The Second Shot (3 page)

Such, then, was the company gathered in Ethel Hillyards’s Devonshire sitting room that afternoon; and it was not until I was halfway through my second cup of tea that I realized, with quite a start, what a very strangely assorted company it was. Scandal has never held the faintest interest for me, I am glad to say, so that the secret history of my companions of the moment is always the last thing to enter my mind.

In the case of Eric Scott-Davies, however, scandal is far too inflated to remain secret; and though one hears, in the circles in which he moves, a new and disgraceful story about him almost every day, one such story had been so persistent a little time ago as to force itself into permanent lodgment even in my mind. For the last year Eric’s name had been coupled unceasingly with that of Sylvia de Ravel, until it was openly said that the whole world knew of the affair except only De Ravel himself. Nor did it need anybody else’s knowledge of De Ravel to inform me that when at last that deluded man did hear of it, something violent would happen. And here Ethel, with sublime tactlessness, had asked the trio to share the same roof for the next fortnight!

No wonder I was unable to repress a slight start. The little panelled sitting room had suddenly taken on for me the aspect of a powder mine, with De Ravel himself as the torch only waiting to be kindled into firing it!

Not a pleasant prospect. And that poor child Elsa there, to have her innocent eyes opened to the sordidness of the world. It really was most reprehensible of Ethel, and I determined to tell her so on the first opportunity. Meantime I endeavoured to extract what consolation I could from the situation by hoping that the explosion, when it occurred, would blow Armorel away as well as her cousin. How pleasant if it did, and left myself and Elsa as the only remnant of the party.

My opportunity with Ethel came sooner than I expected, and it was she who made it. Immediately after tea she remarked casually to me that she believed there were still a few bluebells left in the woods down by the stream, and if I liked she would come with me and show me where they were. Naturally bluebells meant less than nothing to any of the others (except perhaps Elsa, whose eyes lighted at the mention of them but who was fortunately too shy to suggest accompanying us), so that no one offered to spoil our tête-à-tête. It was typical of Ethel’s admirable methods to have separated us from the others so simply and yet so effectively.

I did not mention the subject in my mind as we strolled down through the fields, whose turf had been cropped into springiness by John’s sheep. There is a time and a place for everything, and I did not wish to sadden Ethel with my reproaches until we had exchanged the usual greetings of two old and intimate friends. I was really glad to see Ethel again, and told her so frankly (I always believe in giving pleasure when I conscientiously can), and she was good enough to say that she was pleased to see me too, as indeed I have no doubt that she was; for a woman, Ethel is quite intelligent, and it must be a treat for her, buried away as she is, to come into contact with a sympathetic intellect such as my own, after an uninterrupted course of John, his manure-heap and his detective stories. And yet she seems really genuinely fond of the fellow.

We sat down on a fallen trunk in the bluebell wood and feasted our eyes on the spread of colour in silence. There are few women who can remain silent in the face of the beauties of nature; Ethel is exceptional in that, as in other ways. If I had ever contemplated linking my life with that of a member of the opposite sex, I might have married Ethel although she is a year or two older than myself.

‘I want to talk to you, Cyril,’ she said abruptly, breaking into our silence at last.

‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘And I think I know what you wish to say, Ethel. You realize what a blunder you made in inviting — ’

‘Nothing of the kind,’ Ethel interrupted, perhaps with unnecessary tartness. ‘You haven’t heard what I want to say yet. It’s about Eric Scott-Davies.’

‘As I surmised,’ I murmured, with a little smile.

I let her tell her story in her own way. And I may say at once (for above all things I pride myself on intellectual honesty) that it was a very different one from what I expected to hear. According to what Ethel had to say, the inclusion of Elsa Verity in a party which already contained Eric Scott-Davies and the De Ravels was not a blunder at all but a piece of very carefully thought-out diplomacy. Indeed it appeared that Ethel was becoming positively Machiavellian in her manoeuvres, and though the situation was serious enough in all conscience I could not altogether repress a smile at the notion of dear Ethel in such an unaccustomed rôle.

