The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories Read online

  Suddenly, out of the black bosom of the windless night, there came a sigh of hot air rustling the shrubs outside. It came into the veranda where he sat, like the stir of some corporeal presence, making the light of his lamp to hang flickering in the chimney for a moment, and then expire in a wreath of sour-smelling smoke. One of his dogs sat up for a moment growling, and then all was utterly still again. The arch of clear sky to the east had dwindled and become overcast, and the red moon showed but a faint blur of light behind the gathering clouds.

  Case had used a solitary match to light his lamp, and did not know where, in his own bungalow, he might find a box. But he could get one for certain out of Oldham’s bedroom, for he was a person of extremely orderly habits, and always kept one on a ledge just inside his bedroom door. Case got up and in the dark groped his way across the lobby out of which Oldham’s bedroom opened, and feeling with his hand, immediately found the box on the ledge at the foot of his bed. Standing there, he lit a match, and his eye fell on the bed itself. It was covered with a dark blanket, and on the centre of it, coiled and sleeping, like a round pool of black water, lay a huge cobra. On the moment the match went out—it had barely been lit—and, closing the bedroom door, he went out again on to the veranda.

  He did not rekindle his lamp, but sat, laying the forgotten match-box on his table, and looking out into the blackness of the yawning night. The wind that had extinguished his light had died away again, and all round he heard the heavy plump of the rain, which was beginning to fall heavily. Before five minutes were past, the sluices of the sky were fully open again, and the downpour had become torrential. The lightning, that an hour ago had but winked remotely on the horizon, was becoming more vivid, and the response of the thunder more immediate. At the gleam of the frequent flashes from the sky, the trees in front of the bungalow, the road, and the fields that lay beyond it, started into colour seen through the veil of the rain, that hung like a curtain of glass beads, firm and perpendicular, and then vanished again into the impenetrable blackness. He was not conscious of thought; it seemed only that a vivid picture was spread before his mind—the picture of a dark-blanketed bed on which, like a round black pool, there lay the coiled and sleeping cobra. The door of that room was shut, and a man entering it would no longer find, as he had done, a match-box ready to his hand, close beside the door.

  For another hour he sat there, this mental picture starting from time to time into brilliant illumination, even as at the lightning flashes the landscape in front of him leaped into intolerable light and colour. The roar of the rain and the incessant tumult of the approaching thunder had roused the dogs, and by the flare of the storm Case could see that Boxer and his wife were both sitting tense and upright, staring uneasily into the night. Then simultaneously they both broke into chorus of deep-throated barking and strained at their chains. By the next flash Case saw what had roused their vigilance. The figure of a man with flapping coat was running at full speed from the direction of the mess-room towards the bungalow. He recognized who it was, and now the dogs recognized him, too, for their barking was exchanged for whimpers of welcome and agitated tails.

  Oldham leaped the little hedge that separated the road from the fields and ran dripping into shelter of the veranda. In the gross darkness he could not see Case, and stood there, as he thought, alone, stripping off his mackintosh. Then, by the light of a fierce violet streamer in the clouds, he saw him.

  “Hullo, Case,” he said, “is that you?”

  Oldham moved towards him as he spoke, and by the next flash Case saw him close at hand, tall and slim, with handsome, boyish face.

  “You got my letter?” asked Oldham.

  “Yes, I got your letter.”

  Case paused a moment.

  “Do you expect me to congratulate you?” he asked.

  “No, I can’t say that I do. But I want to say something, and I hope you won’t find it offensive. Anyhow, it is quite sincere. I am most awfully sorry for you. And I can’t forget that we used to be the greatest friends. I hope you can remember that, too.”

  He sat down on the step that led into Case’s section of the bungalow, and in the darkness Case could hear Boxer making affectionate slobbering noises. That kindled a fresh point of jealous hatred in his mind; both dogs, who obeyed him as a master, adored Oldham as a friend. Hotly burned that hate, and he thought again of the closed bedroom door and the black pool on the blanket. Then he spoke slowly and carefully.

