The Tigress

"And yet I understand," he said, seizing on the most obvious end of the tangle. "I don't suppose I'd – you see I have been so close to desperation myself – I don't suppose I'd care, either, if – " But he got no further.

Nina hooked her fingers together tightly behind her head.

"I wouldn't think such thoughts if I were you," she said quite gravely. "You know if you do, the chance comes, and then you do something – and God – only God – will ever measure you by what you really did mean."

Then she looked at him very intently and went on with great impressiveness both of tone and emphasis: "I did give a most awful jab with that sharp thing, and the cartridge exploded and killed my husband, and – I was glad. So, of course, I am a murderess at heart. Don't you see?"

"Yes, I see," said Carleigh somberly.

"And that was my crime," she continued – "that I wanted to do it. And the results haven't mattered so much. What matters is that I wanted to do it. That's all that matters. All that can ever matter."

"I understand," said the man, his voice so low that the words were barely articulate.

There was a long, grim silence which grew oppressive.

"It's years ago, is it not?" he asked then.

"Five years," she answered. "It's not a pretty story, is it? How the duchess enjoys telling it! What she knows and what she thinks. And she's my great-aunt. Fancy what fun it has afforded the rest of the world!"

"That is unworthy of you," Carleigh rebuked under his breath – "to rail about the horror that has blighted your life. I can't laugh over horrors. They turn me cold in the night."

"Ah, but I've grown used to mine," she returned lightly. "And besides, it wasn't so bad as what followed – as the realizing that I could never be clean again. I wonder if all those who've sinned as I have sinned are trying to fill an empty life as I've been trying!"

He moved to a seat, sank down and clutched his head between his hands. "But love wasn't killed in you – you find pleasure in men. It has been in me."

She whirled in her seat so suddenly that he started.

"Good Heavens!" she cried, "you don't fancy that I get any real joy out of flirting, do you? Why, it's only to pass the time. I never forget for one second. I – I couldn't."

There was another silence – briefer, this time – and then Carleigh rose, a bit heavily.

"You're horribly human, you know," he said. "I don't know what to say or what to do. I know only that I long more than ever for you. You – you couldn't care for me again, I suppose?"

She began to laugh. "Oh, you very manlike man!" she cried. "As if I didn't know that was what you came for. No; I couldn't ever care for you. No; not possibly."

There was a tap on the door and the housemaid entered with a card for Nina, who knew whose name it bore before she glanced at it.

"Certainly, Wilson," she said; "show Mr. Andrews in at once."

CHAPTER XXV

The Interested Married Man

Lord Kneedrock lived, when he was in town, in a small suite in St. James's Square.

Here Carleigh came on a bright morning, three days later, to find Kneedrock in the little sitting-room reading before a fire, three windows open and two dogs asleep at his feet.

They talked for half an hour before the visitor reached his point.

"She told me all," he said, then. "I suppose it's fairest to say outright that she told me all."

Kneedrock didn't look at him. He was smoking his pipe, and his gaze fixed itself on the curling clouds of smoke that eddied in the cross-currents of air from the open windows.

"I suppose that she told you she was to blame, eh?" he drawled after a moment.

"She said that she hadn't cared what happened."

"It isn't a pretty story, no matter how you look at it," the viscount observed, putting his reflections into words. "Two desperate persons who didn't care what happened. Poor Darling! He didn't care what happened, either, don't you know. I've often wondered if he didn't load the thing and call her to manage the discharge."

Carleigh's eyes were fascinatedly fixed on the flames in the grate – little blue, dancing devils of light whose heat was overpowered by the chill from outside.

"I thought of that, too," he said, grimly.

"Poor Darling!" Kneedrock went on musingly. "I saw him before any one else. The smoke hadn't cleared away. His face was quite gone, you know. It was awful."

"Good God!"

There was a little pause, and then the older man said:

"What horrible things go on in the world, anyhow!"

"Yes," the other said simply.

"I saw him after that, though," pursued Kneedrock, "in his coffin, tricked out in his dress uniform, a handkerchief spread where his face used to be, and his head on a silk pillow. He looked very peaceful. Glad it was all over, I dare say."

Carleigh only nodded, still looking at the fire. And then there was another pause, which Kneedrock broke eventually with: "We're awfully primitive… Still Nina's story wasn't strictly primitive. It was all warped and twisted by civilization.

