CHAPTER IV
IVOR TRAVELS TO PARIS
It is rather a startling sensation for a man to be caught suddenly by the nape of the neck, so to speak, and pitched out of heaven down to—the other place.
But that was what happened to me when I arrived at Victoria Station, on my way to Paris.
I had taken my ticket and hurried on to the platform without too much time to spare (I'd been warned not to risk observation by being too early) when I came face to face with the girl whom, at any other time, I should have liked best to meet: whom at that particular time I least wished to meet: Diana Forrest.
"The Imp"—Lisa Drummond—was with her: but I saw only Di at first—Di, looking a little pale and harassed, but beautiful as always. Only last night I had told her that Paris had no attractions for me. I had said that I didn't care to see Maxine de Renzie: yet here I was on the way to see her, and here was Di discovering me in the act of going to see, her.
Of course I could lie; and I suppose some men, even men of honour, would think it justifiable as well as wise to lie in such a case, when explanations were forbidden. But I couldn't lie to a girl I loved as I love Diana Forrest. It would have sickened me with life and with myself to do it: and it was with the knowledge in my mind that I could not and would not lie, that I had to greet her with a conventional "Good morning."
"Are you going out of town?" I asked, with my hat off for her and for the Imp, whose strange little weazened face I now saw looking over my tall love's shoulders. It had never before struck me that the Imp was like a cat; but suddenly the resemblance struck me—something in the poor little creature's expression, it must have been, or in her greenish grey eyes which seemed at that moment to concentrate all the knowledge of old and evil things that has ever come into the world since the days of the early Egyptians—when a cat was worshipped.
"No, I'm not going out of town," Di answered. "I came here to meet you, in case you should be leaving by this train, and I brought Lisa with me."
"Who told you I was leaving?" I asked, hoping for a second or two that the Foreign Secretary had confided to her something of his secret—guessing ours, perhaps, and that my unexpected, inexplicable absence might injure me with her.
"I can't tell you," she answered. "I didn't believe you would go; even though I got your letter by the eight o'clock post this morning."
"I'm glad you got that," I said. "I posted it soon after I left you last night."
"Why didn't you tell me when we were bidding each other good-bye, that you wouldn't be able to see me this afternoon, instead of waiting to write?"
"Frankly and honestly," I said (for I had to say it), "just at the moment, and only for the moment, I forgot about the Duchess of Glasgow's bazaar. That was because, after I decided to drop in at the bazaar, something happened which made it impossible for me to go. In my letter I begged you to let me see you to-morrow instead; and now I beg it again. Do say 'yes.'"
"I'll say yes on one condition—and gladly," she replied, with an odd, pale little smile, "that you tell me where you're going this morning. I know it must seem horrid in me to ask, but—but—oh, Ivor, it isn't horrid, really. You wouldn't think it horrid if you could understand."
"I'm going to Paris," I answered, beginning to feel as if I had a cold potato where my heart ought to be. "I am obliged to go, on business."
"You didn't say anything about Paris in your letter this morning, when you told me you couldn't come to the Duchess's," said Di, looking like a beautiful, unhappy child, her eyes big and appealing, her mouth proud. "You only mentioned 'an urgent engagement which you'd forgotten.'"
"I thought that would be enough to explain, in a hurry," I told her, lamely.
"So it was—so it would have been," she faltered, "if it hadn't been for—what we said last night about—Paris. And then—I can't explain to you, Ivor, any more than it seems you can to me. But I did hear you meant to go there, and—after our talk, I couldn't believe it. I didn't come to the station to find you; I came because I was perfectly sure I wouldn't find you, and wanted to prove that I hadn't found you. Yet—you're here."
"And, though I am here, you will trust me just the same," I said, as firmly as I could.
"Of course. I'll trust you, if—"
"If what?"
"If you'll tell me just one little, tiny thing: that you're not going to see Maxine de Renzie."
"I may see her," I admitted.
"But—but at least, you're not going on purpose?"
This drove me into a corner. Without being disloyal to the Foreign Secretary, I could not deny all personal desire to meet Maxine. Yet to what suspicion was I not laying myself open in confessing that I deliberately intended to see her, having sworn by all things a man does swear by when he wishes to please a girl, that I didn't wish to see Maxine, and would not see Maxine?
"You said you'd trust me, Di," I reminded her. "For Heaven's sake don't break that promise."
"But—if you're breaking a promise to me?"
"A promise?"
"Worse, then! Because I didn't ask you to promise. I had too much faith in you for that. I believed you when you said you didn't care for—anyone but me. I've told Lisa. It doesn't matter our speaking like this before her. I asked you to wait for my promise for a little while, until I could be quite sure you didn't think of Miss de Renzie as—some people fancied you did. If you wanted to see her, I said you must go, and you laughed at the idea. Yet the very next morning, by the first train, you start."
"Only because I am obliged to," I hazarded in spite of the Foreign Secretary and his precautions. But I was punished for my lack of them by making matters worse instead of better for myself.
"Obliged to!" she echoed. "Then there's something you must settle with her, before you can be—free."
The guard was shutting the carriage doors. In another minute I should lose the train. And I must not lose the train. For her future and mine, as well as Maxine's, I must not.
"Dearest," I said hurriedly, "I am free. There's no question of freedom. Yet I shall have to go. I hold you to your word. Trust me."
"Not if you go to her—this day of all days." The words were wrung from the poor child's lips, I could see, by sheer anguish, and it was like death to me that I should have to cause her this anguish, instead of soothing it.
"You shall. You must," I commanded, rather than implored. "Good-bye, darling—precious one. I shall think of you every instant, and I shall come back to you to-morrow."
"You needn't. You need never come to me again," she said, white lipped. And the guard whistled, waving his green flag.
"Don't dare to say such a cruel thing—a thing you don't mean!" I cried, catching at the closed door of a first-class compartment. As I did so, a little man inside jumped to the window and shouted, "Reserved! Don't you see it's reserved?" which explained the fact that the door seemed to be fastened.
I stepped back, my eyes falling on the label to which the man pointed, and would have tried the handle of the next carriage, had not two men rushed at the door as the train began to move, and dexterously opened it with a railway key. Their throwing themselves thus in my way would have lost me my