CHAPTER III
JASMINE
CAREY, his interview with Sir Provost concluded, was taking his hat and stick from Ford, the butler, when the sound of an opening door at the farther end of the corridor brought him sharply about. As he turned, a girl came out, paused, and stood stock still looking at him. Carey had secured his professional appointment with Sir Provost by dint of inducing the latter to receive him half an hour before the first patient upon his list for the day.
The girl who stood regarding him had obviously just returned from a ride in the park. Her red-brown hair was almost concealed beneath her hat, but her habit did full justice to her slim figure, and Carey, staring, infatuated, at the apparition in the doorway, decided, contrary to a former conviction, that riding boots did not necessarily disfigure the female foot.
"Jasmine!" he exclaimed, and advanced toward her.
The girl hesitated oddly. Her colour, freshened by exercise, began to desert her. And her eyes, which, despite their deeper blue, at times resembled those of her father, were lowered; almost, she seemed angry.
"Jasmine!" Carey repeated, and halted, feeling the unspoken rebuff.
Then she raised her eyes, but he could read no gladness in them; and, extending her hand:
"Good morning," she said. "Whatever are you doing here so early?"
"I came to see your father," he replied simply. "I had not expected or hoped to see you."
"I have just come in," she explained, in a queerly mechanical way. "I didn't know you were an early rising fiend." She became flippant. Carey thought that the mood was forced. "I'm going to have a tub and then—let me see" She ticked the items off on her fingers: "Grapefruit, Shredded Wheat, toast and marmalade and a cup of coffee. After which, Douglas, with the aid of the Daily Mirror which is thrilling, because one's name may crop up (with photograph) almost any morning, I shall become nearly human."
"I see," said Carey. "In other words, it is much too early for a chat."
"Why?" the girl asked, looking at him naïvely. "Is there something particular you want to talk about?"
"Yes," he declared. "I should have welcomed ten minutes' conversation."
"Oh!" She turned suddenly, so that he was unable to detect her expression. "Well, come up to the snuggery."
She started upstairs and Carey followed.
"Ten minutes, mind—I shall time you!"
"Ten minutes will be enough."
Jasmine paused, three stairs ahead of him, turned and looked down.
"Are you being rude to me?" she demanded.
He laughed, but not mirthfully, meeting her glance; and so they stood for a while until presently she dropped her lashes. Then:
"Go on," he said, and joined her where she stood.
Together they mounted to the first floor, entering the little room which was her own peculiar territory, every appointment of which seemed a part of her, inseparable from her individuality. It was oddly modern, yet its modernity could not conceal the woman who had planned it.
Jasmine snatched off her hat and threw it on a settee, releasing a shock of irrepressible red-brown hair. Then, throwing herself into an armchair:
"Give me a cigarette, Douglas," she begged. "My first as a rule is in my bath, but it's nice to be vicious sometimes."
Carey suppressed a sigh and, opening his cigarette case, offered it to the girl. In her present mood Jasmine always eluded him, and he recognized that she had deliberately adopted this manner as a defence. She had foreseen what was coming, he told himself bitterly, and meant, if it were humanly possible, to head him off. But whilst by no means aggressive, he possessed a quiet obstinacy which he had inherited from his father.
"Jasmine," he said, "why have you been avoiding me lately?"
"Avoiding you!" the girl cried, looking up at him; and a fascinating little frown appeared upon her smooth brow: "I thought you wanted to explain why you had been avoiding me."
"Really?" He laughed. "That, of course, isn't quite fair. I have 'phoned, and called and sent you a note. Is that avoidance?"
"Douglas!" The girl's expression was one of such absolute incredulity that Carey, watching her, could not believe it to be assumed. "How can you stand there and say such things! When did you 'phone me?"
She seemed to be growing angry, and her anger was a song to the man who loved her. For although it was all an unpleasant misunderstanding, if she had been indifferent she would not have cared.
"Listen, dear." He spoke very quietly, seating himself upon the arm of her chair. "I saw you last on Tuesday night."
Jasmine nodded, smiling scornfully.
"It was impossible for me to have a word with you privately."
"Oh, quite," she murmured, puffing furiously at her cigarette.
"You know it was," he continued; "but early the next morning I 'phoned and Clarice told me that you were out."
Jasmine raised her eyes to him.
"What time did you 'phone?" she asked, speaking in a very cold voice.
"At half-past ten."
"At half-past ten on Wednesday morning?"
"Yes."
A fleeting smile showed upon the girl's lips, and now she was watching him intently.
"Well," she asked, "what did you do then?"
"I hoped you would ring me when you came in, but you did not do so. At half-past five I 'phoned again, and left a message with Clarice that I had seats for a first night at the Criterion."
"Really!" she said, softly. "And again I took no notice, I suppose?"
"None whatever," Carey replied. "At eight o'clock I despaired and gave the seats away. I thought at least you might have let me know if you had another engagement, and, naturally, I felt a little sore."
"Naturally," Jasmine murmured.
