The Crime and the Criminal Part 33

"Not I. I'm going to bed."

"Really?"

"Really. I want to make some additions to to-morrow's bag. Sir Haselton won't thank me if I don't."

She looked at me as if she was trying to read my face. When she tried to do that I felt, in some occult fas.h.i.+on, that she succeeded. I would have been prepared to wager that she had her father's power of reading faces--and more.

"I want you to promise me something."

"What is it?"

"I want you to promise to top Lord George's score."

"You ask a hard thing, Miss Jardine. I do not profess to be Lord George Innes's equal as a shot."

"I believe, if you like, you can do anything."

"You believe too much of me. Honestly, for my sake, I wish you would believe a little less."

"Will you promise?"

"I promise that I will try my hardest, that I will do my best; and, as the archer says in 'Ivanhoe,' no man can do more."

"You will hare to do more for me; you will have to promise, and you will have to keep your promise."

It seemed an unreasonable request to make--especially in that insistent fas.h.i.+on--such a promise no man could be sure of keeping. A thousand things might be against him. I might shoot better than I had ever shot in my life, and yet not be certain of topping the score. Yet, when I saw the something that was in her eyes, I cast caution to the wind.

"I promise."

She held out her hand.

"Good-night."

She allowed me to retain her hand for a moment in mine.

"I know you will keep the promise you have made."

She was gone. I turned into my room. And, when in it, I reflected.

"If she knows that I will keep the promise I have made she knows a good deal more than I do. I wonder what will happen if I don't. I can, as a rule, see pretty straight along the barrel of a gun, but I do hope to goodness the birds will be good enough to cross my line of fire. She's the sort of girl to take the miscarriage even of such a promise as an omen. I want the omen to be all the other way."

Some one knocked at the door. It was Archie. He had a smoking jacket on.

"Aren't you coming down into the smoking-room?"

"I am not. And, if you take my tip, you won't go either. You must be almost as much in want of a trifle of bed as I am."

"I am obliged to you. I make my own sleeping arrangements." His tone was snappy. He seated himself on the arm of a chair. "Were you in earnest in what you said to me this morning?"

"To what are you referring?"

"To what you said about Miss Jardine."

"Certainly I was in earnest."

He fixed his glance upon me in a fas.h.i.+on I did not relish.

"Haven't you a grain of pity? Is there nothing human about you, Townsend?"

I felt strongly that that sort of thing must cease. The idea of Lord Archibald Beaupre's mentors.h.i.+p was an idea not to be endured.

"There has been a good deal about your manner towards me lately, Beaupre, to which I have objected, and with good cause. You have presumed on the friends.h.i.+p which exists between us in a manner of which I should have thought you, of all men, would have been incapable." He flushed. I saw I had struck home. "You must excuse me saying that if you consider that the fact of our being acquainted with each other ent.i.tles you to unwarrantably interest yourself in my private affairs, I must request that that acquaintance shall cease."

"You don't understand me--or you won't."

"I understand you better than you imagine. You are not the first jealous man I have known."

He went white and red.

"It isn't jealousy; I swear it isn't."

"It is a matter of complete indifference to me what it is. I object to it in any case."

He was silent for some seconds. He stared at his toes.

"Tell me one thing--have you proposed to her?"

"I shall tell you nothing. After the tone which you have used towards me I decline to allow you to ask me questions."

He got off the arm of the chair.

"Then G.o.d help her." He went to the door. At the door he turned again.

"I don't believe that He will suffer it."

Then he went

If Archie went on like that much longer, he and I should quarrel.

Vicarious morality is a variety of the article to which the most liberal-minded inevitably objects.

CHAPTER XX.

THE NEWS FROM TOWN.

I woke up feeling as fresh as a daisy. When Burton drew up the blinds the sun came gleaming through the bedroom windows.