The Chase of the Ruby Part 12

CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY--AND THE GENTLEMAN

Apparently each of the pair was equally surprised. Each stared at the other as if tongue-tied; Mr Holland motionless, holding the ring a little in front of him, as if suffering from at least temporary paralysis; Miss Bewicke, equally rigid, with her fingers up to her throat, just as she had raised them intending to remove the boa which was about her neck. It was she who first regained the faculty of speech.

'Guy!' The word came with a little gasp, as if she uttered it unwittingly. He was still; staring at her as if he were powerless to remove his eyes from off her face. 'What are you doing?'

Still silence from the man. His incapacity seemed to inspire her with confidence. She removed her boa, smiling as she did so. She sauntered here and there, eyeing things. She walked right round him, peering at him as she went. He might have been some mechanical figure, he endured so stolidly her ostentatious curiosity. Only he followed her with his glance as she pa.s.sed round.

She did not speak when she had finished her inspection; with apparent indifference to his presence she took off her hat and coat. Unable, perhaps, to endure the situation any longer he struggled to obtain possession of his voice. It sounded harsh and husky.

'I thought you had gone to Brighton?'

'So you keep an observation on my movements, I see?' The words were accompanied by a smile which made him clench his fists so tightly that he drove the nails into the palms. She was folding up a veil, with a dainty show of peculiar care. 'I ought to be at Brighton; but I'm not.

I meant to go; but I didn't. It was so late that I put off my journey till tomorrow; so I went to see some people instead. It was painfully slow; this promises to be better.'

Her airy manner, which seemed to him to be so pregnant with contempt, tried him more than reproaches might have done, or rage. He was so conscious of his position that indifference stung more than lashes. A policeman he could have faced, but not this smiling girl. All his self-respect had gone clean out of him; he felt she knew, and floundered in his efforts to regain some part of it.

'Miss Bewicke, you know why I am here.'

'To see me, I suppose. So good of you, Guy. Especially as I take it that you intended to wait for me till I returned from Brighton.'

'I came to take my own.'

'Your own?'

'This.'

He held out the ring between his finger and thumb. She came nearer, so that she might see what it was he held, smiling all the time.

'That--that's mine!'

'It was bequeathed me by my uncle.'

'Your uncle? Impossible; it wasn't his to bequeath.'

'You know the conditions which were attached to its possession. Since you declined to give it me--'

'I did not decline.'

'I don't know what other construction you put upon your conduct of last night. I gathered that you declined. Therefore, since its immediate possession was of capital importance, I came and took it.'

'How nice of you. And you waited till you thought I was at Brighton to show your mettle? How discreet! Guy, weren't you once to have been my husband?'

Nothing was further from his desire than to become involved in a tangle of reminiscences, so he became a little brutal.

'I have the ruby; that is the main point.'

'Are you proud of having robbed me--the girl who was to have been your wife?'

'You would have robbed me.'

'Even supposing that to be true, does that ent.i.tle you to throw aside all those canons of honour to which you have always given me to understand you were such a stickler, and become--a thief? Oh, Guy!'

'I do not propose to bandy words with you. I know of old your capacity to make black seem white--you were ever an actress, May. How the ruby originally came into your possession I cannot say.'

'It's not a pretty story, Guy; scarcely to your uncle's credit.'

'But you were perfectly well aware that morally it was mine. It was nothing to you; it was all the world to me. I believe that you refused to let me have it precisely because you knew that your refusal might entail my ruin; and so your cup of revenge might be filled to the full. Under those circ.u.mstances I hold that I was justified in using any and every means to save myself from being utterly undone by the whim of a revengeful woman.'

'I meant to let you have it.'

'That was not the impression you left upon my mind last night.'

'You took me unawares--I had to think things over.'

'Then if it was your intention that I should have it you cannot but be pleased to find that my action has kept abreast of your intention.'

Miss Bewicke was silent. She was drawing imaginary pictures with her finger-tip on the table by which she was standing, looking down as she did so. His desire was to get away; it was not an interview which he wished to have prolonged. But his departure was postponed.

'Why do you say I am revengeful?'

'You know better than I.'

'Do you think I wish to be revenged on you because once you pretended to love me, and now you keep up that pretence no longer?'

'It was no pretence.'

'I am glad to hear that, because, Guy, I love you still.'

She looked up at him in such a way that she seemed to compel him to meet her eyes. He s.h.i.+vered.

'I wish you wouldn't say such things.'

'Why? Because they're true? I like to tell the truth. I have always loved you, and I always shall, though I shall never be your wife.'

'I thought you said you were engaged to Dumville.'

'So I am. And I daresay that perhaps one day I shall marry him. I don't know quite why. But it certainly isn't because I love him. I have never pretended to. Ask him; he's frankness itself; he'll confess. Although, as you have only told me, I am a woman with ill-regulated pa.s.sions and irresponsible tendencies, I'm a woman with only one love in her life, and you are he. Good-night, and good-bye.'

Now that she had formally dismissed him he felt that it was difficult to go. He fidgeted instead.

'I know you think that I have behaved meanly.'

'Not at all. I suppose you have acted according to your lights.'

'I'm not so sure of that. But, the truth is, I was desperate.'