Ричард Марш
Violet Forster's Lover

CHAPTER XIII
The Alcove

The ball was a great success, it was generally admitted. Miss Forster could have danced each number on the programme with half a dozen different partners if she had chosen. She danced with Mr. Noel Draycott; when it came to sitting out, he found her manner a little disconcerting. He was of the fatuous type of young man, a better dancer than conversationalist. He had a sort of cut-and-dried routine on such occasions, saying the same things, as much as possible, to each of his partners in turn. New ideas would not come to him quickly, especially when he was talking to women; if they would not keep to the subject which he felt was appropriate to the occasion, he preferred not to talk at all.

Miss Forster treated him in that respect quite badly. When he tried to make one of his orthodox remarks, which were meant to be compliments, she ignored him utterly. She not only said things which worried him-to him it always was a labour to find an answer to a remark that was unexpected-she asked him questions which puzzled him still more, questions which he felt that she had no right to ask; particularly of a man in the middle of a dance.

When he had quitted her, before seeking his next partner, he unburdened himself to his friend, Anthony Dodwell.

"She's a top-hole dancer, Miss Forster, and as pretty as paint, but when it comes to asking a man if he likes liars I draw the line."

"Did she ask you if you liked liars?"

"She asked me much worse things than that. She was just asking me, when I hooked it, what I thought was the most shameful way in which a man could treat a friend. If I hadn't hooked it, I don't know what she wouldn't have asked me next; she's taken the stiffening out of my collar, talking to a man like that, between a two-step and a waltz."

When his friend had left him, Dodwell advanced to the lady of whom they had been speaking.

"May I have the pleasure of a dance, Miss Forster?"

She had her hand on the arm of the partner who was about to bear her off; looking Captain Dodwell up and down in a fashion which, to say the least, was marked, she said, in a tone of voice which was clearly audible to those around:

"In any case, Captain Dodwell, you would have been too late." She looked him straight in the face, then she turned to her partner. "Will you please take me away?"

It was not strange that, as the pair moved off, Anthony Dodwell did not look happy; if she had flicked a whip in his face her intention could hardly have been plainer. He was conscious that while there were smiles on some of the faces about him, and while some observed him with curious eyes, there were others who kept their eyes carefully averted. On the whole, he carried the thing off uncommonly well. He strolled away, and presently was dancing with a lady whose charms were not so obvious as they possibly once had been. While he danced he was saying things to himself which would have surprised his partner if she could have heard them.

"What the devil did the little cat mean by that? What have I ever done to her? I swear I've done nothing. I expect that the tale is being told all round the room at this moment; people will be taking it for granted that I've behaved to her like-God alone knows what. I'll have an explanation from her before the night's out-and an apology. I should like to force her down upon her knees before everybody who heard her, the little-"

He left the sentence unfinished, even though he was only speaking to himself; as if he could not find words which would give adequate expression to his feelings. His partner asked him a question, he answered it; but even while he was speaking, as he steered her round the room, he was thinking of Violet Forster.

A little later Miss Forster was dancing with another of his brother officers, Mr. John Tickell, better known as Jackie. Mr. Tickell was not only still a subaltern, he was a junior subaltern; it was his habit to mention the fact, with an air of grievance, to persons of the feminine sex, after a very brief acquaintance, if they showed signs of being sympathetic. As he was quite a nice boy, and not bad-looking, as he would himself have expressed it, when he "struck" a girl, nine times out of ten, he found her as sympathetic as he could possibly have desired. He had made Miss Forster's acquaintance for the first time that night; had booked a dance with her with the brightest hopes, which were destined to be blighted. There was no mistake about her dancing, their steps went perfectly together; it was in other directions that disappointment came. He led her, when the music ceased, to a spot on which he had had his mind's eye all along. In the passage outside the ballroom there was an alcove, quite a small one; it was screened by a palm in a wooden tub, a sensible-sized palm, with plenty of leaves, which really did do service as a screen. Behind this palm there were chairs, two chairs; no more. Any two persons who sat on them would be in the midst of the crowd; there was a perpetual procession up and down the corridor; and yet as much alone as the most sensitive young man who was in need of sympathy could possibly desire. Mr. Tickell made straight for that alcove, rather hurrying the lady.

"I know a first-rate place for sitting out, if only someone isn't there before us."

