The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 27

"It's quite a case," people said. "If he doesn't mean matrimony, it would be decent to exercise more discretion. There used to be some talk of Terry Beddow; that's completely ended. Queer the women men fall for, even the quietest of them! No one's sane any longer. Had three husbands already, hasn't she? Quite a crowd! One would scarcely have supposed that an exclusive chap like Taborley would have joined in the queue to make a fourth. And he could have had almost any girl for the asking.

There's never any telling."

Veiled references began to appear in the society columns; but not so veiled that they could not be recognized. "A romance is developing between a n.o.ble lord, who served in the ranks during the war, and a vivacious beauty, three times widowed, well-known in fas.h.i.+onable circles, etc." One paper published a photograph of them riding side by side. After that sceptics who had not seen for themselves, were persuaded.

It was a mad world--a world in which it was not safe to be censorious.

The lid was off the conventions. Every one was shouting for happiness--happiness at all costs. When they could not get it for the asking, they were taking it without thought of law or penalties. There were few who could afford to sit in judgment and many who preferred to laugh. The day of authority was over. Traditions were no longer respected. While the war was on, men and women had been drilled into dumb acquiescence; now that the drilling was abolished, they had become a mob, avid, leaderless and uproarious.

Tabs came to realize that he was not alone in his lost sense of direction. The right to live had been restored, but neither individuals nor nations were sure what they wanted to do with it. After having been as one in their sacrificial certainty, they had arrived at a cross-roads where there was no policeman to take charge. They had broken up into little groups, gathered about their own vociferous stump-orators. The result was babel. Of orators there were a plenty. They abused one another across the Irish Sea. They tried to shout one another down across the Atlantic Ocean. But the hammer-head men of righteousness were gone. After the apocalyptic splendor of mailed knights of Christ charging stern-faced down to Armageddon, the results of victory had been consigned to the weakling care of a race of talkers.

And yet there was music and laughter. Spring rushed on. Feet that had marched, now moved in the rhythm of the dance. Theaters were crowded.

Jazz-bands clashed. There were endless processions. Youth beckoned.

Chestnut bloom grew white and fell in flurries. Women were no less beautiful. The sun shone thunderously.

If Tabs were foolish, which he did not concede, all the world was his companion in foolishness. Blindly and gropingly he was still going in search of his kingdom. He ignored the gossip which his champions.h.i.+p of Maisie had called forth. He despised it. It made him the more compa.s.sionate toward her--the more determined to help her to weather the storm. Well-meaning friends undertook to warn him. "She's most beautiful and charming. And she's Lady Dawn's sister, of course.

But----Well, to put it frankly, a woman who's been married three times might just as well never have been married at all. Looks as though she'd only squandered her money in rising to the nicety of a marriage-license.

I hope you don't mean to marry her, old chap, because she's not your sort."

When Tabs went to the trouble of a.s.suring these well-wishers that he did not intend to marry her and that she was his sort, they slipped their tongues into their cheeks and opened their eyes wide, "Oh, so that's the way of it!"

Maisie reported to him similar experiences. "So you see how I'm regarded, as though I were no better than I should be. And I'm young and I've done nothing wrong. If it wasn't for your friends.h.i.+p, I should be tempted----"

"But you have my friends.h.i.+p!" he a.s.sured her.

He tried to rise superior to this petty talk of scandal-mongers, but it was not always possible when he remembered Terry.

VII

He met Terry as often as he could contrive, but he no longer forced himself upon her. He could effect nothing so long as her infatuation for Braithwaite lasted.

Now that Sir Tobias had lost faith in him as a lover, his opportunities for meeting her became more rare. When Sir Tobias lost faith in any one, he made no attempt to disguise it. In the case of Tabs, he let him know it with a fine air of magnanimity, as though he were doing him a kindness. His frankness took the form of communicating some new disparaging criticism, astutely attributed to Lady Beddow, every time he was paid a visit.

Having separated Tabs from Terry by carrying him off to his library on one pretext or another, he would carefully close the door and commence, "You men who've seen service are all unbalanced; it would be unfair to hold any of you responsible. You're no exception, my dear fellow, though you probably don't notice it in yourself. As Lady Beddow was saying to me this morning, 'Poor Lord Taborley, he has a rambling mind. Most likely it's a species of sh.e.l.l-shock. There's a queer look comes into his eyes. It's not always there. It's a look as if he were haunted. You ought to speak to him, Tobias--you're his oldest friend--and advise him to see a specialist. It's lucky we found his weakness out before things between him and Terry went too far.'"

