The Rain-Girl/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
LONDON AND LORD DREWITT
HOW am I going to explain you to auntie?"
"By Jove! I hadn't thought of that."
Beresford's look of consternation was so obvious that Lola laughed.
"I might add," she proceeded mischievously, "how am I to explain travelling back to London with you in a reserved compartment? It's—it's"
"I know," he said. "I was thinking of that, only I didn't say it."
"Didn't say what?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.
"What it was like."
Her face crimsoned and, turning her head aside, she became engrossed in the landscape streaming past the window.
"You haven't told me what I'm to say to auntie," she said presently, still looking out of the window.
"Couldn't you say that I saved your life whilst bathing, or plucked you from a burning hotel, or that you ran over me when motoring, or"
"That I came across you in a lunatic asylum," she suggested scathingly. "If I had been nearly drowned the newspapers would have got hold of it, and the Imperial couldn't have been burned by stealth, and if"
"Enough," he laughed. "I apologise. Why not tell her the truth?"
"The truth?" she queried.
"I grant it's the last thing that one usually thinks of. Say that I fainted in your arms in the dining-room of the Imperial and"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," she laughed. "Seriously though," she added a moment later. "I think it would be the best plan."
"To say that I fainted in your arms?" he asked innocently.
"That going to the assistance of a fellow-guest ho had fainted," she continued severely, "I found that he was a cousin of Lord Drewitt."
"And nephew of Lady Drewitt, don't forget that," he said hastily, "or Aunt Caroline would never forgive you."
"I'll remember," she nodded.
"And having dragged me back resisting to this world," he continued, "you might add that you neglected me in a land where foster-mothers were not."
"Whatever are you talking about?"
"Only of your neglect during the early days of my convalescence."
"Suppose it got to be known that you and I were travelling up to London in a reserved compartment?" Lola looked at him. "What would people say?" she demanded reproachfully.
"The worst without a doubt; but what they would say would be as nothing to what they would think. It's not really reserved, you know," he added, "merely the result of the constitutional venality of railway guards."
"But you don't consider my reputation."
"You have allowed me to consider little else for the last nine days," was the calm retort.
"Well, you must come to lunch to-morrow and explain to auntie, and bring Lord Drewitt. We'll invite Mr. Deacon Quelch. He's auntie's pet medium. It's so funny to see Lord Drewitt look at him." She laughed at the recollection.
"I think Drew mentioned that he had met Mr. Quelch," said Beresford drily, recollecting Drewitt's description.
"Now you won't forget," she said. "Two o'clock to-morrow, and above all discretion."
"Do you think I'm likely to forget?" he asked pointedly, "the luncheon, I mean."
"You might faint again," she suggested demurely, "or—or"
"Or what?"
"Or go away," she glanced at him swiftly.
Somehow her simple remark seemed to bring back to him the full realisation of his position. A week or two and he would be faced by He shook himself as if to drive away the thought.
"Why did you do that?" she asked curiously.
"Why did I do what?"
"Shake yourself like—like"
"A little devil had settled on my shoulder and was whispering unpleasant things into my ear," he explained with a smile.
"You are funny." She looked at him appraisingly. "You are funnier than any one I have ever known."
"Pour s'amuse la reine," he smiled.
"I wish I understood you," she said, still regarding him with gravely intent eyes.
"And you think I should wear better understood?" he queried.
"You're not like"
"The other Thirty-Nine Articles. Grace à Dieu!" he laughed.
"I can see it's no use," she said with a sigh. "You won't be serious."
"I dare not."
The tone rather than the words caused her to look at him quickly; but he was smiling.
The train was now rushing into bricks and mortar. To Beresford the greyness of the unending lines seemed reflected in his own thoughts. It was getting very near the end—the end with a capital "E." Still it had been wonderful, and he was not going to complain.
Nothing more was said until they drew into Victoria Station, and then only the commonplaces about luggage and a taxi. He secured a porter, retrieved Lola's luggage from the avalanche that was descending upon the platform from the guard's van, and finally secured a taxi.
"Thank you very much indeed for—for everything," she said with a smile as she held out her hand.
"You will let me see you sometimes?" he pleaded.
"But I thought you were going away," she said smiling.
"Oh, 'the bird of time has still a little way to flutter,'" he quoted as the taxi jerked forward.
"To-morrow then," she cried.
He lifted his hat and turned to the business of securing his own luggage and another taxi.
At the Ritz-Carlton he found that the letter he had sent from Folkestone cancelling his room had miscarried, involving a still further drain into his already sadly depleted capital. These gradual inroads into the limited balance of his days were becoming disturbing.
By six o'clock he had discovered and taken a small furnished bachelor flat in St. James's Mansions, Jermyn Street, had transferred there from the Ritz-Carlton, and was on his way to call upon Drewitt.
As he was shown in by Hoskins, he found Edward Seymour just about to take his departure.
"Behold, my dear Teddy," said Drewitt, lazily waving his hand towards Beresford, "the personification of a spirit of romance that no Cervantes could have killed."
Edward Seymour looked from Beresford to Drewitt, blinking his eyes like a puzzled owl, then feeling that the surest defence lay in offence, he turned to Beresford.
"I suppose you've been spending money again," he sneered.
"No, Edward," said Beresford with a smile, he felt he could afford to smile at everything to-day, "as a matter of fact the taxi-man brought me for nothing."
"Have you ever read Don Quixote?" enquired Drewitt of Edward Seymour.
