NIGHT THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

CONSTANTIA.

The drumming in my ears died suddenly out to silence, and then started afresh more violently than ever, and more sharply, for the long pinging of an electric bell shrilled through it. The pinging ceased sharply: the drumming continued; and I looked up to see the mess sergeant standing over me, at attention.

"Telephone call for you, sir."

I went to the instrument like a man in a dream. Something suddenly gone wrong with Sally's healthy first-born? Jimmy starting for France and ringing me up for farewell? Farrell--d.a.m.n Farrell!--to talk business? Jephson, with word that he had achieved the urgent desire of his heart and been pa.s.sed as a gunner, to join me, _quo fas et gloria duc.u.n.t_? These four only, to my knowledge, had my probable address.

"Hallo?" I called.

"Hallo!" came the answer sharp and prompt, in a woman's voice which I recognised at once for Constantia's. "Is that you, Roddy?"

"Yes--Roddy, all right," I spoke back, mastering my voice.

"Have you seen--?" Her voice trailed off.

"D'you mean the announcement? Yes, two minutes ago. Is it congratulations you're ringing up in this hurry?"

"Roddy, dear, don't be a beast!" the voice implored. "I'm in a horrible hole, and I think only you can help me. Is it possible for you to get leave, and come? Mamma asks me to say that there's a room here, and--and we want you!"

"As it happens," returned I, "there'll be no trouble about getting leave. We're to start--report says--at the end of the week, and I must be sent up to collect a few service odds-and-ends. As for sleeping, I'll ring up Jephson, and if he's already conscripted, I can doss at the Club. All that is easy. But tell me, what is the matter?"

"Oh! I can't here." Constantia's voice thrilled on the wire.

"It's pretty awful. I never gave him leave--_never_!"

"You're getting pretty incoherent," said I. "We'll have it out when we meet. Dinner? . . . No, I shall pick up a meal on the train.

. . . Mustn't expect me before 8.30; I have to put a draft through and see them off. Odd jobs, besides. . . . These are strenuous times."

"Roddy, you're an angel!"

"Not a bit," said I; "and I warn you not to expect me in that capacity. You'll observe that I haven't congratulated you yet."

I put this in rather savagely.

"You're also rather a brute," answered the voice. "But you'll come?"

"Please G.o.d," said I.

"Thank G.o.d!" answered she; and I hung up the receiver.

Well, in my jubilation I had forgotten to ask for leave to run up and get kit. But leave was no sooner asked for than given.

From Victoria that evening I taxi'd straight to Jermyn Street, where I found Jephson, warned by telegram, elate at the prospect of soldiering. I was able, after a talk with my Colonel, to inform him that he had also a prospect of coming along as my servant, and this lifted him to the seventh heaven. Then I went out, picked up a dinner at Arthur's, and walked on to Upper Brook Street.

In those days London had not started to shroud its lamps. One stood a few paces short of the porch of Number 105; and as I turned into Brook Street I saw a man come hastily down the steps, and enter a taxi anch.o.r.ed there. The butler followed and closed the door upon him. The night had begun to drizzle, and there was a sough of sou'westerly wind in the air. I turned up the collar of my service overcoat and, as the taxi pa.s.sed, walked pretty briskly forward and intercepted Mrs. Denistoun's butler, who, after a stare at the retreating vehicle, had reascended the steps and was about to close the door. Recognising me by the light of the porch lamp, he opened the door wide, and full upon the figure of Constantia, standing in the hallway. She gave a little gasp and came to me, holding out her hand.

"You were always as good as your word, Roddy. Come into the library.

Where are you sleeping, by the way?"

"In my flat," said I. "Jephson will not be called up for a day or two. He has a fire lit, and will sit up for me."

"He may have to sit up late," replied Constantia. "Mamma will be down presently. . . . There has been something of a scene, and she is upset. You saw Mr. Farrell go away, just now? You must have pa.s.sed him, almost at the door."

"I did," said I, "though I don't know if he recognised me.

Child, what is the matter?"

"Child?" echoed Constantia. "It does me good to be called that, for that's exactly how I am feeling. . . . He had no right--no right--"

and there she broke off.

"Do you mean," said I, "that he put that announcement in the _Times_ having no _right_ to do it?"

"I dare say," moaned Constantia, waving her arms feebly, pathetically, "he understood more than I meant him to."

"Let us be practical, please," said I, becoming extremely stern.

"Have you, or have you not, engaged yourself to marry Farrell?"

"Certainly I have not," she answered with vivacity. "He asked me, and I--well, I played for time."

I couldn't repress a small groan at this: or, rather, it was half a groan and half a sigh of relief. "Has he spoken to your mother?"

"No."

"Does your mother know about it?"

"Yes. I told her."

"Does she approve of this announcement in the papers? Has she sanctioned it?"

"Of course she does not--of course she has not. . . . Roddy, sit down and don't ask so many questions all of a heap. Sit down and light your pipe, and pa.s.s me a cigarette. Furnilove will bring in some whisky for you by and by."

"Thank you, Constantia; but I don't feel like staying. I've always maintained--oh, d.a.m.nation!" I broke off.

"What have you always maintained, Roddy? Sit down and tell it.

Are you not here because I sent for you? And didn't I send for you because I am in trouble? We are in a tangle, I tell you, and I'm asking you, on my knees, to untwist it. So light your pipe and, before we begin, tell me--What is it you have always maintained?"

"I have always maintained," I answered slowly, even more stern than before, "that no woman can be safely trusted to know a cad from a gentleman. If the cad can flourish a trifle of worldly success in front of her, or if he's a mere adventurer and flashes himself on her boldly enough, _or_, if she has persuaded herself to pity him, she's just fascinated, and you can't trust her judgment ten yards.

There! . . . I've burnt my boats."

Constantia sat for some while pondering this, breathing out the smoke of her cigarette, gazing into the fire under the shade of a handscreen.

"I'll tell you another thing, Roddy," she said at length; "and it's as true and truer. No woman thinks worse of a man for burning his boats. . . . But it isn't quite worldly success to be wrecked and left desolate on an island three hundred miles from anywhere.

It all started (as you hinted) with my pitying him and admiring his strength of will after the awful experience he had tholed."

"He left you just now? I saw him drive away, and his infernal dog with him."