Poor little Christine--it was not her fault. He had asked her to marry him; he meant to be good to her. A servant came to the door.
"Mrs. Challoner said would I tell you that tea is served upstairs in the sitting-room, sir."
Jimmy squared his shoulders; he tried to look as if there had been a Mrs. Challoner for fifty years; but the sound of Christine"s new name made his heart sink.
"Oh--er--thanks," he said as carelessly as he could. "I"ll go up." He waited a few moments, then he went slowly up the stairs, feeling very much as if he were going to be executed.
He stood for a moment on the landing outside the door of the private sitting-room, with an absurdly schoolboyish air of bashfulness.
He pa.s.sed a hand nervously over the back of his head; he wriggled his collar; twice he took a step forward and stopped again; finally the appearance of a servant along the corridor drove him to make up his mind. He opened the door with a rush.
Christine was standing over by the window; the afternoon sunshine fell on her slim, black-robed figure and brown hair. She turned quickly as Jimmy Challoner entered.
"Tea has been up some minutes; I hope it"s not cold."
"I like it cold," said Jimmy.
As a matter of fact, he hated tea at any time, and never drank it if it could be avoided; but he sat down with as good a grace as he could muster, and took a cup from her hand with its new ring--his ring.
Jimmy Challoner glanced at it and away again.
"Nice room this--eh?" he asked.
"Yes." Christine had sugared her own cup three times without knowing it; she took a cake from the stand, and dropped it nervously. Jimmy laughed; a boyish laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt that seemed to break the ice.
"Anyone would think you had never seen me before," he said, with an attempt to put her at her ease. "And I"ve known you all your life!"
"I know; but----" She looked at him with very flushed cheeks. "I"m afraid, Jimmy--afraid that you"ll find you"ve made a mistake; afraid that you"ll find I"m too young and--silly."
"You"re not to call the lady I have married rude names."
"But it"s true," she faltered. She put down the cup and went over to where he sat. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, looking down at him with a sort of fond humility.
"I do love you, Jimmy," she said softly. "And I will--I will try to be the sort of wife you want."
Jimmy tried to answer her, but somehow the words stuck in his throat.
She was not the sort of wife he wanted, and never would be. That thought filled his mind. All the willingness in the world could not endow her with Cynthia"s eyes, Cynthia"s voice, Cynthia"s caressing way of saying, "Dear old boy."
He choked back a big sigh; he found Christine"s hand and raised it to his lips.
"We shall get along swimmingly," he said with an effort. "Don"t you worry your little head."
But she was not satisfied.
"I must be so different from all the other women you are used to," she told him wistfully. "I"m not smart or amusing--and I don"t dress as well as they do."
Jimmy smiled.
"Well, one can always buy clothes," he said. A sudden wave of tenderness swept through his heart as he looked at her. "Anyway, you"ve got one pull over all of them," he said with momentary sentiment.
"Have I--Jimmy! What do you mean?"
He kissed her trembling little fingers again.
"You were my first love," he said with a touch of embarra.s.sment. "And it"s not many men who can claim to have married their first love."
Christine was quite happy now; she bent and kissed him before she went back to her seat. Jimmy felt considerably cheered. If she were as easily pleased as this, life would not be the difficult thing that he had imagined, he told himself. He selected a chocolate cake--suitably heart-shaped--and began to munch it with a sort of relish.
"How would you like to run over to Paris for a few days--later on, of course, I mean?" he added hastily, meeting her eyes. It would be rather fun showing Christine round Paris, he thought. He looked at her with a twinkle.
She was very pretty, anyway; he was proud of her, too, deep down in his heart. No doubt after a bit they would be quite happy together.
He finished the chocolate cake, and asked if he might smoke; he was longing for a cigarette. He was not quite sure if it would be correct to smoke in a room which would be chiefly used by Christine. With Cynthia things had been so different--she smoked endless cigarettes herself; there was never any need to ask permission of her.
He could not imagine Christine with a cigarette between her pretty lips. And yet--yet he had liked it with Cynthia. Odd how different women were.
"Please do smoke," said Christine. She was glad he had asked her; glad that for the rest of his life whenever he smoked a cigarette, it would not merely be Jimmy Challoner blowing puffs of smoke into the air, but her husband. She glowed at the thought.
Jimmy was much more happy now; to his own way of thinking he was getting on by leaps and bounds. He went over and sat on the arm of Christine"s chair; another moment and he would have put an arm round her, but a soft, apologetic tapping at the door sent him flying away from her to the other side of the room.
He was carefully turning the pages of a book when he answered, "Come in," with elaborate carelessness. One of the hotel servants entered; he carried a letter on a tray; he handed it to Christine.
"A messenger from the Sunderland Hotel has just brought this, madam.
He told me to say that it has been there two days, but they did not know till this morning where to send it on to you."
Christine"s face quivered. She did not want to think of the Sunderland; her mother had died there; it would always be a.s.sociated in her mind with the great tragedy of her life. She took the letter hesitatingly; she did not know the writing. She waited till the servant had gone before she opened it.
Jimmy was still turning the leaves of the railway guide feverishly. At the shutting of the door he turned with a sigh of relief.
"A letter?" Christine was drawing the paper from its envelope; pink paper, smelling faintly of lilies. Jimmy lit a fresh cigarette. He walked over to the window and stood looking into the street; a horribly respectable street it was, he thought impatiently, of good-cla.s.s houses, with windows neatly curtained and knockers carefully polished.
He was really quite anxious to kiss Christine; he was wondering whether she, too, was anxious for him to kiss her. After a moment he turned a little, and looked at her tentatively.
But Christine was not looking at him; she was sitting with her eyes fixed straight in front of her, a frozen look of horror on her little face. The letter had tumbled from her lap to the floor.
"Christine!" said Jimmy sharply. He was really alarmed; he took a big stride over to where she sat; he shook her. "Christine--what has happened? What is the matter?"
She looked at him then; she turned her beautiful eyes to his face, and at sight of them Jimmy caught his breath hard.
"Oh, Christine!" he said almost in a whisper.
His thoughts sped back incongruously to a day in the years that had gone; when he and she had been children together down in the country at Upton House.
He had stolen a gun belonging to the Great Horatio, and they had crept out into the woods together--he and she--to shoot rabbits, as he had confidently told her; and instead--oh, instead they had shot Christine"s favourite dog Ruler.
All his life Jimmy remembered the broken-hearted look in Christine"s eyes when she flung herself down by the fast-stiffening body of her favourite. And now she was looking like that again; looking at him as if he had broken her heart--as if---- Jimmy Challoner backed a step; his face had paled.
"In G.o.d"s name, what is it--what is it?"