"I don"t know," said Jones, pa.s.sing his hand across his forehead. "I"ve had a hard day." She looked at him curiously for a moment, then pityingly, then kindly.
Then she jumped up, made him sit down on a big couch by the wall, and took her seat beside him.
Then she took his hand.
"Ju-Ju--why will you be such a fool?"
"I don"t know," said Jones.
The caress of the little jewelled hand destroyed his mental powers. He dared not look at her, just sat staring before him.
"They told me all about the coal mine," she went on, "at least Venetia did, and how they all bully-ragged you--Venetia was great on that.
Venetia waggled that awful gobbly-Jick head of hers while she was telling me--they"re _mad_ over the loss of that coal thing--oh, Ju-Ju, I"m so glad you lost it. It"s wicked, I suppose, but I"m glad. That"s what made me come back, the way they went on about you. I listened and listened and then I broke out. I said all I"ve wanted to say for the last six months to Venetia. You know she told me how you came home the other night. I said nothing then, just listened and stored it up. Then, last night, when they all got together about the coal mine I went on listening and storing it up. Blunders was there as well as your mother and Venetia. Blunders said he had called you an a.s.s and that you were.
Then I broke out. I said a whole lot of things--well, there it is. So I came back--there were other reasons as well. I don"t want to be alone. I want to be cared for--I want to be cared for--when I saw you in Bond Street, yesterday--I--I--I--Ju-Ju, do you care for me?"
"Yes," said Jones.
"I want to confess--I want to tell you something."
"Yes."
"If you didn"t care for me--if I felt you didn"t, I"d--"
"Yes."
"Kick right over the traces. I would. I couldn"t go on as I have been going, lonely, like a lost dog."
She raised his fingers and rubbed them along her lips.
"You will not be lonely," said the unfortunate man in a muted voice.
"You need not be afraid of that." The utter inadequacy of the remark came to him like one of those nightmare recognitions encountered as a rule only in Dreamland. Yet she seemed to find it sufficient, her mind perhaps being engaged elsewhere.
"What would you have said if I had run away from you for good?" asked she. "Would you have been sorry?"
"Yes--dreadfully."
"Are you glad I"ve come back?"
"I am."
"Honestly glad?"
"Yes."
"Really glad?"
"Yes."
"Truthfully, really, honestly glad?"
"Yes."
"Well, so am I," said she. She released his hand.
"Now go and play me something. I want something soothing after Venetia--play me Chopin"s Spianato--we used to be fond of that."
Now the only thing that Jones had ever played in his life was the Star Spangled Banner and that with one finger--Chopin"s Spianato!
"No," he said. "I"d rather talk."
"Well, talk then--mercy! There"s the first gong."
A faint and far away sound invaded the room, throbbed and ceased. She rose, picked up her gloves, which she had cast on a chair, and then peeped at herself in a mirror by the piano.
"You have never kissed me," said she, speaking as it were half to herself and half to him, seeming to be more engaged in a momentary piercing criticism of the hat she was wearing than in thoughts of kisses. He came towards her like a schoolboy, then, as she held up her face he imprinted a chaste kiss upon her right cheek bone.
Then the most delightful thing that ever happened to mortal man happened to him. Two warm palms suddenly took his face between them and two moist lips met his own.
Then she was gone.
He took his seat on the music stool, dazed, dazzled, delighted, shocked, frightened, triumphant.
The position was terrific.
Jones was no Lothario. He was a straight, plain, common-sensical man with a high respect for women, and the position of leading character in a bad French comedy was not for him. Jones would just as soon have thought of kissing another man"s wife as of standing on his head in the middle of Broadway.
To personate another man and to kiss the other man"s wife under that disguise would have seemed to him the meanest act any two-legged creature could perform.
And he had just done it. And the other man"s wife had--heu! his face still burned.
She had done it because of his deception.
He found himself suddenly face to face with the barrier that Fate had been cunningly constructing and had now placed straight before him.
There was no getting over it or under it, he would have to declare his position _at once_--and what a position to declare!
She loved Rochester.
All at once that terrific fact appeared before him in its true proportions and its true meaning.
She loved Rochester.
He had to tell her the truth. Yet to tell her the truth he would have to tell her that the man she loved was dead.
Then she would want proofs.
He would have to bring up the Savoy Hotel people, fetch folk from America--disinter Rochester. Horror! He had never thought of that. What had become of Rochester? Up to this he had never thought once of what had become of the mortal remains of the defunct jester, nor had he cared a b.u.t.ton--why should he?
But the woman who loved Rochester would care. And he, Jones, would become in her eyes a ghoul, a monstrosity, a horror.