Divested of its feminine embroidery and circumlocution, the state of affairs seemed to be briefly this: Eric Scott-Davies, whom both Ethel and myself had long ago agreed to be a cad of the first water, was making a serious onslaught on Elsa Verity – not with design upon her virtue but with the, to me, much more sinister intention of marriage. The poor child, innocent in the ways of the world and dazzled by his superficial good looks and the tremendous self-confidence of the man, already imagined herself half in love with him; without desperate measures the tragedy of marriage would eventuate. Eric Scott-Davies’ own object was obvious: he did not care a rap for Elsa herself, her childlike innocence was not to his taste in women by any means; what he wanted was her money. Having squandered the very respectable fortune into which he had come on the death of his father half a dozen years ago, and with rumours already about that he was contemplating that last resource of all men of family and sensibility, the selling of his family portraits, the fellow was plainly in a desperate position; and when the position was desperate Eric Scott-Davies was not the man to shrink from desperate measures to retrieve it.

So much I gathered from Ethel, and the tears came into her eyes as she spoke of the possibility of Elsa being swept off her feet by such a man, and the inevitable tragic disillusionment afterwards. ‘He really has such a terribly compelling way with him, Cyril,’ she told me earnestly. ‘An inexperienced girl would stand no chance at all with him if he was concentrating on her seriously.’

‘Do you mean that he is actually – h’m! – physically attractive to your sex?’ I asked delicately, for I very much dislike referring to the sexual relations between man and woman in the presence of one of the latter. I am glad to say that the modern habit of discussing in mixed company matters more related to the garbage heap than to the drawing room has never infected me, at any rate.

‘I should think he is,’ Ethel replied. ‘It isn’t flattering my own sex to tell you, but a man of that type, with the veneer covering the brute considerably thinner than usual, appeals directly to every primitive instinct we women have; and we’ ve a good deal more, my dear Cyril, than men of your type ever realize.’

‘I see,’ I said rather uncomfortably.

‘That’s exactly the trouble. It’s men of Eric’s type who
do
sweep us off our feet, not the more civilized kind like you. For instance you, Cyril, could never sweep a woman off her feet if you tried for a thousand years.’

‘I trust I should never try for a single minute,’ I said, somewhat stiffly. If dear Ethel has a fault (and being a woman she can hardly escape that), it is a tendency at times to unnecessary outspokenness.

‘Eric, you see,’ she went on, ‘appeals to instincts in Elsa that the poor child doesn’t know she’s got and would be horrified no doubt to learn that she had; but they respond all right to his sort of treatment. And of course he’s an absolute master in love-making, of the forceful, caveman, won’t-take-modesty-for-an-answer kind, which we unfortunate women find so devastatingly irresistible. A master.’

‘You speak as if you had actual experience,’ I retorted, perhaps unkindly, but I was still feeling a little ruffled.

‘Oh, he’s tried it on me, of course,’ Ethel said with a short laugh. ‘You needn’t look so surprised, Cyril. I’m not positively ugly, and I’m still a year or two on the right side of forty. If it will relieve you, I’ll say I gave him no encouragement at all – in fact I was really very rude to him indeed; but it was an effort. Even while I was saying the nastiest things I could think of, I should just have loved to droop gracefully into his arms.’

What a confession! I passed over it in silence. ‘But do you mean that even after an incident of such unpleasantness he would still accept an invitation to stay under your roof?’

‘Oh, Eric’s got a hide like a rhinoceros. A little thing like that wouldn’t worry him. Besides, no doubt he thinks there’s still hope. After he’s successfully married Elsa’s money, he’ll probably try again.’ I had never heard Ethel so bitter. Usually she is the kindest of creatures.

I took the conversation back to matter of more immediate importance. ‘Of course you’ve warned Miss Verity of the kind of man he is?’

‘Of course I’ve done nothing of the kind,’ Ethel retorted. ‘I’m not a complete and utter fool, Cyril. Even you should know enough to realize that that would be the surest way of pushing her straight into his arms.’

‘But surely she’s old enough to use her reason?’ I protested.

‘She’s twenty-one. And a girl of twenty-one is a bigger idiot in matters of that kind, my dear Cyril, than a girl of seventeen; and I can’t say more than that. Besides, no woman’s ever old enough to use her reason when it’s a question of love.’ One of the many things that Ethel and I have in common is the profound scorn in which she holds her own sex. Indeed, I have noticed that nearly all nice women despise their sex as a whole. Perhaps that is what makes them nice. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘I’ve done the only possible thing: I’ve pretended gently to encourage it. Elsa is quite under the impression that this party has been arranged solely for the benefit of herself and Eric.’

