4 Books by Coningsby Dawson. Coningsby Dawson

front of the mirror, he answered, "Yes, what is it, Ann?"

      "Before you go, I should like to speak with your Lordship."

      "Is it important? I've not got too much time."

      "It's--it's something to do with myself."

      "All right. Half a second."

      On opening the door, he saw at once that her face was disturbed.

      "What is it?"

      "It's something to do with him, sir."

      "With whom?"

      "With Braithwaite."

      It was evident that for Ann there was only one _him_ in the world.

      "Well, what of him?"

      Ann commenced speaking slowly. Under the stress of her nervousness she forgot the correct demeanor for a high-class parlor-maid and became a country girl, twisting the corner of her white, starched apron in her hands.

      "I was noticing the address on that letter your Lordship gave me to post." Tabs thought quickly, "Hullo, we're in for it. That was foolish of me. She's put two and two together."

      But Ann reassured him in her next sentence. "It was to a General at the War Office and I was thinking that he might help. Braithwaite and I had an understanding. I'm not saying we were engaged; we weren't. We didn't tell anybody. But we'd made up our minds to get married if he ever came back. If I'd been engaged to him, I'd have a right to make enquiries; but now, in most people's eyes, I was nothing to him. That's--that's the hardest part of it. You see, sir, he was never reported dead or missing or anything. I just stopped hearing from him. So I thought that if this General was your Lordship's friend----"

      Tabs' brain had been working. He already had a plan. "You thought that I might persuade him to use his influence to have the records searched?"

      She glanced up hopefully. "That's what I was thinking. Would he do it for your Lordship? I don't know how to set about things myself. It's this--this," she almost broke down, "this uncertainty that's a-killing of me. Sister knows about her man, but I----"

      Tabs saw the redness of sleeplessness in her eyes; it was true--the uncertainty was killing her. "Don't upset yourself by talking about it," he said kindly. "I'll write to the General and post my request on my way out."

      He had supposed he had dismissed her and had seated himself at his desk. A sound behind him warned him; he looked across his shoulder to find her still hovering in the doorway.

      She answered his unspoken question as to why she was delaying. "Aren't there any particulars that your Lordship ought to have? Things like his regimental number, and his birthday, and where he was born, and all that? And wouldn't this help?"

      "What's that?"

      She pulled out from her apron-pocket an envelope. "It's one of his letters. If the General was to see it, he'd know I had the right."

      "May I glance through it?"

      Tabs unfolded the scribbled sheets of paper. They were torn from an Army note-book.

      _"My darling Ann:

      The jolly old war drags on and seems as though it were never going to end. Not that I've much to kick about, for it's proved a chance for me. Here's the great news. I'm in for my commission and shall soon be 'an officer and a gentleman.' Don't tell his Lordship if you write to him or see him; he's still in the ranks and might not like it. It's funny to think that I shall be his military superior before many weeks are out and that, were he and I to meet, he'd have to salute me. If I come through the war, I sha'n't go back to being a valet. Once having been a gentleman----"_

      Tabs ran rapidly through this sheet and turned to the next:--

      _"You're wonderfully good. I got the socks that you knitted and the two parcels of food from Harrods. You mustn't spend so much of your money on me. When it's all ended, I'll pay you back. We'll get married and have a little cottage in a little town, the way the song says that we heard together at the Comedy on my last leave. You remember how it goes.

      'And we'll have a little mistress in a silken gown. A little doggie, a little cat, A little doorstep, with WELCOME on the mat.'

      "My dearest sweetheart, I love you.

      "Yours, in the pink, etc."_

      Tabs looked up. "May I keep this for the present?--And, by the way, how many more of them have you?"

      "Nearly a hundred from the day he enlisted. That's one of the last--I never heard from him whether he lived to get his commission."

      When she had vanished, he reread the letter more carefully, made a copy of it and slipped the copy into another envelope addressed to General Braithwaite, together with a note from himself, which read, "_One of the important reasons why I am insistent that you shall call on me is contained in the enclosed copy of one of your many letters, the originals of all of which are in my possession. To a man of honor it speaks for itself_."

      IV

      At the red pillar-box, at the foot of the Square, he posted this second missive. "He'll receive them both by the first delivery to-morrow," he thought. "I wonder what he'll---- Rotten! But it can't be helped." Then he turned to the right by the Tube Station, going up the narrow old world passage, behind the backs of houses, through the graveyard of the Brompton Parish Church to Ennismore Gardens and the sudden, railed in solitudes of Hyde Park.

      There were few pedestrians about. Until he reached the Park they were for the most part men in evening-dress, going to dinner-parties, like himself. Sometimes they were accompanied by their wives or sweethearts, whose little high-heeled shoes made a sharp tap-a-tap against the pavement. Lamps were lighted. The reluctant twilight was gradually fading; the sunset still glowed faintly above clustered chimney-pots to the west. "I'm going to meet Terry," he told himself. "If the day had worked out as I'd planned, I should be going to ask for her hand in marriage---- When I planned that, I still believed that I was young."

      Then he thought forward. Sir Tobias, from the moment he entered, would be scheming to get him to himself. Sir Tobias must be avoided. Directly dinner was ended, he would try to hurry him off and imprison him in his library to discuss this Maisie woman and Adair. Still he was going to see Terry; merely to see her was a compensation which stirred his blood.

      He crossed the Serpentine, stretching like a phantom lake, rose and slate-colored, through the Peter Pan haunted glades of Kensington Gardens. Then he emerged from the Victoria Gate and found himself ringing a bell and being admitted by a butler, who relieved him of his coat and hat with the velvet-plush manner of a fashionable surgeon feeling a patient's pulse.

      "If you will come this way, Sir Tobias is waiting for your Lordship in the library."

      It was happening precisely as he had foreseen; it was being taken for granted that he had come as her father's friend, and therefore in some absurd measure as his contemporary.

      As he prepared to follow, his attention was attracted by the scarlet band and gold braid about an officer's cap which was lying carelessly on the hall-table beside a pair of dog-skin gloves.

      V

      Sir Tobias was standing astride the hearth-rug with his back towards the fire. As the door opened, he was caught in a last nervous adjustment of his tie.

      He was a little man, inclined to be podgy, brimful of a darting kind of energy and dignified with an air of fussy distinction which none of his antics, however grotesque, could diminish. He was Shakespeare as he might have appeared at sixty, after years and a return to Ann Hathaway had quenched the taller flames of his poetic fire. The resemblance was haunting and remarkable: there underlay it a hint of gnome-like agility. One suspected that he affected age as a disguise.