The Missioner
By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
Author of “Anna, the Adventuress,” “A Prince of
Sinners,” “The Master Mummer,” etc.
With Illustrations
By FRED PEGRAM
A. L. BURT COMPANY | ||
Publishers | New York | |
Copyright, 1907,
By the Pearson Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1907,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.
Published January, 1909.
Fourth Printing
“Do you mind explaining yourself?” she asked.
[Page [23]] Frontispiece.
CONTENTS
| BOOK I | ||
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I | Mistress and Agent | [1] |
| II | The Hunter and his Quarry | [13] |
| III | First Blood | [22] |
| IV | Beating her Wings | [32] |
| V | Evicted | [41] |
| VI | Cricket and Philosophy | [52] |
| VII | An Undernote of Music | [61] |
| VIII | Roses | [70] |
| IX | Summer Lightning | [78] |
| X | The Still Figure in the Chair | [85] |
| XI | The Baying of the Hounds | [93] |
| XII | Retreat | [100] |
| XIII | A Creature of Impulse | [105] |
| XIV | Searching the Paper | [114] |
| XV | On the Spree | [121] |
| XVI | The Night Side of London | [129] |
| XVII | The Victims of Society | [138] |
| XVIII | Letty’s Dilemma | [147] |
| XIX | A Report from Paris | [155] |
| XX | Like a Trapped Animal | [162] |
| BOOK II | ||
| I | Rather a Ghastly Part | [172] |
| II | Playing with Fir | [180] |
| III | Monsieur s’Amuse | [188] |
| IV | At the “Dead Rat” | [196] |
| V | The Awakening | [204] |
| VI | The Echo of a Crime | [210] |
| VII | A Country Walk | [218] |
| VIII | The Missing Letty | [227] |
| IX | Foiled! | [235] |
| X | Mysteries in Mayfair | [244] |
| XI | The Way of Salvation | [253] |
| XII | Jean le Roi | [262] |
| XIII | The King of the Apaches | [271] |
| XIV | Behind the Palm Trees | [281] |
| XV | The Only Way | [289] |
| XVI | Man to Man | [296] |
| XVII | Lord and Lady Bountiful | [304] |
THE MISSIONER
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
MISTRESS AND AGENT
The lady of Thorpe was bored. These details as to leases and repairs were wearisome. The phrases and verbiage confused her. She felt obliged to take them in some measure for granted; to accept without question the calmly offered advice of the man who stood so respectfully at the right hand of her chair.
“This agreement with Philip Crooks,” he remarked, “is a somewhat important document. With your permission, madam, I will read it to you.”
She signified her assent, and leaned wearily back in her chair. The agent began to read. His mistress watched him through half closed eyes. His voice, notwithstanding its strong country dialect, had a sort of sing-song intonation. He read earnestly and without removing his eyes from the document. His listener made no attempt to arrive at the sense of the string of words which flowed so monotonously from his lips. She was occupied in making a study of the man. Sturdy and weather-beaten, neatly dressed in country clothes, with a somewhat old-fashioned stock, with trim grey side-whiskers, and a mouth which reminded her somehow of a well-bred foxhound’s, he represented to her, in his clearly cut personality, the changeless side of life, the side of life which she associated with the mighty oaks in her park, and the prehistoric rocks which had become engrafted with the soil of the hills beyond. As she saw him now, so had he seemed to her fifteen years ago. Only what a difference! A volume to her—a paragraph to him! She had gone out into the world—rich, intellectually inquisitive, possessing most of the subtler gifts with which her sex is endowed; and wherever the passionate current of life had flown the swiftest, she had been there, a leader always, seeking ever to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for new experiences and new joys. She had passed from girlhood to womanhood with every nerve of her body strained to catch the emotion of the moment. Always her fingers had been tearing at the cells of life—and one by one they had fallen away. This morning, in the bright sunshine which flooded the great room, she felt somehow tired—tired and withered. Her maid was a fool! The two hours spent at her toilette had been wasted! She felt that her eyes were hollow, her cheeks pale! Fifteen years, and the man had not changed a jot. She doubted whether he had ever passed the confines of her estate. She doubted whether he had even had the desire. Wind and sun had tanned his cheeks, his eyes were clear, his slight stoop was the stoop of the horseman rather than of age. He had the air of a man satisfied with life and his place in it—an attitude which puzzled her. No one of her world was like that! Was it some inborn gift, she wondered, which he possessed, some antidote to the world’s restlessness which he carried with him, or was it merely lack of intelligence?
