The Tigress

Nina sat on the second step of the stile, and Sir Caryll sat on the lowest, cuddled in close by her feet. He had her hand in his and his eyes were raised to her face.

Affairs had moved on very fast – even since luncheon half an hour ago.

"Tell me the truth – your husband is really dead?" the man demanded passionately. "It isn't some horrible spasmodic playfulness of yours to talk loneliness and all that while really – "

"No," answered Nina, nestling her fingers closer and speaking in a warm, low voice. "No, he's really dead. He was cleaning his guns and one was loaded. So careless in his boy, wasn't it? No, it's quite all so. Really, I am marriageable, eligible, and all the rest of it."

Carleigh kissed the nestling fingers. "To think that I ever fancied I knew what love was before!" he murmured. "You dear! You darling! May I call you Nina?"

"But you've called me Nina three times already since luncheon."

"Have I? I didn't know it. Dearest, I do not know what I am doing or saying any more. You have me wound all in and out around these fingers.

"Do you know, I thought I knew a little bit about love and about women, and about what men and women could mean to one another. But I was a baby at the game. I knew the lines, don't you know, but I didn't know their expressiveness. I was a child playing with the letters of the alphabet."

"You saw the symbols, but you didn't know their meaning?"

"Exactly so."

"But now you know."

"Now I know."

Nina hugged herself seductively together. "Isn't it deliciously, delightfully dangerous to sit like this and think that if any one should appear anywhere there would be such an outbreak of talk as would even cause last month to pale with envy?"

He kissed her hand. "I'd love it all," he said. "I can hold no dearer wish than to share a scandal with you. 'There goes the man who made off with Mrs. Darling!' How I should look down with contempt on all less clever men!"

Nina rippled gaily. "You know you do this rather well," she praised. "I'm sure that whoever peeped would fain believe the lie."

"I hope so."

"I'm sure of it. I'll tell you how flirting compares with marriage. It's like the best rouge and the real color. You can manage the rouge; the real color you can't."

"You're so charming!" he exclaimed, rather absorbing the hand. "And, oh, I'm so happy! When we go home, should they guess, what will it matter?"

She laid her free hand on his shoulder. "I'd mind," she said gently. "I don't want them to talk. I'm asked to the house to comfort you; not to catch you or cure you."

"But, Nina, my darling, what can it matter? You will marry me some day soon."

She started so violently that the old stile creaked and bid fair to fall down. The staghound, which had been lying quietly on the grass at their feet, started up, too. Carleigh saw his bared fangs and heard his ugly growl.

"Oh, dear!" he protested, trying to pull her back into her place. "Why, what is it?"

"Don't say it!" she cried, in a tone of violent protest. "Don't! Don't! I'm perfectly willing to play with you at love; but don't speak of marriage.

"When men say that word it always brings me to my senses. I remember, then. The good in me comes back. I get my devil into harness once more. Have I sinned again? Have I fallen into the pit afresh? Does this man really and truly mean what he says? No, no, no! Oh, no!"

He did pull her down, and he got his arm around her.

"Why, love! Why, precious!" he murmured soothingly. "Dear, dear girl! Darling Nina!"

"I don't love you!" she cried vehemently. "I never can love you! I do love one man and I can't love any other. It's no use trying."

And then she was out of his grasp, striking him away as roughly as his other betrayer had done.

Carleigh stood paralyzed. In some ways he was little more than a boy. But – if a boyish heart that had swelled with newborn hope was shrunken suddenly by old, wizened despair – there was at any rate one man-thing about him, for presently he turned his back to her and that ghastly moan – the sob of a suffering man – fell on her ear.

At that Nina came down the two mossy steps and looked at him with curious irresolution, her hand pressed against her lips.

There was a long moment. There was another sob. Then, having drawn close to him, she placed her fingers on his arm.

"What can I do?" she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

He sobbed again. "You can love me," he whispered.

"But I love some one else."

"He doesn't love you. I do."

"But I love him."

"And I love you."

He reached back his arm and pulled her around in front of him. His eyes were shut, his face was wet. He held her hard against his bosom. Their lips met.

The staghound's growl ended the long, dumb seconds. It was provoked by Kneedrock, who was beside them.