"In the stone age things would have been different. The troglodyte would have clubbed Darling, and later, if the lady played tricks, he would have ended her in the same way. That's how to manage women."

He stretched out his iron hand and wrist and looked at them – his right hand and wrist, not the scarred ones. "I hate civilization," he said then suddenly. "I hate honor, and noblesse oblige, and all such tommyrot. It's the ruin of the race."

He spoke slowly now, but with a frightful bitterness.

"Yes," said Carleigh, sympathy swelling quick, "we've gone a long way from the truth of existence."

"It isn't any use going on a wild-goose chase after happiness in these times," Kneedrock went on. "You can't cure your ills, nowadays. I tried to help myself once, and made the worst kind of a mess of it. Go back to your wife, or go off with your mother-in-law, but don't imagine that either course is going to help you to happiness. Because it isn't."

Carleigh was looking Nibbetts straight in the eyes now.

"And yet," he said frankly, "I think that I could be happy – quite happy – with Mrs. Darling."

"No, you couldn't," returned the viscount sharply – gruffly, in fact. "You couldn't. She's too shallow."

"Shallow?"

"Yes, shallow. She has no depths – of feeling, or anything else. Her whole life shows that. She was too pretty when she was young. She led her husband a devil of a dance, and she'll never reform.

"You must go after some other trail or grail, or whatever you choose to call it. You can never either help Nina or get her. Take my word for that."

Carleigh, who wasn't in any sense a strong character, felt depressed at the words. Kneedrock, who was a very strong character, relit his pipe and waited. After a little the other said:

"Do you, by any chance, know a man named Andrews?"

"I know one Andrews," answered Kneedrock, and this time he held out his left hand and wrist. "It was he who gave me that," he added, indicating the healed wound, "the night before poor Darling was shot."

"In India?"

"In India."

"What sort of a chap?"

"Tallish, rather good-looking, brown eyes and hair, young. Was in the civil service."

Carleigh looked puzzled. "I wonder if it could have been the same?" he asked, half to himself. "I met him at Mrs. Darling's the day I called."

"Oh, I dare say," said Kneedrock, non-committally. "He's followed her after five years. Once one gets the virus in one's blood, it's likely to break out any time. So Andrews is at Bath!"

"He seemed to be quite at home."

"Doubtless he is. Nina can make one feel that way. He was very much at home in the Darling bungalow at Umballa. Just before he fired at me he and Nina seemed to be sharing a single chair. You see, I was there on a spying expedition."

"You mean – " queried Carleigh. He couldn't just reconcile Kneedrock and the word.

"I'd heard that Darling was cruel to her and I traveled all the way from Tuamota to the Punjab to find out."

Sir Caryll held his peace, and Kneedrock added: "Of course I found it was the most unwarranted slander. Darling was a saint."

He got up and closed the three windows. Then he poked the coals, and took a place on the hearth-rug with his back to the grate. The dogs still slept.

"So she's amusing herself with Andrews again, eh!" he chuckled. "Recalling those halcyon days of bloodshed, I suppose."

"Perhaps," said Carleigh thoughtfully, "now, after all these years, she'll marry him."

"Oh, no, she won't," flashed from Kneedrock, who was smiling. "She can't, you know."

"I don't see why not," the other rejoined. "She's her own mistress. She's of age, and a widow, and of sound mind."

The viscount maintained a rather disconcerting silence for the space of several seconds, puffing at his pipe and following the smoke with his eyes. Then he patted the head of the nearest dog with the toe of his boot.

When, finally, he spoke, it was to ask: "Did you ever hear me spoken of as her lover?"

"Yes," answered Carleigh, surprised beyond words.

Kneedrock raised his head and his eyes as they rested for a moment upon Sir Caryll's were curiously devoid of expression.

"I was," he said with a sort of dry grimness. "I'm more than that – I'm her husband."

CHAPTER XXVI

Three Persons Go Three Ways

As he realized the full meaning of Lord Kneedrock's amazing statement, the young and unhappy baronet started. His eyes opened very wide and his jaw dropped, leaving his mouth open, too, though not so wide.

"Yes, we're married," Kneedrock continued. "We've been married a long time."

The only thing that could have drowned the sound of the proverbial dropping pin was the low snoring of one of the sleeping dogs.