He finished reading and folded up the pages, to find her regarding him still with that air of careful attention with which she had listened to his monotonous flow of words. He found her interest surprising. It did not occur to him to invest it with any personal element.
“The agreement upon the whole,” he remarked, “is, I believe, a fair one. You are perhaps thinking that those clauses——”
“If the agreement is satisfactory to you,” she interrupted, “I will confirm it.”
He bowed slightly and glanced through the pile of papers upon the table.
“I do not think that there is anything else with which I need trouble you, madam,” he remarked.
She nodded imperiously.
“Sit down for a moment, Mr. Hurd,” she said.
If he felt any surprise, he did not show it. He drew one of the high-backed chairs away from the table, and with that slight air of deliberation which characterized all his movements, seated himself. He was in no way disquieted to find her dark, tired eyes still studying him.
“How old are you, Mr. Hurd?” she asked.
“I am sixty-three, madam,” he answered.
Her eyebrows were gently raised. To her it seemed incredible. She thought of the men of sixty-three or thereabouts whom she knew, and her lips parted in one of those faint, rare smiles of genuine amusement, which smoothed out all the lines of her tired face. Visions of the promenade at Marienbad and Carlsbad, the Kursaal at Homburg, floated before her. She saw them all, the men whom she knew, with the story of their lives written so plainly in their faces, babbling of nerves and tonics and cures, the newest physician, the latest fad. Defaulters all of them, unwilling to pay the great debt—seeking always a way out! Here, at least, this man scored!
“You enjoy good health?” she remarked.
“I never have anything the matter with me,” he answered simply. “I suppose,” he added, as though by an afterthought, “the life is a healthy one.”
“You find it—satisfying?” she asked.
He seemed puzzled.
“I have never attempted anything else,” he answered. “It seems to be what I am suited for.”
She attempted to abandon the rôle of questioner—to give a more natural turn to the conversation.
“It is always,” she remarked, “such a relief to get down into the country at the end of the season. I wonder I don’t spend more time here. I daresay one could amuse oneself?” she added carelessly.
Mr. Hurd considered for a few moments.
“There are croquet and archery and tennis in the neighbourhood,” he remarked. “The golf course on the Park hills is supposed to be excellent. A great many people come over to play.”
She affected to be considering the question seriously. An intimate friend would not have been deceived by her air of attention. Mr. Hurd knew nothing of this. He, on his part, however, was capable of a little gentle irony.
“It might amuse you,” he remarked, “to make a tour of your estate. There are some of the outlying portions which I think that I should have the honour of showing you for the first time.”
“I might find that interesting,” she admitted. “By the bye, Mr. Hurd, what sort of a landlord am I? Am I easy, or do I exact my last pound of flesh? One likes to know these things.”
“It depends upon the tenant,” the agent answered. “There is not one of your farms upon which, if a man works, he cannot make a living. On the other hand, there is not one of them on which a man can make a living unless he works. It is upon this principle that your rents have been adjusted. The tenants of the home lands have been most carefully chosen, and Thorpe itself is spoken of everywhere as a model village.”
“It is very charming to look at,” its mistress admitted. “The flowers and thatched roofs are so picturesque. ‘Quite a pastoral idyll,’ my guests tell me. The people one sees about seem contented and respectful, too.”
