CHAPTER VIII
A PREFERENCE FOR BLIND BELIEF
Exactly how he hoped to spend the precious hour after nine that evening, when he would see Miss Varris again, he could not say. But he was preparing for it long before the time to leave his hotel for the Tudor.
"I have always said," he reflected severely to himself, "that a healthy man should normally and naturally be careful of his appearance. But if he begins to be cautious of it—well, I begin to suspect him."
He smiled down tolerantly at the heap of evening ties he had tried in turn and discarded.
"And when he knows, by having haunted the Tudor Hotel for eight counted hours to-day, that it is a twelve minutes' walk from here at the most extravagant estimate, and, when he still has one whole, unelapsed hour before him and can only fuss and fume—my suspicions increase. Well!"
He glanced apprehensively into the glass once more before he drew away. For the first time in his life he was unashamed to recognize that he was tall and well looking and that his features were undeniably straight and good, and his eyes and hair just dark enough to contrast distinctly well with the clean, summer tan which browned his face.
"But decently good looks, of themselves, can't count much with her," he recalled, sobering his first satisfaction immediately. "She is not in the least impressed with her own infinitely finer ones; she just takes them for granted. So why should mine count with her? And certainly because a man may be fairly tall and healthy and tanned is no infallible indication that he may not be—a pilferer!"
He sat considering something very gravely then for an instant. But in a moment he sprang up, chose his coat and stick carefully, and went out.
As he passed into the street, he stood and stared long in the direction of her hotel, then shrugging his covert coat closer about his shoulders, he took himself resolutely in the opposite direction. Yet it was still well before nine as his nervous step brought him around at last before the Tudor.
He recognized this and was turning about impatiently, when a carriage, which had passed him, stopped before one of the private entrances to the suites on the ground floor and two women alighted.
A maid opened the door and the elder woman went directly in, but the younger stopped and gazed for an uncertain instant down the street.
"Oh, mother!" Preston heard her call softly after the retreating figure. "Mr. Preston!"
"Mr. Preston!" Mrs. Varris returned at once to the door beside her daughter and welcomed the young American.
"Mrs. Varris! Miss Varris!" He colored consciously with his pleasure as he came in under their light. "You were dining out," he charged guiltily, as they handed their cloaks to the maid who took his things also, "and I brought you back early!"
"But we were very glad to come back!" Mrs. Varris replied. "Indeed, we consider ourselves very fortunate in having this opportunity to see you again, for we are planning to leave to-morrow for Cornwall. And then in two weeks we sail for home. So it was most fortunate that we heard of your being here to-day, was it not?"
"Certainly, for me, Mrs. Varris," the young American affirmed fervently. "And I certainly am indebted to whoever told you."
The maid had closed the door behind them and disappeared; and, as they all sat down, Preston saw again the girl's peculiar and frankly amused smile.
"Are you, Mr. Preston?" she asked.
"I certainly am!"
"Then it was your friends—and followers, too, I presume I may say—the police!"
"The police?"
"They!"
"Well, no matter what that impends—to quote your note—I am grateful to them for this at any rate. But how did they come to tell you I was here?" he asked. "And how did you know they had been following me, Miss Varris?"
"Because they have been following us, too."
"You?"
"Yes; but only to try to trace you. We were unable to help them, but when they finally found where you were, they were good enough to let us know."
"Which was really most fortunate, Mr. Preston," Mrs. Varris repeated, "as indeed I should not have liked to leave England without knowing what were to be the consequences of that trouble we brought you into at Ely."
"But you brought me into no trouble, Mrs. Varris. As I told you that morning, I was already suspected."
"It is very good of you to say that, Mr. Preston; but you know, as we do, that before we compromised you by taking you into our confidence and then directly naming you to the police as the one who might have robbed us, there was really nothing against you. So we must feel entirely responsible for the embarrassments to which, we know, you have since been subjected. And, unless you will allow us to help clear up the further difficulties which threaten you, we shall feel ourselves very much more to blame."
