Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 42

"Why couldn't you have me fetched decently?"

The chorus had vanished; they two were alone, with Charles, abashed.

"Your man wanted to put me out. I'm all in, George, so I just put him out, and rang the bells for you." He sighed wearily, and added: "Anyhow, it worked."

George turned a heavy face on the footman, but d.i.c.k spoke first.

"Charles is a d.a.m.ned good servant," he said. "I know what I look like.

He was in the right, so I had to evict."

"What's your trouble, d.i.c.k?" asked George, speaking, thought the servant, as if this d.i.c.k were the first of all d.i.c.ks and all men.

"I've got a girl in a cab out there. She's worse beat than I am, George.

I want you and Liz to look after her till to-morrow."

Bruffin turned to his servant.

"Lady Elizabeth is in my study," he said. "Ask her to come to me here."

Then, to d.i.c.k, "Sit down," he went on, and disappeared, to return quickly with a tumbler in his hand.

With half-closed eyes, d.i.c.k continued as if the other man had never left him.

"She's mounting guard," he said, "with the shuvver to help, over our catch--the worst blackguard unhung."

A handsome woman of some thirty years, with ma.s.ses of darkest hair cunningly disposed, neck and shoulders beautiful beyond criticism, and dressed in a peignoir of delicate simplicity, came to her husband with a rush smooth as the full-sailed speed of a three-masted schooner.

Charles, with recovered dignity, followed in her wake.

"George! What is it, George?" she exclaimed, before she had even time to get her eyes focused upon his companion.

"That," answered George, with a derisive gesture.

"Why, it's--oh, _d.i.c.k_!" she cried.

With her long, slender hands on his shoulders, she peered close and eagerly into the battered countenance.

"Oh, d.i.c.kie dear, whatever have they been doing to its good old face?"

she demanded, with tenderness for the one, and anger for the many mingling in her voice.

"Nothing to what they got from him, Betsy--unless I'm an a.s.s. But he'll tell us when that whisky's worked in his veins a bit. He's got a lady out there, waiting. Shall I fetch her in--or you?"

d.i.c.k half rose from his chair. But Lady Elizabeth Bruffin pushed him back into it.

"I will, of course," she said, and made for the front door so quickly that Charles only just had it open in time.

As he told the butler before he slept that night, "It'd've done your kind heart good, Mr. Baldwin, to see how they were eating 'im with their eyes. His word law, you know, and do what he wanted, almost before he could say what it was, and it might be an hour before he could tell 'em why. And the terrible object he was--but with something strong and compelling, one might say, underneath."

He was thinking, perhaps of the hand which had lifted him over the threshold.

Charles had followed his mistress to the taxi.

The driver, turning on her approach, stood back, touching his cap; amazed by this condescension of jewels and silk to beauty ill-clothed, draggled, dirty and exhausted.

Suddenly Lady Elizabeth remembered that she did not know even the girl's name.

"Open the door, please," she said to the driver. And then, to Amaryllis, "My dear, you're to come in," and stretched her hands out with a motion so inviting that the girl laid her own in them, taking all their support to rise and get out on the pavement.

"Take my arm. Poor little thing, you're tired to death," said Lady Elizabeth, with what the girl called a coo in her voice.

"You don't even know my name----" began Amaryllis.

"I know something better--you're d.i.c.k Bellamy's friend. That is a pa.s.sport and an introduction, my dear."

Charles followed them up the steps. On the third his mistress stopped and turned. Charles halted on the second step.

"There's a man in the taxi?" said Lady Elizabeth interrogatively.

"Yes," replied the girl. "We're keeping him. He's drunk."

"Charles," said Lady Elizabeth, "a.s.sist the driver in keeping the person inside from getting out."

"Yes, my lady," said Charles; and, feeling that haply he was mixing in great matters, he went back to the cab and stood sentry very loftily over its further exit.

When they were inside, Lady Elizabeth shut the big door.

"George!" she said; and Bruffin took his eyes from d.i.c.k, to see his wife leading towards them a pale-faced, tear-smudged girl, with a battered sun-bonnet flung back on her shoulders and a great halo of untidy red hair topping a graceful, weary figure habited in clothes which, in their present state, would have disgraced the woman they had come from.

George took a step forward, and d.i.c.k half rose in courtesy.

"This is Miss ----" said Lady Elizabeth, and stuck.

"Oh, Liz!" cried d.i.c.k. "Beginning an introduction, when you haven't been introduced yourself! Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, you have on your arm Miss Caldegard, daughter of the eminent Professor Caldegard. George, you behold the same. Miss Caldegard, Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, and her husband, Mr. George Bruffin. He is famous for immeasurable wealth which he can't use and a few brains which he uses in all sorts of queer ways, and hasn't yet spent."

He limped towards the two women.

"Liz, dear," he went on, "please put her to bed. She's had the deuce and all of a day. She'll tell you, only don't let her talk too much."

Lady Elizabeth nodded.

"Would you like to go to bed now, dear?" she asked.

A smile, radiant on the tired face, illuminated Amaryllis.

"Oh, please, yes. I can see it--all white!" she answered.

And without a word from any of the four, the women left the men standing in the hall.

It was empty when Lady Elizabeth returned. She found George in his study.