"It was one of those useful businesses that are managed sometimes," the speaker amplified without any feeling apparently. "Nobody knew. Nobody knows. I went to South Africa, was supposed to have been killed in battle, and Darling came along.

"She married him at the end of a year, and went to India with him. It was about then that I got my memory back. My head was pretty badly knocked about, you see, and for months I didn't know my own name. Of course I heard about it, but I kept my mouth shut and hid myself away in the South Pacific."

Carleigh just stared. It was altogether too much for him to grasp fully. So he had no questions. But Kneedrock kept on:

"So she wasn't exactly the débutante that Darling thought. Naturally, it's all a mess. Everything's a mess. You take my advice and go off with your mother-in-law."

Carleigh was shaking now as if with the ague.

"They call the whole business love," Nibbetts said. "Well, I thank Heaven I had it young! I'm the one man that Nina can't fool. She knows it. I know it. And you know it, too, now.

"Of course she hasn't any claim on me, and I haven't on her. But we shall neither of us ever marry. That's understood. We can't very well. Don't talk about this. Going? Well, then, good-by, old chap! Better go off with Mrs. Veynol. Good-by!"

Carleigh got out somehow. He was faint and giddy. He went to one of his many clubs, and sat there for a long while. Life looked to him a very low, sordid business.

Outside there was fog and mud, slime and filth. And in his heart there was little that was cleaner.

Nina went down to Puddlewood the next week and surprised everybody.

They weren't expecting her in the least. They hadn't heard a word from her or of her, and they didn't know a thing about the skin-grafting and the wonderful success that Pottow, aided by the Andrews cuticle, had made of it.

They were all gathered in the great hall for tea when she arrived, and her entrance was rather dramatic. She insisted that she should not be announced, but permitted to find her way in alone.

The black staghound, Tara, was with her, and at her command he preceded her, bounding into the group with Nina's umbrella gripped in his lean jaws.

Every woman screamed, and every man who was not already standing sprang to his feet.

"God bless my soul!" cried the duke. "How did that beast get here? It's Nina Darling's. There isn't another such in all England."

Lord Waltheof reached for the umbrella, which Tara gave up without protest, and turned with expectant gaze toward the door.

"It's Mrs. Darling's umbrella," said Wally, examining the initials on the silver-gilt handle. "She must be here."

The duchess rose at that, and her gaze joined that of the hound. She and every one else had the same question in mind: "How will she look?" But there was a very trying delay before it was answered.

Nina came running in an instant later; but, to the dismay of the curious, she was thickly and closely veiled.

From this, of course, they drew their own conclusions, just as she wished them to. Every last one of them believed that her face was not fit to be seen.

Every man, without exception, was sorry – deeply sorry; and every woman, without exception, wasn't. Nina's beauty had always been a hard thing to combat.

For the duchess's kiss she lifted her veil the least bit and presented the extreme point of her chin. The duchess, observing closely, noted that it was unmarred, and concluded that it was the only portion of her great-niece's face that was.

"I have been perfectly brutal to all of you," Nina admitted gaily, "but when you hear my story I'm sure you'll all forgive me."

It is hard for most women to forgive a pretty woman, but to forgive a pretty woman who has suddenly become ugly is not so difficult.

They – the women, that is – were disposed to overlook the poor creature's rudeness. The men were always her slaves, so they didn't count. It was the women she had appealed to, anyhow.

"Nina never is brutal," declared the duke. "I say, Doody, haven't I always said – "

But no one was listening, not even the duchess, who rarely failed to confirm him.

"I've had the most awful time with my burns," Nina was hurrying on; "and I hadn't the heart to write letters, talk, or even see any one. I denied myself to everybody."

"Until you were quite all right again, I suppose?" ventured Lady Bellingdown in an effort to draw her.

"Until I got so desperately lonely – so hungry for the faces and voices of my own people – that I should have come to you even without any face at all."

It was an unfortunate choice of phrasing. Every one noticed it and thought of poor Darling. Every one, that is, except Nina herself, to whom the comparison never occurred. She was too occupied in thinking of how Charlotte Grey would look when she saw her without her veil.

"You needn't mind us, of course," said Charlotte just at that minute.

"Oh, I don't!" Nina came back. "I know you'll overlook any blemishes."

