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Chapter VIII. How Things Happen

John looked up quickly as Nadine entered the ante-room, and there was something apprehensive in his eye.

A feeling of peace had come to him when, shortly before dinner, his couch had been rolled in here from the hall and he had escaped temporarily from social responsibilities. Nadine, dressed early, had herself supervised the removal and the arranging of the room, assuming responsibility for his comfort, but she had only lingered for a moment or two afterwards. He gained an impression—it was correct—that she had originally intended to stay longer, and had then abruptly changed her mind.

A perfect dinner had followed. Its character gave no hint that it had been designed and cooked by a Chinaman. He had had one visitor during the meal. Anne had left her table to make sure that everything was all right. “I suppose I really ought to have watched you being shoved in here,” she had said, “but I’m afraid I never do half the things I ought to do, and anyway Mrs. Leveridge was looking after you, wasn’t she? She’s terribly nice, isn’t she? I love her. Be sure to give a view-halloa if you want anything, won’t you?” The idea that any one in Bragley Court should have to shout for service made John smile.

The dark lawn outside the window sheltered by the long ballroom wing—had the ballroom been a lecture-hall and the ante-room less luxuriously furnished, he might have fancied himself back in college, staring out into the dark quadrangle where studious figures flitted not always with studious thoughts—had contributed to the sense of mental repose.

Then the peace had been broken. Guests, impelled by kindness or curiosity, had paid him short visits, or popped their heads in to give him a word or a smile. Apart from Harold Taverley, the men had fought rather shy of him, but the women had formed an intermittent procession. Mrs. Rowe had introduced her daughter, Ruth, who had been thoroughly unmodern and had blushed rather painfully. Miss Fermoy-Jones, on the other hand, had been quite unblushing, and during ten boring minutes had contrived to mention the titles of six of the sixteen mystery novels she had written. “Of course, they’re terrible stuff, really,” she had gushed, when she had become mistakenly convinced that she would not be believed, “but if people demand a thing, what are you to do? And just as you can write a bad psychological novel, I suppose you can write a good detective story. Lift your readers up, I say, and it doesn’t really matter where you start from—if you understand what I mean, Mr. Foss. But I mustn’t make your head ache by talking literature!” Lady Aveling had introduced Zena Wilding. Maybe she had hoped Zena would stay, but this interview had ended rather abruptly when the actress had suddenly noticed Lord Aveling in the doorway, and had whispered confidentially, “I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go and talk shop, but perhaps I’ll see you again later.” Anne, too, had paid him a second visit.

But Nadine Leveridge had kept away, and during the intervals of the procession John had visualised her in the ballroom, from which music faintly floated. He visualised her with painful clearness and struggled not to.... And he was struggling not to now, when she appeared, and caught his expression.

If she had been dancing, there was little sign of it.

She looked as neat as when he had last seen her, and the double row of pearls lay against smooth, cool skin.

“Shall I go?” she asked with disarming bluntness.

“Go? Good Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “Why on earth?”

“You look worried.” His mind raced for the right answer, but her mind raced his. “I expect your foot’s still giving you the devil.”

“Just a bit.”

“So I will go. You’d rather be alone. I know you’ve had a string of visitors. Good-night.”

“I say—you’re not—wait a minute—you’re not really going, are you?”

“You’re quite sure you don’t want me to?”

“I should hate you to!”

“Well, after all, I didn’t really come here just to turn round and go back again,” she smiled.

She entered the room and walked towards the window. A dog across the dark lawn was barking.

“Haig’s a bit restless to-night,” she remarked. “Haig is our watch-dog, and Lord Aveling’s method of keeping the Great War green. Though why anybody wants to keep a war green I’ve never learned.” She pulled the long curtains across the window, shutting out the lawn and muffling Haig’s war-cry. Then she rolled a large green silk pouffe towards the couch and sat beside him. “What do we talk about, Mr. Foss? Things that matter, or things that don’t?”

“I’ll leave the choice to you,” he hedged. “But perhaps cabbages and kings would be the safest.”

“Safest?”

He turned red. What a fool he was! What a blundering ass! Usually he was rather good at conversation, but now he could not even talk of cabbages and kings without putting his foot in it. He did not realise that there are some women with whom it is almost impossible for a man to talk insignificantly. Beneath their trivial words they are telling him all the while that they like him or dislike him, love him or loathe him. The personal equation is all that lives behind their conversation.

“Have a cigarette, and don’t worry,” said Nadine. She produced a tiny gold case and held it out to him. “Forgive their idiotic size.”

