The dangerous game
discovered how ill and nervous I had become, and she sent me to Colwyn
Bay, with my cousins, because she thought the sea air might do me
good”; and she laughed grimly at the thought of sea air as a remedy
for a broken heart.
Little Bundle at that moment pawed his master’s leg, an intimation
that he wanted to be taken up, so Darville took his tiny black pet
under his arm, where he sat contentedly surveying their visitor.
“I know, poor Edris,” he said in that tender, affectionate tone he
would adopt towards a child. “I sympathize very deeply with you. I
said nothing, but on that night when I met Lionel I realized only too
plainly the weakness of his character. Quite a good fellow, but
unfortunately lacking in experience of the world and its ways. Like
all young fellows of his age and stamp, he believes himself to be
strong and well balanced, yet his lack of that wisdom which is only
acquired as age creeps on causes him to be unstable--a human sail that
drifts upon every wind.”
Then his hand touched her hair ever so lightly, for with the other he
was holding his pet.
“Edris!” he continued in a strained voice. “We are friends. My age is
such that you might well be my daughter. You are young, smart,
vivacious, athletic, with all the world before you. Place a tombstone
over this unfortunate love-affair, and rise again to live and to love.
Soon you will meet another man who will come into your life--a man far
worthier than Lionel, and more stable and reliable. You will love, and
you will marry, and I will always be your friend--your adopted uncle,
if you wish, or your adopted father.”
The girl said nothing. She placed her chin upon her hands, and with
her bare elbows upon her knees sat looking thoughtfully into the
flames.
“I shall never love again,” she exclaimed at last, in a low, broken
voice. “Lionel has killed all affection within me. I loved him madly.
He was my very soul, and yet he only played with me, and I found it
out when too late. He--he has broken my heart, Seton!”
And she burst into tears, and, covering her face with her hands,
sobbed bitterly.
“No, no, Edris,” said the man, walking to her and placing his hand
tenderly upon her bowed head. “You must not give way like this. I know
how hard it must be to bear, though I myself have never experienced
love. I am one of those hard, bitter men who are proof against your
sex. Some people have called me a woman-hater, and----”
“You’re not that, Seton,” she protested amid her tears. “I know you
are not.”
“How do you know?” he asked, glad that his remark had caused her
sobbing to cease.
“Because you are always so polite and gallant--always so sympathetic
and so merry.”
“I enjoy the society of women younger than myself, I admit, but that
does not prove that love has ever entered my heart, does it?”
“No. I suppose it doesn’t. But----” And she paused, raised her head,
and looked at him with those gray eyes still filled with tears. “But
do you remember what you told me one afternoon when we were smoking
together on the terrace in Wengen--about Elaine?”
He bit his lip. He had, in a moment of foolishness, told her of his
romantic attachment, and he now regretted it. Edris had expressed
sympathy with him about quite a trivial matter, and he in turn had
given her his confidence. But he had not told her Elaine’s name or
rank. He had given Elaine his solemn promise never to mention her name
lest gossip should result and it might reach her husband’s ears.
“Yes,” he replied mechanically, “I remember what I told you.”
“And you really deny that after ten years you have never loved her?”
“Edris, I have never loved Elaine. I tell you that frankly,” was his
quiet response.
“Surely that would be impossible,” said the girl.
“She was only my dear and devoted friend. Ours was purely a Platonic
friendship which--well, which very nearly developed into love, but
happily did not.”
“Why?” she asked, keenly interested.
“Because we mutually agreed to part.”
“To part!” she cried. “Have you parted?”
“Yes. Some months ago.”
The girl said nothing for a few moments, and then asked:
“Why?”
“Because we both recognized that our continued association would be
dangerous,” he said, though, if the truth were told, the real reason
was that great love for the girl before him--a mad passion which had,
ever since the previous winter, arisen within his blank and hitherto
loveless life.
“And you are really nothing to each other now?”
“We have never been more than true, devoted friends. Ever since her
schoolgirl days I have regarded her as my one and only true little
friend. She has often borne with me through my troubles, my trials,
and my disappointments. I used to regard her, because of her level
head and her curious intuition of the future, as one of my own age.
Often I awoke to the fact that she was only a girl--as you are----”
He held his breath. He saw that he had committed a _faux pas_.
“I mean that she was so much younger than myself, and--and yet her
woman’s brain was more acute than my own. I believed my intuition
infallible, but I often had to admit that she was far cleverer than
myself. She could scheme and plot and----”
“Plot? What do you mean? Why plot?”
He had trodden upon thin ice, and he knew it instantly. Elaine had
often helped him to solve difficult problems in his Secret Service
work.
“Oh, well--I--I don’t mean that she could really plot, you know,” he
faltered hastily. “Perhaps I myself was the plotter! Who knows?”