"But, Mrs. Varris—"
"Please, Mr. Preston, do not evade for our sakes. Really," she rebuked, "if you had not tried to spare us before from the results of our own action, and had gone on with us for a few days from Ely, as we wished, you would have saved yourself and us, too, a great deal of discomfort."
"Truly, Mrs. Varris, I am sorry; but I did not imagine—"
"Oh, ours was nothing, Mr. Preston! But you—tell me, have you not been seriously embarrassed many times in these last weeks?"
"Well, Mrs. Varris," the young American smiled, "as I told Mr. Dunneston this morning when he asked me much the same thing, I have not been jailed yet."
"Mr. Dunneston? You saw him this morning?" the girl queried with interest. "So he is here in Plymouth, too?"
"Please, Ethel!" Mrs. Varris silenced the interruption. "But you cannot deny, Mr. Preston," she went on, "that you have been inconvenienced many times. And do you know, so far are the police at a loss for the real thief and committed to the absurd mistake concerning you which we led them into at Ely, that if you try to leave England now they probably will arrest and jail you?"
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Varris," the American tried to return lightly. "Mr. Dunneston warned me of that. In fact, he told me that they have not yet arrested me because they think, if they leave me alone a little longer, I will do something a little more bold and they can catch me, at last, with proof."
"That is what I understood, Mr. Preston; and, therefore, I sent for you at once."
"Why?"
"You are not to sail for home just yet?"
"No. I can get nothing either here or at Southampton for at least a week—possibly longer."
"Good! Then you will come with us down into Cornwall for the week you have still to stay here?"
"But, Mrs. Varris, you are only asking this because—"
"I am asking it because both I and Ethel shall be very glad to have you with us; because it will be a pleasure. And I ask it also because it gives us an opportunity to undo a part, at least, of the consequences of the trouble we have brought upon you—an opportunity which, I know, you cannot now feel that you must deny us."
She arose as she finished and offered a friendly hand.
"We leave on the Cornwall Express at nine thirty in the morning, Mr. Preston," she added. "And I must write letters and do many more things before Elsie finishes packing to-night; so I know you will excuse me now. We will see you at the train?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Varris," the young American hesitated. "Thank you," he stammered. "Yes, you will see me at the train in the morning and—oh, I certainly will go with you, if I honestly can!"
She nodded cordially and slipped into the next room; and Preston, as he turned to the girl, did not reseat himself at once, but went over and stood at the window which opened upon the lawn, gazing out silently into the dark.
"You must think me very strange," he said slowly.
"No," the girl replied, as though she had been expecting it, "only very sensitive!"
"Very sensitive?"
"Yes. I knew you were, even before you showed it that evening—the last time we saw you."
"I'm not! And I didn't show it. But," he questioned inconsistently in a moment, "how did you know it?"
"Oh, most people who pretend to take things as lightly and as recklessly as you do are really very sensitive when one knows the truth. The manner they show to others is merely their necessary defence and their natural—"
"Perversion?"
"Oh, no! Compensation. They have to make it up to themselves—"
"And to the others?"
"Yes; and, Mr. Preston, when you give your sensible part an opportunity for a time, you much more than make up for the worry you give yourself and your friends from your sensitive side."
"Thank you. May I—hope from that that perhaps I could have worried you?"
"You did. Yes; if you want to hope it."
"I do—brazenly and all unashamed, if I could believe with it that I might ever make it up to you somehow."
"Oh, you have already—you do!" the girl assured. "For, of course, I didn't worry much about you," she hurried on at once. "I only worried about—well, Mr. Dunneston and the other English who, obviously, cannot appreciate either your natural way or—"
"Or its compensation?"
"Yes. It left you so defenceless among them."
"So that was the way I appeared to you?" Preston turned back to his window and gazed out. "That was why you stood by and did—what you did for me? I knew you couldn't think much about me, of course; but I didn't think that I was to you just some one whom you felt you had to take up and care for—a defenceless Daniel in the British Lion's den!"
"Didn't you?" the girl laughed gayly. "Well, you were—just that! And now, Mr. Preston," she gathered herself up sternly, "please be serious a moment—oh, sensible, I meant, sensible! Serious means sensible to most people, but clearly not to you!"
