A PEACEMAKER
On Christmas morning Grace Carling knelt before the altar in Westminster Abbey, where, as usual at this early service, there were but a few worshippers.
Through the vast, dim spaces above, beyond the radiance of the lighted chancel, the soft coo of the pigeons outside was distinctly audible above the low tones of the ministrant priest. Of other sounds there were none; the very spirit of peace seemed to brood over the glorious old place, the spiritual heart of England to-day as through so many long, long centuries.
There was peace in Grace Carling’s heart for the moment, renewed strength and courage for the long ordeal through which she and her beloved were painfully passing. She knew that at this hour, yonder in the prison chapel, such a little distance away in reality, Roger himself would likewise be kneeling; and, as always at these times, they were very near to each other, in that spiritual communion which, to those who have experienced it, is a sublime and eternal fact, albeit a fact that even they can neither explain nor understand.
When she went out presently with the words of the benediction still lingering in her ears, her pale face was serene and beautiful as that of an angel.
There were very few people about at this early hour—a mild, grey morning, with the great towers of Westminster looming through the haze like those of some dim, rich city of dreams. She walked swiftly, absorbed in thought, and as she reached Buckingham Gate came face to face with Austin Starr.
“Why, what an early bird!” she said, smiling up at him.
“I’ve been around to your place with some flowers—spring flowers, that mean hope! I guessed you would be at church, and wanted you to find them to greet you,” he explained.
“That was dear of you, Austin; just like you. Have you breakfasted? No? Then come back to breakfast with me, do. You haven’t met my dear little Miss Culpepper yet.”
“Thanks, I’d like to. Is that the old lady I saw right now? She looks a real peach.”
“She’s priceless, and such a comfort to me. What a long time since I’ve seen you, Austin. I began to think you were forgetting me.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he assured her earnestly. “But I’ve been very busy and very worried. I’ll tell you all about it directly, if I may.”
He did look worried—she had noticed it at once—but there was no opportunity to say more at the moment, as they had reached the lift.
Miss Culpepper came running out at the sound of Grace’s key in the lock.
“Oh, my dear, a gentleman has been with a mass of such beautiful flowers and a great basket of fruit!”
“I know. Here he is, come back to breakfast. Miss Culpepper—Mr. Austin Starr. Now go in to the fire, Austin, and make yourself at home—you’ll find Dear Brutus on the hearthrug, I expect—while I take my hat off.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Culpepper,” said Austin. “Mrs. Carling has just been telling me what a great comfort you are to her, and I can well believe it. We all hated her to be living here all alone. Why, did you expect me or is someone else coming?”
His quick eyes had noted that the table was laid for three persons, and already adorned with his own gifts.
Miss Culpepper paused in the act of laying another place, and put her finger to her lip mysteriously, with a significant glance towards the door.
“That’s Mr. Carling’s place,” she whispered. “It’s always laid ready for him at every meal. It pleases her, and I think it’s a beautiful idea really.”
Austin nodded sympathetically, but felt troubled nevertheless. The thought occurred to him that “if things went wrong with Roger”—the only way in which at present, even to himself, he would acknowledge the probability of Carling being convicted of the crime with which he was charged—Grace would surely die, or lose her reason.
He felt somewhat reassured, as to her mental state anyhow, when she re-entered, looking so cheerful, so self-possessed, yet, alas! physically so fragile.
She seemed perfectly normal, and yet he noticed how often she glanced at that vacant place with the chair drawn up before it, with such a curious expression in her eyes, as if she indeed saw Roger sitting there in the flesh. It was absolutely uncanny.
“Now what’s the trouble, Austin?” she asked, when the simple meal was at an end, and Miss Culpepper retreated with the breakfast things, leaving them together. She had drawn up a chair for him in front of the fire, and he knew that the vacant easy one was reserved for Roger, that “shadowy third.”
“First it’s about Roger. I’ve been following up every trail I could think of, Grace, and every one of them has led just nowhere. I seem to get up against a blank wall every time. I’ve even been to Snell again, but he can’t or won’t help; and sometimes I feel just about in despair!”
She met his troubled gaze serenely.