Or he would say, "Lady Beddow and I were talking about you, my dear fellow. You know she's very fond of you. She loved your mother before you. 'The little big lady from America,' she used to call her. She's naturally very much upset at the way in which you're getting yourself talked about. Unfortunately she holds me partly responsible for having induced you to visit this Maisie woman. 'You ought to have known him better,' she says. 'There's an immoral streak in him--an inherited taint, which I, for one, always suspected.' She was wondering whether you have any knowledge of there having been insanity in your family."

After having invented such discomforting surmises and given his wife the credit for them, the old gentleman would blink his crafty eyes and rest his hand affectionately on Tabs' arm. At the end of each visit he was pressed to call again; but when he called, it was to find himself shepherded into the library, safely out of reach of Terry, in order that he might hear his conduct discussed afresh, either directly or by insinuation.

He was unable to defend himself without betraying Terry. She maintained her silence with regard to Braithwaite, refusing to take her parents into her confidence. They naturally attributed the hanging fire of the engagement to Tabs, supposing that on the eve of his proposal he had been ensnared in the net of Maisie. In their eyes he cut a shabby figure.

Behind his back Terry came to his defense. She would hear and believe no wrong of him. This only proved to her parents that her heart still followed him. They thought her very brave and became more gloomy in their accusations. Matters took a serious turn: her health began to fail. When the doctor was summoned, he ascribed the cause to secret worrying and prescribed a complete change. Tabs received no word of this happening, for Terry had become increasingly shy, so that she created the appearance of avoiding him. She quite definitely avoided Maisie.

There came a day in early June when he went to call on her and was informed by the velvet-plush James that Miss Terry was out of London on a visit of undetermined length. When he asked for her address, James shook his head mournfully. She had been ill and was to be spared all disturbing communications. His orders were that her address was to be given to n.o.body.

"But that order doesn't apply to me," Tabs urged.

James became more profoundly agitated. He averted his eyes, while he fiddled with the last b.u.t.ton of his plump waistcoat. "I regret to say, to your Lords.h.i.+p most especially."

"Humph!" Tabs stroked his chin. "Is Sir Tobias at home?"

"Your Lords.h.i.+p would gain nothing by seeing Sir Tobias."

"You might mention to him that I called." With that he descended the steps and climbed into his runabout.

"Turned away!" he thought. "Turned away from Terry's house!" Then his mind went back to two months ago--the hopes he'd had, his meeting with her at the station, his asking her father for her hand in marriage. It was like the old front-line trench, when reenforcements had failed to come up: there was nothing for it but to dig one's self in and stick it out.

He had been shown the door with as little ceremony as an intruding peddler.

VIII

From Terry's house he went to Mulberry Tree Court, but the route that he chose was not direct. He drove all over the West End first, through Oxford Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly; then back by way of Regent Street, swinging to the left through Conduit Street, till he again struck Bond Street. He doubled and redoubled on his tracks, moving among crowds, feeling that he must hear the noise of crowds, yet seeing little of the sights on which his eyes rested. It had been like this with him before, after being in too close contact with calamity. It had been like this in war-days, when he had returned on brief leaves out of monstrous offensives to the appalling quiet of a normal world. He hadn't dared to be alone. He had felt that his sanity depended on his rubbing shoulders with people. He had been like a child in an empty house, leaning out of a window to catch the stir of life along the pavements.

The gayety of the London season was at its height. Khaki was growing rare. Signs of war had almost completely vanished. No one wanted to talk about it. No one wanted to read about it. Shops had redecorated their windows with the necessities and luxuries of civilian requirements.

There was a wave of spendthrift extravagance abroad. Every one in the streets had the look of being out for a good time. The threat of torturing to-morrows no longer made life haggard. If there was one lesson that the past five years had taught it was that each new day was a gift from the G.o.ds, to be enjoyed separately and drained of every available drop of pleasure. The restraints of duty were indefinitely postponed. Men and women sauntered in pairs, aimlessly and joyously.

Work was the bondage furthest from their thoughts. They seemed aware of no one but themselves in their ecstasy at being reunited. Racing had been restarted; up and down the gutters newsboys ran shouting the winners. London was a Tommy on leave, insubordinately, humorously, contagiously happy.

