The Wheel Spins (18 page)

“Haven’t I given you a memory you’ll never forget?”

Mrs. Laura’s eyes flashed angrily, and Todhunter laughed. He had grown rather bored by the languid beauty and her synthetic culture; but now that she had suddenly become alive, he was aware of the fact that she was slipping from him.

“I was only teasing you,” he said. “Of course, no one will ever know about us.
I
could risk nothing like that. But we might have been in a jam if I had not thought a jump ahead when that girl asked me about the peeping woman.”

“Why,” asked Laura, who had only grasped the fact that Todhunter would never go an inch out of his way to champion an unattractive middle-aged woman.

“Why? Because she’s disappeared. If I had not repudiated her, I should have to make a statement at Trieste,” Todhunter laughed. “Can’t you see the headlines? ‘Englishwoman lost on Continental express.’ Photograph of Mr. Todhunter who was on his honeymoon, when. And thus and thus. It wouldn’t be long before the English press got on to my identity. One of the penalties of fame—however limited.”

Mrs. Laura did not look as impressed as he wished, for his words had raised a new issue.

Perhaps, after all, the game was not lost, because it was not yet ended. Although Todhunter had no intention of risking a scandal when he lured her away on this trip, she saw a chance to engineer one and so force his hand.

If she went to the professor and assured him of Miss Froy’s existence the result was bound to be future complications. There could be no doubt of the professor’s probity and public spirit, which would enforce an investigation—whatever the cost to his personal convenience.

Her violet eyes suddenly glittered. As the beautiful bride of the alleged Todhunter, she was an important detail in the picture, and one that reporters would not overlook or suppress. She always made such an appealing photograph.

Afterwards there would be a sensational divorce case, and Sir Peveril—in honour bound—would be obliged to make her the second Lady Brown.

At the thought she drew a deep breath, for the wheel was still spinning.

Her counter was not yet lost.

Mrs. Laura sat and looked at the window which held the reflection of the lighted carriage, thrown on panels of rushing darkness. She smiled at her dimly-mirrored face—smoky-dark, with shadowed eyes and triumphant lips. The wheel was still spinning for her.

And since their fates were interlinked it was spinning also for Miss Froy. The little spinster was in a perilous plight, but she was an obstinate optimist. She clung to the hope that everything would come right in the end, and that at long last she would reach home.

Miss Froy loved her home with that intense perverted passion which causes ardent patriots to desert their native lands and makes men faithless to their wives. Like them, she left what she loved most—for the joy of the return.

This special absence had been a thrilling experience. During the first six months of exile, she had been excited by the novelty of living in semi-royal surroundings. Everything was so exaggerated and unreal that she had a confused sense of having strayed into some fairy tale. She wandered and lost herself amid a maze of pillared halls and gilded apartments. There seemed to be endless marble stairs—countless galleries—all duplicated in enormous mirrors, so that at least one-half of the castle was illusion.

The scenery, in its breathless beauty, held the same bewildering quality of unreality. In her letters to her family she gave up the attempt to describe blue and purple mountains, whose white crests smashed through the sky—boiling jade rivers—lush green valleys—towering precipices.

“There aren’t enough adjectives,” she wrote. “But it’s all simply topping.”

True to schedule, however, when she cracked her seventh month of absence, her rapture suffered its first eclipse and she began to realise the drawbacks of living in a castle. To begin with she got lost no longer, and there were not so many marble staircases, since she had located the mirrors.

There were other unpleasant details, including fleas in the thick carpets and rich upholstery, for the hounds were many and the servants few.

Her vast bedroom, which was like a stage royal apartment, was comfortless and cold, since the enormous coloured porcelain stove—resembling a cathedral altar-piece—was insufficiently stoked.

There were ten courses for dinner—but only one knife and fork, which the diner cleaned with bread.

All the men were handsome and respectful, but none seemed to realise that she was a curly-headed girl whose pet sport was refusing curates.

