"You may. And I"ll help myself to a word or two with you," retorted Mortimer, following Plank out of the room, down the stairs to the lighted reception-room, where they wheeled, confronting one another.
"What is the matter?" demanded Plank. "At the club they told me you were asleep in the card-room. I didn"t tell Leila. What is wrong?"
"I"m--I"m dead broke," said Mortimer harshly. "Billy Fleetwood took my paper. Can you help me out? It"s due to-morrow."
Plank looked at him gravely, but made no answer.
"Can you?" repeated Mortimer violently. "Haven"t I done enough for you?
Haven"t I done enough for everybody? Is anybody going to show me any consideration? Look at Quarrier"s manner to me just now! And this very day I did him a service that all his millions can"t repay. And there you stand, too, staring at me as though I were some d.a.m.ned importuning shabby-genteel, hinting around for an opening to touch you. Yes, you do! And this very day I have done for you the--the most vital thing--the most sacred favour one man can do for another--"
He halted, stammered something incoherent, his battered eyes wet with tears. The man was a wreck--nerves, stamina, mind on the very verge of collapse.
"I"ll help you, of course," said Plank, eyeing him. "Go home, now, and sleep. I tell you I"ll help you in the morning.
Don"t give way! Have you no grit? Pull up sharp, I tell you!"
But Mortimer had fallen into a chair, his ravaged face cradled in his hands. "I"ve got all that"s c-coming to me," he said hoa.r.s.ely; "I"m all in--all in! G.o.d! but I"ve got the jumps this trip.
You"ll stand for this, won"t you, Plank? I was batty, but I woke up in time to grasp the live wire Billy Fleetwood held--three shocks in succession--and his were queens full to my jacks--aces to kings twice!--Alderdene and Voucher sitting in until they"d started me off hiking h.e.l.lward!"
He began to ramble, and even to laugh weakly, pa.s.sing his puffy, shaking hands across his eyes.
"It"s good of you, Beverly; I appreciate it. But I"ve been good to you.
You"re all to the good, my boy! Understand? All to the good. I fixed it; I did it for you. You can have your innings now. You can have her when you want her, I tell you."
"What do you mean?" said Plank menacingly.
"Mean! I mean what I told you that day at Black Fells, when we were riding. I told you you had a chance to win out. Now the chance has come--same"s I told you. Start in, and by the time you"re ready to say "When?" she"ll be there with the bottle!"
"I don"t think you are perfectly sane yet," said Plank slowly.
"Let it go at that, then," sn.i.g.g.e.red Mortimer, struggling to his feet.
"Bring Leila back; I"m all in; I"m going home. You"ll be around in the morning, won"t you?"
"Yes," said Plank. "Have you got a cab?"
Mortimer had one. The gla.s.s and iron doors clanged behind him, and Plank, waiting a moment, sighed, raised his head, and, encountering the curious gaze of a servant, trudged off up-stairs again.
The game had ended at both tables. Quarrier and Agatha stood by the window together, conversing in low voices. Belwether, at a desk, sat muttering and fussing with a cheque-book. The others were in Sylvia"s apartments.
A few moments later Kemp Ferrall arrived, in the best of spirits, very much inclined to consider the night as still young; but his enthusiasm met with no response, and presently he departed with his wife and Marion in their big Mercedes, wheeling into the avenue at a reckless pace, and streaming away through the night like a meteor run mad.
Leila, in her wraps, emerged in a few moments, looking at Plank out of serious eyes; and they made their brief adieux and went away in Plank"s brougham.
When Agatha"s maid arrived, Quarrier also started to take his leave; but Sylvia, seated at a card-table, idly arranging the cards in geometrical designs and fanciful arabesques, looked up at him, saying:
"I wanted to say something to you, Howard."
Agatha pa.s.sed them, going into Sylvia"s room for her wraps; and Quarrier turned to Sylvia:
"Well?" he said, with the slightest hint of impatience.
"Can"t you stay a minute?" asked Sylvia, surprised.
"Agatha is going in the motor with me. Is it anything important?"
