“He is a constant visitor,” observed Lady Millebrook. “And a constant friend,” said Mrs. Tollebranch. A delicate flush mantled on her otherwise ivory cheek, her great gray eyes, famed for their far-away, saintly expression, shone through a gleaming veil of tears. With the lithe, undulating movement so characteristic of her, she crossed the velvety carpets to the window, and, lifting a corner of her silken blind, peeped out over her window-boxes of jonquils as the hall-door closed, and a well-dressed man with a slight stoop and a worn, dyspeptic countenance went slowly down the doorsteps and got into his cab. As though some subtle magnetic thrill had conveyed to him the knowledge that fair eyes looked on his departure, he glanced up and bowed, for one moment becoming a younger man, as a temporary glow suffused his pallid features. Then the cab drove off, and Mrs. Tollebranch, slipping her hand within the arm of Lady Millebrook, drew her back to her cosy seat within the radius of the fire-glow, and rang for tea.
“I did not have it up while poor Cadminster was here,” she explained. “The sight of Sally Lunn is horrible to him, and he is positively forbidden tea.”
“They say,” said Lady Millebrook, nibbling the Sally Lunn, “that he lives upon gluten biscuits, lean boiled mutton, and white fish, washed down by weak Medoc, mixed with hot water.”
“It is true,” returned her friend.
“And yet he dines out. I meet him comparatively often at other people’s tables,” said Lady Millebrook. 108“And here—invariably.” Her eyebrows wore the crumple of interrogation.
“The servants have orders to pass him over,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch, sipping her tea. “If Jerks or Wilbraham were to offer him a made dish, one, if not both of them, would be instantly dismissed.”
“My dear Clarice! Friendship is friendship.... But Jerks and Wilbraham.... Such invaluable servants! You cannot mean what you say!”
“I do mean it,” nodded Mrs. Tollebranch. “Oh, Bettine!” she murmured, clasping Lady Millebrook’s hand, “don’t look so surprised. If you only knew how much that man has sacrificed for me!”
“If there is anything upon which I pride myself,” observed Lady Millebrook, “it is my absolute lack of curiosity. And yet people are always telling me their secrets—the most intimate, the most important! ‘Bettine,’ they say, ‘you are a Grave!’ ... So I am; it is quite true. A thing once repeated in my hearing is buried for ever! We have not known each other very long, it is true, but you must have discovered that I am absolutely reliable! Talking of sacrifices, there are so many sorts. Now perhaps in your gratitude for this service rendered you by Lord Cadminster, you overrate. Perhaps it is really not so great as you imagine! Perhaps...! But I am not curious in the least!”
“Would it surprise you to hear,” queried Mrs. Tollebranch, “that Cadminster, two years ago, was perfectly healthy! Not the cadaverous dyspeptic he is now; not the semi-invalid, but a robust, healthy, fresh-colored man of the out-of-doors, hardy English type?”
Lady Millebrook elevated her eyebrows. “Dear me,” she observed. “How very odd! And now—you know his horrid soubriquet—‘The Boiled Owl.’ He has earned it since, of course.”
“He had a splendid appetite once,” continued Mrs. 109Tollebranch, “an iron constitution—a perfect digestion. He gave them all three to save a woman’s honor. Oh! Bettine, can you guess who the woman was?”
“I never hazard guesses about my friends,” said the inexorable Lady Millebrook. “But I feel, somehow, that she may have been you?”
“I was weak,” admitted Mrs. Tollebranch, clasping her friend’s hand with agitated jeweled fingers. “But not wicked, Bettine. Promise me to believe that!”
“I never promise,” said Bettine, “but no one could look at you and doubt that ... whatever you might do, would be the outcome of irresistible impulse, not the result of deliberate—ahem! My dearest, you interest me indescribably,” she cried, “and if I were the least bit inclined to curiosity, I am sure I should implore you to go on.”
“You shall hear the story of Cadminster’s Great Sacrifice, Bettine,” said Mrs. Tollebranch, “and when you have heard, you will regard him——”
“As Bayard and all the other heroes of chivalry rolled into one, and dressed by a Bond Street tailor,” interrupted Lady Millebrook, with a glow of impatience in her fine dark eyes. “I think you mentioned two years ago?” she added, settling a little stray lock of her friend’s silken blonde hair, and sinking back among her cushions.
“Two years ago,” murmured Mrs. Tollebranch, “Willibrand became bitten with the Golf Spider. He is as wild about the game to-day,” she added, “as ever.”
