Life is like some crazy machine that is always going either too
slow or too fast. From the cradle to the grave we alternate between
the Sargasso Sea and the rapids--forever either becalmed or
storm-tossed. It seemed to Maud, as she looked across the
dinner-table in order to make sure for the twentieth time that it
really was George Bevan who sat opposite her, that, after months in
which nothing whatever had happened, she was now living through a
period when everything was happening at once. Life, from being a
broken-down machine, had suddenly begun to race.
To the orderly routine that stretched back to the time when she had
been hurried home in disgrace from Wales there had succeeded a mad
whirl of events, to which the miracle of tonight had come as a
fitting climax. She had not begun to dress for dinner till somewhat
late, and had consequently entered the drawing-room just as Keggs
was announcing that the meal was ready. She had received her first
shock when the love-sick Plummer, emerging from a mixed crowd of
relatives and friends, had informed her that he was to take her in.
She had not expected Plummer to be there, though he lived in the
neighbourhood. Plummer, at their last meeting, had stated his
intention of going abroad for a bit to mend his bruised heart: and
it was a little disconcerting to a sensitive girl to find her
victim popping up again like this. She did not know that, as far as
Plummer was concerned, the whole affair was to be considered opened
again. To Plummer, analysing the girl's motives in refusing him,
there had come the idea that there was Another, and that this other
must be Reggie Byng. From the first he had always looked upon
Reggie as his worst rival. And now Reggie had bolted with the
Faraday girl, leaving Maud in excellent condition, so it seemed to
Plummer, to console herself with a worthier man. Plummer knew all
about the Rebound and the part it plays in the affairs of the
heart. His own breach-of-promise case two years earlier had been
entirely due to the fact that the refusal of the youngest Devenish
girl to marry him had caused him to rebound into the dangerous
society of the second girl from the O.P. end of the first row in
the "Summertime is Kissing-time" number in the Alhambra revue. He
had come to the castle tonight gloomy, but not without hope.
Maud's second shock eclipsed the first entirely. No notification
had been given to her either by her father or by Percy of the
proposed extension of the hand of hospitality to George, and the
sight of him standing there talking to her aunt Caroline made her
momentarily dizzy. Life, which for several days had had all the
properties now of a dream, now of a nightmare, became more unreal
than ever. She could conceive no explanation of George's presence.
He could not be there--that was all there was to it; yet there
undoubtedly he was. Her manner, as she accompanied Plummer down the
stairs, took on such a dazed sweetness that her escort felt that in
coming there that night he had done the wisest act of a lifetime
studded but sparsely with wise acts. It seemed to Plummer that this
girl had softened towards him. Certainly something had changed her.
He could not know that she was merely wondering if she was awake.