Before her last five months were up she became so homesick that her longing for a small stone house—backed by an apple orchard, and overlooking a country churchyard—grew to a passion. Sick of the theatrical scenery, she would have exchanged all the mountains and rivers for one corner of an English meadow with a clump of elms and a duck-pond.

The night before her return her excitement was so great that she could not sleep, in anticipation of her journey. She could not believe in it, although her luggage was packed and labelled. One suitcase held soiled linen, destined for a real good boil. She did her personal washing in the bathroom, by stealth, since she had seen too many pails emptied into the beautiful green river which was the communal laundry.

As she lay and tossed she heard the faint scream of an engine, muted by distance to an amplified mosquito-ping. It was the night express, which—when farther down the valley—woke up the homesick sleepers in the hotel and whistled their thoughts after it, as though it were a monstrous metallic Pied Piper.

Just as, later, it called to Iris, it now drew the little spinster from her bed. She ran to the window and was in time to see it shoot past the end of the gorge, like a golden rod of light slipping into grooves of darkness.

“Tomorrow night
I
shall be in an express, too,” she gloated.

It was a rapture to anticipate her long journey, stage by stage and frontier by frontier, until she reached a small dingy station which was merely a halt built amid empty fields. No one would meet her there, because her father was afraid that blundering Sock, in his ecstasy, might leap at the engine and try to lick its face too.

But they would be waiting for her farther down the lane—and her eyes grew misty at the thought of that meeting. Yet even then she would not reach her journey’s end until she ran through a dim white gate and a starlit garden, to see the light streaming through an open door.

“Mater,” said Miss Froy, with a lump in her throat.

Then a sudden fear touched her heart.

“I’ve never been so homesick before,” she thought. “Is it a warning? Suppose—suppose something happened—to keep me from getting home.”

Something happened—something so monstrous and unexpected that she could not really believe in it. It was an adventure which could only be credited in connection with any one else.

At first she was certain that some one would soon come to her aid. She told herself it was a fortunate circumstance that she had met the charming English girl. They were compatriots, and she could rely on her with utmost confidence, because—were the situation reversed—she knew she would tear the train apart, wheel by wheel, in order to find her.

But as the time crawled on and nothing happened, doubts began to flock into her mind. She remembered that the girl had a touch of sunstroke and was far from well. She might be worse, or even seriously ill. Besides it would be difficult to try to explain the circumstances when one was ignorant of the language.

There was an even worse possibility. Iris might have tried to intervene and been snatched up, too, in the great machine which had caught her up in one of its revolutions. At the thought, Miss Froy’s lip grew beaded from desperation and fear.

Then, suddenly, she felt the braking of the train. Its clatter and roar died down to a grinding slither, and with a mighty jerk the engine stopped.

“They’ve missed me,” she thought triumphantly. “Now they are going to search the train.”

And once again she saw the lights of home streaming through the open door.

As she waited in happy expectation she would have been surprised and gratified to know that the beautiful bride—who looked like a film star—was thinking of her.

Although she was only a pawn, she was the central figure in a plot to restore her liberty. At that moment the professor was standing in the corridor just outside Mrs. Laura’s coupé. She had only to call to him and Miss Froy’s ultimate release would be put in train.

As there was plenty of time before Trieste was reached, she delayed in order to be quite certain of the wisdom of her decision. Once she had applied the match she could not stop the blaze of publicity.

In reality, however, her mind was made up. Although she had discovered the barrister’s drawbacks he was the original prize for which she had played. When she was Lady Brown, Sir Peveril would be merely a husband and she knew how to deal with this useful domestic animal. Hitherto she had been humiliated by the knowledge that his programme did not include marriage, and in her anxiety to impress him favourably, she had developed an inferiority complex.

Royal smashing tactics suited her better. Her voice was arrogant as she spoke to the barrister.

“What are we stopping for?” she asked, looking out at a squalid platform, dimly visible in a few flickering lights.