  “I quite remember it,” he said, “and it seems to me the most amazing thing in the world. I can recall it all, all my—my love for you, and the day when we settled into this bungalow together, and the joy of it. I recall, too, that you have taken from me everything you could lay hands on, money, the affection of the dogs even——”

  Oldham interrupted in sudden resentment at this injustice.

  “As regards money, I may remind you, since you have chosen to mention it, that I have not succeeded in taking any away from you,” he remarked.

  Case was not roused by this sarcasm; he could afford, knowing what he knew, to keep calm.

  “I am sorry for having kept you waiting so long,” he said. “But you may remember that you begged me to pay you at my convenience. It will be quite convenient to-morrow.”

  “My dear chap,” broke in Oldham again, “as if I would have mentioned it, if you hadn’t!”

  Case felt himself scarcely responsible for what he said; the tension of the storm, the infernal tattoo of the rain, the heat, the bellowing thunder, seemed to take demoniacal possession of him, driving before them the sanity of his soul.

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t mention it,” he said, “until you had sold my debt to some Jewish money-lender.”

  In the darkness he heard Oldham get up.

  “There is no use in our talking, if you talk like a madman,” he said.

  The sky immediately above them was torn asunder, and a flickering spear of intolerable light stabbed downwards, striking a tree not a hundred yards in front of the bungalow, and for the moment the stupendous crack of the thunder drowned thought and speech alike. Boxer gave a howl of protest and dismay, and nestled close to Oldham, while Case, starting involuntarily from his chair, held his hands to his ears until the appalling explosion was over.

  “Rather wicked,” he said, and poured himself out a dram of neat spirits.

  That steadied him, and, recovering himself a little, he felt that he was behaving very foolishly in letting the other see the madness of his rage and resentment. It was far better that he should lull Oldham into an unsuspicious frame of mind; otherwise he might suspect, might he not, that something was prepared for him in his room? Others, subsequently, if they quarrelled, might guess that he himself had known what lay there ... but it was all dim and fantastic. Then the fancied cunning and caution of an unbalanced man who is at the same time ready to commit the most reckless violence took hold of him, and instantly he changed his tone. He must be quiet and normal; he must let things take their natural course, without aid or interference from himself.

  “The storm has played the deuce with my nerves,” he said, “that and the news in your letter, and the sight of you coming like a wraith through the rain. But I won’t be a lunatic any longer. Sit down, Percy, and try to forgive all the wild things I have been saying. Of course, I don’t deny that I have had an awful blow. But, as you have reminded me, we used to be great friends. She and I were great friends, too, and I can’t afford to lose the two people I really care most about in the world, just because they have found each other. Let’s make the best of it; help me, if you can, to make the best of it.”

  It was not in Oldham’s genial nature to resist such an appeal, and he responded warmly.

  “I think that is jolly good of you,” he said, “and, frankly, I hate myself when I think of you. But, somehow, it isn’t a man’s fault when he falls in love. I couldn’t help myself; it came on me quite suddenly. It was as if someone had come quickly up behind me and pitched me into the m
iddle of it. At one moment I did not care for her; at the next I cared for nothing else.”

  Case had himself thoroughly in hand by this time. He even took pleasure in these reconciliatory speeches, knowing the completeness with which a revenge prepared without his planning should follow on their heels. Had a loaded pistol been ready to his hand, and he himself secure from detection, he would probably not have pulled the trigger on his friend, but it was a different matter that he should merely acquiesce in his walking in the dark into the room where death lay curled and ready to strike. That seemed to him to be the act of God; he was not responsible for it, he had not put the cobra there.

  “I felt sure it must have happened like that,” he said. “Besides, as you know, Kitty and I had quarrelled and had broken our engagement off. Of course, I hoped that some day we might come together again—at least, I know now that I hoped it. But that was nothing to do with you. You fell in love with her, and she with you. Yes, yes. Really, I don’t wonder. Indeed—indeed, I do congratulate you—I congratulate you both.”