Carleigh didn't care in the least. In spite of her struggling he held her fast, and his voice rang almost fiercely as he said:

"Don't tell this yet. You see we are going to be married."

"Yes?" observed the viscount, without a trace of wonder or any other emotion. "I wish you joy."

With that she wrenched herself free. "No, no!" she cried in a passion of protest. "It isn't so! It's not true! I have refused him. You know my story, Hal! You know how it is with me!

"I can never marry any man but one. I told him so, but he wouldn't believe it. And then he cried and I kissed him. You tell him that I can never marry him. Tell him everything."

Kneedrock's lip curled in a cynical half-smile.

"It's not my story to tell," was his retort. "I don't understand it. I never do understand love-stories. It's quite enough for me to go about alone without any love-story of my own and come suddenly upon broken-hearted people like yourselves."

Carleigh was deepest crimson. "You might spare Mrs. Darling at all events," he said haughtily.

Kneedrock glanced at him indifferently. "I'm not being rough with any one," he returned. "I haven't any faith in human nature, so stiles never give me shocks."

He paused a brief moment and looked over their heads at the gray sky. Neither of them spoke.

"I say," he added suddenly. "Do you know it's long past three? You'll both be jolly late for tea unless you make haste. I'm off." And he was gone.

"I wonder what will happen next," Nina hazarded as she watched Nibbetts disappear over the crest of the hill. Then she turned to Carleigh with a most enticing smile.

"Well, as we know one another pretty well now, perhaps you had better take me in your arms and kiss me very nicely once more, for it is quite possible we may never have another chance."

Carleigh could hardly place himself. Whether he was in his right senses or had all at once lost his reason – turned lunatic – he couldn't just tell for the life of him.

Nevertheless, he eagerly obeyed her suggestion. He took her in his arms and he kissed her – not once, but thrice.

Then they walked home.

CHAPTER XIV

Truths, Kisses, and Ducal Ennui

Carleigh, in his room before dinner that evening, took his head in his hands and wondered.

He wondered a long time, but nothing very clear resulted. Then he rebrushed his disordered hair until it was smooth and shining once more, and went down.

The dinner guests were Mr. Telborn and the Marchioness of Highshire, who happened to be legally man and wife. Both of them were exceedingly lofty personages.

"We wouldn't have come if we had known the Greys were here," the Marchioness said confidentially to Lady Bellingdown, with a slight frown as they sat waiting. "Mr. Telborn never liked him, anyway, and since the affair of – "

The marchioness rested her case there.

"Where's that old Rembrandt copy of yours now?" Telborn asked his host, fixing his glass in his eye and glaring about the room. "It used to hang over there."

"Oh, that's up in London on exhibition," writhed his lordship. "Some vow it's real, you know."

"Real – huh!" returned Telborn expressively.

"Well now, it may be real, you know," said the duke, coming forward with valor. "And if it isn't, ever so many good pictures are copies. I say, Doody, haven't we a lot of copies at Puddlewood?"

But the duchess was otherwise interested.

"You've heard about Emily, of course," she was saying, addressing the marchioness. "The poor thing's run off with the second coachman. A very nice-appearing man, I believe. But it seems that he has one wife already."

"How terrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Darling, who was sitting close to the fire, yet shivered slightly.

"People do run off sometimes," reminded Carleigh, who was standing beside her. "I don't know that it's so terrible. It settles things quickly."

"But not when the man's married; only when the woman's married," the duchess qualified. "When the woman's married it does settle things, of course; but when the man's married, it doesn't.

"I will say this – a husband left in the lurch is always much more obliging at helping to set things straight than is a woman. Think of the Betterton-Nyns! They've been waiting for ten years. So has Captain Leigh."

"I wonder why people who love one another don't bolt oftener," said Carleigh in a low voice to Nina, dragging a chair near as the duchess turned away and perching himself on its arm. "Conventionality is a very ghastly thing, with which I have less patience every hour."

"If they both want to, they generally do," she replied without smiling. "But they must both want to."

"Well, then, why don't the Betterton-Byns, or whatever's the name – I never heard of them before – do it, then?"

"Why, they have done it. They've been off for years. In Alaska or somewhere. Betterton-Nyn, not Byn, is the name they took. It's Claudius Synge and Elsie Fairweather, don't you know."

