
“Well, you wanted to get out of it, too. You go about in forests and shoot harmless little tigers. You’re the strong man and very persuasive, dearest, too.”
Thus mingling sarcasm with flattery Imogen had her way. It was not quite so unusual as you might think. We were to give Michael luncheon on the morrow, and afterwards he would learn his news. Our work was done. We went down on to the floor, danced, and Imogen disgraced herself. We were waltzing and approached the steps of one of the gangways to the floor. On the second of these steps a fat, red, pompous, bald man stood, dressed elaborately as a Roman Emperor — golden greaves upon his legs, a purple toga with the end flung across his shoulder and a wreath of laurels upon his crown. He had come in state, for two lictors with the paraphernalia of their office stood behind him. One could not imagine a man more conscious of the perfection of his dress or of his fitness to wear it. The Emperor surveyed the Albert Hall with a placid satisfaction as though he had just built it with slave-labour brought from a successful campaign upon the Danube. As we came close to him Imogen stopped. She was dressed as Columbine and in white from the flower in her hair to her feet. There were others in the hall pretending to be Columbine — that was to be expected — but Imogen was Columbine.
“Just wait a minute,” she said, and leaving my arm she ran up to the Emperor with the most eager expression upon her face.
“You’ll excuse me, sir,” she said very clearly, “but can you tell me at what hour you’re to be thrown to the lions?”
The fat man who had begun to listen with a smile, turned away with a snort of disgust. He was furious at the gibe. On the other hand it made Imogen’s evening for her. She gurgled with pleasure as we resumed our broken waltz and her anxieties for the morrow were forgotten.
Chapter 23 Letty Ransome’s Handbag
THERE WERE, AFTER all, four who took their luncheon the next day at our table in the grill-room of the Semiramis. But we began as three, assembling in our proper order of unpunctuality: Michael Crowther to the minute, myself next, Imogen last. We sat for five minutes or so in the lounge, I with a Bacardi cocktail, Imogen drinking it and Michael looking on benevolently. Then, through the swing doors Letty Ransome burst in. She was in a fluster but there was nothing discomposing in that. A fluster was as much a complement of Letty Ransome as her skirt. She could not move about in public without either. She swung into the grill-room and out again, she jingled some bracelets at Michael and poured out some ecstatic words to another group. Imogen whispered quickly:
“Ask her to have a cocktail, Michael!” and since he hesitated, she added an imperious: “Be quick or I’ll make you drink one yourself.”
Michael rose and, blushing — he who had once been Michael D., the Captain of the Dagonet! — said timidly: “Letty, will you join us?”
Letty was at the age which thrives on long nights in dusty rooms. She was radiant of face, and for the rest of her, shiny as lacquer from her smooth hair to the points of her shoes. She was introduced to Imogen and myself and was kind to us; and I ordered a large clover-club for her.
“I saw you both at the ball. Wasn’t it wonderful?” she cried. “I never enjoyed myself so much. Have you seen Jill?”
“No,” said I.
“I thought that Jill and I might lunch together,” said Letty.
“I don’t think that she’s coming down for luncheon,” Imogen observed.
“Oh?” Letty was a trifle put out. She looked about the small lounge, and Imogen said:
“Won’t you lunch with us? We’re going in now.”
“I’d love to,” said Letty. “But I must run up to Jill’s flat.” A shadow of annoyance flitted across Imogen’s face. It was just to avoid such a contingency that Imogen had asked her to lunch with us. Once let Letty Ransome offer her advice about the destination of the sapphire and Michael Crowther went out at a hundred to one. Ideas, the vitamins of the soul, meant nothing to her practical mind. Imogen might call a sapphire an idea, if she were crazy enough to think it one. Letty knew it for a colourful piece of corundum with a definite market value.
“You see,” Letty explained, “a party of us drove back to Jill’s flat at seven o’clock this morning. Jill had a bath and went to bed and then we all had breakfast in her bedroom. I left my handbag there when we went home. I won’t be a second.”
