The Tigress Part 53

"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 s.p.a.ce 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. "n.o.body knew. n.o.body 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 debutante 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.