CHAPTER 13.
Albert was in a hurry. He skimmed over the carpet like awater-beetle.
"Quick!" he said.
He cast a glance at the maid, George's co-worker. She was reading anovelette with her back turned.
"Tell 'er you'll be back in five minutes," said Albert, jerking athumb.
"Unnecessary. She won't notice my absence. Ever since shediscovered that I had never met her cousin Frank in America, I havemeant nothing in her life."
"Then come on."
"Where?"
"I'll show you."
That it was not the nearest and most direct route which they tookto the trysting-place George became aware after he had followed hisyoung guide through doors and up stairs and down stairs and had atlast come to a halt in a room to which the sound of the musicpenetrated but faintly. He recognized the room. He had been in itbefore. It was the same room where he and Billie Dore had listenedto Keggs telling the story of Lord Leonard and his leap. Thatwindow there, he remembered now, opened on to the very balcony fromwhich the historic Leonard had done his spectacular dive. That itshould be the scene of this other secret meeting struck George asappropriate. The coincidence appealed to him.
Albert vanished. George took a deep breath. Now that the moment hadarrived for which he had waited so long he was aware of a return ofthat feeling of stage-fright which had come upon him when he heardReggie Byng's voice. This sort of thing, it must be remembered, wasnot in George's usual line. His had been a quiet and uneventfullife, and the only exciting thing which, in his recollection, hadever happened to him previous to the dramatic entry of Lady Maudinto his taxi-cab that day in Piccadilly, had occurred at collegenearly ten years before, when a festive room-mate--no doubt with thebest motives--had placed a Mexican horned toad in his bed on thenight of the Yale football game.
A light footstep sounded outside, and the room whirled round Georgein a manner which, if it had happened to Reggie Byng, would havecaused that injudicious drinker to abandon the habits of alifetime. When the furniture had returned to its place and the rughad ceased to spin, Maud was standing before him.
Nothing is harder to remember than a once-seen face. It had causedGeorge a good deal of distress and inconvenience that, try as hemight, he could not conjure up anything more than a vague vision ofwhat the only girl in the world really looked like. He had carriedaway with him from their meeting in the cab only a confusedrecollection of eyes that shone and a mouth that curved in a smile;and the brief moment in which he was able to refresh his memory,when he found her in the lane with Reggie Byng and the broken-downcar, had not been enough to add definiteness. The consequence wasthat Maud came upon him now with the stunning effect of beauty seenfor the first time. He gasped. In that dazzling ball-dress, withthe flush of dancing on her cheeks and the light of dancing in hereyes, she was so much more wonderful than any picture of her whichmemory had been able to produce for his inspection that it was asif he had never seen her before.
Even her brother, Percy, a stern critic where his nearest anddearest were concerned, had admitted on meeting her in thedrawing-room before dinner that that particular dress suited Maud.It was a shimmering dream-thing of rose-leaves and moon-beams. That,at least, was how it struck George; a dressmaker would have found alonger and less romantic description for it. But that does notmatter. Whoever wishes for a cold and technical catalogue of thestuffs which went to make up the picture that deprived George ofspeech may consult the files of the Belpher Intelligencer andFarmers' Guide, and read the report of the editor's wife, who"does" the dresses for the Intelligencer under the pen-name of"Birdie Bright-Eye". As far as George was concerned, the thing wasmade of rose-leaves and moon-beams.
George, as I say, was deprived of speech. That any girl couldpossibly look so beautiful was enough to paralyse his faculties;but that this ethereal being straight from Fairyland could havestooped to love him--him--an earthy brute who wore sock-suspendersand drank coffee for breakfast . . . that was what robbed George ofthe power to articulate. He could do nothing but look at her.
From the Hills of Fairyland soft music came. Or, if we must beexact, Maud spoke.
"I couldn't get away before!" Then she stopped short and darted tothe door listening. "Was that somebody coming? I had to cut adance with Mr. Plummer to get here, and I'm so afraid he may. . ."
He had. A moment later it was only too evident that this wasprecisely what Mr. Plummer had done. There was a footstep on thestairs, a heavy footstep this time, and from outside the voice ofthe pursuer made itself heard.
"Oh, there you are, Lady Maud! I was looking for you. This is ourdance."