As he drove, Tabs argued out his problem. From house-top to house-top the June sky sagged like an azure canopy. Across pavements the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne lay in bars of gold. Flower-sellers stood at intervals along the curb, scenting the air with their country nosegays. A lazy breeze ruffled drooping flags which had been hung out for the latest festival.

Everywhere there were girls in their blowy summer dresses--girls of all kinds and sorts. Single girls, married girls, girls who worked for their livings, girls whose business it was to be beautiful, girls who were merely drudges. There were both pathos and urgency in the sight of them.

It was not good that they should live alone. They had wasted their youth too long. The great necessity for that waste was ended. Not one of them was a patch on Maisie.

If he did not desire Maisie, why did he miss her? Was it that he would not allow himself to desire her? Why did he encourage his pa.s.sion for Terry--Terry who in her mild and gentle way had become almost insolently unappreciative? Wouldn't he be wiser to content himself with the woman who was within reach rather than----?

He frowned as the truth dawned on him. For the first time he had acknowledged it. He did love Maisie. Not as he loved Terry, of course; but in a more human way, to the extent of needing her companions.h.i.+p. He had made a discovery that amazed himself--a discovery that thousands of men had made before him: that it was possible for him to love two women at the same tune, utterly differently and yet with entire sincerity. He felt as lowered in his self-esteem as if he had committed bigamy. He was dumbfounded at this new twist that his emotions had developed. Without consulting him, they had played a trick on him which forever disqualified him for the larger role of constant lover. He felt himself pushed down to almost the level of a philanderer--a philanderer not much more august than Adair. The suspicion crossed his mind that, if he could believe himself in love with two women, he couldn't be very mightily in love with either.

But he was impatient of delays--worn out with procrastinations. The magnificent chances of the present were slipping past him. One day he would be old. "_Now, now, now_, is the appointed time," throbbed his engine. Out of the sheer disorganization of his thoughts a desperate scheme took shape. Why should he not go to Maisie and say, "We're neither of us first in each other's affections. It's a rough-and-tumble world! Why be thin-skinned about it? We may become first later. Let's stop dreaming of kingdoms round the corner and make the best of such kingdoms as are ours to-day."

The idea took hold of him with force. It fascinated him. He turned his car about. In pa.s.sing through Mayfair he made a detour to glance at Taborley House. The American Hospital had vacated it. It looked ruined and forlorn. He tried to picture it as it might appear if Maisie were its mistress.

Twenty minutes later he drew up before the retiring little villa with its marigold-tinted curtains. He had by no manner of means decided on his course of action. He could not have told you what he was going to say to Maisie. In this as in so many other ways, he believed himself abnormal. No one had ever told him that ninety-nine out of a hundred married men, if they spoke the truth, would have to confess that they had been unaware thirty seconds before they proposed that they were going to do so; and that the most incredible happening in their lives had been when, thirty seconds later, they had discovered that not only had they proposed, but that they had been riotously accepted.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

SOME PEOPLE FIND THEIR KINGDOMS

I

He was in the act of shutting off his engine when he heard himself accosted. "I beg your pardon, but are you, Mr. Gervis?"

It was a pleasant voice--a man's. Keeping his eyes on what he was doing, Tabs answered in the negative. Then he recalled that Gervis had been the name of Maisie's second husband. "If it's the Gervis who used to live here," he indicated the house with a jerk of his head, "I'm afraid you won't find him. He's been dead these three years--killed at the Front."

A quiet chuckle greeted this piece of information, followed by a hearty, "Thank the Lord."

Tabs had finished what he was doing. As he stepped out of the car, he threw a contemptuous glance at the man who could be so callous. He was a slightly built, fresh-complexioned young fellow of middle height, with amiable gray eyes and a fair, closely-trimmed mustache. He belonged to the demobilized subaltern type and had the weary, drawn expression of over-strained nerves that so many young faces had at that time. He was dressed in a smartly fitting suit of striped navy-blue flannel and carried himself with the plucky alertness of a highly bred fox-terrier.

He had a clean and gallant bearing which it was difficult to reconcile with the ungenerosity of his last remark. In a neat, unforceful way he would have been handsome, had it not been for a badly healed scar which ran straight across his forehead, only just escaping his eyes.