THE ELEVENTH HOUR

"_This Week"s Society Problem_," mused Peggy. "_A, an unsophisticated young spinster, finding herself alone in the residence of B, an eligible bachelor acquaintance, notices upon B"s dining-room table a letter in B"s handwriting, addressed to herself and stamped for post._ Problem: _What should A do?_ Answer adjudged correct: _Leave the letter where it is and wait until the postman delivers it._ Answer adjudged incorrect: _Open the letter and read it_."

A minute later the seal was broken and Peggy was composedly extracting the folded sheets.

"I"m afraid I never did have the instincts of a real lady," she said.

"But perhaps the postman would never have delivered this letter. I will salve my conscience by picking off the stamp and saving him a penny."

She did so. Then, sitting down to the table and drawing the lamp a little nearer, she smoothed out the crackling pages and began to read.

_This is the letter of a man who suffers from an impediment in his speech. I have been able to talk to you on many subjects, but never on this--the thing that matters most in all the world_.

Peggy drew her chair a little closer.

_I might have told you all about it long ago, the letter continued, for I have been ready to do so ever since you gathered me up from under the car at the foot of Wickmore Hill.

But I never did. Twice I have nearly done it, and twice I have drawn back--the first time because it seemed too soon, the second because it seemed no use. If details would interest you, the first time was in the early days of my convalescence at t.i.te Street. I came hobbling into your drawing-room one afternoon--and you had been crying. I suppose your father had been inconsiderate again. Not that you showed it, but I happened to sit down in the same chair as your handkerchief, which was soaking. If necessary, I can produce the handkerchief as evidence_.

Peggy gave a half-hysterical little sob.

_The second time was on Chelsea Embankment. I don"t suppose you remember_.

Then followed Philip"s version of what took place on Chelsea Embankment.

Peggy smiled indulgently. She could afford to smile now.

_But now that the reason which kept you from marrying any one--and I think it was fine of you--has been removed, I want to reopen the subject in earnest. First of all, let me talk about the beginning of things_....

Peggy looked up.

"I wonder why men always want to go back to the Year One when they make love," she mused. "Tim did it, too. I suppose it is a man"s idea of showing how firmly founded his affection is. "Established eighteen-seventy-six"--that sort of thing!"

Then she returned to her letter.

It was a lengthy epistle, this Epistle of Theophilus. Primarily it was a love-letter; but when you have never written a love-letter before and never intend to write another, a good deal of secondary matter is apt to creep in. This letter contained the whole of Philip"s simple philosophy of life; his confession of faith; the thoughts that a deeply reserved and extremely sensitive man sets down just once, and for one eye only.

He felt that Peggy was ent.i.tled to a full and complete inventory of his thoughts about her; so he set them all down, page by page, line by line; not knowing that a woman as often as not chooses a man as she chooses a house, not because of the stability of the foundations or the purity of the water-supply, but because a quaint, old-fashioned sundial in the garden has caught her fancy, or some oddly shaped room in an out-of-the-way turret strikes her as the one and only site for a little private and particular retreat of her own. But Peggy read on.

The letter covered wide ground. It went back to their first wonderful meeting, and recalled childish conversations which Peggy thought she had forgotten. It told of knightly dreams, and of the Lady whom the Knight was one day to meet and marry--not realising that he had met her already. After that came more recent history--the second meeting, and the rapturous convalescence at t.i.te Street. The black months that followed the tragedy on Chelsea Embankment were sketched very lightly.

Finally came the story of the momentous voyage upon the Bosphorus, and the race home.

The letter closed with a pa.s.sage which need not be set down here. This is in the main a frivolous narrative; and there are certain inner rooms in the human heart, from the threshold of which self-respecting frivolity draws back with decent reverence.

The clock struck two. Simultaneously the outer door of the flat opened with the rattle of a latchkey; and next moment Timothy burst into the room. Peggy was curled up in the big armchair before the fire, apparently half asleep.

"That you, Timmy?" she enquired.

"Yes--dearest!" replied Timothy.

Inflated with the enormous pride of possession, he leaned over the back of the chair and gazed fondly down upon his prospective bride.

"Don"t bother me just now," said Peggy. "I"m rather sleepy."

"Darling!" responded the infatuated Timothy.

"Stop blowing on the top of my hand, and help yourself to a cigarette, there"s a good child," suggested the darling soothingly.

Timothy obeyed, a trifle dashed.

"I don"t think, little girl," he remarked, lighting the cigarette, "that that is _quite_ the way in which a man expects to be greeted by his _fiancee_."

"His what?" asked Peggy.

"His--well, dash it all, Peggy," exclaimed Timothy impatiently,--he was naturally somewhat tightly strung up to-night,--"don"t be a little pig.

Here I come hareing along from the dance in search of you, as full of beans as--as--as a--"

"Beanpod?" suggested Peggy helpfully.

"No! Yes! All right! Beanpod, if you like!" cried the sorely tried youth. "But give a fellow a chance. As I say, here I come, red-hot on your track, just overflowing with--well, I can"t describe it--and you greet me as if I were a Rural Dean."

"I should never dream of addressing a Rural Dean as "Timmy," Timmy,"

Peggy replied.

"Well, you know what I mean," insisted Timothy, not in the least appeased by this soft answer. "Just think. We have both been pa.s.sing through the greatest crisis of our lives--the most thrilling moment of our joint existence--"

"Have we?" asked Peggy in simple wonder. "I didn"t know."

Her incensed swain, grappling heroically with his feelings, began to stride about the room.

"Peggy," he said in a stern voice, "let us understand one another clearly."

For reply, the unfeeling Miss Falconer rose to her feet and struck an att.i.tude.

""_Tush!" cried the Marquis, pacing the floor of the bijou boudoir liked a caged lion_," she recited.

Timothy uttered an impatient e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and dropped upon the sofa.

"_Then, with a superb gesture of contempt, he turned upon his heel and flung himself into the depths of an abysmal divan_," continued Peggy.

"Careful, Timmy! I heard the sofa crack."

"I suppose you know, Peggy," announced Timothy in a very ill-used voice, "that you are breaking my heart? Also destroying my faith in women? Mere details, of course," he added, in what was meant to be a tone of world-weary cynicism; "but they may interest you!"

He rose, and leaning gloomily against the mantelpiece, glowered his disapprobation of his beloved"s ill-timed levity.

Once more, just as in her conversation with Philip, Peggy flashed into another mood. She put out an appealing hand, and touched Tim caressingly.

"Timmy, dear," she said, "I"m sorry--there! Will you forgive me, please?"