George did not know who Mr. Plummer was. He did not want to know.His only thought regarding Mr. Plummer was a passionate realizationof the superfluity of his existence. It is the presence on theglobe of these Plummers that delays the coming of the Millennium.
His stunned mind leaped into sudden activity. He must not be foundhere, that was certain. Waiters who ramble at large about a feudalcastle and are discovered in conversation with the daughter of thehouse excite comment. And, conversely, daughters of the house whotalk in secluded rooms with waiters also find explanationsnecessary. He must withdraw. He must withdraw quickly. And, as agesture from Maud indicated, the withdrawal must be effectedthrough the french window opening on the balcony. Estimating thedistance that separated him from the approaching Plummer at threestairs--the voice had come from below--and a landing, the space oftime allotted to him by a hustling Fate for disappearing was somefour seconds. Inside two and half, the french window had openedand closed, and George was out under the stars, with the cool windsof the night playing on his heated forehead.
He had now time for meditation. There are few situations whichprovide more scope for meditation than that of the man penned up ona small balcony a considerable distance from the ground, with hisonly avenue of retreat cut off behind him. So George meditated.First, he mused on Plummer. He thought some hard thoughts aboutPlummer. Then he brooded on the unkindness of a fortune which hadgranted him the opportunity of this meeting with Maud, only tosnatch it away almost before it had begun. He wondered how long thelate Lord Leonard had been permitted to talk on that occasionbefore he, too, had had to retire through these same windows. Therewas no doubt about one thing. Lovers who chose that room for theirinterviews seemed to have very little luck.
It had not occurred to George at first that there could be anyfurther disadvantage attached to his position other than theobvious drawbacks which had already come to his notice. He was nowto perceive that he had been mistaken. A voice was speaking in theroom he had left, a plainly audible voice, deep and throaty; andwithin a minute George had become aware that he was to suffer theadditional discomfort of being obliged to listen to a fellowman--one could call Plummer that by stretching the facts alittle--proposing marriage. The gruesomeness of the situation becameintensified. Of all moments when a man--and justice compelled Georgeto admit that Plummer was technically human--of all moments when aman may by all the laws of decency demand to be alone without anaudience of his own sex, the chiefest is the moment when he isasking a girl to marry him. George's was a sensitive nature, and hewrithed at the thought of playing the eavesdropper at such a time.
He looked frantically about him for a means of escape. Plummer hadnow reached the stage of saying at great length that he was notworthy of Maud. He said it over and over, again in different ways.George was in hearty agreement with him, but he did not want tohear it. He wanted to get away. But how? Lord Leonard on a similaroccasion had leaped. Some might argue therefore on the principlethat what man has done, man can do, that George should haveimitated him. But men differ. There was a man attached to a circuswho used to dive off the roof of Madison Square Garden on to asloping board, strike it with his chest, turn a couple ofsomersaults, reach the ground, bow six times and go off to lunch.That sort of thing is a gift. Some of us have it, some have not.George had not. Painful as it was to hear Plummer flounderingthrough his proposa
l of marriage, instinct told him that it wouldbe far more painful to hurl himself out into mid-air on thesporting chance of having his downward progress arrested by thebranches of the big tree that had upheld Lord Leonard. No, thereseemed nothing for it but to remain where he was.
Inside the room Plummer was now saying how much the marriage wouldplease his mother.
"Psst!"
George looked about him. It seemed to him that he had heard avoice. He listened. No. Except for the barking of a distant dog,the faint wailing of a waltz, the rustle of a roosting bird, andthe sound of Plummer saying that if her refusal was due to anythingshe might have heard about that breach-of-promise case of his acouple of years ago he would like to state that he was more sinnedagainst than sinning and that the girl had absolutely misunderstoodhim, all was still.
"Psst! Hey, mister!"
It was a voice. It came from above. Was it an angel's voice? Notaltogether. It was Albert's. The boy was leaning out of a windowsome six feet higher up the castle wall. George, his eyes by nowgrown used to the darkness, perceived that the striplinggesticulated as one having some message to impart. Then, glancingto one side, he saw what looked like some kind of a rope swayedagainst the wall. He reached for it. The thing was not a rope: itwas a knotted sheet.
From above came Albert's hoarse whisper.
"Look alive!"