"No, I didn't know," said Carleigh, much shocked. "And who is Captain Leigh?"

"Leigh Fairweather, of course."

"Oh, of course."

After this came the dinner, and then coffee in the rose-pink picture-room, the royal blue picture-room being closed for the week to all but decorators.

Nina had slipped away, and the other women were having a thoroughly enjoyable time talking about her.

"She doesn't really want him, does she?" the marchioness asked Lady Bellingdown. "I thought that there was something very bad about him. If he's so nice, why didn't the mother marry him herself?"

"That's what every one is asking," said the duchess, noting her hostess's embarrassment. "I'm sure I think he's very nice myself. And so pathetic, too. We're going to ask him to Puddlewood later."

"I don't think that Nina will ever marry again," observed Charlotte Grey.

"And yet, you know, she'd be rather dear to marry," the duchess commented. "I always liked Nina Darling. Of course, we understand that she shouldn't. Yet she's very nice."

"Poor Colonel Darling!" sighed Lady Bellingdown reflectively.

"He's at rest now," said the duchess. "Poor soul! And yet," she added, "I did always like Nina."

"We all like her," agreed Lady Bellingdown. "And Caryll, who only came last night, is not only consoled, but desperately in love again, which is a great triumph for her particular talent."

"Yes," the marchioness agreed. "They say Caryll did have a hard time. Fancy! A mother jealous of her own daughter. Strange persons, those, Americans!"

"She almost killed Caryll," declared his aunt warmly. "The poor fellow was nearly crazed."

"He might do worse than marry Nina," the duchess decided. "There are a few years' difference in their ages, but that doesn't matter nowadays since Lady Grandison's leap in the dark. Ten years' difference there, and they're like a pair of turtle-doves."

"I know," said Lady Grey in her meditative way. "It wouldn't be bad, of course; but, then, Nina would never have him. She has her own story, you know."

"I know," said the duchess.

Nina, coming out of her own room to run back downstairs, ran into the arms of a man instead.

"Oh!" she cried in surprise; not in alarm.

"I saw you run away," laughed the right man's voice in her ear. "So I ran, too. Kiss me again and I'll make a bargain with you. Let me make all the love I please, and I'll promise not to speak of marriage again."

He had her locked fast against his breast. "You promise me something," she suggested. "Go to Harry – to Kneedrock, you know – and get him to tell you my story. You'll never want to marry me then; and I'll have a clear conscience."

"What rot! Fancy my fussing over your story! What do I care about your story?"

"But you must know it," she insisted, "because, you see, it will make it easier for both of us. After a while – when you've married that girl – you'll be glad that I was honest with you."

He was kissing her.

"I shall never marry the girl," he declared. "I shall marry you."

She laid her cheek against his shoulder. "If you marry me I shall get rid of you somehow," she whispered. "I love love, but I simply hate husbands. It won't do to marry me. You ask Kneedrock. He knows."

She could feel his heart flopping about in his bosom.

"You – you extraordinary creature!" he faltered.

"Yes, isn't it awful?" she asked. "I think myself it is shocking. But I can't help it. I am made so."

He tried to laugh and failed.

"Do you want to kiss me any more?.. No?.. Then step off my gown and I'll run back downstairs."

Sunday went off well. Some went to church and some didn't. Carleigh didn't. Nina didn't. They went for a walk instead.

"This is heavenly," said the man. "I'm so happy. You are an enchantress. I feel that before I met you I never knew what anything meant."

"Men all say that," she affirmed. "Men are very stupid. They get a little chain of pearly speeches together, and then they expect women to fancy that no other man ever even so much as saw a pearl before."

"Say what you please," he cried, all but caroling in his joy. "Only let me be by to hear, and let there be woods ahead where I may kiss you again."

"It's odd you should enjoy kissing me," she returned placidly. "It's droll. That's another thing I find charming in men. It's the energy with which they kiss a new woman."

Carleigh laughed heartily. "How rippingly you put it!" said he. "Come now, how many men have kissed you?"

"This year or in my whole life?"

"Either."

She considered a little and then she yawned. "I don't see the good in troubling to count. I know now that you are not really in love, so why bother further?"

"Bother further? Not really in love? What do you mean?"