“I know you are leaving no stone unturned, Austin, and that the reason why you have not been to see me was because you had discovered nothing at present. But don’t let it trouble you. We must just go on keeping our hearts up, trusting and waiting. That’s sometimes the hardest thing in life, but it’s got to be done. And Roger will be cleared, how or when I do not know—yet: only that he will be saved, freed, his innocence established before the whole world!”
“You’re wonderful, Grace! I wish to heaven I had such faith.”
“I couldn’t live without it,” she said simply. “We all seem to be moving in a terrible fog, or, rather, to be so enveloped in it that we can’t move, we don’t know which way to turn! But the fog’s going to lift, the sun’s going to shine—in time! Have you seen much of the Cacciolas lately?”
“Not for the last few days. I’ve been in and out a good deal, have got to know them pretty well, and the more I know them the better I like them—even young Melikoff—and the more I’m convinced that none of them had any more to do with that unhappy woman’s death than you or I had, and know no more about it. They seldom speak of it now—never when Boris is there. Lady Rawson seems to have had a sort of malign influence over him, which Maddelena resented bitterly; so did the maestro, for all he’s so gentle and tolerant, dear old man!”
“Was that Miss Maddelena I saw you with last week?” asked Grace quietly.
“Saw me with her—where?”
“In St. James’s Park. I was sitting down. You passed quite close to me.”
“Oh, yes! I did meet her one day, by pure chance. I never saw you. Curious too, she was very upset because Boris had had a letter from Sir Robert Rawson asking him to go and see him, and she didn’t want him to do so.”
“Did he go?” asked Grace quickly.
“I don’t know—I haven’t seen or heard from any of them since. But if he did, and anything transpired that would give us any light, Maddelena would have got it out of him and sent word to me—sure.”
“I wonder why Sir Robert wanted to see him,” mused Grace, “and why Miss Maddelena didn’t want him to go?”
He smiled.
“She was afraid it would upset him. She’s very fond of Boris, and that’s why she was so jealous of Lady Rawson’s influence over him. As a matter of fact, she’s made up her mind to marry him, and I guess she’ll have her way! She’ll be a charming and a jolly good wife too, though it will be a case of ‘one who loves and one who graciously permits himself to be loved.’ They’re going to the States in the spring; Cacciola’s just fixed up a season in New York, where Boris will make his début, and then they’ll go on tour. I bet Maddelena comes back as Mrs. Melikoff. She’s just about the most masterful young woman I’ve ever met, though a real good sort too.”
He smiled again, indulgently and reminiscently, then sighed.
“Cacciola wanted Winnie to go with them,” he continued slowly, staring fixedly at the fire; “but I gather she’s refused. It would have been a big chance for her; and besides, I’ll have to go over myself in the early spring. We could all have gone together, and she’d have met my mother and sisters, and—— But now of course——”
He turned to Grace with startling suddenness. “Grace, do you know that Winnie’s giving me the frozen mitten?”
“Giving you the—what?” she echoed in sheer surprise.
“That she’s turned me down. I haven’t even seen her since the day after she came back from Bristol.”
“Nor have I, or only for a few minutes between whiles. She’s been away most of the time, with all these provincial engagements—only got back late last night; she rang me up.”
“Did she say anything about me?”
“No, only that she hadn’t seen you. I’m going to help down at Bermondsey. Aren’t you coming too?”
“No—I don’t know. She hasn’t asked me. Fact is, she hasn’t answered my letters—she’s simply ignored me. I went around yesterday, and her maid said she wasn’t at home, though I’m plumb certain she was all the time. Then I rang up, and again the maid answered and said Winnie had gone to bed, and again I didn’t believe her. Why is she treating me like this? I can’t understand it. It’s worrying me no end. I’d have tried to find out from George, but he’s in Paris, as you know.”
Grace nodded.
“When did you see her last?”
“I told you—the day after she returned from Bristol. It was at Cacciola’s, as it happened, and she came on here to you afterwards. I came with her as far as the lift, but she’d scarcely speak to me, though why I don’t know to this moment.”
He looked so utterly forlorn and lugubrious that Grace had to smile, while she rapidly reviewed the situation and recalled her own vague suspicions.
“You say you last saw her at Cacciola’s,” she mused. “What happened there?”