She struck a match. As the light flickered on her features, their perfection almost hurt him. Of course, it was beauty-parlour perfection. Therefore, not really perfection at all. He held on to that thought while he advanced his head to the light. She blew the match out as soon as he had used it, then struck another and lit her own cigarette from a greater distance.

They smoked for a few moments in silence. He had an agonising sensation that valuable seconds were slipping away, dropping irreclaimably into the void of time. Suddenly she raised her head.

“Yes,—I remember—one can just hear the music from this room,” she exclaimed. “Has it tantalised you, as it tantalised me when I was lying on that couch two years ago?”

“I’m not a great dancer,” he answered, “but I like it.”

“You’re cut out for the diplomatic service,” she smiled, “you answer questions so tactfully! I could hardly lie still! There were better dancers that time than this. Apart from Mr. Taverley—and even he trod on my foot once”—She advanced a shoe and regarded the gold-sandalled toe—“there’s not a good dancer here. Well, Lord Aveling’s not bad—but the rest! Sir James dances with a sort of pompous caution. Mr. Pratt seems to have the one object of preventing you from knowing what steps he’s going to do next. I can usually follow anybody, but he beats me. I’m sure it’s on purpose. Of course, his bosom companion, Mr. Bultin, doesn’t dance at all. Or, if he does, he won’t. He just watches with a kind of insulting boredom. So I escaped him. Also Mr. Rowe. But Mr. Chater—oh, my God! We almost came to blows!”

“How does Mr. Chater dance?” inquired John, feeling that all this conversation was mere prelude. “I can’t imagine him dancing attractively.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re right, anyway. He—how can one describe it?—he seems to press, and yet he doesn’t. I think it’s because he is pressing with his mind. He was asking questions—quite quietly and casually—all the time we danced.” She laughed. “He even asked a question about us.”

“What—you and me?”

“You and me. He wanted to know whether we’d known each other a long while.”

“Confound the fellow! It wasn’t his business!”

“So I implied. Although he did it quite nicely. Shall I tell you what he reminds me of? A fairly intelligent worm—and after talking with fairly intelligent worms, I always feel I want a bath!”

“I suppose it was when you implied that it wasn’t his business that you nearly came to blows?” asked John.

“No—we just survived that one. It was when he said, ‘Did I hear somebody say your husband’s in the army?’”

“I—see,” murmured John.

“I believe you do,” she answered.

A wave of anger swept through him.

“The man’s a cad!” he exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”

“That’s what I’m wondering, Mr. Foss,” replied Nadine thoughtfully. “Lord Aveling sometimes collects queer folk, but he’s rather excelled himself this week-end—I’ve not come across Mr. Chater’s type here before. By the way—do you know my husband isn’t in the army?”

John nodded, and hoped he was not flushing as he recalled the information Taverley had given him.

“Would it be cricket to ask who told you?”

“But you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. Harold Taverley. He was one of my husband’s best friends.”

“He still is.”

She looked at him quizzically, then smiled.

“You put that rather nicely,” she said. “And is Harold Taverley still my friend? No, never mind. I’m asking unfair questions.” She paused. She gave a queer little sigh. “Well, we’ve exhausted the cabbages and kings!”

She checked a movement to rise from the pouffe, and hunched her shoulders instead. The green wrap slipped from her back. As she half-turned to pick it up, a bare shoulder touched his sleeve.

“Your first impulse was right,” he said.

“What impulse?” she answered.

“Weren’t you going?”

“Yes. And then I decided not to.”

“Well—I think you’d better!”

“You’re not afraid of Mr. Chater?”

“Hell, no! I beg your pardon.”

“I like honest swearing, and hell’s a good word. Mr. Leveridge used it constantly. Are you afraid of me?”

“That’s possible. But more of myself. So, you see, you’d really better go.”

“It wouldn’t do any good.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’d only want me back again.”

He took a breath. He could not decide at that instant whether she were wonderful or hateful.

“Suppose that’s true?” he demanded.

“There’s no need to suppose it,” she replied smoothly. “It is true. I’m sorry I brought you here. That’s one thing I wanted to say. But, as I have, let’s face it and talk it out, shall we? It’s only when you don’t face facts that they become exaggeratedly distorted—or fruitless.”

He decided that she was wonderful. Already the idea of facing facts and of avoiding conventional subterfuges brought some ease to his mind, although he had no notion where the process was going to lead.

“Then let me make an admission,” he said. “It may—explain things a bit. My attitude, I mean. You’ve come upon me at a pretty bad time, Mrs. Leveridge.” He said “Mrs. Leveridge” for the conventional protection of it. “There’s no need to tell you things that just concern myself—that wouldn’t interest you. But please accept them as an explanation of my mood and of any silly blundering. I dare say you were right not to act upon that first impulse of yours to go. Yes, I’m sure you were. Something had to be said—you didn’t know quite what—but now I hope I’ve said it. If I have, you’re released to go back to the ballroom.”