‘Whereas in reality – ’

‘Exactly. As I said just now, there’s only one possible hope and that is to shock her out of this infatuation before it get too deep a hold. And hence, my dear Cyril, the De Ravels.’

I swung my pince-nez meditatively on their cord. The bluebells were quite forgotten by now. In front of us the little stream was tumbling over its rocky bed in a way in which I, straight from London, would normally have found most refreshing; as things were, I scarcely heard it.

‘Rather playing with fire, isn’t it, Ethel?’

‘Deliberately. I’m banking entirely on the fire bursting out and consuming Eric with it.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘Then we must take still sterner measures,’ Ethel replied with positive grimness. ‘I tell you, Cyril, I’d stick at nothing to save Elsa from that man, although I’ve no direct responsibility for her, only a moral one. She’s the daughter of the greatest friend I ever had (you never knew her, she was at school with me); both her parents are dead, and she has no near relatives; legally, the child’s now her own mistress; I’ve simply installed myself
in loco parentis.
I may have usurped the position, but even if I wasn’t so fond of Elsa herself I should feel it my duty to her mother to hang onto it like death. And I don’t mind telling you in confidence, Cyril, that I’d rather strangle Eric with my own hands if I could than see him trap Elsa into a sordid marriage.’ Prophetic words, which afterwards I had only too good cause to remember.

‘Exactly; precisely,’ I soothed, for Ethel had been getting uncomfortably dramatic, and I detest the introduction of drama into any situation with which I am concerned. ‘So Mrs de Ravel, smitten with jealousy of Eric’s attentions to Miss Verity, is to draw back the sheep into her own fold again so effectually that Miss Verity’s eyes will be opened and she will be able to throw off these beginnings of infatuation?’

‘Something like that,’ Ethel agreed, more calmly. ‘As you can imagine if you know anything about her at all, Sylvia de Ravel isn’t the sort of woman ever to let anything go, human or otherwise, of which she’s once established possession. In my opinion Eric made a mistake there. Sylvia isn’t a person who can be picked up, toyed with for a time, and then dropped, according to Eric’s usual charming ways. He caught her, and she was probably difficult to catch; but he caught a Tartar when he did so. Well, now he’s going to pay with Elsa for his mistake.’

‘And De Ravel? I understand he’s the only person who still remains ignorant of that affair. Supposing he gets wind of it?’

Ethel looked at me squarely. ‘Cyril, I don’t care if he does. And I don’t care what happens afterwards, either. All I care about is getting Elsa away from Eric.’ It has been well said that women are the unscrupulous sex. In this matter I judged that Ethel had absolutely no scruples at all.

‘I see. And Miss Scott-Davies? What part is she to play in this Machiavellian scheme?’

‘Armorel? Oh, I just asked her to balance the numbers. Though I thought it would do no harm to show Elsa what sort of a family she’d be marrying into. Besides, there’s no love lost between Armorel and Eric, you know.’

‘Really? I understood they were brought up together, since Armorel’s parents died when she was a small child. I thought they looked on each other as brother and sister.’

‘Exactly,’ said Ethel, with unusual cynicism. ‘Anyhow, you can take it from me that there isn’t any love lost between them. It’s a matter of money, I think,’ she added indifferently.

‘Armorel’s parents hadn’t any, and though Mr Scott-Davies practically adopted her he didn’t mention her in his will, with the vague idea that Eric would provide. I believe Armorel’s feeling is that Eric doesn’t provide enough.’

‘So you merely asked her to make the numbers even. In other words, presumably, to balance me. Am I to assume that I have any part in the plot, then, besides that of your advisor?’

‘Yes, Cyril, you are,’ Ethel smiled. ‘You’re cast for the part of second walking gentleman.’

‘At Minton Deeps I usually prefer to be a lying gentleman,’ I replied humorously, for I usually try to season even the most serious conversation with such small quips. ‘When I think of the sun on your bracken…Still, on this occasion perhaps I’ll forego my rug and laziness. So what do you require of your second walking gentleman?’