“Frontier,” explained the barrister.

“Help. Have we got to get out and go through the Customs?”

“No, we take on the officials here. What’s that shock-headed lunatic up to?”

The barrister frowned as Hare raced into the telegraph office, shouting back the while to the guard who was yelling to him. It was evidently a first-class slanging match, but unintelligible to the English passengers who were deprived of its finer points.

As a matter of fact it had struck the bright young man that he could save his own valuable time at Trieste if he took advantage of the halt to send off Mrs. Barnes’ telegram to Bath, England. The idea, however, did not make him popular with his compatriots.

“Fool’s holding us up,” growled the barrister, looking at his watch.

To his surprise Laura was perfectly calm at the menace to their time-table.

“Does it matter?” she drawled. “We shall get there.”

“We might lose our connection. We’ve cut it pretty fine. That reminds me of something. I was wondering whether, in
your
interests, we had better part before we get into Italy. We might run up against some one we know.”

“Personally I should not compare Italy with Piccadilly Circus. Still, it’s on the map. What do you want to do?”

“I could take the Trieste-Paris express. Could you manage by yourself at Milan?”

“Perfectly. I shall find some one. Or some one will find me. In any case, I can look after myself.”

There was a confident note in her voice—associated with the dismissal of cooks—for the professor had just gone back to his compartment. She rose from her seat, prepared to follow him, when the Customs officials appeared at the end of the corridor.

That check was of vital importance to Miss Froy. As Laura did not wish to be interrupted, she wanted for the professor’s luggage to be examined. In the interval the barrister had sensed a situation which prompted a few leading questions.

“What makes you look so serious?” he asked.

“You forget, this may be serious for me.”

“In what way? We’re not parting for ever, are we? I can meet you in London.”

“How nice.”

Now that her pride was no longer a buffer between the natural woman and self-expression, Laura felt mistress of the situation. She held the winning card.

“I’m wondering,” she said, “if I can endure the name of ‘Brown,’ after being Mrs. Parmiter.”

“Will the occasion arise?”

“Well, if there’s a divorce, you could hardly let me down. It’s not done, is it, darling?”

“But, my sweet, there will be no divorce.”

“I’m not so sure. I know you made it very plain to me that you would not give your wife the evidence to divorce you. But she’ll read about us in the papers—and no woman could stand for that.”

“You seem very sure of your publicity. Perhaps you have a better knowledge of the possibilities than I have?”

The barrister glowered at her as though she were a hostile witness, for he had realised the threat which underlay her smiles.

She meant to try to rush a situation.

“I can reassure you on one point,” he said coldly. “If your husband brings an action, you may lose your own charming name. But you will not be called upon to make the greater sacrifice. There is already one Lady Brown. My wife will never divorce me.”

Laura stared at him incredulously.

“You mean, she’d take it lying down?” she asked.

“Does the posture matter? The point is that we have a complete understanding. It would be against our mutual interests ever to part company. But I think here is no real risk of publicity. Do you?”

He knew he had won and she knew it too. His cool level voice stirred up Laura’s smouldering passion.

“If there was,” she said, “it seems as if I was the only one that stood to lose. You boast that your wife won’t divorce you. Well, my husband would. And I thank God for it. At least I am married to a real man with decent natural feelings.”

The barrister screwed his monocle in his eye in an instinctive effort to preserve his dignity.

“I’m afraid I’ve disappointed you,” he said. “I had no idea that I had led you to hope for anything beyond a pleasant and unconventional holiday.”

Before Laura could speak, the Customs officer entered their compartment and was very courteous and obliging over the luggage and passport of the distinguished Englishman and his beautiful bride.

After he had gone the professor appeared again in the corridor—still puffing at his pipe.

Laura shivered at the sight of him because he reminded her of what she had nearly lost by a premature disclosure. Her fine house, her social position, her respectability, and perhaps even her children would all have been swept away for a man who would not marry her.