“I’m here!”
Maud advanced quickly. His eyes had grown accustomed to the murk, and he could see her dimly. The smell of her damp raincoat came to him like a breath of ozone. He could even see her eyes shining in the darkness, so close was she to him.
“I hope you’ve not been waiting long?”
George’s heart was thundering against his ribs. He could scarcely speak. He contrived to emit a No.
“I didn’t think at first I could get away. I had to …” She broke off with a cry. The rat, fond of exercise like all rats, had made another of its excitable sprints across the floor.
A hand clutched nervously at George’s arm, found it and held it. And at the touch the last small fragment of George’s self-control fled from him. The world became vague and unreal. There remained of it but one solid fact—the fact that Maud was in his arms and that he was saying a number of things very rapidly in a voice that seemed to belong to somebody he had never met before.
Chapter 19
With a shock of dismay so abrupt and overwhelming that it was like a physical injury, George became aware that something was wrong. Even as he gripped her, Maud had stiffened with a sharp cry; and now she was struggling, trying to wrench herself free. She broke away from him. He could hear her breathing hard.
“You—you–” She gulped.
“Maud!”
“How dare you!”
There was a pause that seemed to George to stretch on and on endlessly. The rain pattered on the leafy roof. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled dismally. The darkness pressed down like a blanket, stifling thought.
“Good night, Mr. Bevan.” Her voice was ice. “I didn’t think you were—that kind of man.”
She was moving toward the door; and, as she reached it, George’s stupor left him. He came back to life with a jerk, shaking from head to foot. All his varied emotions had become one emotion—a cold fury.
“Stop!”
Maud stopped. Her chin was tilted, and she was wasting a baleful glare on the darkness.
“Well, what is it?”
Her tone increased George’s wrath. The injustice of it made him dizzy. At that moment he hated her. He was the injured party. It was he, not she, that had been deceived and made a fool of.
“I want to say something before you go.”
“I think we had better say no more about it!”
By the exercise of supreme self-control George kept himself from speaking until he could choose milder words than those that rushed to his lips.
“I think we will!” he said between his teeth.
Maud’s anger became tinged with surprise. Now that the first shock of the wretched episode was over, the calmer half of her mind was endeavouring to soothe the infuriated half by urging that George’s behaviour had been but a momentary lapse, and that a man may lose his head for one wild instant, and yet remain fundamentally a gentleman and a friend. She had begun to remind herself that this man had helped her once in trouble, and only a day or two before had actually risked his life to save her from embarrassment. When she heard him call to her to stop, she supposed that his better feelings had reasserted themselves; and she had prepared herself to receive with dignity a broken, stammered apology. But the voice that had just spoken with a crisp, biting intensity was not the voice of remorse. It was a very angry man, not a penitent one, who was commanding—not begging—her to stop and listen to him.
“Well?” she said again, more coldly this time. She was quite unable to understand this attitude of his. She was the injured party. It was she, not he who had trusted and been betrayed.
“I should like to explain.”
“Please do not apologize.”
George ground his teeth in the gloom.
“I haven’t the slightest intention of apologizing. I said I would like to explain. When I have finished explaining, you can go.”
“I shall go when I please,” flared Maud.
This man was intolerable.
“There is nothing to be afraid of. There will be no repetition of the—incident.”
Maud was outraged by this monstrous misinterpretation of her words.
“I am not afraid!”
“Then, perhaps, you will be kind enough to listen. I won’t detain you long. My explanation is quite simple. I have been made a fool of. I seem to be in the position of the tinker in the play whom everybody conspired to delude into the belief that he was a king. First a friend of yours, Mr. Byng, came to me and told me that you had confided to him that you loved me.”
Maud gasped. Either this man was mad, or Reggie Byng was. She choose the politer solution.
“Reggie Byng must have lost his senses.”
“So I supposed. At least, I imagined that he must be mistaken. But a man in love is an optimistic fool, of course, and I had loved you ever since you got into my cab that morning …”
“What!”
“So after a while,” proceeded George, ignoring the interruption, “I almost persuaded myself that miracles could still happen, and that what Byng said was true. And when your father called on me and told me the very same thing I was convinced. It seemed incredible, but I had to believe it. Now it seems that, for some inscrutable reason, both Byng and your father were making a fool of me. That’s all. Good night.”
Maud’s reply was the last which George or any man would have expected. There was a moment’s silence, and then she burst into a peal of laughter. It was the laughter of over-strained nerves, but to George’s ears it had the ring of genuine amusement.
“I’m glad you find my story entertaining,” he said dryly. He was convinced now that he loathed this girl, and that all he desired was to see her go out of his life for ever. “Later, no doubt, the funny side of it will hit me. Just at present my sense of humour is rather dormant.”
Maud gave a little cry.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Mr. Bevan. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all. Oh, I am so sorry. I don’t know why I laughed. It certainly wasn’t because I thought it funny. It’s tragic. There’s been a dreadful mistake!”
“I noticed that,” said George bitterly. The darkness began to afflict his nerves. “I wish to God we had some light.”
The glare of a pocket-torch smote upon him.
“I brought it to see my way back with,” said Maud in a curious, small voice. “It’s very dark across the fields. I didn’t light it before, because I was afraid somebody might see.”
She came towards him, holding the torch over her head. The beam showed her face, troubled and sympathetic, and at the sight all George’s resentment left him. There were mysteries here beyond his unravelling, but of one thing he was certain: this girl was not to blame. She was a thoroughbred, as straight as a wand. She was pure gold.
“I came here to tell you everything,” she said. She placed the torch on the wagon-wheel so that its ray fell in a pool of light on the ground between them. “I’ll do it now. Only—only it isn’t so easy now. Mr. Bevan, there’s a man—there’s a man that father and Reggie Byng mistook—they thought … You see, they knew it was you that I was with that day in the cab, and so they naturally thought, when you came down here, that you were the man I had gone to meet that day—the man I—I—”
“The man you love.”
“Yes,” said Maud in a small voice; and there was silence again.
George could feel nothing but sympathy. It mastered other emotion in him, even the grey despair that had come her words. He could feel all that she was feeling.
“Tell me all about it,” he said.
“I met him in Wales last year.” Maud’s voice was a whisper. “The family found out, and I was hurried back here, and have been here ever since. That day when I met you I had managed to slip away from home. I had found out that he was in London, and I was going to meet him. Then I saw Percy, and got into your cab. It’s all been a horrible mistake. I’m sorry.”
“I see,” said George thoughtfully. “I see.”
His heart ached like a living wound. She had told so and he could guess so much. This unknown man who triumphed seemed to sneer scornfully at him from shadows.