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Ebook has 1079 lines and 53377 words, and 22 pages

PART I

A CALL

IT was once said of Mr. Robert Grimshaw: "That chap is like a seal"--and the simile was a singularly just one. He was like a seal who is thrusting his head and shoulders out of the water, and, with large, dark eyes and sensitive nostrils, is on the watch. All that could be known of him seemed to be known; all that could be known of the rest of the world he moved in he seemed to know. He carried about with him usually, in a crook of his arm, a polished, light brown dachshund that had very large feet, and eyes as large, as brown, and as luminous, as those of his master. Upon the occasion of Pauline Lucas's marriage to Dudley Leicester the dog was not upon his arm, but he carried it into the drawing-rooms of the many ladies who welcomed him to afternoon tea. Apparently it had no attractions save its clear and beautiful colour, its excellent if very grotesque shape, and its complete docility. He called upon a lady at tea-time, and, with the same motion that let him down into his chair, he would set the dog upon the floor between his legs. There it would remain, as motionless and as erect as a fire-dog, until it was offered a piece of buttered tea-cake, which it would accept, or until its master gave it a minute and hardly audible permission to rove about. Then it would rove. The grotesque, large-little feet paddled set wide upon the carpet, the long ears flapped to the ground. But, above all, the pointed and sensitive nose would investigate with a minute attention, but with an infinite gentleness, every object within its reach in the room, from the line of the skirting-board to the legs of the piano and the flounced skirts of the ladies sitting near the tea-tables. Robert Grimshaw would observe these investigations with an indulgent approval; and, indeed, someone else once said--and perhaps with more justness--that Mr. Grimshaw resembled most nearly his own dog Peter.

And to Hartley Jenx's croaking remark that Dudley Leicester might have done himself better, Grimshaw, with his eyes upon the bride, raised and hardened his voice to say:

"Nobody in the world could have done better, my good man. If it hadn't been Dudley, it would have been me. You're come to the wrong shop. I know what I'm talking about. I haven't been carting Yankees around ruins; I've been in the centre of things."

Hartley Jenx, who estimated Dudley Leicester at five thousand a year and several directorates, estimated Grimshaw at a little over ten, plus what he must have saved in the six years since he had come into the Spartalide money. For it was obvious that Grimshaw, who lived in rooms off Cadogan Square and had only the smallest of bachelor shoots--that Grimshaw couldn't spend anything like his income. And amongst the guests at the subsequent reception, Hartley Jenx--who made a living by showing Americans round the country in summer, and by managing a charitable steam-laundry in the winter--with croaking voice, might at intervals be heard exclaiming:

"The bride of the day has refused sixty thousand dollars a year!"

So that, although the illustrated papers lavishly reproduced Pauline's pink-and-white beauty, stated that her father was the late Commodore Lucas, and her mother a daughter of Quarternion Castlemaine, and omitted the fact that she had refused twelve thousand a year to many seven and a few directorates, there were very few of those whom Grimshaw desired to have the knowledge that did not know this his tragedy.

On the steps of the church, Robert Grimshaw was greeted by his cousin, Ellida Langham, whose heavily patterned black veil, drooping hat of black fur, and long coat all black with the wide black sleeves, enhanced the darkness of her coal-black eyes, the cherry colour of her cheeks, and the rich red of her large lips. Holding out her black-gloved hand with an odd little gesture, as if at the same time she were withdrawing it, she uttered the words:

"Have you heard anything of Katya?" Her head seemed to be drawn back, birdlike, into the thick furs on her neck, and her voice had in it a plaintive quality. Being one of two daughters of the late Peter Lascarides, and the wife of Paul Langham, she was accounted fortunate as owning great possessions, a very attached husband, and sound health. The plaintive tone in her voice was set down to the fact that her little daughter of six was said to be mentally afflicted, and her sister Katya to have behaved in the strangest possible manner. Indeed, Mr. Hartley Jenx was accustomed to assure his American friends that Katya Lascarides had been sent abroad under restraint, though her friends gave it out that she was in Philadelphia working at a nerve-cure place.

"She is still in Philadelphia," Robert Grimshaw answered, "but I haven't heard from her."

Ellida Langham shivered a little in her furs.

"These November weddings always make me think of Katya and you," she said; "it was to have been done for you in November, too. I don't think you have forgotten."

"I'm going to walk in the Park for ten minutes," Grimshaw replied. "Peter's in the shop. Come too."

She hooked herself on to his arm to be conducted to her coup? at the end of a strip of red carpet, and in less than two minutes they were dropped on the pavement beside the little cigar-shop that is set, as it were, into the railings of the Park. Here Peter the dachshund, sitting patiently on the spot where his master had left him, beside the doormat, greeted Robert Grimshaw with one tiny whimper and a bow of joy; and then, his nose a hair's-breadth from Robert Grimshaw's heel, he paddled after them into the Park.

It was very grey, leafless, and deserted. The long rows of chairs stretched out untenanted, and the long perspective of the soft-going Ladies' Mile had no single rider. They walked very slowly, and spoke in low tones.

"I almost wish," Ellida Langham said, "that you had taken Katya's offer. What could have been said worse of her than they say now?"