No one was; they placed themselves in the two chairs. Mr. Tickell gave a little sigh of satisfaction; the young woman beside him was distinctly a find-as he would himself have phrased it, "a ripping dancer, awfully well turned out, and a dazzler to look at." He had no doubt that he was in for an extremely good time, and therein showed that the prophetic eye was certainly not his, because he had been there only a very few minutes before he began very ardently to wish that that alcove had been occupied by a dozen, or even twenty, people, instead of being left invitingly open for him.

"Are you fond of dancing?"

He also had his methods of commencing such conversations; this was one of his stereotyped openings; he liked to lead up to the sympathetic point by routes with which he was acquainted.

"Don't I dance as if I were-is that what you mean?"

This was not at all the sort of answer he had expected; from his point of view, it was not playing the game. While he was still floundering about for a suitable answer, she put a question to him on her own account.

"What are you fond of?"

He would have liked to say that he was fond of her. He had had partners to whom he would have said it without the slightest hesitation; but somehow he felt that this was a partner with whom the remark might not have the success it deserved; and before he spoke she again went on.

"Are you fond of gambling?"

"Gambling?" He stared at her with startled eyes, it seemed to him to be such a singular question to have hurled at him.

"I mean, for instance, are you fond of poker?" Again she went on before he could speak, taking an answer for granted in a fashion which he found a trifle disconcerting. "But, of course, I know you are; I have heard of some of your performances at poker."

He really did not like her tone at all; there was something in it which made him conscious of a vague discomfort. What could the girl be driving at?

"Particularly I've heard of one."

She said it while she was glancing at him over the top of her fan, which she was opening and shutting.

"Which one?"

"Weren't you playing some months ago when one of your brother officers was accused of cheating?"

Small wonder if his eyes seemed to grow rounder, the bad taste of such a remark! To say nothing of its unexpectedness.

"Really, I don't know to what you refer."

"Oh yes, you do. You know perfectly well; if you don't, I'll explain."

"Thank you very much, but if you don't mind, I'll take you back to the ballroom; there's someone whom I've just thought I ought to be behaving nicely to."

"You'll behave as nicely as you can to me before you try your practised hand on anybody else. You've presence of mind, Mr. Tickell, but it won't do. You sit still until I let you go."

Except by violence, he could hardly have got away; he saw now why she had expressly directed him to take the farther chair. He could scarcely get out of the alcove without passing her; he did not see how he could do it if she did not choose to let him.

"At the game of poker to which I wish to call your attention, right at the close, you were betting against Mr. Sydney Beaton."

"If you don't mind, I'd much rather not talk about it; I don't know how you came to know anything about it, but you'll understand that it's rather a painful subject to me. What do you think of the floor-first-rate, isn't it?"

If he hoped to get her to confine her conversation to what he regarded as proper topics, his hope was doomed to disappointment, as she at once made plain.

"There was a good bit of money in the pool, at the point on which I wish to refresh your memory-over a thousand pounds, I've been given to understand, at the moment when Mr. Beaton covered your raise-you had a straight, king high; Mr. Beaton had a full, three aces and a pair of knaves, a much better hand than yours, and yet, I'm told, you claimed the pool."

"Then you've been misinformed. Excuse me, Miss Forster, I don't know what all this has to do with you."

"It has a very great deal to do with me. You claimed the pool-"

"I did not claim the pool; really, Miss Forster, I don't think this is the sort of thing to talk about at a dance."

"You took the pool, you conveyed its contents to your pockets."

"It was adjudged to be mine. But with all possible apologies, Miss Forster, I must decline to discuss the subject with you, especially at such a moment as this. May I take you back to the ballroom?"

He stood up, his face a little flushed; if he thought that she would be overawed by his air of determination, he was mistaken. She also stood up, in such a way that without an actual tussle it would have been impossible for him to escape-that well-screened alcove had its drawbacks.

"You will not leave me, Mr. Tickell, till you have given me certain explanations which I am about to require from you. Sit down."

Nothing could have been more dictatorial than her manner, or more uncalled for; his visage sufficiently expressed the amazement he felt.

"Miss Forster!"

"You have done me a very serious injury, Mr. Tickell, a wrong which no man with any pretensions to decency would do any woman; if you decline to sit down, if you try to leave this place, there'll be a scandal, because I shall follow you into the ballroom, and wring an explanation from you there. I am not friendless; I will take care that you don't leave this house till I have it."

The young gentleman sat down, with every appearance of the most extreme discomfiture. His words came from stammering lips.