She considered him without replying. She had never before detected that manner, that hardness in a voice always so even in quality.
"What is it?" he repeated.
She thought a moment, putting aside for the time his manner, which she could not comprehend; then:
"I wanted to ask you a question--a rather ignorant one, perhaps. It"s about your Amalgamated Electric Company. May I ask it, Howard?"
After a second"s stare, "Certainly," he said.
"It"s only this: If the other people--the Inter-County, I mean--are slowly ruining Amalgamated, why don"t you stop it?"
Quarrier"s eyes narrowed. "Oh! And who have you been discussing the matter with?"
"Mr. Plank," she said simply. "I asked him. He shook his head, and said I"d better ask you. And I do ask you."
For a moment he stood mute; then his lips began to shrink back over his beautiful teeth in one of his rare laughs.
"I"ll be very glad to explain it some day," he said; but there was no mirth in his voice or eyes, only the snickering lip wrinkling the pallor.
"Will you not answer now?" she asked.
"No, not now. But I desire you to understand it some day--some day before November. And one or two other matters that it is necessary for you to understand. I want to explain them, Sylvia, in such a manner that you will never be likely to forget them. And I mean to; for they are never out of my mind, and I wish them to be as ineffaceably impressed on yours.
Good night."
He took her limp hand almost briskly, released it, and stepped down the stairs as Agatha entered, cloaked, to say good night.
They kissed at parting--"life embracing death"--as Mortimer had sneered on a similar occasion; then Sylvia, alone, stood in her bedroom, hands linked behind her, her lovely head bent, groping with the very ghosts of thought which eluded her, fleeing, vanishing, reappearing, to peep out at her only to fade into nothing ere she could follow where they flitted through the dark labyrinths of memory.
The major, craning his neck in the bay-window, saw Agatha and Quarrier enter the big, yellow motor, and disappear behind the limousine. And it worried him horribly, because he knew perfectly well that Quarrier had lied to him about a jewelled collar precisely like the collar worn by Agatha Caithness; and what to do or what to say to anybody on the subject was, for the first time in his life, utterly beyond his garrulous ability. So, for the first time also in his chattering career, he held his tongue, rea.s.sured at moments, at other moments panic-stricken lest this marriage he had engineered should go amiss, and his ambitions be nipped at the very instant of triumphant maturity.
"This sort of thing--in your own caste--among your own kind," his panicky thoughts ran on, "is b-bad form--rotten bad taste on both sides.
If they were married--one of them, anyway! But this isn"t right; no, by gad! it"s bad taste, and no gentleman could countenance it!"
It was plain that he could, however, his only fear being that somebody might whisper something to turn Sylvia"s innocence into a terrible wisdom which would ruin everything, and knock the underpinning from the new tower which his inflated fancy beheld slowly growing heavenward, surmounting the house of Belwether.
Another matter: he had violated his word, and had been caught at it by his prospective nephew-in-law--broken his pledged word not to sell his Amalgamated Electric holdings, and had done it. Yet, how could Plank dominate, unless another also had done what he had done? And it made him a little more comfortable to know he was sharing the fault with somebody--probably with Siward, whom he now had the luxury of despising for the very thing he himself had done.
"Drunkard!" he muttered to himself; "he"s in the gutter at last!"
And he repeated it unctuously, almost reconciled to his own shortcoming, because it was the first time, as far as he knew, that a Belwether might legitimately enjoy the pleasures of holding the word of a Siward in contempt.
Sylvia had dismissed her maid, the old feeling of distaste for the touch of another had returned since the last mad, crushed embrace in Siward"s arms had become a memory. More and more she was returning to old instincts, old habits of thought, reverting to type once more, virgin of lip and thought and desire, save when the old memory stopped her heart suddenly, then sent it racing, touching her face with quick, crimson imprint.
Now, blue eyes dreaming under the bright ma.s.ses of her loosened hair, she sat watching the last glimmer amid the ashes whitening on the hearth, thinking of Siward and of what had been between them, and of what could never be--never, never be.