“Nothing that I know of,” he asserted earnestly. “They were singing—or Boris was—when I got there, and I didn’t see Winnie at first; she was sitting in a dark corner.”
“H’m! And Miss Maddelena was there?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Does Winnie know what you’ve just told me—about Mr. Melikoff and Maddelena?”
“I don’t know—how should I? I’ve told you I haven’t seen her since. What’s that got to do with it, anyhow?”
“Quite a lot, perhaps. Look here, Austin, I’ll be quite frank with you. When I saw you and Miss Maddelena—if it was she—last week, until I recognized you I really thought you were—well, just a pair of sweethearts. You really appeared to be on such very confidential terms!”
“Great Scott! Why I—she—it’s only her way! She’s impulsive, affectionate with people she likes, even when they’re only casual acquaintances like myself. The old man’s the same. See here, Grace, you don’t mean that you think Winnie’s jealous—jealous of Maddelena?”
She laughed outright. She couldn’t help it. His consternation and his air of injured innocence were so comical.
“I think it highly probable, my dear Austin.”
“But it’s absurd!” he protested. “And it’s not a bit like Winnie.”
“Isn’t it? I’m afraid you don’t know much about women, Austin, even though you are a novelist, and psychologist, and all the rest of it.”
He laughed too, then, somewhat ruefully:
“I guess you’re about right. You generally are. Question is—what’s to be done?”
“What did you send her for Christmas?”
“Only some flowers and candies. I took them around myself last night and left them. But I’ve got this.” From his waistcoat pocket he extracted a dainty little morocco case, opened it and passed it to Grace, adding sheepishly, “You see, I wanted to give her this myself, if she’ll only see me.”
“Oh, how beautiful!” Grace cried, as she examined the ring—a superb sapphire surrounded by small diamonds.
“Sapphire’s her favourite stone, and just the colour of her eyes, that wonderful deep blue,” he said. “I bought it weeks back, and have been carrying it around ever since, waiting the opportunity to give it her.”
“You are a dear, Austin, and you won’t have to wait much longer. Take my advice and go straight along to Chelsea now; you’ll catch her before she starts out for church, and you can go with her. I’m coming along later. She’ll see you right enough this time.”
He obeyed with alacrity, and when she had started him off she rang up Winnie. Martha answered, and asked her to “hold the line” while she fetched her mistress. A minute later came Winnie’s fresh young voice.
“That you, Grace, darling? How are you? You’re coming along directly?”
“Yes, in an hour or so, I’ve just had an early visitor—Austin. The poor boy’s awfully upset.”
“Really? Why?” Winnie’s tone had become frigid.
“I think you know well enough, old thing. He’s confided to me that you seem to have given him the frozen mitten!”
A pause. Then, icily:
“I don’t understand the expression; it sounds exceedingly vulgar!”
“Win, darling, don’t fence, or pretend not to understand. It’s serious. I saw something was wrong; I’ve suspected it for some time, and had no end of trouble to get it out of him. But he says you’ve cut him systematically ever since you got back from Bristol, that you won’t see him or answer his letters, and he’s frightfully unhappy about it.”
“Is he?” Another pause, and what sounded like an angry sob. “It’s all very well for him to talk, but if you’d seen him as I did, with that Maddelena Cacciola, when he didn’t know I was there—why I thought he was going to kiss her in front of everybody! And—and—oh, I can’t explain, but I—I saw and heard quite enough that day to—to realize that—I’d made a mistake—or he had.”
“Winnie, you’re quite wrong! I know all about that, and there’s nothing in it. Surely you know the Cacciolas well enough by this time to know how unconventional and—well—effusive they are. Austin admires the girl in a way, but he says she’s ‘the most masterful young woman he’s ever met,’ and—he loves you, Win; you know that in your heart. It—it’s not worthy of you, dear, to mistrust him so—not to give him a chance to explain. Darling, are you going to let the rift widen—perhaps to spoil both your lives for nothing—when there’s so much real sorrow in the world?”
“I know. I’ve been pretty miserable too, and—I don’t know when I shall see him again,” said Winnie tremulously, and Grace smiled.
“You’ll see him in about ten minutes, if he’s been able to find a taxi. He’s on his way to you now. Bye-bye till lunch time.”
She put up the receiver.