The Yellow Crayon
convinced you that our action is necessary!”
“To-morrow at midday,” Mr. Sabin said, “I will be here. I have the
honour to wish you all good-night.”
His farewell was comprehensive. He did not even single out Lucille for a
parting glance. But down the broad stairs and across the hall of Dorset
House he passed with weary steps, leaning heavily upon his stick. It was
a heavy blow which had fallen upon him. As yet he scarcely realised it.
His carriage was delayed for a few moments, and just as he was entering
it a young woman, plainly dressed in black, came hurrying out and
slipped a note into his hand.
“Pardon, monsieur,” she exclaimed, with a smile. “I feared that I was
too late.”
Mr. Sabin’s fingers closed over the note, and he stepped blithely
into the carriage. But when he tore it open and saw the handwriting he
permitted himself a little groan of disappointment. It was not from her.
He read the few lines and crushed the sheet of paper in his hand.
“I am having supper at the Carlton with some friends on our way
to C. H. I want to speak to you for a moment. Be in the Palm
Court at 12.15, but do not recognise me until I come to you. If
possible keep out of sight. If you should have left my maid will
bring this on to your hotel.
“M. C.”
Mr. Sabin leaned back in his carriage, and a frown of faint perplexity
contracted his forehead.
“If I were a younger man,” he murmured to himself, “I might believe
that this woman was really in earnest, as well as being Saxe Leinitzer’s
jackal. We were friendly enough in Paris that year. She is unscrupulous
enough, of course. Always with some odd fancy for the grotesque or
unlikely. I wonder--”
He pulled the check-string, and was driven to Camperdown House. A great
many people were coming and going. Mr. Sabin found Helene’s maid, and
learnt that her mistress was just going to her room, and would be alone
for a few minutes. He scribbled a few words on the back of a card, and
was at once taken up to her boudoir.
“My dear UNCLE,” Helene exclaimed, “you have arrived most opportunely.
We have just got rid of a few dinner people, and we are going on to
Carmarthen House presently. Take that easy-chair, please, and, light a
cigarette. Will you have a liqueur? Wolfendon has some old brandy which
every one seems to think wonderful.”
“You are very kind, Helene,” Mr. Sabin said. “I cannot refuse anything
which you offer in so charming a manner. But I shall not keep you more
than a few minutes.”
“We need not leave for an hour,” Helene said, “and I am dressed except
for my jewels. Tell me, have you seen Lucille? I am so anxious to know.”
“I have seen Lucille this evening,” Mr. Sabin answered.
“At Dorset House!”
“Yes.”
Helene sat down, smiling.
“Do tell me all about it.”
“There is very little to tell,” Mr. Sabin answered.
“She is with you--she returns at least!”
Mr. Sabin shook his head.
“No,” he answered. “She remains at Dorset House.”
Helene was silent. Mr. Sabin smoked pensively a moment or two, and
sipped the liqueur which Camperdown’s own servant had just brought him.
“It is very hard, Helene,” he said, “to make you altogether understand
the situation, for there are certain phases of it which I cannot discuss
with you at all. I have made my first effort to regain Lucille, and it
has failed. It is not her fault. I need not say that it is not mine. But
the struggle has commenced, and in the end I shall win.”
“Lucille herself--” Helene began hesitatingly.
“Lucille is, I firmly believe, as anxious to return to me as I am
anxious to have her,” Mr. Sabin said.
Helene threw up her hands.
“It is bewildering,” she exclaimed.
“It must seem so to you,” Mr. Sabin admitted.
“I wish that Lucille were anywhere else,” Helene said. “The Dorset House
set, you know, although they are very smart and very exclusive, have
a somewhat peculiar reputation. Lady Carey, although she is such a
brilliant woman, says and does the most insolent, the most amazing
things, and the Prince of Saxe Leinitzer goes everywhere in Europe by
the name of the Royal libertine. They are powerful enough almost to
dominate society, and we poor people who abide by the conventions are
absolutely nowhere beside them. They think that we are bourgeois because
we have virtue, and prehistoric because we are not decadent.”
“The Duke--” Mr. Sabin remarked.
“Oh, the Duke is quite different, of course,” Helene admitted. “He is a
fanatical Tory, very stupid, very blind to anything except his beloved
Primrose League. How he came to lend himself to the vagaries of such a
set I cannot imagine.”
Mr. Sabin smiled.
“C’est la femme toujours!” he remarked. “His Grace is, I fear,
henpecked, and the Duchess herself is the sport of cleverer people. And
now, my dear niece, I see that the time is going. I came to know if you
could get me a card for the ball at Carmarthen House to-night.”
Helene laughed softly.
“Very easily, my dear UNCLE. Lady Carmarthen is Wolfendon’s cousin, you
know, and a very good friend of mine. I have half a dozen blank cards
here. Shall I really see you there?”
“I believe so,” Mr. Sabin answered.
“And Lucille?”
“It is possible.”
“There is nothing I suppose which I can do in the way of intervention,
or anything of that sort?”
Mr. Sabin shook his head.
“Lucille and I are the best of friends,” he answered. “Talk to her, if
you will. By the bye, is that twelve o’clock? I must hurry. Doubtless we
shall meet again at the ball.”
But Carmarthen House saw nothing of Mr. Sabin that night.
CHAPTER XX
Mr. Sabin from his seat behind a gigantic palm watched her egress from
the supper-room with a little group of friends.