"Why, my dear boy, don't get huffed. Surely even you know that a man really in love can't put up with a conversation like that. Of course, I'm asked here to cure you of the blues; not to plunge you into a fresh trap. You know that. And it's nice to see how well I do it."

"So you think I'm not really in love, eh?"

"I jolly well know you aren't."

There was a slight pause while Carleigh thought fast and furiously. Nina walked on, insouciante. He was the least of her troubles.

After a little they entered the woods. Then he finished reflecting and took up talking again.

"So you are just flirting with me?"

"Only that."

"And yet you know as well as I do that in every flirtation there lies the seed of a pure and passionate love."

She shook her head. "Not with me. My flirtations are pure, but my passionate love is all seed – gone to seed."

"The seed can be replanted," he suggested.

"More than planting must go toward my future harvest. I tell you frankly that my spade-and-harrow days are over."

"Let me spade and harrow."

"Oh, what rot it all is!" she exclaimed abruptly. "I'm so deadly weary of everything."

"Quite so," he interrupted eagerly. "So am I. We'll go away. I'll get a post somewhere. And we'll shunt all our troubles."

"I'd grow tired too soon," said Nina slowly. "You see, you wouldn't grow tired, but I should."

Carleigh hardly knew how to take that.

"I'm so interesting," she continued – "so fascinating – what you will. And a man always enjoys my talk while it's going on. But I'm tired of my own talk and want a change."

He smiled. "Keep still," he said, "and perhaps I'll give you one."

"That's a very old joke," she rebuked sorrowfully. "Oh, I can be quite certain of being bored to death with you. I mustn't consider you for a minute."

"What's to be done about me, then?"

"Oh, you will make up with the girl some day, and then – " she stopped.

"And then?"

"Oh, how you will hate yourself!"

Meanwhile – or later, between church and luncheon – Waltheof, in the billiard-room, was chalking a cue. "It will be a good lesson," he said. "He needs a shaking up."

"He'll get a shaking up," said the duke. "I say, Nibbetts, won't Carleigh get a shaking up?"

"It's wicked – all of it," declared Kneedrock gruffly. "I've never loved a woman in my life" – which was a lie – "but I've notions about things. Nina is unreasonable."

"You think so because you've never loved a woman," said Sir George.

"A woman is unreasonable because she is a woman – " began Nibbetts, but Sir George cut in before he could finish:

"And a man's unreasonable because she is a woman, too," he laughed. "Don't preach, but walk out and find them, if you feel it is really your duty to chaperon your cousin. All I can say is what I've often said before – poor Darling!"

"No, I won't go out and find them," Kneedrock refused, pitching his huge bulk down on the window seat. "It's none of my business."

"More's the pity," was Sir George's comment. "I'll tell you what I think. It ought to be your business. That's what every one of us thinks."

An ugly white look overspread the viscount's rugged visage, and the subject was dropped.

Later, however, in the privacy of his wife's room, the duke said more – much more.

"Doody, it's rotten how they go on here about dear Nina." That was how he began it. He repeated himself a great deal, and he appealed to the duchess for verification with every other sentence. But his finish was almost impassioned.

"I'm getting very sick of the whole thing, I'll be dashed if I'm not. Of course she shot her husband, or Kneedrock shot him, and of course Carleigh is in love with his fiancée's mother.

"But I say it's very tiresome to have to hear about 'em all the time. I'm very tired of hearing of 'em all the time. I say, Doody, you know I'm tired of hearing of 'em all the time. Don't you, Doody?"

"Yes," answered the duchess, "and I am, too. I'm sure I don't want to hear any more about them now. Do ring the bell for Olivette, and go to your room."

CHAPTER XV

A Last Walk and a Last Appeal

Monday, of course, meant the breaking up of the party and the conclusion of Nina's mission. She had done what she could and she was delighted to think that for once in her misguided career she had actually performed a service not wholly selfish.

As Carleigh emerged from the breakfast-room, where he and his aunt were among the last, Lady Bellingdown slipped her arm through his, saying:

"Well, my dear boy, we've done you good, haven't we?"

He glanced back over his shoulder to indicate whom he had in mind – for Nina had come down but a minute before – last of all – and said, smiling: "She's a wonder."