  Oldham gave a great sigh of pleasure and relief.

  “It’s ripping of you to take it like that,” he said. “I hardly dared to hope you would. Thanks ever so much—ever so much! And now, do you know, I think I shall go to bed. I am dog-tired. I had a six hours’ ride to the station this morning, and even up there it was hideously hot.”

  Case again reminded himself that he must behave naturally—not plan anything, but not interfere.

  “Oh, you must have a drink,” he said, “though I’m afraid there is no ice. I’ll get you a glass and soda.”

  He came out into the veranda again with these requisites. Oldham was stifling a prodigious yawn.

  “I’m half dead with sleep. Probably I shall chuck myself on my bed just as I am, to save the trouble of undressing.”

  Case felt his hand tremble as he put the glass down on the table.

  “I know that feeling,” he said. “Sometimes, when one is very sleepy, the sight of a bed is altogether too much for one. I dare say I shall do the same. Help yourself to whisky while I open the soda for you.”

  Oldham drank his peg and again rose.

  “Well, I’m for bed,” he said. “And I can’t tell you what a relief it is to me to find you like this. By the way, about that bit of money. Pay me exactly when it’s convenient to you—next year or the year after, if you like. I should be wretched if I thought you were putting yourself about over it. So good night, Reggie.”

  He turned to go, and it seemed to Case that hours passed and a thousand impressions were registered on his brain as he walked down the twenty-five feet of veranda that separated the two doors of entrance that led into their quarters. Outside, another change had come over the hot, tumultuous night, and, as if the very moon and stars were concerned in this pigmy drama, where but a single life out of the innumerable and infinitesimal little denizens of the world was involved, a queer triangular rent had opened in the rain-swollen sky, and a dim moon and a company of watery stars stared silently down, and to Case’s excited senses they appeared hostilely witnessing. Ten minutes ago the rain had ceased as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off, and, except for the tom-tom that still beat monotonously in the town, a silence of death prevailed. The steam rose thick as sea-mist from the ground; above it a blurred etching of trees appeared and the roof of the mess-room. The grey unreal light shone full into the veranda, and he could see that Boxer was sitting bolt upright on his blanket-bed, looking at Oldham’s retreating figure. Daisy was industriously scratching her neck with a hind-leg, and from the table a little pool of spilt soda-water was dripping on to the ground.

  All this Case noticed accurately and intently, and, as yet, Oldham was not half-way down the veranda. Once he hung on his step and sniffed the hot, stale air. That was a characteristic trick; he wrinkled his nose up like a dog, showing his white teeth. Once he shifted his dripping mackintosh from right hand to left, holding it at arm’s length. Then, as he turned to pass into the door, he made a little staccato sign of salutation to Case with his disengaged hand. Boxer appropriated that, and wagged a cordial tail in response.

  Eagerly and expectantly, now that he had vanished from sight, Case followed his movements, visualizing them. He heard him shuffle his feet along the floor in the manner of a man feeling his way in the dark, and knew that he was drawing near to the closed bedroom door and the black interior. Oldham had said that he was very tired, that he was inclined just to throw himself on the bed and sleep, and the absence of matches and the added inconvenience of undressing in the dark would further predispose him to this. He would throw himself on the bed all in a piece, after the fashion of a tired man, and awake to fury the awful bedfellow, with the muscular coils and the swift death that lay crouched beneath its hood, which lay sleeping there. To-morrow there would be no debt for Case to pay, no gnawing of unsatisfied hate, and for Oldham no letter to his lady with the so satisfactory account of the evening’s meeting.

  Then from within came the rattle of a turned door-handle, and Case knew that the death-chamber stood open. There followed a pause of absolute stillness, in which Case felt utterly detached from and irresponsible for whatever might follow. Then came the jar of a closed door....

  And that tore him screaming from his murderous dreams, from which, perhaps, he had awoke too late. He found himself, with no volition of his own, running down the veranda and calling at the top of his voice:

  “Percy, Percy,” he cried, “come out. There is a cobra on your bed!”

