The Profiteers Part 15

Wingate," he concluded, shaking his head gravely, "you have disappointed me."

They pa.s.sed on. The young lady tossed her head angrily.

"There are times," she announced, "when I hate Lord Dredlinton. I don't know any one who can say such horrid things without being actually rude.

I'm sure his wife looks much too good for him," she added generously.

Wingate's nerves were all on edge. He glanced at his watch and rose regretfully to his feet.

"I am afraid," he said, as he led the way towards the exit, "that I must go back to work. Thank you so much for coming and taking pity upon a lonely man, Miss Lane."

"You can have all that sort of pity you like," she whispered.

"Then I shall certainly make demands upon it," he a.s.sured her, as they parted at the door.

He found himself presently back in the cool and pleasantly austere surroundings of his sitting room and threw himself into an easy-chair drawn up in front of the wide-flung windows. A strong breeze, against which a flight of seagulls leaned, was stirring the trees in the Embankment Gardens and ruffling the surface of the water. The pall of smoke eastward seemed here and there cloven by a wind-swept avenue of clearer s.p.a.ces. He felt a sudden and pa.s.sionate distaste for his recent environment,--the faint perfume which had crept out from the girl's hair and face as she had leaned towards him, the brus.h.i.+ng of her clothes against his, the daring exposure of silk stocking, the continual flirtatious appeal of her eyes and lips. He felt himself in revolt against even that faint instinct of toleration which her prettiness and at times subtle advances had kindled in him. He let his thoughts rest upon the more wonderful things which smouldered in his brain and leaped like fire through his veins when he dared to think of them. The room seemed suddenly purified, made fit for her presence.

"I am sure that Mr. Wingate will see me if he is alone," he heard a familiar voice say.

He sprang to his feet, realising in those few moments into what paradise his thoughts had been climbing, and greeted Lady Dredlinton.

Josephine accepted the easy-chair which he wheeled up for her and glanced around the room critically.

"Just what I expected," she murmured. "A nice healthy man's room, without too much furniture, and with plenty of books. You are wondering why I came, of course."

"I am too content with the good fortune which brought you to find time for wonder," he replied.

"You'll laugh at me when I tell you," she warned him.

"You needn't tell me at all unless you like. You are here. That is enough for me."

She shook her head.

"I am putting myself in the confessional," she declared. "I was leaving the place with a disagreeable taste in my mouth. At the last moment, even as I was stepping into a taxicab, I turned back. I went instead to the desk and boldly asked for the number of your suite. I want that taste removed, please."

"Tell me how I can do it in the quickest possible manner," he begged.

She turned and looked at him, enquiringly at first, then with a delightful little smile which relieved all the tenseness of her expression.

"By a.s.suring me that you are not going to emulate, in however innocent a fas.h.i.+on, my husband's exploits in the musical comedy world."

He leaned over her chair, took her hands in his and looked into her eyes.

"Honestly," he asked, "do you need any a.s.surance?"

"That is the funny part of it," she laughed. "Since I am here, since I have seen you, I don't feel that I do, but downstairs I had quite a horrid little pain."

"You will never have occasion to feel it again," he told her. "I met Miss Flossie Lane last night for the first time at the supper party to which Roger Kendrick took me. I was placed next to her, and somehow or other she seems to have convinced herself that I invited her to lunch to-day."

"And you?"

"To be perfectly honest I can't remember having done anything of the sort. However, what was I to do?"

"What you did, of course. That is finished. Now tell me about that supper party. What happened? Was Dredlinton really rude to you?"

"Your husband was drunk," Wingate answered. "He was rude to everybody."

"And what was the end of it?"

"I carried him out of the room and locked him up," he told her.

She laughed softly.

"I can see you doing it," she declared. "Are you as strong as you look, Mr. John Wingate?"

"I am certainly strong enough to carry you away and lock you up if you don't call me John," he replied.

"John, then," she said. "I don't mind calling you John. I like it. How fortunate," she went on lazily, "that we really did get to know one another well in those days at etaples. It saves one from all those twinges one feels about sudden friends.h.i.+ps, for you know, after all, in a way, nothing at etaples counted. You were just the most charming of my patients, and the most interesting, but still a patient. Here, you simply walk into my life and take me by storm. You make a very foolish woman of me. If I had to say to myself, 'Why, I have known him less than a week!'

it would hurt my pride horribly."

"Blessed little bit of sh.e.l.l that found a temporary shelter in my arm!"

he exclaimed. "All the same, I feel just as you do. Out there, for all your graciousness, you were something sacred, something far away."

"And here?" she whispered.

"Shall I tell you?" he asked, with a sudden fire in his eyes.

"For heaven's sake, no!" she begged, thrusting out her hands. "I'm afraid to think--afraid of actual thoughts. Don't let us give form to anything.

Let me be content to just feel this new warmth in my life."

She leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. A little tug came snorting up the river. Even the roar of the traffic over Waterloo Bridge seemed m.u.f.fled and disintegrated by the breeze which swept on its way through the rustling lime trees.

"You are wonderfully situated here," she went on. "I don't believe it is London at all. It rests me more than any place I have been in for a long time, and yet--at the same time--I think that it is going to make me sad."

"Sad? But why?" he asked anxiously.

"Because it seems like one of the stopping places--where one steps off to think, you know. I don't want to think. I have had nine such miserable years. All through the war there was one's work, one's hospital, the excitement of the gigantic struggle. And now everything seems flat. One struggles on without incentive. One lives without hope."

"We weren't meant to do that," he protested.

"Only those of us who have thrown our lives away," she went on wearily.

"You see, I thought Henry was different. I thought he only wanted a little understanding, a little kindness. I made a mistake."

"Life is too wonderful a thing," he insisted, "to lose the glory of it for one mistake."

"I am on the rocks," she sighed, "now and always. If I were made like your little luncheon friend, it might be different. I suppose I should spread my wings and settle down upon another planet. But I can't. I am differently made. I am not proud of it. I wish I weren't. It wouldn't all seem so hard then, I am still young, you know, really," she added, with a note of rebellion in her tone.

"How young?"

"Thirty-one."