"I-I-I never heard such a thing in my life; I-I've done you a wrong? Why, Miss Forster, I never met you before. Of course, I've heard of you, everybody has; as-as to doing you a wrong, I'd no more think of doing you a wrong than-than- Whatever makes you think I have?"

She resumed her seat beside him with an air that was much more commanding than he had ever seen worn by his colonel.

"Be so good as to answer the question which I put to you just now, Mr. Tickell: why did you convey to your own pockets the contents of the pool which properly belonged to Mr. Beaton, since he had won it?"

"I do not know why you are talking to me like this, Miss Forster-I give you my word I don't-but if you know so much you must know the chaps said he cheated."

"What chaps?"

"All the chaps."

"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Tickell, on your honour, that all the men who were present in the room accused Mr. Beaton of cheating?"

"That's what it amounts to, but, of course, it began with Dodwell."

"I am perfectly aware that Captain Dodwell made a certain statement for which Mr. Beaton was only kept from knocking him down by the rest of you-brave men! What I want to know is if you were all in the conspiracy. Did you yourself see, with your own eyes, Mr. Beaton cheat?"

"I can't say that I did."

"You were watching him the whole time?"

"I suppose I was."

"Did you see anything in the least suspicious about anything he did?"

"I'm bound to say I didn't, at least, not to notice it."

"Had you any suspicions of him?"

"Not the faintest shadow of one, we were chums; I would as soon have suspected myself."

"So, except for what Captain Dodwell said, which was, after a fashion, corroborated by Mr. Noel Draycott, you had no reason to suppose that Mr. Beaton had been guilty of the slightest irregularity?"

"I suppose I hadn't, if you look at it like that."

"You would unhesitatingly have handed the pool to Mr. Beaton, without even the slightest feeling of having been ill-used?"

"Of course I would; he had won it; his hand was better than mine."

"He denied having done what Captain Dodwell stated?"

"Rather; as you said, he wanted to knock him down; he was as mad as a hatter."

"Would you have behaved with perfect calmness in the face of Captain Dodwell's hideous accusation?"

"I don't expect I should, especially as we were all of us pretty warm to begin with."

"Would you want to knock a man down who said that kind of thing of you?"

"You bet, I should want to kill him."

"Because Mr. Beaton felt exactly as you would have done, his brother officers, chivalrous creatures, threw him out of the room-you assisted them?"

"Upon my word, I hardly know what I did do, it was a regular rough-and-tumble; Beaton fought like ten wild cats. I daresay I did bear a hand."

"Oh, you dare say? I congratulate you, Mr. Tickell, on the courageous assistance you lent your brother officers; was it twelve or twenty against one? They could scarcely have done without you. Cowards! And having assisted your friends in getting rid of the rightful claimant, you had no scruple in placing Mr. Beaton's money in your pocket, and, I presume, paying with it some of the more pressing debts which I understand you owed?"

The young gentleman winced, the lady's thrust had gone home.

"That's all I want from you, Mr. Tickell; I am obliged to you for the confession you have made. I advise you to consider your position, and to ask yourself, when you are dancing with your next partner, if a person who has behaved as you have done is entitled to show his face in such a house as this. Mr. Beaton cheated no one; he is incapable of such conduct as yours; you cheated him, having first joined yourself with some twelve or twenty of your friends to get him out of the way. Think over what I have said to you, Mr. Tickell, instead of whispering soft nothings to your partners, and remember that I shall be watching. Now you may go."

CHAPTER XIV
"Who is Simmons?"

Miss Forster was strolling by herself along the corridor; she had declined to permit Mr. Tickell to accompany her, and the youth had seemed glad enough to get away. She examined her programme; she had it in her mind to cut the next dance, not from one of the reasons which usually prompt that nefarious course of action, but because she had a strong feeling that for a few minutes she would like to be alone. She passed into the conservatory through a door which was at the end of the corridor. The music for the next dance had already commenced; the sitters-out, to whom the conservatory is a haven much to be desired, had gone. She moved to a couch which was flanked on either side by towering ferns. She had just sat down and was congratulating herself upon the prospect of remaining, for at least a brief period, undisturbed, when a voice addressed her.

"I am fortunate, Miss Forster, in finding you alone."

The speaker was Captain Anthony Dodwell. She said nothing, but, rising, made as if to go away. He treated her as she had just treated Mr. Tickell; he interposed himself so as to render it difficult for her to pass.