“They should be, madam,” Mr. Hurd answered drily. “The villagers have had a good many privileges from your family for generations.”
The lady inclined her head thoughtfully.
“You think, then,” she remarked, “that if anything should happen in England, like the French Revolution, I should not find unexpected thoughts and discontent smouldering amongst them? You believe that they are really contented?”
Mr. Hurd knew nothing about revolutions, and he was utterly unable to follow the trend of her thoughts.
“If they were not, madam,” he declared, “they would deserve to be in the workhouse—and I should feel it my duty to assist them in getting there.”
The lady of Thorpe laughed softly to herself.
“You, too, then, Mr. Hurd,” she said, “you are content with your life? You don’t mind my being personal, do you? It is such a change down here, such a different existence ... and I like to understand everything.”
Upon Mr. Hurd the almost pathetic significance of those last words was wholly wasted. They were words of a language which he could not comprehend. He realized only their direct application—and the woman to him seemed like a child.
“If I were not content, madam,” he said, “I should deserve to lose my place. I should deserve to lose it,” he added after a moment’s pause, “notwithstanding the fact that I have done my duty faithfully for four and forty years.”
She smiled upon him brilliantly. They were so far apart that she feared lest she might have offended him.
“I have always felt myself a very fortunate woman, Mr. Hurd,” she said, “in having possessed your services.”
He rose as though about to go. It was her whim, however, to detain him.
“You lost your wife some years ago, did you not, Mr. Hurd?” she began tentatively. As a matter of fact, she was not sure of her ground.
“Seven years back, madam,” he answered, with immovable face. “She was, unfortunately, never a strong woman.”
“And your son?” she asked more confidently. “Is he back from South Africa?”
“A year ago, madam,” he answered. “He is engaged at present in the estate office. He knows the work well——”
“The best place for him, of course,” she interrupted. “We ought to do all we can for our young men who went out to the war. I should like to see your son, Mr. Hurd. Will you tell him to come up some day?”
“Certainly, madam,” he answered.
“Perhaps he would like to shoot with my guests on Thursday?” she suggested graciously.
Mr. Hurd did not seem altogether pleased.
“It has never been the custom, madam,” he remarked, “for either my son or myself to be associated with the Thorpe shooting parties.”
“Some customs,” she remarked pleasantly, “are well changed, even in Thorpe. We shall expect him.”
Mr. Hurd’s mouth reminded her for a moment of a steel trap. She could see that he disapproved, but she had no intention of giving way. He began to tie up his papers, and she watched him with some continuance of that wave of interest which he had somehow contrived to excite in her. The signature of one of the letters which he was methodically folding, caught her attention.
“What a strange name!” she remarked. “Victor Macheson! Who is he?”
Mr. Hurd unfolded the letter. The ghost of a smile flickered upon his lips.
“A preacher, apparently,” he answered. “The letter is one asking permission to give a series of what he terms religious lectures in Harrison’s large barn!”
Her eyebrows were gently raised. Her tone was one of genuine surprise.
“What, in Thorpe?” she demanded.
“In Thorpe!” Mr. Hurd acquiesced.
She took the letter and read it. Her perplexity was in no manner diminished.
“The man seems in earnest,” she remarked. “He must either be a stranger to this part of the country, or an extremely impertinent person. I presume, Mr. Hurd, that nothing has been going on in the place with which I am unacquainted?”
“Certainly not, madam,” he answered.
“There has been no drunkenness?” she remarked. “The young people have, I presume, been conducting their love-making discreetly?”
The lines of Mr. Hurd’s mouth were a trifle severe. One could imagine that he found her modern directness of speech indelicate.
“There have been no scandals of any sort connected with the village, madam,” he assured her. “To the best of my belief, all of our people are industrious, sober and pious. They attend church regularly. As you know, we have not a public-house or a dissenting place of worship in the village.”
“The man must be a fool,” she said deliberately. “You did not, of course, give him permission to hold these services?”
