Intrusion of Jimmy Page 9

  this time. He must have mistaken the way. He had doubtless come

  straight. He could not have come straighter. On the other hand, it

  would be quite in keeping with the cheap substitute which served the

  Earl of Dreever in place of a mind that he should have forgotten to

  mention some important turning. Jimmy sat down by the roadside.

  As he sat, there came to him from down the road the sound of a

  horse's feet, trotting. He got up. Here was somebody at last who

  would direct him.

  The sound came nearer. The horse turned the corner; and Jimmy saw

  with surprise that it bore no rider.

  "Hullo?" he said. "Accident? And, by Jove, a side-saddle!"

  The curious part of it was that the horse appeared in no way a wild

  horse. It gave the impression of being out for a little trot on its

  own account, a sort of equine constitutional.

  Jimmy stopped the horse, and led it back the way it had come. As he

  turned the bend in the road, he saw a girl in a riding-habit running

  toward him. She stopped running when she caught sight of him, and

  slowed down to a walk.

  "Thank you ever so much," she said, taking the reins from him.

  "Dandy, you naughty old thing! I got off to pick up my crop, and he

  ran away."

  Jimmy looked at her flushed, smiling face, and stood staring.

  It was Molly McEachern.

  CHAPTER XII

  MAKING A START

  Self-possession was one of Jimmy's leading characteristics, but for

  the moment he found himself speechless. This girl had been occupying

  his thoughts for so long that--in his mind--he had grown very

  intimate with her. It was something of a shock to come suddenly out

  of his dreams, and face the fact that she was in reality practically

  a stranger. He felt as one might with a friend whose memory has been

  wiped out. It went against the grain to have to begin again from the

  beginning after all the time they had been together.

  A curious constraint fell upon him.

  "Why, how do you do, Mr. Pitt?" she said, holding out her hand.

  Jimmy began to feel better. It was something that she remembered his

  name.

  "It's like meeting somebody out of a dream," said Molly. "I have

  sometimes wondered if you were real. Everything that happened that

  night was so like a dream."

  Jimmy found his tongue.

  "You haven't altered," he said, "you look just the same."

  "Well," she laughed, "after all, it's not so long ago, is it?"

  He was conscious of a dull hurt. To him, it had seemed years. But he

  was nothing to her--just an acquaintance, one of a hundred. But what

  more, he asked himself, could he have expected? And with the thought

  came consolation. The painful sense of having lost ground left him.

  He saw that he had been allowing things to get out of proportion. He

  had not lost ground. He had gained it. He had met her again, and she

  remembered him. What more had he any right to ask?

  "I've crammed a good deal into the time," he explained. "I've been

  traveling about a bit since we met."

  "Do you live in Shropshire?" asked Molly.

  "No. I'm on a visit. At least, I'm supposed to be. But I've lost the

  way to the place, and I am beginning to doubt if I shall ever get

  there. I was told to go straight on. I've gone straight on, and here

  I am, lost in the snow. Do you happen to know whereabouts Dreever

  Castle is?"

  She laughed.

  "Why," she said, "I am staying at Dreever Castle, myself."

  "What?"

  "So, the first person you meet turns out to be an experienced guide.

  You're lucky, Mr. Pitt."

  "You're right," said Jimmy slowly, "I am."

  "Did you come down with Lord Dreever? He passed me in the car just

  as I was starting out. He was with another man and Lady Julia Blunt.

  Surely, he didn't make you walk?"

  "I offered to walk. Somebody had to. Apparently, he had forgotten to

  let them know he was bringing me."

  "And then he misdirected you! He's very casual, I'm afraid."

  "Inclined that way, perhaps."

  "Have you known Lord Dreever long?"

  "Since a quarter past twelve last night."

  "Last night!"

  "We met at the Savoy, and, later, on the Embankment. We looked at

  the river together, and told each other the painful stories of our

  lives, and this morning he called, and invited me down here."

  Molly looked at him with frank amusement.

  "You must be a very restless sort of person," she said. "You seem to

  do a great deal of moving about."

  "I do," said Jimmy. "I can't keep still. I've got the go-fever, like

  that man in Kipling's book."

  "But he was in love."

  "Yes," said Jimmy. "He was. That's the bacillus, you know."

  She shot a quick glance at him. He became suddenly interesting to

  her. She was at the age of dreams and speculations. From being

  merely an ordinary young man with rather more ease of manner than

  the majority of the young men she had met, he developed in an

  instant into something worthy of closer attention. He took on a

  certain mystery and romance. She wondered what sort of girl it was

  that he loved. Examining him in the light of this new discovery, she

  found him attractive. Something seemed to have happened to put her

  in sympathy with him. She noticed for the first time a latent

  forcefulness behind the pleasantness of his manner. His self-

  possession was the self-possession of the man who has been tried and

  has found himself.