And he laughed.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN THE PAPERS
They dined together in the big, garish restaurant of the Hotel
Metropole amid the gay crowd which assembles there each week-end, no
matter what weather or what season. He had asked for the right-hand
corner table by the window. The _maître d’hôtel_ knew him, and he
was served well. Cosmopolitan as he was, he possessed a strange and
peculiar attraction for all hotel servants. He always treated them
good-humoredly, and his tips were judicious without being lavish. As
an old traveler, whenever he arrived at an hotel, he started
tipping--not when he left, as people usually do. Hence he was regarded
as a person to be well looked after. He was known from _concierge_ to
_chasseur_ in a hundred hotels in Europe, just as he was known at his
own club in St. James’s Street. The newspapers often referred to him
as a “cosmopolitan of cosmopolitans,” or as a world-famed traveler, as
indeed he was.
They laughed merrily together amid the gay chatter of the smart,
holiday-making crowd, for in the Metropole at Brighton one meets each
week-end all sorts of well-known people with their womenfolk, from
jockeys to judges.
“How delighted I am that you are here with me, Edris,” he whispered
across the little table, raising his glass and looking into her great
gray eyes. She looked very dainty and charming in a black semi-evening
gown, which showed to advantage the alabaster whiteness of her neck
and arms. The necklace she wore consisted of a number of graduated
cubes of glittering rock-crystal separated by tiny beads of jet, an
ornament which suited her type of beauty to perfection.
“Are you quite sure that you are really pleased I’m here?” she asked
with a tantalizing smile.
“Why, of course I am,” he said, his dark eyes fixed upon hers.
“Then if you find my company as pleasant as you say, you’ll come to
Wengen, eh?”
“I can’t promise you that,” was his laughing response, though, now
that he knew that her engagement with Lionel was broken, he had
already secretly made up his mind to obey her wishes and go to
Switzerland.
“But you’ll have to promise before I go home on Monday,” said the girl
decisively.
“Well, I can’t make any promise yet,” Darville protested. “Let’s go
and have coffee.”
Together they walked through the lounge to the big palm-court, which
was already half-full, and for an hour sat over their coffee and
liqueurs, listening to the orchestra. Then they strolled back beside
the sea to Hove. The tide was coming in, and the restless waves roared
over the beach as together they trod the broad promenade.
Just before eleven o’clock they reëntered the flat, where Edris found
the maid awaiting her. After divesting herself of her coat and hat,
she came into the sitting-room where Darville was standing with his
back to the fire, a smart figure in his well-cut dinner-clothes. She
seated herself cozily in the corner of the settee, took a cigarette
from his case, and allowed him to light it for her.
Then he said:
“Before we went out you were talking of Lionel.”
“And you were talking of Elaine,” she added. “Why have you really
parted from her? Do tell me the truth, Seton,” she said.
“I have already told you the truth,” he answered. “I did not love her,
and----”
“But she loves you. Nothing will convince me to the contrary.”
The man sighed, and for some time remained silent.
Then he shook his head and said:
“No. Edris, you are quite mistaken. We have been fast friends all
these years--that’s all.”
“And you really mean to say that in all that time you have never been
jealous of her--I mean before she married?”
“Never. Only silly fools are jealous.”
“And if you had been in love with her, would you not have been jealous
of any other man who paid her marked attention?”
“No. I have never known what jealousy is.”
“Then you have happily been spared a terrible suffering--a mental
torture that drives one to madness,” the girl said, her countenance
very serious. “I was jealous of Lionel, and I know, alas! what it
is--a living hell. And,” she added, “I hope, Seton, you will never go
through what I have done.”
“I’m not likely to,” he laughed. “Consider my age. If I were younger
and in love I might perhaps run the risk of an attack of the malady.”
“A man is never too old to be jealous,” was her quiet, philosophic
reply.
“Then you were jealous of Lionel! You apparently had just cause to be,
eh?”
“Unfortunately, I had. I trust no man now that I have learnt my own
lesson. My heart is broken,” she repeated in a hard voice of deep
regret. “I shall never love again.”
He turned from her in order that she could not see his face, and
pretended to get some matches from the sideboard.
“Oh, you’ll forget him, and love again one day,” he remarked
cheerfully.
“No,” she said in a decisive tone, “never.”
He had long ago realized that she was a strong-willed little person,
who held firm opinions about people and things, entertained very
strong likes and dislikes, and was never afraid to speak her own mind
before anybody. In her childhood days she had been a tomboy and the
naughtiest girl in her school. She had always had her own way in
everything, indulged as she had been by fond parents, and she had
grown up frank in nature, independent in spirit, and entirely fearless
of what people might think.
Because of this free, careless nature of hers she was defying the
world and spending the week-end with a bachelor in his rooms.
Darville was struggling hard to conceal the great passion he had
conceived for her. For nearly a whole year he had loved her very
deeply. Yet he had successfully hidden the truth, so that she was even
then entirely unsuspicious of it. The one barrier--Lionel--had been
removed, he told himself, yet the other remained, still
insurmountable--his age. That fact had always troubled him. A hundred
times, when he looked in his mirror and saw his gray hair, tears
welled in his eyes as the vision of her sweet young face arose before
him and taunted him always. If Edris had come into his life when he
had been thirty, engaged in the reckless task of sowing his wild oats,
then how different all would have been!
He raised his head, and his eyes suddenly met hers. She saw the look