“I haven’t implied any burning desire to go back to the ballroom,” she reminded him.

“Well—anywhere else.”

“Anywhere but here? Because, if I don’t, my seconds are numbered, and you will leap up, despite your foot, and throw your arms round my neck?”

“Lord! I give it up!” he muttered.

“No, don’t give it up—stick to it,” replied Nadine soberly, “only try playing it my way. I know a lot more about men than you do about women, which is generally the case, although men can rarely bring themselves to believe it—and I know a lot about you. No, don’t interrupt. I’ll tell you what I know. Not dates and facts and things. I don’t know the year you were born in, for instance, or the house you live in. I don’t know your particular sport, though I’m sure you’ve got one and it isn’t hunting. You’re not fond of killing things, and would only do it happily for England. You look as if you’d got your fair share of that particular folly. I don’t know—” She paused suddenly. “Want me to go on? Now I’m warning you!”

He nodded. She pressed her cigarette-end into an ashtray, and continued:

“I don’t know the name of the particular trouble that sent you scurrying out of London to a remote place like Flensham, without even a definite address for the night.... By the way, I’m quite aware that you were behind me at the ticket office in London, and you can try and work that out if it has any significance and if it amuses you.... But I do know that, whatever her name is, you didn’t treat her shabbily. And you can think, if you want to, that it was because of that knowledge—just instinctive then, of course—just a feeling—that I stuck to you rather more than I might have done after your accident. I don’t mean—since we’re being frank—that the adventure of it all didn’t attract me. But I soon realised that you weren’t chasing me.”

He stared at her. She laughed.

“It’s funny how little men believe in a woman’s instinct,” she said, “and yet how much they owe to it! Do you really suppose that—well, do you suppose that if a man like Mr. Chater had tumbled out of that train, I’d have troubled to lug him along here like this?”

“I’m sure you would have!” he exclaimed impulsively. “You’d never have left him—or anybody else—in a hole!”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t start idealising me!” she begged, good-naturedly. “I’m not idealising you. I’m just suggesting that you’re rather straight—as men go. No, I wouldn’t have left Mr. Chater in a hole—though I would now, and help to pile the earth on top! I’d have taken him to the doctor’s, and I’d have parked him there. Or even if I’m underrating the Good Samaritan in my nature—even if I had brought him here—I wouldn’t have deserted the ballroom for him, and smoked a cigarette with him, and have thrown the cabbages and kings overboard. Am I mixing my metaphors?” She paused, and the light he had seen in her eyes before, and which he found himself instinctively watching for, sent a queer sensation through him. “So perhaps I’ve as much necessity to warn you, Mr. Foss, as you have to warn me?”

She looked at him with provocative inquiry. He shoved aside a sudden wonder whether, after all—behind everything—she were laughing at him. He knew the wonder was not worthy, or genuine, and that it was merely another protective device. He decided that the most protective thing to do would be to go on idealising her.

“I believe I’m a little bit out of my depth,” he said.

“Most of us are,” she answered.

“Yes, perhaps. Life’s a puzzle. But what I meant was—I may as well admit it—I haven’t had time yet to become a man of much experience.” Was he talking idiotically? Like a small boy? He had no notion, but he plunged on, “Things still seem rather wonderful to me, you know. Probably I’ll grow out of that, only I don’t want to. I thought I’d grown out of it this morning. Now—I’m not quite sure.” He stopped, arrested by a thought. Instinctively she bent a little closer, following his mind rather than hers. He continued hurriedly, “That was an extraordinary guess of yours just now. About my trouble. I mean. I don’t know which is more extraordinary—your guessing it, or my not minding. I didn’t think I could ever talk about it to anybody. When a fellow’s been turned down—”

“Don’t say more than you mean to—”

“No, it’s all right. Well, he generally keeps it pretty well inside him. Or so I should imagine. Doesn’t want people to be sorry for him. Gets into a sort of—mental loneliness that no one must disturb. You know, I believe it’s a sort of silly, self-pitying exaltation. But, whatever it is—I say, I’m getting a bit tied up! What’s happening to me? I’m just talking rot!”

Something almost uncontrollable surged through him, surprising him by its force. He stared at her, keeping very still. His forehead became damp in a moment. Then he found Nadine’s lips against his.

Nadine had kissed many men in her life, but she had never kissed any man as she now kissed John Foss. There was not only passion, there was something maternal in her kiss.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said. “I’m sorry, John.”

