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“I have got a table for our coffee,” said Mr. Shirley, “also some chairs; try if you can pick up a few more, Lord Lullworth—and you, Overton—get a couple of the easiest cane ones and we shall be all right.”
Thus it was that the sweet companionship of the dinner-table was broken up. Mr. Shirley was too well accustomed to dinner-giving to fancy that one invariably longs to retain in the twilight and among the scent of roses the companion one has had at the dinner-table. And thus it was that Mr. Ernest Clifton found that the only vacant chair was that beside Josephine—it took him as much manoeuvring to accomplish this as would have enabled him, if he had been a military commander, to convince the War Office that he was the right man to conduct a campaign.
And thus it was that Pierce Winwood found himself by the side of Amber, while Lord Lullworth had fallen quite naturally into pony talk with a young woman who, having been left pretty well off at her father’s death the year before, had started life on her own account with a hunting stable within easy reach of the Pytchley.
And then the coffee came, with the sapphire gleam of green Chartreuse here and there, and the topaz twinkle of a Benedictine, and the ruby glow of cherry brandy. It was all very artistic.
There was a different note in the chat on the terrace in the twilight from that which had prevailed in the dining-room. In the dining-room people had seemed to be trying to talk down the band, now they were talking with it. The band was making a very sympathetic accompaniment to their chat—nay, it even suggested something of a possible topic, for it was playing the dreamy strains of the “Roses of Love” Valse. People could not talk loud when that delicious thing was wafting its melody round them—ensnaring their hearts with that delicate network of woven sounds—breathing half hushed rapture at intervals and then glowing as the June roses glow in a passion that is half a dream.
“I suppose you have lovelier places than Ranelagh in Australia,” said Amber as she leant back in her chair. Pierce Win wood was leaning forward in his.
“Oh, yes, I dare say there are lovelier places in Australia,” he replied. “You see there’s a pretty fair amount of room in Australia for places lovely and the opposite. But there’s no place out there that’s just the same as this place here on such an evening as this. I used to wonder long ago if I should ever see Ranelagh under such conditions as these—distinguished men—there are some distinguished men here—and beautiful women—music and moonlight and the scent of roses, and above all, the consciousness that this is Home—Home—in Australia we think a good deal about this England of ours. People in England have great pride in thinking of Australia as their own, but their pride is nothing compared to that of the Australians in thinking of England as their Home.”
“Of course we are all one,” said Amber. “But your father could scarcely have told you about Ranelagh: it did not exist in its present form in his day—that is to say—oh, you see that I am assuming that he was in Australia for a good many years.”
“I heard about Ranelagh first from a stock rider on one of my father’s farms. He was one of the best chaps in the world. He showed me a prize or two that he had won here in the old days,—his old days could not have been more than five or six years ago. I had also a groom who used to play polo here.”
“And people talk about the days of romance being past!” said Amber. “I dare say you could furnish our school—I wonder if Guy mentioned it to you——-”
“Oh, yes; he told me all about it.”
“You could furnish the romance class with some capital plots to work out, could you not?”
“I dare say I could if I knew all the circumstances that led up to the fragments that came under my notice. But I could not ask the stock rider or the groom how they came to sell their horses and settle down to live on thirty shillings a week in a colony. I could not even ask either of them what was his real name.”
“I suppose that almost every romance begins by a change of name?”
He was silent for some moments. Then he threw away the end of the cigar which he had been smoking and drank the few drops of liqueur which remained in his glass. He drew his chair an inch or two closer to hers saying in a low tone:
“It was only a short time before I left the colony that I had brought under my notice the elements of a curious romance. Would you care to hear it?”
“I should like very much. If it is unfinished it might make a good exercise for Mr. Richmond to set for one of his classes at the school—‘given the romance up to a certain point, required the legitimate and artistic ending—that would be the problem.”
“A capital notion, I think. I should like very much myself to know what the legitimate ending should be. But I have noticed now and again that Fate is inclined to laugh at any scheme devised by the most astute of men. That is to say when we have in our possession what seems the beginning of a real romance Fate steps in and brings about the most disastrous ending to the story.”
“That is nearly always what happens. It only proves that romance writers know a great deal better than Fate how to weave the threads of a story into a finished fabric.”
“Ah! those ‘accursed shears’!... I wonder if... never mind, I will tell you the romance as far as it came under my notice and you or your literary adviser—or perhaps your father—but I don’t suppose that Sir Creighton would trouble himself over a miniature romance.”
“Oh, wouldn’t he just? He reads nearly every novel that comes out—especially the French ones.”
“Oh, then I need not hesitate to ask you to place before him the fragment which I acquired in the colony less than a year ago.”
“It will be a capital exercise for him—working out the close artistically. The story begins in England, of course?”
“Of course. Let me think how it does begin. Yes, it begins in England—at a seaport town. There is a shipbuilding yard. The head of it is, naturally, a close-fisted, consequently a wealthy man—one of those men who from insignificant beginnings rise by their own force of character to position of wealth and influence. He has a son and the son has a friend. The son has acquired extravagant habits and his father will not sanction them, nor will he pay his debts a second time, he declares—he has already paid them once. When the relations between the father and the son are in this way strained, the son’s friend is suddenly taken sick, and after a week or two the doctors in attendance think it their duty to tell him that he cannot possibly recover—that they cannot promise him even a month’s life. The man—he must have been a young man—resigns himself to his fate and his friend, the son of the shipbuilder comes to bid him farewell. In doing so, he confesses that in what he calls a moment of madness, he was induced to forge the name of the firm on certain documents on which he raised money, but that the discovery of the forgery cannot be avoided further than another fortnight, and that will mean ruin to him. The dying man suggests—he is actually magnanimous enough—idiotic enough—to suggest that he himself should confess that he committed the crime. That will mean that his friend will be exculpated and that he himself will go to the grave with a lie on his lips and with the stigma of a crime on his memory.”