"What do you say of her as it is?" Robert Grimshaw answered.

Mrs. Langham drooped in discouragement.

"That she is engaged in good works. But in Philadelphia! Who believes in good works in Philadelphia? Besides, she's acting as a nurse--for payment. That isn't good works, and it's disagreeable to lie even about one's sister."

"Whatever Katya did," Robert Grimshaw answered seriously, "she would be engaged in good works. You might pay her a king's salary, and she'd still do more than she was paid for. That's what it is to do good works."

"But if you had taken her on her own terms ..."--Mrs. Langham seemed as if she were pleading with hint--"don't you think that one day she or you will give in?"

"I think she never will, and she may be right," he answered. "I think I never shall, and I know I am."

"But if no one ever knew," she said "wouldn't it be the same thing as the other thing?"

"But wouldn't it be much better worth lying about?" she appealed to him. "You are such a dear, she's such a dear, and I could cry; I want you to come together so much!"

"I don't think I shall ever give in," he answered. And then, seeing a real moisture of tears in the eyes that were turned towards him, he said:

And then he added, as briskly as he could, for he spoke habitually in low tones, "I am coming in to supper to-night, tell Paul. How's Kitty?"

They were turning across the soft going, down towards where Mrs. Langham's motor was waiting for her beside the door of the French Embassy.

"Oh, Doctor Tressider says there's nothing to be fundamentally anxious about. He says that there are many children of six who are healthy enough and can't speak. I don't exactly know how to put it, but he says--well, you might call it a form of obstinacy."

Robert Grimshaw said "Ah!"

"Oh, I know you think," his cousin commented, "that that runs in the family. At any rate, there's Kitty as lively as a lark and perfectly sound physically, and she won't speak."

"And there's Katya," Mr. Grimshaw said, "as lively as a thoroughbred, and as sound as a roach, and a great deal better than any angel--and she won't marry."

Again Mrs. Langham was silent for a moment or two, then she added:

"You haven't heard"--Mr. Grimshaw continued his musings--"you haven't heard from your mother's people that there was any obstacle?"

"None in the world," she answered. "There couldn't have been. We've made all the inquiries that were possible. Why, my father's private bank-books for years and years back exist to this day, and there's no payment in them that can't be traced. There would have been mysterious cheques if there were anything of the sort, but there's nothing, nothing. And mother--well, you know the Greek system of dealing with girls--she was shut up in a harem till she--till she came out here to father. No, it's inexplicable."

Mrs. Langham gave vent to a little sort of wail.

"You aren't going back on Katya?" she said. "It isn't true, is it, that there's another?"

"I don't know whether it's true or not true," Grimshaw said, "but you can take it that to-day's ceremony has hit me a little hard. Katya is always first, but think of that dear little woman tied to the sort of obtuse hypochondriac that Dudley Leicester is!"

"Oh, but there's nothing in Pauline Lucas," Mrs. Langham objected, "and I shouldn't say Dudley was a hypochondriac. He looks the picture of health."

"Ah, you don't know Dudley Leicester as I do," Grimshaw said. "I've been his best friend for years."

"I know you've been very good to him," Ellida Langham answered.

"I know I have," Grimshaw replied, as nearly as possible grimly. "And haven't I now given him what was dearest and best to me?"

"But Katya?" Mrs. Langham said.

"One wants Katya," Grimshaw said--"one wants Katya. She is vigour, she is life, she is action, she is companionship. One wants her, if you like, because she is chivalry itself, and so she's obstinate; but, if one can't have Katya, one wants...."

He paused and looked at the dachshund that, when he paused, paused and looked back at him.

"That's what one wants," he continued. "One wants tenderness, fidelity, pretty grace, quaintness, and, above all, worship. Katya could give me companionship; but wouldn't Pauline have given me worship?"

"But still ..." Mrs. Langham commenced.

She beckoned to her car to come in at the gates and follow them along the side-walk past the tall barracks in the direction of Kensington.

"Yes, I dearly want to talk about Pauline," Grimshaw said, and his cousin laughed out the words:

"You haven't changed a bit, Toto," she began again. "You play at being serious and reserved and mysterious and full of knowledge, but you're still the kiddie in knickerbockers who used to have his pockets full of chocolate creams for the gardener's mite of a daughter. I remember I used to see you watching her skip. You'd stand for minutes at a time and just devour her with your eyes--a little tot of a thing. And then you'd throw her the chocolate creams out of the window. You were twelve and I was nine and Katya was seven and the gardener's daughter was six, but what an odd boy I used to think you!"

"That's precisely it," Grimshaw said. "That's what I want in Pauline. I don't want to touch her. I want to watch her going through the lancers with that little mouth just open, and the little hand just holding out her skirt, and a little, tender expression of joy. Don't you see--just to watch her? She's a small, light bird. I want to have her in a cage, to chirrup over her, to whistle to her, to give her grapes, and to have her peep up at me and worship me. No, I haven't changed. When I was that boy it didn't occur to me that I could have Katya; we were like brother and sister, so I wanted to watch little Millie Neil. Now I know I might have Katya and I can't, so I want to watch Pauline Leicester. I want to; I want to; I want to."

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