The God in the Car: A Novel

"A woman, Bessie," she heard a voice behind her saying, "may be anything from a cosmic force to a clothes-peg."

"I don't know what a cosmic force is," said Lady Semingham.

"A cosmic force? Why – "

"But I don't want to know, Alfred. Why, Maggie, that's a new shade of brown on your shoes. Where do you get them?"

Mrs. Dennison gave her bootmaker's address, and Lady Semingham told her husband to remember it. She never remembered that he always forgot such things.

The arrival of the Seminghams seemed to break the spell which had held Mrs. Dennison apart from the group over against her. Adela strolled across, followed by Marjory, and the Baron on Marjory's arm. The whole party gathered in a cluster; but Marjory hung loosely on the outskirts of the circle, and seemed scarcely to belong to it.

The Baron seated himself in the place Willie Ruston had left empty. The rest stood talking for a minute or two, then Semingham put his hand in his pocket and drew out a folded sheet of tracing-paper.

"We're all Omofagites here, aren't we?" he said; "even you, Baron, now. Here's a plan Carlin has just sent me. It shows our territory."

Everybody crowded round to look as he unfolded it. Mrs. Dennison was first in undisguised eagerness; and Marjory came closer, slipping her arm through Adela Ferrars'.

"What does the blue mean?" asked Adela.

"Native settlements."

"Oh! And all that brown? – it's mostly brown."

"Brown," answered Semingham, with a slight smile, "means unexplored country."

"I should have made it all brown," said Adela, and the Baron gave an appreciative chuckle.

"And what are these little red crosses?" asked Mrs. Dennison, laying the tip of her finger on one.

"Eh? What, those? Oh, let me see. Here, just hold it while I look at Carlin's letter. He explains it all," and Lord Semingham began to fumble in his breast-pocket.

"Dear me," said Bessie Semingham, in a tone of delicate pleasure, "they look like tombstones."

"Hush, hush, my dear lady," cried the old Baron; "what a bad omen!"

"Tombstones," echoed Maggie Dennison thoughtfully. "So they do – just like tombstones."

A pause fell on the group. Adela broke it.

"Well, Director, have you found your directions?" she asked briskly.

"It was a momentary lapse of memory," said Semingham with dignity. "Those – er – little – "

"No, not tombstones," interrupted the Baron earnestly.

"Little – er – signposts are, of course, the forts belonging to the Company. What else should they be?"

"Oh, forts," murmured everybody.

"They are," continued Lord Semingham apologetically, "in the nature of a prophecy at present, as I understand."

"A very bad prophecy, according to Bessie," said Mrs. Dennison.

"I hope," said the Baron, shaking his head, "that the official name is more correct than Lady Semingham's."

"So do I," said Marjory; and added, before she could think not to add, and with unlucky haste, "my brother's going out, you know."

Mrs. Dennison looked at her. Then she crossed over to her, saying to Adela,

"You never let me have a word with my own guest, except at breakfast and bedtime. Come and walk up and down with me, Marjory."

Marjory obeyed; the group began to scatter.

"But didn't they look like tombstones, Baron?" said Bessie Semingham again, as she sat down and made room for the old man beside her. When she had an idea she liked it very much. He began to be voluble in his reproof of her gloomy fancies; but she merely laughed in glee at her ingenuity.

Adela, by a gesture, brought Semingham to her side and walked a few paces off with him.

"Will you go with me to the post-office?" she said abruptly.

"By all means," he answered, feeling for his glass.

"Oh, you needn't get your glass to spy at me with."

"Dear, dear, you use one yourself!"

"I'll tell you myself why I'm going. You're going to send a telegram."

"Am I?"

"Yes; to invite someone to stay with you. Lord Semingham, when you find a woman relies on a man – on one man only – in trouble, what do you think?"

She asked the question in a level voice, looking straight before her.

"That she's fond of him."

"And does he – the man – think the same?"

"Generally. I think most men would. They're seldom backward to think it, you know."

"Then," she said steadily, "you must think, and he must think, what you like. I can't help it. I want you to wire and ask a man to come and stay with you."

He turned to her in surprise.

"Tom Loring," she said, and the moment the name left her lips Semingham hastily turned his glance away.

"Awkward – with the other fellow here," he ventured to suggest.

"Mr. Ruston doesn't choose your guests."