This was precisely what George wanted to do for at least anotherfifty years or so; and it seemed to him as he stood there in thestarlight, gingerly fingering this flimsy linen thing, that if hewere to suspend his hundred and eighty pounds of bone and sinew atthe end of it over the black gulf outside the balcony he would lookalive for about five seconds, and after that goodness only knew howhe would look. He knew all about knotted sheets. He had read ahundred stories in which heroes, heroines, low comedy friends andeven villains did all sorts of reckless things with theirassistance. There was not much comfort to be derived from that. Itwas one thing to read about people doing silly things like that,quite another to do them yourself. He gave Albert's sheet atentative shake. In all his experience he thought he had never comeacross anything so supremely unstable. (One calls it Albert's sheetfor the sake of convenience. It was really Reggie Byng's sheet.And when Reggie got to his room in the small hours of the morningand found the thing a mass of knots he jumped to the conclusion--being a simple-hearted young man--that his bosom friend Jack Ferris,who had come up from London to see Lord Belpher through the tryingexperience of a coming-of-age party, had done it as a practicaljoke, and went and poured a jug of water over Jack's bed. That isLife. Just one long succession of misunderstandings and rash actsand what not. Absolutely!)
Albert was becoming impatient. He was in the position of a greatgeneral who thinks out some wonderful piece of strategy and can'tget his army to carry it out. Many boys, seeing Plummer enter theroom below and listening at the keyhole and realizing that Georgemust have hidden somewhere and deducing that he must be out on thebalcony, would have been baffled as to how to proceed. Not soAlbert. To dash up to Reggie Byng's room and strip his sheet offthe bed and tie it to the bed-post and fashion a series of knots init and lower it out of the window took Albert about three minutes.His part in the business had been performed without a hitch. Andnow George, who had nothing in the world to do but the childishtask of climbing up the sheet, was jeopardizing the success of thewhole scheme by delay. Albert gave the sheet an irritable jerk.
It was the worst thing he could have done. George had almost madeup his mind to take a chance when the sheet was snatched from hisgrasp as if it had been some live thing deliberately eluding hisclutch. The thought of what would have happened had this occurredwhen he was in mid-air caused him to break out in a coldperspiration. He retired a pace and perched himself on the rail ofthe balcony.
"Psst!" said Albert.
"It's no good saying, 'Psst!'" rejoined George in an annoyedundertone. "I could say 'Psst!' Any fool could say 'Psst!'"
Albert, he considered, in leaning out of the window and saying"Psst!" was merely touching the fringe of the subject.
It is probable that he would have remained seated on the balconyrail regarding the sheet with cold aversion, indefinitely, had nothis hand been forced by the man Plummer. Plummer, during these lastminutes, had shot his bolt. He had said everything that a man couldsay, much of it twice over; and now he was through. All was ended.The verdict was in. No wedding-bells for Plummer.
"I think," said Plummer gloomily, and the words smote on George'sear like a knell, "I think I'd like a little air."
George leaped from his rail like a hunted grasshopper. If Plummerwas looking for air, it meant that he was going to come out on thebalcony. There was only one thing to be done. It probably meant theabrupt conclusion of a promising career, but he could hesitate nolonger.
George grasped the sheet--it felt like a rope of cobwebs--and swunghimself out.
Maud looked out on to the balcony. Her heart, which had stood stillwhen the rejected one opened the window and stepped forth to communewith the soothing stars, beat again. There was no one there, onlyemptiness and Plummer.
"This," said Plummer sombrely, gazing over the rail into thedarkness, "is the place where that fellow what's-his-name jumpedoff in the reign of thingummy, isn't it?"
Maud understood now, and a thrill of the purest admiration forGeorge's heroism swept over her. So rather than compromise her, hehad done Leonard's leap! How splendid of him! If George, now sittingon Reggie Byng's bed taking a rueful census of the bits of skinremaining on his hands and knees after his climb, could have readher thoughts, he would have felt well rewarded for his abrasions.
"I've a jolly good mind," said Plummer, "to do it myself!" Heuttered a short, mirthless laugh. "Well, anyway," he saidrecklessly, "I'll jolly well go downstairs and have abrandy-and-soda!"
Albert finished untying the sheet from the bedpost, and stuffed itunder the pillow.
"And now," said Albert, "for a quiet smoke in the scullery."
These massive minds require their moments of relaxation.