  He heard the handle rattle and the door bang. Next moment he was on his knees in the dark lobby, clasping Oldham’s legs in a torrent of hysterical sobbing.

  THE FALSE STEP

  Mrs. Arthur Bolney Ross, when, three years ago, she set sail, or, rather, set screw, for England, had no very clear idea of the campaign she intended to wage there, though a firm determination to win it, and had mentally arrived at no general plan beyond those preliminary manœuvres which our charming American invaders usually adopt when they first effect a landing on the primitive pavements of Piccadilly. She had, in fact, taken half a dozen rooms at the Ritz Hotel and a box on the grand tier of the Covent Garden Opera House. But she had also, for the six months preceding her expedition, secretly received daily lessons on the pronunciation and idioms of that particular (and, as she thought, peculiar) dialect of the English language which was in vogue among the section of the English-speaking race with whom she intended to have dealings.

  Rightly or wrongly, she had decided that the screaming drawl of New York, which a few years before had so captivated the English upper classes, and had led to so many charming and successful marriages, was now out of date, and would enchant no longer. So instead of being content with her expressive native speech, she learned with almost passionate assiduity the mumbling English diction, the inaudible Victorian voice, which she rightly considered would be a novelty to those who had so largely abandoned it themselves in favour of a more strident utterance. But she did not, in mastering the Victorian voice and intonation, suffer her knowledge of her native tongue and its blatant delivery to wither from misuse; she but became bi-lingual, and schooled her vocal cords to either register without in the least confusing the two.

  It was in this point that she showed herself a campaigner of no stereotyped order, but one who might go far, who intended in any case to go further than anybody else. The idea was brilliant. Others before her had become more English than the English, and had done well; others had remained more American than the Americans, and had done even better. But she, among the immense bales of her luggage, brought with her this significant little handbag, so to speak: she could sound American or English at will. She could say without stumbling, “Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” or “How are you?” just as she pleased. And in this, so it seems to her historian, lay the germ of her success, and also the seeds of her final and irretrievable disaster, for in spite of her modulated voice and acquired idiom, she remaine
d American in thought, with the regal impulses of a queen in Newport.

  In other respects she was not, on her first landing, different in kind from our ordinary hospitable invaders. She had a real Arthur Bolney Ross in the background, who was capable of being shown and tested, if, so to speak, she was “searched,” but who, since his mind had in the course of years become nothing more nor less than a mint, out of which streams of bullion perpetually issued, preferred to be left alone for the processes of production. Amelie was excellent friends with him, when they had time and inclination to meet, and it always gave her a comfortable feeling to know that Arthur was in existence. If they had met very often, it is probable that they would have got on each other’s nerves, and, since she had an immense fortune of her own, have considered the desirability of a divorce; but in the meantime Amelie decidedly liked the feeling of stability which her husband gave her. She did not think about him much, but she knew he was there.

  Husbands, she had ascertained, were going to be fashionable in London this year, or, if not exactly fashionable, were going to be “worn” in the manner of some invisible but judicious part of the dress, like a cholera belt, or, as Amelie would have called it when she spoke American, a gripe-girdle. Pearls also were worn, though not so invisibly as husbands, and Amelie had five superb ropes of these, which could be verified by anybody, and never got on her nerves at all. She had also, among her general equipment, a very excellent sort of social godmother, Lady Brackenbury, who, for a remuneration that made no difference to Amelie, but a good deal to her, was prepared to exert herself to the utmost pitch of her very valuable capabilities in the matter of bringing people to see her and in taking her to see people, and in preventing the wrong sort of people from having any sort of access to her. Amelie was willing to put herself into Lady Brackenbury’s hands with the complete confidence in which she would have entrusted her mouth to a reliable dentist, had her admirable teeth demanded any sort of adjustment. She could not have made a wiser choice: there was nobody, in fact, among possible godmothers in London, who would have been a sounder sponsor.