  At the bottom of her consciousness, too, there was a faint stirring

  of some emotion, which she could not analyze, not unlike pain. It

  was vaguely reminiscent of the agony of loneliness which she had

  experienced as a small child on the rare occasions when her father

  had been busy and distrait, and had shown her by his manner that she

  was outside his thoughts. This was but a pale suggestion of that

  misery; nevertheless, there was a resemblance. It was a rather

  desolate, shut-out sensation, half-resentful.

  It was gone in a moment. But it had been there. It had passed over

  her heart as the shadow of a cloud moves across a meadow in the

  summer-time.

  For some moments, she stood without speaking. Jimmy did not break

  the silence. He was looking at her with an appeal in his eyes. Why

  could she not understand? She must understand.

  But the eyes that met his were those of a child.

  As they stood there, the horse, which had been cropping in a

  perfunctory manner at the short grass by the roadside, raised its

  head, and neighed impatiently. There was something so human about

  the performance that Jimmy and the girl laughed simultaneously. The

  utter materialism of the neigh broke the spell. It was a noisy

  demand for food.

  "Poor Dandy!" said Molly. "He knows he's near home, and he knows

  it's his dinner-time."

  "Are we near the castle, then?"

  "It's a long way round by the road, but we can cut across the

  fields. Aren't these English fields and hedges just perfect! I love

  them. Of course, I loved America, but--"

&nbs
p; "Have you left New York long?" asked Jimmy.

  "We came over here about a month after you were at our house."

  "You didn't spend much time there, then."

  "Father had just made a good deal of money in Wall Street. He must

  have been making it when I was on the Lusitania. He wanted to leave

  New York, so we didn't wait. We were in London all the winter. Then,

  we went over to Paris. It was there we met Sir Thomas Blunt and Lady

  Julia. Have you met them? They are Lord Dreever's uncle and aunt."

  "I've met Lady Julia."

  "Do you like her?"

  Jimmy hesitated.

  "Well, you see--"

  "I know. She's your hostess, but you haven't started your visit yet.

  So, you've just got time to say what you really think of her, before

  you have to pretend she's perfect."

  "Well--"

  "I detest her," said Molly, crisply. "I think she's hard and

  hateful."

  "Well, I can't say she struck me as a sort of female Cheeryble

  Brother. Lord Dreever introduced me to her at the station. She

  seemed to bear it pluckily, but with some difficulty."

  "She's hateful," repeated Molly. "So is he, Sir Thomas, I mean. He's

  one of those fussy, bullying little men. They both bully poor Lord

  Dreever till I wonder he doesn't rebel. They treat him like a

  school-boy. It makes me wild. It's such a shame--he's so nice and

  good-natured! I am so sorry for him!"

  Jimmy listened to this outburst with mixed feelings. It was sweet of

  her to be so sympathetic, but was it merely sympathy? There had been

  a ring in her voice and a flush on her cheek that had suggested to

  Jimmy's sensitive mind a personal interest in the down-trodden peer.

  Reason told him that it was foolish to be jealous of Lord Dreever, a

  good fellow, of course, but not to be taken seriously. The primitive

  man in him, on the other hand, made him hate all Molly's male

  friends with an unreasoning hatred. Not that he hated Lord Dreever:

  he liked him. But he doubted if he could go on liking him for long

  if Molly were to continue in this sympathetic strain.

  His affection for the absent one was not put to the test. Molly's

  next remark had to do with Sir Thomas.

  "The worst of it is," she said, "father and Sir Thomas are such

  friends. In Paris, they were always together. Father did him a very

  good turn."

  "How was that?"

  "It was one afternoon, just after we arrived. A man got into Lady

  Julia's room while we were all out except father. Father saw him go

  into the room, and suspected something was wrong, and went in after

  him. The man was trying to steal Lady Julia's jewels. He had opened

  the box where they were kept, and was actually holding her rope of

  diamonds in his hand when father found him. It's the most

  magnificent thing I ever saw. Sir Thomas told father he gave a

  hundred thousand dollars for it."

  "But, surely," said Jimmy, "hadn't the management of the hotel a

  safe for valuables?"

  "Of course, they had; but you don't know Sir Thomas. He wasn't going

  to trust any hotel safe. He's the sort of a man who insists on doing

  everything in his own way, and who always imagines he can do things

  better himself than anyone else can do them for him. He had had this

  special box made, and would never keep the diamonds anywhere else.

  Naturally, the thief opened it in a minute. A clever thief would

  have no difficulty with a thing like that."

  "What happened?"

  "Oh, the man saw father, and dropped the jewels, and ran off down

  the corridor. Father chased him a little way, but of course it was

  no good; so he went back and shouted, and rang every bell he could

  see, and gave the alarm; but the man was never found. Still, he left

  the diamonds. That was the great thing, after all. You must look at

  them to-night at dinner. They really are wonderful. Are you a judge

  of precious stones at all?"

  "I am rather," said Jimmy. "In fact, a jeweler I once knew told me I

  had a natural gift in that direction. And so, of course, Sir Thomas

  was pretty grateful to your father?"

