signal for the whole hungry party to come milling along the gallery from the small drawing-room, from the terraces, from all the corners in which they were disporting themselves, and converge on the dining-hall. It was on the same main floor, situated above the special level of the great drawing-room, and those once-menial regions where the telephones had been installed. Meurice could maintain his place on the stairs brazenly, and nobody would bother him. But the cavalcade of joyous voices drowned out Liri’s first words when the distant party, whoever he might be, answered her, and blotted into meaningless murmurs half of what passed afterwards. It is hard enough making sense of one half of a telephone conversation; trying to make something of half of that one half is a job for the cypher experts.
“Never mind that,” he heard her say clearly, her voice low and guarded, but sharp with impatience and strain, “there’s no time…” And again, after a maddening moment when nothing was audible but the Rossignol twins marching along the gallery to the loud, gay strains of “Aupres de ma blonde”: “… just
There was more, a hard silence on her part, the distant voice inaudibly pouring words at her, never a name to identify him. Why must they sing even when they weren’t getting paid for it? There went Andrew Callum, leading half a dozen disciples in “The Boy from Killane,” and away went a burst of words from Liri, down the wind with the heroic lament for Douglas Kelly:
“Tell me, who is the giant with gold, curling hair.
He who rides at the head of your band?
Seven feet is his height, with some inches to spare.
And he looks like a king in command…”
And on the diminishing echo, clearly: “Damn you, I’ve
The receiver clashed in the rest, and the door swung before her thrust, she was out, and at the foot of the staircase.
He turned and took the rest of the stairs three at a time, in long leaps. By the time Liri came out on the main landing, he was away along the gallery and out through the great front doors, and bounding down the steps from the terrace towards the dimming slopes that led to the Braide. He ran like a hare, in exuberant leaps, back to the duty Liri had laid on him. The vacant, wandering hand was still languid and easy on the thrusting current. Meurice found himself a dry place to stand, and waited; it was certain he wouldn’t have long to wait.
“I wish I hadn’t done it now,” said Felicity, as many another has said before her with as little effect, and many another will certainly say in the future. “If I’d known…” She stopped there, jutted a dubious lip at what it had been in her mind to say, and rejected it ruthlessly. Whatever she lacked, she was beginning to discover in herself a rare and ferocious honesty. “I should, though,” she said, “the way I felt, even if I’d known how it would turn out.”
“None of us knows that yet,” George reminded her crisply. He had placed a chair considerately for her, so that no too acute light should touch her face, and no too direct glance put her off her stride. Oh, there was stuff in Felicity of which she knew nothing yet, even if she was finding out some things about herself the hard way, and too rapidly.
“No,” she conceded, “but we know the probabilities. I did know them, even then, or I could have if I’d been willing.”
“I doubt,” said George, doing her the justice of showing a like honesty, “if you anticipated that much success.”
She looked up quickly at that, a little startled, and considered it gingerly. The faintest and briefest glint of a smile showed in her eyes, and as feebly withdrew. “You’re not trying to make me think I haven’t done something dreadful, are you?” You, of all people! her tone implied.
“No, I wouldn’t do that. But I am telling you that something like that happens in most lives. Most of us, when it does happen, are lucky enough, clumsy enough, or scared enough to make a mess of our opportunity for malice. You were the unlucky one. You had the perfect explosive put into your hand, and the perfect fuse for it into your mouth. Even then, for some of us, it would have failed to go off. But we shouldn’t have been less guilty. Having something to regret leaves you anything but unique or particular in this world, Felicity, rather confirms you one of the crowd.” He saw her braced to think that out, and resolute to kick the argument to pieces, and saw fit to divert the event. “Look; suppose I ask you my questions first, and then we can talk.”
“All right,” she agreed. “But I’ve told you everything I can think of now.”
“Yes, this is a matter of something you did tell me. You said you left Lucien there by the river, and came away, ‘and latched the gate after me.’ Did you mean that literally? Not just pulled the gate to after you, but latched it?”
She was staring at him now alertly and brightly, momentarily deflected from her own problems. “Yes, latched it. Of course! Why, is that important?”
“It’s a detail. They all help. The latch was still in position then?”
She nodded emphatically. “You couldn’t very well miss it, it’s nearly as long as my arm.” An exaggeration of course, what she was really indicating with a small flourish was her forearm, from elbow to fingertips. “It hasn’t had any rivets, or whatever they are, holding it for a long time, it just hangs there in the slots, you can pull it out if you want to.”
“Yes, I see. And Lucien didn’t think better of it, and come after you? Try to stop you?”
“No,” she said sombrely, “why should he? He didn’t know what I was going to do. He didn’t care about me one way or the other. I suppose there wasn’t really any reason why he should. He never even looked round. He was sitting in the grotto, glad I was gone. I realise now that he must have been at the end of his patience, to do what he did to me.”
“I suspect,” said George, “that his patience was always on the short side.”
“Maybe. I didn’t really know much about him, did I?” she said bleakly. “And neither did he about me.” She looked up earnestly into George’s face, and asked simply: “What am I going to do?”
Outside, the gong for dinner was bawling merrily, but they didn’t notice it, or hear the noisy parade to the hall.
“Live with it,” said George with equal simplicity, “and make the best of it. I can’t absolve you, and you wouldn’t be grateful to me if I tried. I can’t charge you with anything, and there isn’t any penance to be found anywhere, if