“There is a proverb, ‘Once a golfer, always a golfer,’” put in Lady Millebrook. “I believe that to play the game successfully requires a vast amount of thought and judgment, which insensibly diverts a man’s mind from less harmless topics, and that it entails an invigorating and healthy action of the arms and legs, soothing to the nervous system, and improving in its effect upon the 110temper. Were I asked by any married woman of my acquaintance whether she should encourage her husband in his devotion to golf, or dissuade him from it, I should advise her to encourage the fad. The game, unlike others, can be played all the year round, in sunshine, rain, or snow.”
“Willibrand used to play it in the snow,” put in Mrs. Tollebranch, “with red balls. It was when we were spending March at Tobermuirie two years ago, that——”
“That Lord Cadminster performed the chivalrous action which resulted for him in the permanent loss of his digestion? Well?”
“Tobermuirie is the bleakest spot in North Britain,” began Mrs. Tollebranch, returning the teacups to the tray, and touching the electric bell in a manner which conveyed the intimation that she would not be at home to any caller for the next quarter of an hour. “The castle is one of the oldest inhabited residences in Europe, and, I verily believe, the coldest. If you would like to find out for yourself how easily a northern gale can penetrate walls ten feet thick in the thinnest places, come to us in July.”
“I shall make a point of it!” said Lady Millebrook, cuddling down into her warm, scented lair of cushions.
“Of course, the male division of the house-party was made up of golfing enthusiasts,” went on Mrs. Tollebranch. “Major Wharfling, Sir Roger Balcombe, Cadminster, who was as keen as Willibrand in those days, three Guardsmen, and D’Arsy Pontoise.”
“By the way, what has become of Pontoise?” queried Lady Millebrook. “One never meets him now as one used.”
“He scarcely ever leaves Paris, I believe,” returned Mrs. Tollebranch, rather constrainedly. “Since his reconciliation with the Duc, his great-uncle, and his marriage 111with Mademoiselle De Carapoix, who I have heard is a very strict Catholic and humpbacked——”
“Besides being a great heiress.... Of course, he is kept well within bounds. But what a fascinating creature Pontoise used to be. Bubbling with life, effervescing with spirits. Sadly naughty, too, I fear, for the names of at least half a dozen pretty married women used to be mixed up with his in all sorts of scan.... My dearest, I beg your pardon!”
“I, at least, was not wicked—only weak!” said Clarice, with icy dignity. “And as to there being five others——”
“My sweet, it was the vaguest hearsay. Nothing certain, except that Pontoise spoke perfect English and was a veritable Apollo! I can imagine the rigors of imprisonment in a Border castle in March to have been ameliorated by the fact of his being a guest under its aged roof. Did he play golf?”
Mrs. Tollebranch rose and took a dainty screen of crimson feathers from the high mantelshelf.
“He tried to learn,” she explained, holding the screen so as to shield her delicate complexion from the glowing heat of the log fire. “But the game baffled him. To play it properly, I believe, the mind must be dead to all other interests——”
“And Pontoise’s mind was unusually alive at that particular moment to things outside the sphere of golf,” mused Lady Millebrook. “Golf is a game for husbands, not for——” Her red lips closed on the unuttered word.
“Don’t say, ‘lovers’!” implored Clarice. “From beginning to end, Bettine, it was nothing but a flirtation. I will own that I was—attracted, almost fascinated. I had never met a human being whose nature was of so many colors ... whose soul....” She broke off.
“I have been informed on good authority,” observed Lady Millebrook, “that whenever Pontoise meant mischief 112he invariably talked about his soul. But do go on!
“Of course, you played golf also; and as one of the great advantages connected with the game is that you can choose your own partner, I may presume that Pontoise made acquaintance with it under your auspices, and that when he landed himself in the jaws of some terrific sand-bunker, you were at hand to help him out.”
“As his hostess, it was rather incumbent upon me,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch, “to make myself of use. Willibrand and Sir Roger Balcombe termed him a duffer; Major Wharfling is nothing but a professional, Cadminster and the Guardsmen were hard drivers all. And as Bluefern had made me a golfing costume which was a perfect dream——”
“You completed the conquest of Pontoise. I quite understand!” said Bettine. “In that frock, armed with a long spoon. I quite grasp it.”
“The golf course is very open at Tobermuirie,” went on Clarice, playing with the feather fan.
“But there are hillocks, and bumps and boulders, and things behind which Pontoise managed to get in a good many references to his soul. I grasp that also,” observed Lady Millebrook.
“He did mention his soul,” admitted Mrs. Tollebranch. “He said that it had always been lonely, thirsting for the sympathy of a sister-spirit until——”
“Until he met you!”
“He did say as much. And he explained how, in sheer desperation of ever meet............