"Indeed we will," agreed the duke; "we're all so devilish glad to see you!" He put a hand under her elbow and whispered close to her ear. "Come sit by me. There's some very excellent seed-cake."

Then, laughing, Nina sat down with the duke on her right and Sir George Grey on the other side of her. The three ladies faced her directly. So did Lord Waltheof, who had his customary place behind Kitty Bellingdown's chair.

A footman came in with the tea-things, and Nina glanced around inquiringly. "Isn't Nibbetts here?" she asked, striving to make the question appear casual.

Everybody seemed to look at everybody else, and no one was in any haste to answer. Already the duchess was busy with the cups and saucers.

"Nibbetts has gone to Scotland," Shucks finally told her.

"Is it possible he's still running after his marmalade lass?" she laughed. "You men do have odd tastes."

"Something wrong with Nibbetts – that's a fact," declared his grace bluntly. "Does most unheard-of things."

"I don't understand," she said, turning to him with sudden seriousness. "What unheard-of things, for example?"

But here the duchess intervened. "Do be still, Pucketts. You're very hard on Nibbetts. You always were. He's never been anything but eccentric. Why magnify a phase of it into something extraordinary?"

"Because it is extraordinary," the duke defended. "Fancy a man haunting the tiger-house at the Zoölogical Gardens day after day, and for hours at a stretch! It's not sane, you know."

Nina bent her veiled face closer to him. "Does Hal Kneedrock do that?" she asked.

"He did," was the answer. "I saw him there myself. Others saw him. I say, Doody, didn't I see Nibbetts in the tiger-house?"

"I dare say you did," his wife confirmed. "But what of it?"

"It's very odd, I say. Very odd. It looks like second childhood. The kiddies like to go to the tiger-house."

No one else said a word. But they all seemed most interested, in Nina especially.

"But now he's gone to Scotland, you say?" she asked.

"Yes, to Scotland. Are there any zoölogical gardens in Scotland, I wonder? Doody, are there any zoölogical gardens in Scotland?"

"Nibbetts has gone to Dundee," the duchess returned, pouring tea. "I don't fancy he'll be able to find any tigers there."

"There's a girl there," said Nina. "He told me so. A girl and a parrot. Can you imagine Nibbetts and a romance?" Her laugh rippled through her veil.

Sir George handed her her tea, and she lifted her veil to a point between her nose and her upper lip. The women stared, and so did the men. But there wasn't a scar in sight.

"Do try the seed-cake," urged the duke. "I can recommend it. I can, really."

Nina tried it. A minute later her veil went to the bridge of her nose, which she brushed with a filmy speck of handkerchief.

They all gazed over their cups, and their eyes testified to their astonishment. Her cheeks were of rose-leaf texture, unmarred.

Then, quite casually, she put down her cup and saucer, lifted her arms, got busy with her hands, and – presto! – her hat and veil were off and her whole face bare to where her golden hair swept across her brow.

Charlotte Grey gasped. The duchess and Lady Bellingdown were dumb.

"By gad!" exclaimed Waltheof in a fervor of astonished admiration. "You're more beautiful than ever, Mrs. Darling."

"We fancied you were horribly marked," cried the duke. "We did, really. All purple blotches and that sort of thing. Didn't we, Doody?"

"Speak for yourself, Pucketts," said Doody. "I could never imagine Nina anything but lovely."

Kitty Bellingdown had turned to frown at her cavalier. She regarded his outburst as quite unnecessary and very ill-timed.

Charlotte Grey gasped a second time. Then she said: "I'd be willing to be burned to get a complexion like yours, dear."

"But, you see, I had the foundation to begin on; and I had a friend who was willing to sacrifice something for me," replied Nina sweetly. So sweetly that Charlotte Grey fairly gritted her teeth.

Lady Bellingdown grasped the situation and rushed to the rescue with a change of subject.

"Nina," she said, "did you know that Caryll had returned to his wife?"

Then it was really Mrs. Darling's turn to gasp. "Really!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. He was in England for a week, but never came near us. It seems they had a quarrel over some trifle and he ran away to give her a lesson. Unfortunately it got into the papers."

"I saw it," Nina white-lied valiantly.

"But did you see about Mrs. Veynol?"

"You mean – "

"About her marriage."