"Pardon me, Miss Forster, but, as you are aware, there is an explanation which you owe me, and which you will be so good as to let me have before you go."

"Stand aside, sir."

"A short time ago you more than suggested that I was not the kind of person with whom you cared to dance-with whom, indeed, any decent woman would care to dance. You did this publicly, in such a way that your treatment of me is, at this moment, a common topic of conversation in the ballroom. What explanation have you to give?"

"None; you are not the kind of person with whom any decent woman would care to dance, or talk. Are you going to stand on one side, or am I to call for assistance?"

"What grounds have you for what you just now said-what have I ever done to you that you should say it?"

"Captain Dodwell-it seems incredible, but I believe you still do hold that rank in the King's service-you are a liar, a coward, and, I believe, a thief. That you are not, in any sense, an honest man, is certain; to what extent your dishonesty goes, you know better than I do, though I hope to make the thing quite clear before very long. Do you really imagine that an explanation is required as to why a decent woman is unwilling to dance, to talk, or to be associated in any way whatever, with a person of that kind?"

"You are taking advantage of your being a woman, Miss Forster; can you give me the name of any man who will be willing to be associated with you in what you just now said?"

"On an infamous occasion, Captain Dodwell, you found one man, Mr. Noel Draycott, who, for reasons of his own, was so base as to be willing to be associated with a foul lie which you uttered; but before very long I confidently hope that every man who was then present will be associated with me against you. Will you let me pass, or would you prefer that I should repeat what I have just now said in the presence of the dancers who are now leaving the ballroom?"

He let her pass. The music had ceased, couples were streaming in; among the first was Lady Cantyre on the arm of her attendant cavalier. At sight of the girl she started.

"Haven't you been dancing?" She glanced towards Dodwell, whose attitude scarcely suggested riotous enjoyment. As her eye caught Violet's she seemed to have a glimmer of understanding. She turned to her partner. "That was a perfect dance she's missed, wasn't it?" Then, to Violet, "And, by the way, I think I heard a certain gentleman inquiring for you-with an air!"

Miss Forster danced through the rest of the programme-no other of her partners had occasion to complain of her in any way whatever. Her demeanour could not have been more orthodox; she behaved just as a young woman ought to who is having a first-rate time at a delightful ball. During the dances and in that more critical period between them, she was all that her partners could possibly have desired; lucky men! No one, to look at her, or to listen to her, would have guessed that anything had happened to crumple a single rose leaf, to mar in the least degree her night's enjoyment.

Only when dancing with one partner was a word said which was not, perhaps, altogether in keeping with the spirit of the hour. The partner was Major Reith, and, in the beginning, the words came from him. That scene in the woods, far from weakening, had rather strengthened their friendship. He was years older than she; what had passed between them on that occasion seemed to have produced in him the attitude, say, of an uncle, who was on the best terms with his niece. He said the word, after the dance was over, when they had settled themselves on chairs which were in full view of the whole assembly; there was evidently no thought of the privacy of the alcove for them.

"What's this I hear you've been saying to Anthony Dodwell and to Jackie Tickell?"

"How can I tell what you hear behind my back?"

"Exactly; how can you? And you can't guess either?"

"Did I ever pretend to be any good at guessing?"

"It seems that you said something to Dodwell, when he asked you for a dance, which has set people's tongues wagging; you alone know what you said to Jackie, but he's going about with a face as black as his shoes."

"My dear Major Reith, I understand that you are sleeping here to-night. If you ask me in the morning for information, I will give you all I can; but, while I may remark that I have said to both the persons you name only a little of what I propose to say, I would rather not tell you what I have said now. This is a ball; I want that to be the only fact in my mind for the remainder of the night."

"One more question and it shall. Have you heard anything of Beaton?"

"I haven't; but I may have. Something has happened that I don't understand, which puzzles me; but ask me about that also in the morning. As Mr. Tickell said when he wished to change the conversation, isn't it a capital floor?"

The major took the hint, which was more than she had done. The rest of the conversation was more in harmony with the moment; that is, they talked of nothing in which either took the slightest real interest.

The ball had come to the end to which all balls come at last, and Miss Forster, having retired to her room, had gone through, with her maid's assistance, the preliminary stages of unrobing, when, Lady Cantyre entering, she informed the maid that her services would no longer be required-and the friends were left alone. The countess, who was attired in a mysterious garment of sky-blue silk, which became her, if the thing were possible, even more than the dress which she had worn at the ball, had placed herself in an arm-chair, and was toasting her toes at the fire.