She turned her head suddenly. Mr. Chater stood in the doorway.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I was looking for Lord Aveling.”

He closed the door again, and was gone.

“Well?” asked Nadine. “What do we do to Mr. Chater?”

Chapter IX. Largely Concerning Chater

“That man’s dangerous,” said Nadine. “Let’s be practical. Two points stick out. One, I’ve been a beast. Two, Mr. Chater knows all about it.”

“Do you think I care a damn about Mr. Chater?” replied John, through the whirl of his mind.

“Don’t you?”

“Why should I?”

Nadine smiled rather ironically, and he misinterpreted her expression.

“No, I’m the beast,” he exclaimed. “I meant I didn’t care a damn about Mr. Chater for myself—I forgot about you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” she answered. “You needn’t worry about me. I’m case-hardened—”

“Don’t!”

“What?”

He looked at her almost angrily.

“I can’t bear it when you talk about yourself as though—as though you were—”

“The world’s worst woman? No, John, I’m not that. I generally play the game—however dangerous—and I generally choose players who know all about the risks. I’m being quite honest with you. Virtues and vices alike. But just sit on that impulse to idealise me. Men like you do that much too easily. The reason I said I was a beast was because I’ve taken you at a disadvantage and got you into a mess.”

“I don’t admit that!”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re even better than your old school tie.”

“Are you idealising me?”

“Heavens, no! I could tell you something that would make you wince! But I want to get you out of the mess. If I could do it by saying good-night and walking out of the room, I’d leave you this moment.”

“That wouldn’t help,” he agreed.

“What will?” she asked. “Have you any suggestion?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a good one?”

“It’s the only one—and if you know me as well as you think you do, you’ll realise it.”

“Go on, then.”

“It’s the continuation of your honesty with me. You can’t do the David Garrick stunt, you know.”

“David Garrick?”

“He got drunk to cure Ada Ingot of her love for him.”

“I won’t get drunk,” she smiled. “But I still don’t see your solution?”

“I think it resolves itself into the answer to a simple question.”

“That sounds horribly risky!”

“Yes—perhaps. But this time I do know all about the risk, so you’ll be playing fair.”

“You’re not going to ask me what I know about you that would make you wince?”

“No. You can tell me that voluntarily, if ever you want to. May I put the question?”

“Yes.”

“Well, here goes. It’ll show you, anyhow, that I’m not idealising you.” She wondered. “When you kissed me just now, did you feel as though you were beginning another ‘affair’?”

For an instant she almost decided to cheat. But for his reference to David Garrick, she might have. That reference had weakened her defences, however, for she doubted now, as she saw his eyes watching her for every informative little sign, whether she could cheat him. For once in her life, she had the sense that she was being beaten.

“Would you like to withdraw the question?”

She gave him that chance, but he did not take it. He shook his head.

“No, I didn’t feel I was beginning an affair,” she answered. “So now where are we?”

He found, to his dismay, that he did not know. The exact significance of a kiss has baffled countless intelligences. His expression gave him away, and as she felt her power returning she was urged by an intense desire to use it kindly.

“Listen, John,” she said. “And you can call me Nadine. That doesn’t mean anything these days. I’m not a silly, impulsive woman, though a few fools sometimes imagine I am, but I do react quickly to a situation when it develops. That’s my true nature. I even remember the day when I found it out—consciously, I mean. A pretty foul beast kissed me, and spoilt his chance of a repetition by saying, ‘If you can’t be good, be careful.’ I slapped his face, but I took his advice. I asked myself whether I was ‘good.’ I refused to hedge. I found I wasn’t. But—you may or you may not understand this—I refused to desert myself—to become twisted, or dull, or insignificant—by living the life of some one else. It wouldn’t have been life to a person like me. It would have been death. So I decided to be careful, to stick to a few rules I made, and have generally kept to, and to go through with it.”

She paused suddenly. Then gave a little shrug, and continued:

“Rather funny, telling you all this after only a few hours’ acquaintance, but somehow I feel I owe it to you. And then one of my rules is to be frank—although I admit my frankness with you has been unusually rapid.... I wonder why?”

He restrained an impulse to make a suggestion. Her self-analysis fascinated him, and he did not want to interrupt it. His eyes were on the contours of her shoulder, but his attention was on the contours of her mind.

“I expect you’ve had something to do with it. You’re not very easy to lie to. Where is all this getting us to? Perhaps nowhere, after all. I kissed you, John, because I suddenly wanted to—”

“And because you knew I wanted you to,” he interrupted her then.