"Her marriage? Surely – "

"Yes. She's married for the third time. Now it's a journalist, a sub-editor on one of the cheap and nasty society weeklies. Fancy!"

"Ah, that cleared the way, then. Caryll would never have gone back otherwise."

"You think that?"

"I know it. He told me as much."

"You mean you saw him – saw him the week he was here?"

Nina colored faintly. She had not meant to tell.

"Yes," she answered. "He came to me at Bath. He wanted me to save him. He couldn't quite decide between the pair of them, so he wished to compromise on me."

Lady Bellingdown nearly boiled over.

"He's a most ungrateful boy," she cried. "He must have known how anxious we all were about you, and he never sent me a line. Only a wire that he had returned to Nice and Rosamond."

"If he – " Nina began, and finished with: "He might have said Rosamond and Nice. Don't you think so? It's straws, you know – "

After dinner that evening Nina got the duke alone in a corner.

"Tell me more about Hal Kneedrock," she begged, taking the clawlike ducal hand in both her own. "Is there anything really wrong, do you think?"

His grace, out of ear-shot of the duchess, didn't mince matters. "Mad as a hatter," he said earnestly. "Brain gone all to pieces over something. No doubt about it. Poor old Nibbetts!"

"But how? What has he done except haunt the tiger-house?"

"Nothing. But the way he haunts it. There all day, you know, from opening to close, every day of the week."

"That's an odd mania. Can't anything be done? Has any one talked with him?"

"Yes," answered the duke. "His man. Bellingdown and I saw his man and told him what was up. We asked him to keep his master in sight and see that no harm came to him. Just that. But the beggar exceeded his instructions. He let Kneedrock see him and then he tried to argue him out of his habit."

"And what did Hal say?"

"He didn't say; he acted. He beat the poor fellow up most fearfully. Went into a towering rage, in fact."

"And now nobody'll speak to him about it, I suppose," cried Nina indignantly. "You men are such cowards."

"No, no, no," the duke protested. "It isn't that, my child. It isn't really. But, you see, it's a most delicate matter. He probably has some reason for going there that in his own mind seems perfectly right and proper."

"Then, after all, why interfere?"

"Because he's attracting attention. Or was. Of course, he's not now. He's in Dundee, you know."

"Yes. I've heard that. When he comes back perhaps he won't go to the tiger-house any more."

His grace adjusted his monocle and carefully examined his three massive rings of yellow gold, handsomely set with jewels.

"If he does there'll be trouble," he said quietly.

"But if he's not creating a disturbance?"

"Ah, but he is. That's just it. He collects a crowd."

"How?"

The duke hesitated. "I suppose it's this that Kitty was afraid I'd tell you. You've been through a lot of nervous strain, with the fire and things, and she wanted to save you. I can see it."

Nina naturally was doubly interested. "You've gone too far now to turn back," she said. "You must tell me the rest. I have a right to know all."

"Well, it's this way" – the duke dropped his glass and turned to her, his voice very low – "it's just one cage that he's a penchant for. He stands before it, or paces up and down before it continuously." Then he paused.

Nina was growing annoyed. "What of it?" she asked.

"You know that story he's always telling you – that you're a reincarnated tigress. Well, this is the cage of a tigress."

"I think you are all very silly," she declared. "Fancy connecting the two facts! He's probably doing it on a wager – or been doing it." But she was disturbed, nevertheless.

"The tigress is a very handsome beast," continued the duke, "and – you may as well have the worst of it – he talks to her. He mumbles under his breath. Sometimes it's a tone that is most adoring, and again he berates her scandalously. And, Nina, you'd never imagine it, but it's quite true – the creature seems to understand."

Then she laughed nervously. "No," she said. "I won't believe that. It's too silly for words. I'm surprised at you, Pucketts, taking such a thing seriously. Nibbetts has been playing a joke on you. And your imagination has done the rest. I never heard such ridiculous folderol in all my life."

She stood up and started to move away, but the duke was by her side.

"There's one thing he says that is quite plain," he continued. "I heard it and Bellingdown heard it. We were there beside him, and he didn't so much as see us. He was blind to everything except that great, lithe, purring she-cat."

Nina turned to him. In spite of her little speech of repudiation she was all a-quiver from head to feet. "What was it?" she asked.

"He was calling the beast Nina."