_ BOOK IV. AT THE SHIPYARD
CHAPTER VIII
The two sisters had managed to fray each other's nerves raw. The mere fact that Abbie advocated marriage and maternity threw Mamise into a cantankerous distaste for her own dreams.
Larrey had delayed Davidge long enough for Mamise to be rid of Abbie, but the influence of both Larrey and Abbie was manifest in the strained greetings of the caller and the callee. Instead of the eagerness to rush into each other's arms that both had felt in the morning, Davidge entered Mamise's presence with one thought dominant: "Is she really a spy? I must be on my guard." And Mamise was thinking, "If he should be thinking what Abbie thought, how odious!"
Thus once more their moods chaperoned them. Love could not attune them. She sat; he sat. When their glances met they parted at once.
She mistook his uncertainty for despondency. She assumed that he was brooding over his lost ship. Out of a long silence she spoke:
"I wonder if the world will ever forget and forgive?"
"Forget and forgive who--whom, for what?"
"Germany for all she's done to this poor world--Belgium, the
Lusitania, the
Clara?"
He smiled sadly. "The
Clara was a little slow tub compared to the
Lusitania, but she meant a lot to me."
"And to me. So did the
Lusitania. She nearly cost me my life."
He was startled. "You didn't plan to sail on her?"
"No, but--" She paused. She had not meant to open this subject.
But he was aching to hear her version of what Larrey had told.
"How do you mean--she nearly cost you your life?"
"Oh, that's one of the dark chapters of my past."
"You never told me about it."
"I'd rather not."
"Please!" He said it with a surprising earnestness. He had a sudden hope that her confession might be an absolving explanation.
She could not fathom this eagerness, but she felt a desire to release that old secret. She began, recklessly:
"Well, I told you how I ran away from home and went on the stage, and Sir Joseph Webling--"
"You told me that much, but not what happened before you met him."
"No, I didn't tell you that, and I'm not going to now, but--well, Sir Joseph was like a father to me; I never had one of my own--to know and remember. Sir Joseph was German born, and perhaps the ruthlessness was contagious, for he--well, I can't tell you."
"Please!"
"I swore not to."
"You gave your oath to a German?"
"No, to an English officer in the Secret Service. I'm always forgetting and starting to tell."
"Why did you take your oath?"
"I traded secrecy for freedom."
"You mean you turned state's evidence?"
"Oh no, I didn't tell on them. I didn't know what they were up to when they used me for-- But I'm skidding now. I want to tell you--terribly. But I simply must not. I made an awful mistake that night at Mrs. Prothero's in pretending to be ill."
"You only pretended?"
"Yes, to get you away. You see, Lady Clifton-Wyatt got after me, accused me of being a spy, of carrying messages that resulted in the sinking of ships and the killing of men. She said that the police came to our house, and Sir Joseph tried to kill one of them and killed his own wife and then was shot by an officer and that they gave out the story that Sir Joseph and Lady Webling died of ptomaine poisoning. She said Nicky Easton was shot in the Tower. Oh, an awful story she told, and I was afraid she'd tell you, so I spirited you away on the pretext of illness."
Davidge was astounded at this confirmation of Larrey's story. He said:
"But it wasn't true what Lady C.-W. told?"
"Most of it was false, but it was fiction founded on fact, and I couldn't explain it without breaking my oath. And now I've pretty nearly broken it, after all. I've sprained it badly."
"Don't you want to go on and--finish it off?"
"I want to--oh, how I want to! but I've got to save a few shreds of respectability. I kidnapped you the day you were going to tea with Lady C.-W. to keep you from her. I wish now I'd let you go. Then you'd have known the worst of me--or worse than the worst."
She turned a harrowed glance his way, and saw, to her bewilderment, that he was smiling broadly. Then he seized her hands and felt a need to gather her home to his arms.
She was so amazed that she fell back to stare at him. Studying his radiant face, she somehow guessed that he had known part of her story before and was glad to hear her confess it, but her intuition missed fire when she guessed at the source of his information.
"You have been talking to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, after all!"
"Not since I saw her with you."
"Then who told you?"
He laughed now, for it pleased him mightily to have her read his heart so true.
"The main thing is that you told me. And now once more I ask you: will you marry me?"
This startled her indeed. She startled him no less by her brusquerie:
"Certainly not."
"And why not?"
"I'll marry no man who is so careless whom he marries as you are." _