"So throughout the following day I did nothing. But on Friday, as I could not understand your silence, I telephoned again at four in the afternoon. You were out, but I left a message with Clarice requesting you to ring me directly you came in, and saying that the matter was urgent. You did not do so. Jasmine, I became perfectly wretched—because I could not imagine what I had done to offend you; and on Saturday morning I wrote you a note and sent it around to you personally by Ecko. He returned, saying that you were out, but that he had left the note with Ford. You have never answered it. Jasmine"—he bent over her—"tell me why? What have I done?"
He tried to take her hand, but she thrust him aside, and, springing up, stood looking at him with such an expression of scorn upon her flushed face that his courage deserted him and, although innocent of offence, he knew all the mortification of discovered guilt. She threw her cigarette into the hearth, then turned and faced him again.
"I trusted you," she said in a low voice. "I thought you were different from the silly bunch of people I generally go about with. I admired your cleverness, I—I liked you. Now, to crown everything, you stand here in my room and tell me lies—deliberate lies."
"Jasmine!"
Carey felt that he had turned pale. But now the mask of scorn was gone and the girl's delicate lips twitched.
"Oh, don't pretend!" she cried pathetically. "It makes it so much harder." She raised her hand. "No, don't say anything. Just wait a moment; I want to ask Clarice a question."
She crossed the room and pressed a bell.
"But listen to me," Carey began in a curiously suppressed voice.
Standing with her back to him:
"Wait," Jasmine implored, "please wait."
There was a rap on the door, and Clarice, Jasmine's maid, entered: a healthy-looking Jersey girl with a freckled complexion, ingenuous to the point of absurdity. She smiled in undoubted welcome upon finding Carey in the room; but:
"Clarice," said Jasmine, sharply, "why did you forget to tell me that Mr. Carey had telephoned."
"Telephoned, Miss Jasmine?" The girl's eyes opened roundly as saucers. "Not all this week, unless Mr. Ford spoke to him."
"Oh, yes," Jasmine nodded coolly. "Of course it would be Ford who answered the telephone. Get my bath ready in ten minutes, Clarice."
Looking vaguely bewildered, the girl went out, and as the door closed. Jasmine turned to Carey.
"So much for your telephoning," she said. "You might easily have made a better excuse, Douglas. You know the house well enough to be fully aware that Ford, and not Clarice, would have answered the telephone. And now for your note."
She crossed to an intimate little lacquer bureau, opened it, and from a pigeon-hole took out a yellow envelope, which Carey immediately recognized as one of his own. Without a word, she turned and handed it to him.
"There is your note," she added quietly.
Carey, conscious of a growing wonder and alarm, glanced at the address in his own handwriting—looked quickly at the girl who was watching him with an expression so strange that he found himself unable to classify it—and then pulled out the contents of the envelope: a perfectly blank sheet of his own note-paper!
"A joke, no doubt," said Jasmine. "But I am afraid"—and again her lips twitched—"it didn't quite appeal to me."
Carey temporarily found himself at a loss for words. He stood stupidly looking from the envelope to the blank page and back again to the girl. Some cigarettes lay on a little saucer inside the bureau, and she took one almost mechanically and lighted it.
"It wasn't necessary to go to so much trouble, Douglas," she declared. "I have no right to criticize your actions or your friends. Madame Sabinov is obviously very fascinating and I suppose I should compliment you upon your conquest."
"Madame Sabinov!" Carey exclaimed, "but I"
"I have told you that you owe me no explanation," Jasmine interrupted, "please don't offer one. You will only annoy me. I had heard from several sources that you had been seen about with her before last Tuesday night."
"It's a lie!" Carey cried, angrily, "an infernal lie! I had never seen her in my life before last Tuesday night."
Jasmine looked at him in such a way that he longed to fall upon his knees before her and plead forgiveness for these strange sins which he had not committed. Tears were trembling upon her lashes. He felt that he was going mad, or that all the world was joined in some strange conspiracy against him.
"On Tuesday afternoon, when you put me off for Bobby's party," she continued brokenly, "I knew. All that you have done since was so unnecessary." She controlled herself, clenched her hands, and, looking at him with blazing eyes:
"Surely," she cried, "when you came for me at the last moment, you didn't expect me to join you? Do you think you can make a convenience of me? Do you think I want you on sufferance?" She turned away, biting her lips. "I went with someone else," she continued in an unnatural voice, "and found you there—with her."
"Jasmine!"
Carey's voice had grown strangely husky, too. In three strides he was beside her, his arm about her shoulders.
"Go away!" she cried imperiously, stamped her foot, twisted free and flung apart from him, turning, pale-faced. "Please go away. I don't want to say any more about it."
A knock sounded upon the door, and:
"Your bath is ready, Miss Jasmine," the voice of Clarice announced.
Jasmine walked resolutely across.
"Very well, Clarice," she called. "I am coming."
She opened the door, turned, and:
"You know your way out, Douglas," she said, "Good-bye."