  "He simply gushed. He couldn't do enough for him. You see, if the

  diamonds had been stolen, I'm sure Lady Julia would have made Sir

  Thomas buy her another rope just as good. He's terrified of her, I'm

  certain. He tries not to show it, but he is. And, besides having to

  pay another hundred thousand dollars, he would never have heard the

  last of it. It would have ruined his reputation for being infallible

  and doing everything better than anybody else."

  "But didn't the mere fact that the thief got the jewels, and was

  only stopped by a fluke from getting away with them, do that?"

  Molly bubbled with laughter.

  "She never knew. Sir Thomas got back to the hotel an hour before she

  did. I've never seen such a busy hour. He had the manager up,

  harangued him, and swore him to secrecy--which the poor manager was

  only too glad to agree to, because it wouldn't have done the hotel

  any good to have it known. And the manager harangued the servants,

  and the servants harangued one another, and everybody talked at the

  same time; and father and I promised not to tell a soul; so Lady

  Julia doesn't know a word about it to this day. And I don't see why

  she ever should--though, one of these days, I've a good mind to tell

  Lord Dreever. Think what a hold he would have over them! They'd

  never be able to bully him again."

  "I shouldn't," said Jimmy, trying to keep a touch of coldness out of

  his voice. This championship of Lord Dreever, however sweet and

  admirable, was a little distressing.

  She looked up quickly.

  "You don't think I really meant to, do you?"

  "No, no," said Jimmy, hastily. "Of course not."

  "Well, I should think so!" said Molly, indignantly. "After I

  promised not to tell a soul about it!"

  Jimmy chuckled.

  "It's nothing," he said, in answer to her look of inquiry.

  "You laughed at something."

  "Well," said Jimmy apologetically, "it's only--it's nothing really--

  only, what I mean is, you have just told one soul a good deal about

  it, haven't you?"

  Molly turned pink. Then, she smiled.

  "I don't know how I came to do it," she declared. "It just rushed

  out of its own accord. I suppose it is because I know I can trust

  you."

  Jimmy flushed with pleasure. He turned to her, and half-halted, but

  she continued to walk on.

  "You can," he said, "but how do you know you can?"

  She seemed surprised.

  "Why--" she said. She stopped for a moment, and then went on

  hurriedly, with a touch of embarrassment. "Why, how absurd! Of

  course, I know. Can't you read faces? I can. Look," she said,

  pointing, "now you can see the castle. How do you like it?"

  They had reached a point where the fields sloped sharply downward. A

  few hundred yards away, backed by woods, stood the gray mass of

  stone which had proved such a kill-joy of old to the Welsh sportsmen

  during the pheasant season. Even now, it had a certain air of

  defia
nce. The setting sun lighted the waters of the lake. No figures

  were to be seen moving in the grounds. The place resembled a palace

  of sleep.

  "Well?" said Molly.

  "It's wonderful!"

  "Isn't it! I'm so glad it strikes you like that. I always feel as if

  I had invented everything round here. It hurts me if people don't

  appreciate it."

  They went down the hill.

  "By the way," said Jimmy, "are you acting in these theatricals they

  are getting up?"

  "Yes. Are you the other man they were going to get? That's why Lord

  Dreever went up to London, to see if he couldn't find somebody. The

  man who was going to play one of the parts had to go back to London

  on business."

  "Poor brute!" said Jimmy. It seemed to him at this moment that there

  was only one place in the world where a man might be even reasonably

  happy. "What sort of part is it? Lord Dreever said I should be

  wanted to act. What do I do?"

  "If you're Lord Herbert, which is the part they wanted a man for,

  you talk to me most of the time."

  Jimmy decided that the piece had been well cast.

  The dressing-gong sounded just as they entered the hall. From a

  door on the left, there emerged two men, a big man and a little one,

  in friendly conversation. The big man's back struck Jimmy as

  familiar.

  "Oh, father," Molly called. And Jimmy knew where he had seen the

  back before.

  The two men stopped.

  "Sir Thomas," said Molly, "this is Mr. Pitt."

  The little man gave Jimmy a rapid glance, possibly with the object

  of detecting his more immediately obvious criminal points; then, as

  if satisfied as to his honesty, became genial.

  "I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Pitt, very glad," he said. "We have

  been expecting you for some time."

  Jimmy explained that he had lost his way.

  "Exactly. It was ridiculous that you should be compelled to walk,

  perfectly ridiculous. It was grossly careless of my nephew not to

  let us know that you were coming. My wife told him so in the car."

  "I bet she did," said Jimmy to himself. "Really," he said aloud, by

  way of lending a helping hand to a friend in trouble, "I preferred

  to walk. I have not been on a country road since I landed in

  England." He turned to the big man, and held out his hand. "I don't

  suppose you remember me, Mr. McEachern? We met in New York."

  "You remember the night Mr. Pitt scared away our burglar, father,"