He shook his sandy little head. He always felt at a disadvantage with Drewitt.
"That would explain my allusion, Teddy. Now you must run away to Cecily, or she will think you are lost. Give her my love, and tell her I shall dispute the will." The smile which accompanied these words robbed them of some of their sting.
"I'll tell Aunt Caroline that you're back," said Edward Seymour to Beresford as he walked towards the door.
Beresford nodded as the door closed behind him.
"That's just the sort of thing that dear, amiable, sweet-natured little Teddy would do," said Drewitt. "Richard, before you plunge me into the maelstrom of your adventures, I beseech you to ring for coffee."
Beresford did so.
"No, Richard, not a word until I am fortified. Three times this week have I seen the aunt, twice been buttonholed by Sir Redman Bight, the club bore, in addition to being invited to join the Board of the Auto-Balloon Bus and Tram. Car Syndicate, I think that was its name. It has really been most exhausting. By the way, did you ring twice?"
Beresford nodded.
"Thank you for remembering that twice means coffee. You might have rung three times, which means; but never mind, that is a purely domestic matter."
After a pause Drewitt continued, "London's exactly where you left it, Richard, incidentally where Lola Craven left it also. She has not been heard of or seen since that breakfast. Heavens! that breakfast—and—and her aunt. Her conversation made me feel like rose-blight subjected to a patent spray-exterminator. I have never encountered anything like it." A look of complete misery overspread Drewitt's features. "I'm positively afraid to enquire of Hoskins how much I owe for coffee. It must be a prodigious amount. Ah! here it is," as Hoskins entered with a tray and proceeded to fill the two white and gold cups, which he handed to Drewitt and Beresford.
"What I most admire about you, Richard, is your capacity for the unexpected. You leave London for all the discomforts of the country-side, from damp beds to mosquitoes, your loving family hears nothing of you for eight weeks, then suddenly you reappear, clothed in a manner that is a direct challenge to Solomon—the king, I mean, not the Piccadilly florist. You then proceed to behave in a manner that is eccentric, even for you, Richard, who in yourself are a sort of mental jazz-band. Now for your story, I can bear it."
In a few words Beresford told of the "accidental" meeting with Lola Craven at the Imperial, and that he had accepted an invitation for Drewitt and himself to lunch on the morrow. He refrained from mentioning that Mr. Quelch would be present.
"Impossible, quite impossible. To-morrow I am lunching with—let me see, who is it? I know it's somebody uncomfortable, because I have been looking forward to it with dread."
"To-morrow you are lunching with us, Drew," said Beresford quietly.
"Since you put it so persuasively," he said drily, "I cannot of course refuse. Perhaps you will ring the bell once, that means that Hoskins' presence is required."
Beresford did so, and a moment later Hoskins entered.
"Hoskins," said Drewitt, "I am due to lunch with somebody or other to-morrow. It doesn't matter with whom. Just say that—that—well, just make my excuses in your usual inimitable manner."
Hoskins bowed and withdrew.
"Richard, you are keeping something from me." Drewitt reached for a cigarette and proceeded to light it.
"And you, with your customary discretion, will not press the matter," said Beresford with a smile.
"Perhaps you're right. When a man makes a peculiarly transparent sort of ass of himself, he is usually too conscious of the fact to require outside comment. By the way, the Aunt has been enquiring about you."
"About me?" queried Beresford.
"Yes. I think I unduly alarmed her by an indiscreet reference to a possible inquest upon your remains. Perhaps one or two ill-advised references to the cheerless and unhygienic qualities of coroners' courts were responsible. What she will say when she learns that you have been cutting the ground from under my feet at Folkestone, I haven't the most remote idea."
"Don't be an ass."
"Richard," continued Drewitt, "I have a foreboding. Like the estimable Cassandra, I feel a perfect tenement-house of foreboding. With your romantic disposition, Lola Craven's fascinating personality and your high sense of honour and integrity, we have a situation that Sophocles would have welcomed with tears of artistic joy."
"You are talking a most awful lot of rot, Drew." Beresford was conscious of a surly note in his voice.
"How much money have you got?" Drewitt leaned forward slightly, the bantering note had disappeared from his voice.
Beresford looked across at him curiously.
"I've given up taking stock of my resources."
For fully a minute there was silence, broken at length by Drewitt.
"Richard, there are a few hundreds at the bank unclaimed by my hysterical creditors, if"
"Thanks, old man," said Beresford quietly as he rose. "I shall be all right," and he gripped with unusual warmth the hand that Drewitt extended to him.
"You're in the very devil of a mess, Dickie," he said quietly. "I'm always here when you want me."
Beresford drove back to Jermyn Street to telephone to Lola that Drewitt would be able to lunch on the morrow. He felt strangely lonely without her. For the last week he had been constantly in her company, and now suddenly she had been lifted clean out of his life. There was the whole evening to dispose of, and the following morning until lunch-time. He might go to a theatre, it was true; but what object would there be when his thoughts would be elsewhere than with the performers?
Arrived at Jermyn Street, he got through to the Belle Vue, and held the line for nearly ten minutes whilst they were searching for Lola. Eventually a message came that she was not to be found, and with a vicious jab he replaced the receiver. Three times he rang her up, and three times the message was the same. Finally he sat down to write a note and, having spoiled a number of sheets of note-paper, folded and placed in an envelope something with which he was entirely dissatisfied. It was impossible to write to the Rain-Girl with all sorts of barriers and restraints intervening.