“Yes. But—this is what I want to say—and what I want you to believe. That moment wasn’t as important as it seemed to you, and as it may go on seeming to you for a little while. You see, you take life very seriously—don’t you?” He nodded. “And everything’s important to you, particularly in your present mood. That’s why I feel so mean, and want to get this in its right proportion.... No good! I’m making a horrible hash of it! I wish, for your sake, that you didn’t have to stay here over the week-end.”

She stared at his foot, annoyed with herself for making a hash of it.

“Well, I’m glad I’m staying,” John answered abruptly, “if it’s not going to make any difficulty for you. I mean—that fellow Chater—”

“Oh, he can’t hurt me!”

“If he does, I’ll murder him!”

“Please don’t! I’d hate to appear as a witness at the trial!” Her voice grew lighter. “After all, John, I don’t think a kiss between two unattached people at a week-end party is going to excite a blackmailer!”

“Blackmailer?” repeated John with a frown.

“The word slipped out,” she responded.

“But you seemed to mean it.”

“Well, he does rather strike me as that type, though legally one isn’t supposed to say so without proof.”

“Perhaps you’ve got the proof?”

“No.”

“You know more than you’ve told me, though?”

Nadine hesitated as a small incident flashed into her mind. She had tried to dismiss it, but somehow it had stuck.

“Nothing much,” she said, “only if you have any dark secrets, John, I wouldn’t leave them about when Mr. Chater’s around.”

“Please tell me,” he urged. “I’ve a hunch about that chap—and also a special cause for curiosity. If he is going to be a nuisance, I’d like to know all that’s going about him.”

She looked at him curiously, then laughed.

“If I satisfy your curiosity, will you tell me the cause of it?” she bargained. “Fifty-fifty.”

“Right,” he laughed back. She was trying to steer their moods away from the personal equation, and he responded to her lead. “You first.”

“Well—it happened before dinner, just after I’d seen you moved into here,” she said. “When I left you I walked into a little comedy. Or tragedy. Miss Wilding—you’ve met her, haven’t you?”

John nodded. “She came in here a little while ago, shortly before you did,” he answered. “Then she went off with Lord Aveling—I think to read a play to him or something.”

“Did she?” Nadine looked thoughtful for a moment, then proceeded: “She was coming down the stairs. I’d dressed, but she hadn’t. Thomas—that’s one of the butlers, the only one I don’t like—he nearly knocked my champagne glass over at dinner—Thomas darted out of a shadow, and gave her an envelope. Then, while Miss Wilding was looking at the envelope, Mr. Chater came running from somewhere—very quietly, like a cat—and bumped into her. She dropped the envelope, and he picked it up and returned it to her, full of apologies. I noticed that he looked at the writing on the envelope before he gave it back.”

“It doesn’t sound too good,” remarked John, “but there needn’t have been anything in it.”

“Possibly there wasn’t,” answered Nadine. “But Miss Wilding looked very red when she turned and went upstairs again, and Mr. Chater would have turned and followed her if I hadn’t asked him for a light.”

“I see. Did he give you the light?”

“Most unwillingly.”

“And then?”

“He said, ‘Chilly evening, isn’t it?’ and went upstairs after Miss Wilding.... This sounds horribly like gossip, doesn’t it? I don’t usually poke my nose into other people’s affairs. But—well, you asked for it.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Oh, no, I want my payment!”

John looked a little ashamed of himself.

“Well, I’m only telling you this because you’re asking for it,” he said. “If there’s nothing in your information, there’s less than nothing in mine. Are you superstitious?”

“I’m wearing green.”

“Then it won’t worry you to know that there are thirteen guests sleeping here to-night.”

“No, are there?” she exclaimed, and the tone of her voice rather belied her implication of immunity. “Have you counted?”

“Mr. Taverley did it for me.”

“I—I hope you’re not superstitious?” she asked, after a little pause.

“No more than you are,” he smiled. “But even if I were, I’d be safe according to Mr. Taverley’s theory. He said that, if any bad luck came, it would come to the thirteenth guest to arrive through the front door.”

“Who was the thirteenth?”

“Our friend Mr. Chater. And I’ll tell you something, Nadine. There—I’ve said it. If our friend Mr. Chater plays any of his alleged tricks on you, he’ll have the worst luck he’s ever had in his life. You can remember that!”

She looked at him seriously, then rose from the pouffe on which she had been sitting.

“Be very careful, John,” she said, holding out her hand. “I should never forgive myself if anything bad happened to you. I think it’s time to say good-night.”

He took her hand and pressed it.

“Good-night,” he replied. “I’m under no delusions about anything. But I mean what I said. Like hell.”