“Certainly not,” the agent answered. “I refused it absolutely.”
The lady rose, and Mr. Hurd understood that he was dismissed.
“You will tell your son about Thursday?” she reminded him.
“I will deliver your message, madam,” he answered.
She nodded her farewell as the footman opened the door.
“Everything seems to be most satisfactory, Mr. Hurd,” she said. “I shall probably be here for several weeks, so come up again if there is anything you want me to sign.”
“I am much obliged, madam,” the agent answered.
He left the place by a side entrance, and rode slowly down the private road, fringed by a magnificent row of elm trees, to the village. The latch of the iron gate at the end of the avenue was stiff, and he failed to open it with his hunting crop at the first attempt. Just as he was preparing to try again, a tall, boyish-looking young man, dressed in sombre black, came swiftly across the road and opened the gate. Mr. Hurd thanked him curtly, and the young man raised his hat.
“You are Mr. Hurd, I believe?” he remarked. “I was going to call upon you this afternoon.”
The little man upon the pony frowned. He had no doubt as to his questioner.
“My name is Hurd, sir,” he answered stiffly. “What can I do for you?”
“You can let me have that barn for my services,” the other answered smiling. “I wrote you about it, you know. My name is Macheson.”
Mr. Hurd’s answer was briefly spoken, and did not invite argument.
“I have mentioned the matter to Miss Thorpe-Hatton, sir. She agrees with me that your proposed ministrations are altogether unneeded in this neighbourhood.”
“You won’t let me use the barn, then?” the young man remarked pleasantly, but with some air of disappointment.
Mr. Hurd gathered up the reins in his hand.
“Certainly not, sir!”
He would have moved on, but his questioner stood in the way. Mr. Hurd looked at him from underneath his shaggy eyebrows. The young man was remarkably young. His smooth, beardless face was the face of a boy. Only the eyes seemed somehow to speak of graver things. They were very bright indeed, and they did not falter.
“Mr. Hurd,” he begged, “do let me ask you one question! Why do you refuse me? What harm can I possibly do by talking to your villagers?”
Mr. Hurd pointed with his whip up and down the country lane.
“This is the village of Thorpe, sir,” he answered. “There are no poor, there is no public-house, and there, within a few hundred yards of the farthest cottage,” he added, pointing to the end of the street, “is the church. You are not needed here. That is the plain truth.”
The young man looked up and down, at the flower-embosomed cottages, with their thatched roofs and trim appearance, at the neatly cut hedges, the well-kept road, the many signs of prosperity. He looked at the little grey church standing in its ancient walled churchyard, where the road divided, a very delightful addition to the picturesque beauty of the place. He looked at all these things and he sighed.
“Mr. Hurd,” he said, “you are a man of experience. You know very well that material and spiritual welfare are sometimes things very far apart.”
Mr. Hurd frowned and turned his pony’s head towards home.
“I know nothing of the sort, sir,” he snapped. “What I do know is that we don’t want any Salvation Army tricks here. You should stay in the cities. They like that sort of thing there.”
“I must come where I am sent, Mr. Hurd,” the young man answered. “I cannot do your people any harm. I only want to deliver my message—and go.”
Mr. Hurd wheeled his pony round.
“I submitted your letter to Miss Thorpe-Hatton,” he said. “She agrees with me that your ministrations are wholly unnecessary here. I wish you good evening!”
The young man caught for a moment at the pony’s rein.
“One moment, sir,” he begged. “You do not object to my appealing to Miss Thorpe-Hatton herself?”
A grim, mirthless smile parted the agent’s lips.
“By no means!” he answered, as he cantered off.
Victor Macheson stood for a moment watching the retreating figure. Then he looked across the park to where, through the great elm avenues, he could catch a glimpse of the house. A humorous smile suddenly brightened his face.
“It’s got to be done!” he said to himself. “Here goes!”