"Violet, I'm told that you've been going it."

"Haven't we all been going it?"

"Yes, but not quite, I hope, on the same lines as you. You practically, it seems, treated Captain Dodwell to a whipping in the middle of the ballroom. That is not exactly the sort of treatment that one expects one guest to mete out to another."

"Margaret, I am more than ever convinced that Sydney Beaton has been the victim of a conspiracy. Something which was on Captain Dodwell's face during the brief interview I had with him, which he forced on me, made me absolutely certain that, for some purpose of his own, which I intend to get at the bottom of very soon, he was guilty of a deliberate falsehood on that horrible night; that he's a liar and a coward, as I had the pleasure of telling him."

"Oh, you did. No wonder that I had a feeling that he looked as if he had not altogether enjoyed the night. That was not a pretty thing for you to say. Vi, take care; be very sure of what you do. Things, from your point of view, are pretty bad already, you don't want to make them worse."

"I'm not going to make them worse-I couldn't. Margaret, something has happened to Sydney-something dreadful; something which I don't understand. Look at this. Do you know anything about it?"

She handed the countess something which she had taken out of the leather case upon the table.

"Isn't it your locket, the one he gave you, with his picture? Why do you ask if I know anything about it?"

"It's the one I gave him. You remember that you came to see me before you went downstairs; when you went out, did you see anything lying on the floor just outside my room?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Why?"

"Did you see that locket?"

"I certainly didn't; why am I being cross-examined?"

"Do you know anything about a maid in your employ named Simmons?"

"I don't; is there such an one?"

"Almost directly after you had gone a maid, who said that her name was Simmons, came into the room with that locket in her hand, and said that she'd picked it up off the floor just outside my room. Margaret, how could that locket have got there?"

"I don't believe it was there when I went out; I remember, quite well, looking up and down to see who was about. I could hardly have helped seeing it if it was there. But what's the mystery?"

"When we became engaged, we gave each other a locket; here's the one he gave me, that's the one I gave him; he said that it should never leave him. The last time I saw him-you know, I told you all about it-I showed him my locket, where it was; he put his finger inside his collar, he hooked up that chain, and on it was that locket; he declared it had never left him since he had had it, and that it never should. I am quite sure that he took it away with him that night; how came it to be on the floor outside my door?"

"It does seem odd."

"I should say it's as certain as anything could be, that that locket has been with him all the time he's been away. As you know, I've had no communication with him of any sort or kind, in spite of all my efforts; I've not had the faintest clue to his whereabouts. Isn't it an extraordinary thing that that locket-from which he was inseparable-should be picked up on the floor just outside my room by a complete stranger, especially as it couldn't have been there before she came on the scene, or you'd have noticed it?"

"Simmons? I don't remember the name; and I rather pride myself on the fact that I do know the names of all the maids. Perhaps she came with one of the other women."

"No, she told me that she had been here only a few days, and that she came with some other new servants last week from town. Margaret, I've a feeling that that woman brought the locket with her; that she'd never found it as she pretended, that she knows more about it than she chose to say-the feeling was strong on me as she stood there with her smiling face. This locket came into her possession in some queer way. I saw it on her face, although she kept on smiling. If I hadn't been going down to the dance, I'd have had it out of her."

"Had what out of her?"

"The truth! If you only knew how I feel that everything-everyone-is against us; against me, and against Sydney; if you only knew what I've had to bear at home, from uncle, and other ways-from myself. Sydney is in some desperate plight; I'm as convinced of it as if he himself had told me. If I could only get at him to help him! But I can't! I can't! I don't know where he is! And now that woman brings me his locket, from which I'm perfectly certain he would not allow himself to be parted unless he were at his last gasp-unless something worse than death stared him in the face. I do believe he'd stick to it-yes, Margaret, I mean it. I know Sydney, as no one else does, as no one else can; he has his faults-no one need tell me that, but I know he loves me, and that, having said what he did say about that locket, he'd stand to his word while the breath was in his body, unless-mind! – unless some awful thing has befallen him, and that's what I'm afraid of. You may laugh, but there's something here" – the girl pressed her hands to her side-"which tells me-if you only knew how afraid I am-oh, Margaret, if you only knew!"

The girl sank on to her knees at the countess's side, she hid her face on her ladyship's silken lap-and she cried.