"Isn't she? Doesn't she say the most startling things? She's a bomb made animate."

"One is always wondering what will come next," he declared. "I'm wondering it just now."

As he proposed it himself, he might very easily have foreseen it without waste of speculation. They took a long walk – the last of their series of long walks.

"And now," said lover to loved as they went at swinging pace through the park, the staghound as usual at their heels, "where do you go next?"

"Carfen," she answered. "Just beyond the border of Carlisle."

"I know them," he announced delightedly. "I'll get myself asked."

But Nina shook her head. "Don't," she adjured. "Because if you do, I'll leave."

He stopped short in his stride. "In Heaven's name, why?" he asked, his astonishment and dismay undisguised.

"Because I will not have you ruined with your fiancée," was her calm answer.

"My dear girl, I have no fiancée. That's all over."

"Oh, no, it isn't."

"Oh, yes, it is."

She freed the hand he had been holding and then slipped it into his again. Then they walked on.

"Love's never over," she observed wisely. "You'll only care the more for her later." Then she raised her eyes and beheld him deeply crimson.

"With me it's all over," he declared in a voice that shook with mingled feelings. "You don't know of what you speak. It couldn't possibly be made up. I couldn't marry her. I couldn't possibly live in the house with – with – " He stopped short.

"It will straighten out," said Nina calmly. "Such things do, you know."

"Not this kind. Wait – look!" He opened his coat, thrust his hand within, and drew a jewel from some hidden pocket. It was a ring which he held out to her.

She took it from him, and her eyes opened very wide. For a brief space she gazed at him pensively and silently.

"Of what are you thinking?" he asked.

"I was wondering if you had it always with you."

"Always."

"Does your man transfer it from one suit to another?"

He had not expected just that question, but he repeated himself.

"Always," he said a bit stiffly, and added: "Do you want it?"

"Her ring?" she cried with an arrogant little laugh. "No, indeed."

He looked at her and then at the ring in her fingers. It was a rather remarkable pearl, surrounded by faintly bluish diamonds.

"Pearls mean tears," she said.

"Then throw it away!" he commanded irritably. "I don't want it, either."

He saw her, without another word, toss it off into the forest mold. In spite of his command he had not expected that. It gave him a start.

"Perhaps the stones were not real," she said lightly. "Were they?"

"Yes," was all that he could answer.

"What an effective bit that would make on the stage," she suggested. "A man bidding a woman throw away a rope of pearls if she would not accept them as a gift from him, and she taking him at his word and pitching them into the sea."

"You are a strange creature," he commented. "Fancy chucking off a ring in that manner!" It was very plain to be seen that he was annoyed.

"I know," she said seriously. "And I'd chuck myself away just as gaily if it were possible to do it completely. I was on the verge of doing it once in India. I thought anything would be better than the things that were."

"Why didn't you, then?"

"I couldn't. I was prevented. My whole life was changed again at that very instant."

"And what happened?"

"The man I was going to chuck myself away on cut his throat."

Carleigh gasped. "Killed himself?"

"Not quite," Nina answered coolly. "He was prevented, too. But he carries the scar. Every time he shaves he must think of me."

"My dear girl," he remonstrated. He was still thinking of the ring. It was of such value that he began to question whether she was quite in her right mind. "You do let one in for thrilling experiences. That I must say."

"Now as then," she admitted, stopping short. "I've been very horrid," turning her head until her eyes looked directly into his. "I'm not just myself to-day. I don't know why I threw your pearl away. Come back with me and I'll pick it up."

"Can you find it, do you think?" he asked, palpably pleased.

"Of course. I threw it on the bare roots. I meant to pick it up on our way back."

He was smiling now, as transparent as any schoolboy. "You are most awfully odd, you know," he said, vastly solaced. "But if we pick it up, you must let me put it on."

"No, no."

"Yes, yes."

"Well, if you insist. But it will mean nothing."

When they reached the spot both looked searchingly about. Carleigh went down on his knees and soiled his sensitive hands delving among the bare roots. Nina tossed aside bits of mold with the toe of her boot. But the ring was not found.

"Never mind; it's been a thrilling experience. You said so yourself," she remarked lightly. "And it isn't every day that a man gets a really new sensation, you know. And that was utterly new to you, I'm sure."