"All right. I'll try it. What is it?"
"Then tell me first, please, just for curiosity, what is it makes you prefer arrest here to going with us into Cornwall to-morrow?"
"That's not fair, Miss Varris!" Preston had to smile in spite of himself. "You know that I would rather go with you to-morrow than do anything else I could choose. You know that—"
"I do!" the girl returned frankly. "Otherwise I wouldn't ask you why you do not come. But since I do believe that, why don't you come?"
"You know!"
"Because you consider it more necessary than ever that we should have word of you from some responsible person before it is right for us to trust you further?"
"Yes."
"Then if we had such word, you would not question your right to come with us—and escape the police?"
"Of course not."
"Well, Mr. Preston, we have received that responsible word of you at last!"
"What's that?"
"Yes; your letter finally caught Mrs. Thorne at Constantinople—she had left France—and she replied to mother. The letter came yesterday."
"Yesterday?" Preston found himself repeating dully. "Before you wrote your note to me?"
"Yes. But does that not satisfy you? Was not that the lacking essential?"
"Yes," he repeated weakly, feeling a queer sinking sensation of disappointment, which he knew the girl must notice.
"So that," he comprehended audibly, "was why you were willing to write me as you did, and could ask me to go to Cornwall with you?"
The girl laughed triumphantly.
"I thought you would think something like that, so I preserved the answer. Here is the letter," she took it from the table drawer. "Do you want to see it?"
"Thank you," he turned it mechanically in his hands. "Why! It has not been opened!"
The girl laughed again.
"No; of course not!"
"Of course not?"
"Hush!" the girl warned. "Mother was not expecting it. I did not tell her you had written for it. But I recognized the writing when it came and put it aside."
"But why?"
"Because I wanted to prove to you, if you came, that I was right in what I said to you that night at Ely. And you have just admitted it. Yes, you have!
"You remember I said that the essential facts between people are those which each judges of the other for herself. You pretended to think that the formal commendation of some responsible third person was more important. You pretended that, even a moment ago. But just now, when you supposed our invitation was the result of Mrs. Thorne's letter, you showed what you really thought of a person who requires the opinion of another."
She took back the unopened envelope.
"Now," she tantalized, as she put the end of a paper-knife under the flap, "I shall do with this just as you prefer. Shall I open it or not?"
"Please don't," Preston replied humbly. "You were right," he acknowledged. "Confidence can't come from any one else—it must be only what one believes! And if you are willing to wish to keep it that, I wish it too!"
"I am willing!" the girl withdrew the blade from the flap. She took up a pen and wrote across the front of the envelope.
"Especially, Mr. Preston, since you told me Mr. Dunneston was in town with you."
"Why?"
"Because he rather dared me, as I told you, to try my ideas with you and see how I would come out. And getting knowledge this way would not be quite fair."
She handed the letter back to the young American.
"I have forwarded it home. Mrs. Thorne will think it missed us here; and mother can acknowledge it from home. Will you mail it when you go?"
"Thank you!" He put it in his pocket, and looked about for his things. But it was almost two hours later when he finally found them, and fully eleven when he left.
And then, as the girl followed him to the door, he recalled himself once more.
"By the way," he said, "you know Mr. Dunneston is quite worried as to whether or not it is his duty to lay all the facts he has gained about me before the police."
"Yes?" the girl asked.
"He really has a most damaging array, you know. But he has settled it with himself this way. He has promised that if I make one last and more daring attempt to-night and get away with it and the police can't catch me, he will let me sail free as far as he is concerned!"
"I hope you thanked him!"
"I did!" he touched her hand quickly again and started off. But something in that last contact seemed to keep his every sense and impulse so restless and enlivened that it was still another hour and more before his nervous energies were tired to a possibility of sleep.
But at last he made his way from the docks and deserted streets into which he had wandered, and climbed the Hoe to his hotel. And, as he turned to gaze out upon the sound, the lights of the Brazilian mail ship, which sailed at midnight, were far out beyond the harbor lamps and slowly disappearing beyond the black of the southern horizon.