‘Yes?’

‘Please, sir, dinner is served.’

‘Dinner!’ I echoed. It was nearly ten, but I had forgotten about that much-postponed meal.

‘Yes, sir. Didn’t you give orders to have it ready immediately? For two, I think you said, sir.’ The voice sounded matter-of-fact enough, but in my bewilderment I nearly lost all sense of what I was doing. At last I managed to murmur in a voice that might have been anybody’s: ‘Yes, of course, for two.’

On second thoughts, I left the telephone disconnected. I felt just then that I couldn’t bear another summons. And, though my course was clear, I did not know what to do next; my will had nothing but confusion to work with. In the dark, perhaps, I might collect myself. But it didn’t occur to me to turn out the light; instead, I parted the heavy curtains that shut off the huge bow-window and drew them behind me. The rain was driving furiously against the double casements, but not a sound vouched for its energy. A moon shone at intervals, and by the light of one gleam, brighter than the rest, I saw a scrap of paper, crushed up, lying in a corner. I smoothed it out, glad to have employment for my fingers, but darkness descended on the alcove again and I had to return to the room. In spite of its crumpled condition I made out the note—easily, indeed, for it was a copy of the one I had just read. Or perhaps the original; but why should the same words have been written twice and even three times, not more plainly, for Gertrude never tried to write plainly, but with a deliberate illegibility?

There was only one other person besides Gertrude, I thought, while I stuffed the cartridges into my revolver, who could have written that note, and he was waiting for me downstairs. How would he look, how would he explain himself? This question occupied me to the exclusion of a more natural curiosity as to my appearance, my explanation. They would have to be of the abruptest. Perhaps, indeed, they wouldn’t be needed. There were a dozen corners, a dozen points of vantage all well known to Mr. Santander between me and the dining-room door. It came to me inconsequently that the crack of a shot in that house would make no more noise than the splintering of a tooth-glass on my washing-stand. And Mr. Santander, well versed no doubt in South American revolutions, affrays, and shootings-up, would be an adept in the guerilla warfare to which military service hadn’t accustomed me. Wouldn’t it be wiser, I thought, irresolutely contemplating the absurd bulge in my dinner jacket, to leave him to his undisputed mastery of the situation, and not put it to the proof? It was not like cutting an ordinary engagement. A knock on the door interrupted my confused consideration of social solecisms.

‘Mr. Santander told me to tell you he is quite ready,’ the butler said. Through his manifest uneasiness I detected a hint of disapproval. He looked at me askance; he had gone over. But couldn’t he be put to some use? I had an idea.

‘Perhaps you would announce me,’ I said. He couldn’t very well refuse, and piloted by him I should have a better chance in the passages and an entry valuably disconcerting. ‘I’m not personally known to Mr. Santander,’ I explained. ‘It would save some little awkwardness.’

Close upon the heels of my human shield I threaded the passages. Their bright emptiness reassured me; it was inconceivable, I felt, after several safely negotiated turns, that anything sinister could lurk behind those politely rounded corners—Gertrude had had their angularities smoothed into curves; it would be so terrible, she said, if going to bed one stumbled (one easily might) and fell against an edge! But innocuous as they were, I preferred to avoid them. The short cut through the library would thus serve a double purpose, for it would let us in from an unexpected quarter, from that end of the library, in fact, where the large window, so perilous-looking—really so solid on its struts and stays—perched over the roaring sea.

‘This is the quickest way,’ I said to the butler, pointing to the library door. He turned the handle. ‘It’s locked, sir.’

‘Oh, well.’

We had reached the dining-room at last. The butler paused with his hand on the knob as though by the mere sense of touch he could tell whether he were to be again denied admittance. Or perhaps he was listening or just thinking. The next thing I knew was that he had called out my name and I was standing in the room. Then I heard Mr. Santander’s voice. ‘You can go, Collins.’ The door shut.

My host didn’t turn round at once. All I could make out, in the big room lighted only by its four candles and the discreet footlights of dusky pictures, was his back, and—reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece—his eyes and forehead. The same mirror showed my face too, low down on the right-hand side, curiously unrelated. His arms were stretched along the mantelpiece and he was stirring the fire with his foot. Suddenly he turned and faced me.

‘Oh, you’re there,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

We moved to the table and sat down. There was nothing to eat.

I fell to studying his appearance. Every line of his dinner-jacket, every fold in his soft shirt, I knew by heart; I seemed always to have known them.

‘What are you waiting for?’ he suddenly demanded rather loudly. ‘Collins!’ he called. ‘Collins!’ His voice reverberated through the room, but no one came. ‘How stupid of me,’ he muttered; ‘of course, I must ring.’ Oddly enough he seemed to look to me for confirmation. I nodded. Collins appeared, and the meal began.

Its regular sequence soothed him, for presently he said: ‘You must forgive my being so distrait. I’ve had rather a tiring journey—come from a distance, as they say. South America, in fact.’ He drank some wine reflectively. ‘I had one or two things to settle before . . . before joining the Army. Now I don’t think it will be necessary.’

‘Necessary to settle them?’ I said.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I have settled them.’

‘You mean that you will claim exemption as an American citizen?’

Again Mr. Santander shook his head. ‘It would be a reason, wouldn’t it? But I hadn’t thought of that.’

Instinct urged me to let so delicate a topic drop; but my nerves were fearful of a return to silence. There seemed so little, of all that we had in common, to draw upon for conversation.

‘You suffer from bad health, perhaps?’ I suggested. But he demurred again.

‘Even Gertrude didn’t complain of my health,’ he said, adding quickly, as though to smother the sound of her name: ‘But you’re not drinking.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ I stammered. I had meant to say I was a teetotaller.

My host seemed surprised. ‘And yet Gertrude had a long bill at her wine merchant’s,’ he commented, half to himself.

I echoed it involuntarily: ‘Had?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s been paid. That’s partly,’ he explained, ‘why I came home—to pay.’

I felt I couldn’t let this pass.

‘Mr. Santander,’ I said, ‘there’s a great deal in your behaviour that I don’t begin (is that good American?) to understand.’

‘No?’ he murmured, looking straight in front of him.

‘But,’ I proceeded, as truculently as I could, ‘I want you to realize——’

He cut me short. ‘Don’t suppose,’ he said, ‘that I attribute all my wife’s expenditure to you.’

I found myself trying to defend her. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘she has the house to keep up; it’s not run for a mere song, a house like this.’ And with my arm I tried to indicate to Mr. Santander the costly immensity of his domain. ‘You wouldn’t like her to live in a pigsty, would you? And there’s the sea to keep out—why, a night like this must do pounds’ worth of damage!’

‘You are right,’ he said, with a strange look; ‘you even underestimate the damage it has done.’

Of course, I couldn’t fail to catch his meaning. He meant the havoc wrought in his affections. They had been strong, report said—strong enough for her neglect of them to make him leave the country. They weren’t expressed in half-measures, I thought, looking at him with a new sensation. He must have behaved with a high hand, when he arrived. How he must have steeled himself to drive her out of the house, that stormy night, ignoring her piteous protestations, her turns and twists which I had never been able to ignore! She was never so alluring, never so fertile in emotional appeals, as when she knew she was in for a scolding. I could hear her say, ‘But, Maurice, however much you hate me, you couldn’t really want me to get wet!’ and his reply: ‘Get out of this house, and don’t come back till I send for you. As for your lover, leave me to look after him.’ He was looking after me, and soon, no doubt, he would send for her. And for her sake, since he had really returned to take part in her life, I couldn’t desire this estrangement. Couldn’t I even bridge it over, bring it to a close? Beati pacifici. Well, I would be a peace-maker too.