They came to a halt in the broad carpeted way only a few feet from him.
Lady Carey, in a wonderful green gown, her neck and bosom ablaze with
jewels, seemed to be making her farewells.
“I must go in and see the De Lausanacs,” she exclaimed. “They are in
the blue room supping with the Portuguese Ambassador. I shall be
at Carmarthen House within half an hour--unless my headache becomes
unbearable. Au revoir, all of you. Good-bye, Laura!”
Her friends passed on towards the great swing doors. Lady Carey
retraced her steps slowly towards the supper-room, and made some languid
inquiries of the head waiter as to a missing handkerchief. Then she came
again slowly down the broad way and reached Mr. Sabin. He rose to his
feet.
“I thank you very much for your note,” he said. “You have something, I
believe, to say to me.”
She stood before him for a moment in silence, as though not unwilling
that he should appreciate the soft splendour of her toilette. The jewels
which encircled her neck were priceless and dazzling; the soft material
of her gown, the most delicate shade of sea green, seemed to foam about
her feet, a wonderful triumph of allegoric dressmaking. She saw that
he was studying her, and she laughed a little uneasily, looking all the
time into his eyes.
“Shockingly overdressed, ain’t I?” she said. “We were going straight to
Carmarthen House, you know. Come and sit in this corner for a moment,
and order me some coffee. I suppose there isn’t any less public place!”
“I fear not,” he answered. “You will perhaps be unobserved behind this
palm.”
She sank into a low chair, and he seated himself beside her. She sighed
contentedly.
“Dear me!” she said. “Do men like being run after like this?”
Mr. Sabin raised his eyebrows.
“I understood,” he said, “that you had something to say to me of
importance.”
She shot a quick look up at him.
“Don’t be horrid,” she said in a low tone. “Of course I wanted to see
you. I wanted to explain. Give me one of your cigarettes.”
He laid his case silently before her. She took one and lit it, watching
him furtively all the time. The man brought their coffee. The place was
almost empty now, and some of the lights were turned down.
“It is very kind of you,” he said slowly, “to honour me by so much
consideration, but if you have much to say perhaps it would be better
if you permitted me to call upon you to-morrow. I am afraid of depriving
you of your ball--and your friends will be getting impatient.”
“Bother the ball--and my friends,” she exclaimed, a certain strained
note in her tone which puzzled him. “I’m not obliged to go to the thing,
and I don’t want to. I’ve invented a headache, and they won’t even
expect me. They know my headaches.”
“In that case,” Mr. Sabin said, “I am entirely at your service.”
She sighed, and looked up at him through a little cloud of tobacco
smoke.
“What a wonderful man you are,” she said softly. “You accept defeat with
the grace of a victor. I believe that you would triumph as easily with
a shrug of the shoulders. Haven’t you any feeling at all? Don’t you know
what it is like to feel?”
He smiled.
“We both come,” he said, “of a historic race. If ancestry is worth
anything it should at least teach us to go about without pinning our
hearts upon our sleeves.”
“But you,” she murmured, “you have no heart.”
He looked down upon her then with still cold face and steady eyes.
“Indeed,” he said, “you are mistaken.”
She moved uneasily in her chair. She was very pale, except for a faint
spot of pink colour in her cheeks.
“It is very hard to find, then,” she said, speaking quickly, her bosom
rising and falling, her eyes always seeking to hold his. “To-night you
see what I have done--I have, sent away my friends--and my carriage.
They may know me here--you see what I have risked. And I don’t care.
You thought to-night that I was your enemy--and I am not. I am not your
enemy at all.”
Her hand fell as though by accident upon his, and remained there. Mr.
Sabin was very nearly embarrassed. He knew quite well that if she were
not his enemy at that moment she would be very shortly.
“Lucille,” she continued, “will blame me too. I cannot help it. I want
to tell you that for the present your separation from her is a certain
thing. She acquiesces. You heard her. She is quite happy. She is at the
ball to-night, and she has friends there who will make it pleasant for
her. Won’t you understand?”
“No,” Mr. Sabin answered.
She beat the ground with her foot.
“You must understand,” she murmured. “You are not like these fools
of Englishmen who go to sleep when they are married, and wake in the
divorce court. For the present at least you have lost Lucille. You heard
her choose. She’s at the ball to-night--and I have come here to be with
you. Won’t you, please,” she added, with a little nervous laugh, “show
some gratitude?”
The interruption which Mr. Sabin had prayed for came at last. The
musicians had left, and many of the lights had been turned down. An
official came across to them.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, addressing Mr. Sabin, “but we are
closing now, unless you are a guest in the hotel.”
“I am staying here,” Mr. Sabin answered, rising, “but the lady--”
Lady Carey interrupted him.
“I am staying here also,” she said to the man.
He bowed at once and withdrew. She rose slowly to her feet and laid her
fingers upon his arm. He looked steadily away from her.
“Fortunately,” he said, “I have not yet dismissed my own carriage.
Permit me.”
* * * * *
Mr. Sabin leaned heavily upon his stick as he slowly made his way along
the corridor to his rooms. Things were going ill with him indeed. He was
not used to the fear of an enemy, but the memory of Lady Carey’s white
cheeks and indrawn lips as she had entered his carriage chilled him.
Her one look, too, was a threat worse than any which her lips could
have uttered. He was getting old indeed, he thought, wearily, when