The Coward Behind the Curtain. Marsh Richard
she cried, "he must be perfectly hideous!"
"He is not," admitted Dorothy, "what some people would call good-looking."
"Fancy going you don't know where with such a man as that! – you who have always said that in a man you must have beauty of mind, and soul, and form!"
Dorothy bent over the frock she was folding.
"We have been taught that a plain casket may contain a priceless jewel."
She might have been taught it; yet she doubted if Mr Emmett was a casket of that kind. Before long she was sure that he was not. Her box, whose appearance produced uncomplimentary remarks from her guardian, was fastened on the top of the car; presently she had quitted the convent, with all her worldly possessions. Mr Emmett was his own driver. She sat beside him, on the front seat, while the chauffeur sat behind. She would have preferred to have had it the other way round, but it was settled for her without her having a voice in the matter. A big coat was slipped over her shoulders; she was on the seat; a rug was wrapped round her knees; they were off; before she clearly realised what had happened; certainly before she had said all the adieux she would have liked to say. It was all like some strange dream; whose strangeness was accentuated by the subsequent flight of the throbbing monster through the air.
What was the name of the town at which they stayed that first night she never knew. She had not curiosity enough to ask; no one volunteered the information. After dinner, which was to her a wholly unaccustomed feast, at which she ate scarcely anything, in spite of Mr Emmett's well-meant gibes and jeers, she stole up to bed as soon as she could; to a big bed; in a big room, in the old inn, there she lay, a lonely, forlorn maiden; thinking, puzzling, doubting, wishing, with all her heart, that she was back again in the safe shelter of the convent. She wished it often during the days and weeks which followed. She was a young girl, and, like a young girl, all agog to stand on tiptoe, if needs be, and open the windows which would enable her to look into the house of life. Under normal circumstances, that motor cruise might have been to her one long delight; but the circumstances were abnormal; so that for long afterwards a motor car stood for her as a sort of synonym for a nightmare.
Everything was spoilt by Mr Emmett's presence. From the first moment he had impressed her disagreeably; that impression grew with each hour that she spent in his near neighbourhood. The trouble was that it was so hard to get away from him. He would have her sit beside him on that front seat; ignoring utterly her reiterated requests to be allowed to sit behind. During the first days they motored continually; stopping in the daytime only to eat and drink-principally, so it seemed to Dorothy, where Mr Emmett was concerned, for the latter. The quantity he drank amazed and frightened her; always, when night fell, he had drunk too much. During the day the liquor he consumed had an unhappy effect upon his driving. He was quick enough to perceive that he had not inspired the girl with sentiments of affection; and this he resented. But, instead of setting himself to get the better of any distaste she might have for him, he seemed to take a malicious pleasure in paying her out for entertaining a feeling of the kind. Discovering that she felt a not unnatural girlish timidity in her new position as passenger on a motor car, he went out of his way to increase instead of lessen it, so that, before long, her timidity became actual terror. Nearly always he took the car along at what appeared to her to be a dangerous speed; as the day advanced, and the drinks multiplied, the speed grew more. At first she remonstrated, feebly enough; but he only laughed, and pressed the car still faster. Afterwards she sat silent; but she could not prevent her cheeks from turning white, or her mouth from shutting tighter. When he saw these signs he delighted in taking risks which made her heart stand still. One afternoon he knocked down a child in a village street on the other side of Blois. At first, in her agony, she thought it was killed; but it appeared that only its arm was broken. When the people came flocking round he gave the parents two thousand francs in bank-notes; one could not but feel that they would have been willing to have their own arms broken on those terms. He was lavish enough with his money. They spent that night in Tours. The next day he offered her a wad of notes, and suggested that she should go into the town and provide herself with a sufficient wardrobe. She had not realised till lately how scanty it really was; continual travelling made drains on her resources which she found it hard to meet. But he offered her cash in a way which jarred on her every nerve; she would not buy herself clothes with money which came from him. When she made this clear to him he called her an adjectived fool; and broke into a torrent of language from which she fled in terror.
At Lyons he tried to kiss her; whereat she burst into a frenzy of rage which surprised herself, and startled him. It was in the hall of the hotel after dinner, just as she was going up to bed; always, so soon as dinner was over, she went straight to her room. Billson, the chauffeur, happened to enter at the moment, to get orders for the morrow. Emmett, turning, saw him grinning at his discomfiture.
"By-!" he cried, eager to vent his fury on someone. "If you don't take care I'll kill you!"
But Billson never flinched; and he continued to grin. He was a shortish, youngish man, with a white, clean-shaven face, and black hair, which he wore parted in the middle. He seemed to have a gift for silence; Dorothy had hardly heard him speak a dozen times. She had a feeling that, for some cause, his master stood in awe of him. Although he went on grinning, Mr Emmett made no attempt to carry out his threat-at least, while she was flying up the stairs.
They spent some days at Aix-les-Bains. There he made to her his first proposal of marriage; he was in his cups at the time. To say that she refused him is to say little. When she gained the sanctum of her own apartment she was in an agony of shame and distress. Her dilemma was not a pleasant one. It seemed to her that it was just as impossible to remain in this man's company as it was to escape from it. She was penniless, friendless. How was she to get away from him? To whom was she to turn? Her ignorance was pitiable. For all she knew, his position as her guardian gave him powers over her against which it was vain to struggle. If she ran away from him, she thought it very probable that he could compel her to return; in which case her last plight would be worse than her first. Besides, with no money in her pocket, where could she run? Despite her horror of the man, to her, in her childlike ignorance, it seemed as if he had gripped her to him with bonds of steel.
CHAPTER II
THE CURTAIN
When they landed in England it was to her as if she had been for years with Mr Emmett, and Billson, and the car; though, in reality, they had only been associated for a very few weeks. She felt as if, during those interminable weeks, the best of her life had gone from her, and already she had grown old, before she was eighteen. She had forgotten how to smile; at night she could not sleep; her head was always aching; her nerves were in such a state of tension that she was beginning to be afraid of the sound of her own voice; the world had become to her a prison from which there was no way out. She had not been to England since she was a small child; returning to it was like coming a strange country. She would have forgotten her own tongue had not so many of the girls in the convent been English. They went up to town on the inevitable motor; on the way she kept looking about her with eyes which, in spite of herself, would grow dim. She had often dreamed of the journey she would make, one day, to London; she had never dreamed that it would be like this. They put up that night in a huge railway station hotel. On the morrow, for once, they parted company with the motor; Mr Emmett took her with him to a midland town by rail. Some race meeting was on; Dorothy had a hazy notion that her guardian had something to do with horses and with racing: it was a subject of which she had heard him speaking more than once. Some horsey acquaintances travelled with him in the same compartment; they played bridge all the way, to Dorothy's relief; she was glad that they should do anything which would keep them from speaking to her.
Mr Emmett took apartments at the principal hotel. There, in the private sitting-room, after a tête-à-tête dinner, he proposed to her again. He was more sober than he sometimes was at that hour; perhaps, on that account, he expressed himself with a clearness which she found appalling. In various fashions he had asked her again and again to marry him since that first time at Aix-les-Bains. She had begun to understand that not only was he a man who would not take No for an answer, but also that he was not likely to stick at anything which would enable him to gain an end he had in view. If she had had any doubts upon that latter point they were dissipated then. He did not so much ask her to be his wife,