She sprang up and ran out into the hall; and she was away a longer time than we expected. We all watched the hands of the electric clock jump as a minute elapsed, then wait ever so long, then jump again.
“Oh, I do hope — —” said Imogen and stopped there lest Michael should be distressed by her fears. But, oddly enough, Michael was the least troubled of the three of us. He had ascended to some plane of faith whither neither of us could follow him.
“If I were to describe Letty Ransome and Jill Leslie,” he said with a smile, “I should quote Monsieur Chaunard’s difference between himself and his memory.”
He made us laugh, anyway, and got us over one of the clock’s jumps.
It was a quarter to two when Letty Ransome left us and ten times the minute hand made its tiny leap before Letty reappeared and when she did we were all a little shocked at the change in her. She was breathing as though her lungs were choked, she was distracted with the effort to breathe. Her colour was patchy; where the rouge did not flare, her skin was the hue of tallow and the scarlet of her lips was not an ornament but a parody. She dropped into her chair.
“I was a fool,” she said with a gasp. “The lift was up at the top of the building. I didn’t want to keep you. I ran up the stairs. It’s only the third floor but I’ve been warned against stairs.” She smiled appealingly. Her beauty had all gone, so it was, perhaps, the more natural that she should pray:
“Will you give me a moment?”
“Take your time, of course,” said I. “We’re in no hurry. Michael has an appointment at half-past three —— Oh!” My grunt was due to a lusty kick on the ankle delivered by the small but capable foot of my wife.
“This is the bag?” she asked. “It’s pretty.”
It was lying on the small table between them. Imogen was not at all interested in the bag nor did she think it especially pretty. But she had to keep her blundering husband quiet if she could. She reached out her hand and took the bag up just a second before Letty Ransome reached out hers; though Letty’s movement was a swift dart made in a spasm of fear. She drew back her hand at once when the movement had failed, but the fear remained in her eyes. “It’s just an ordinary bag,” she said with a little catch in her voice. But it was not quite an ordinary bag. It was a charming affair of old tapestry, and a medallion of blue enamel was let into the centre of it on each side. Imogen turned it over, admired it, and put it back on the table again.
“Shall we go in now?” she asked, and she led the way into the grill-room. She turned round at the door and looked at Letty. “Ah!” she remarked. “You haven’t forgotten it this time. I was afraid that you had left it on the table.”
She nodded towards the bag which Letty was now carrying clasped tightly in her hand.
“Not twice in twenty-four hours,” Letty returned with a laugh. “I am too helpless for words without it.”
I asked them in turn what they would like for luncheon.
“Something simple,” said Imogen.
“Me, too, please,” said Letty.
“Quite so,” said I, and knowing the sort of simple food which would appeal to Letty, I ordered blinis, Homard à l’Americaine, cold grouse with a salad and an apple flan. Letty had by now quite recovered her spirits and she rattled away about the ball and how much she had enjoyed it. I could not bring myself to believe that in reality she ever enjoyed anything. Spite was so large an element in all her thoughts. Every comment must carry its little stab, planted viciously with however little dexterity. We were told that Carrie Baines looked lovely, and if she had only dared to smile she would not have given everyone the impression that her loveliness was a mask of enamel. As for dear old Lord Pollant, wasn’t he a marvel? When he danced his râtelier so chattered that the castanets in the orchestra weren’t wanted at all, were they? And having had my fill of this talk, I broke in rather abruptly:
“Did you find Jill awake when you went up?”
Letty Ransome was in the middle of saying: “Minnie Cartwright — they tell me she used to be lovely,” and she repeated with a stammer: “ — used to be lovely—” and then the clatter of her voice died away altogether and once more her face was as patchy as a Spanish shawl.
Something had happened then up the stairs in Jill’s flat whilst the minute hand of the clock jumped ten times. All that agitation under which Letty had laboured when she re-entered the lounge was not due to hurry nor to any malady of the heart. For here it was, renewed. Something terrible had happened. Silence for a little while held us all. We tried not to look at Letty’s terror-stricken face. Then I repeated my question.