CHAPTER II
THE HUNTER AND HIS QUARRY
The mistress of Thorpe stooped to pat a black Pomeranian which had rushed out to meet her. It was when she indulged in some such movement that one realized more thoroughly the wonderful grace of her slim, supple figure. She who hated all manner of exercise had the ease of carriage and flexibility of one whose life had been spent in athletic pursuits.
“How are you all?” she remarked languidly. “Shocking hostess, am I not?”
A fair-haired little woman turned away from the tea-table. She held a chocolate éclair in one hand, and a cup of Russian tea in the other. Her eyes were very dark, and her hair very yellow—and both were perfectly and unexpectedly natural. Her real name was Lady Margaret Penshore, but she was known to her intimates, and to the mysterious individuals who write under a nom-de-guerre in the society papers, as “Lady Peggy.”
“A little casual perhaps, my dear Wilhelmina,” she remarked. “Comes from your association with Royalty, I suppose. Try one of your own caviare sandwiches, if you want anything to eat. They’re ripping.”
Wilhelmina—she was one of the few women of her set with whose Christian name no one had ever attempted to take any liberties—approached the tea-table and studied its burden. There were a dozen different sorts of sandwiches arranged in the most tempting form, hot-water dishes with delicately browned tea-cakes simmering gently, thick cream in silver jugs, tea and coffee, and in the background old China dishes piled with freshly gathered strawberries and peaches and grapes, on which the bloom still rested. On a smaller table were flasks of liqueurs and a spirit decanter.
“Anyhow,” she remarked, pouring herself out some tea, “I do feed you people well. And as to being casual, I warned you that I never put in an appearance before five.”
A man in the background, long and lantern-faced, a man whose age it would have been as impossible to guess as his character, opened and closed his watch with a clink.
“Twenty minutes past,” he remarked. “To be exact, twenty-two minutes past.”
His hostess turned and regarded him contemplatively.
“How painfully precise!” she remarked. “Somehow, it doesn’t sound convincing, though. Your watch is probably like your morals.”
“What a flattering simile!” he murmured.
“Flattering?”
“It presupposes, at any rate, their existence,” he explained. “It is years since I was reminded of them.”
Wilhelmina seated herself before an open card-table.
“No doubt,” she answered. “You see I knew you when you were a boy. Seriously,” she continued, “I have been engaged with my agent for the last half-hour—a most interesting person, I can assure you. There was an agreement with one Philip Crooks concerning a farm, which he felt compelled to read to me—every word of it! Come along and cut, all of you!”
The fourth person, slim, fair-haired, the typical army officer and country house habitué, came over to the table, followed by the lantern-jawed man. Lady Peggy also turned up a card.
“You and I, Gilbert,” Wilhelmina remarked to the elder man. “Here’s luck to us! What on earth is that you are drinking?”
“Absinthe,” he answered calmly. “I have been trying to persuade Austin to join me, but it seems they don’t drink absinthe in the Army.”
“I should think not, indeed,” his hostess answered. “And you my partner, too! Put the stuff away.”
Gilbert Deyes raised his glass and looked thoughtfully into its opalescent depths.
“Ah! my dear lady,” he said, “you make a great mistake when you number absinthe amongst the ordinary intoxicating beverages. I tell you that the man who invented it was an epicure in sensations and—er—gastronomy. If only De Quincey had realized the possibility of absinthe, he would have given us jewelled prose indeed.”
Wilhelmina yawned.
“Bother De Quincey!” she declared. “It’s your bridge I’m thinking of.”
“Dear lady, you need have no anxiety,” Deyes answered reassuringly. “One does not trifle with one’s livelihood. You will find me capable of the most daring finesses, the most wonderful coups. I shall not revoke, I shall not lead out of the wrong hand. My declarations will be touched with genius. The rubber, in fact, is already won. Vive l’absinthe!”
“The rubber will never be begun if you go on talking nonsense much longer,” Lady Peggy declared, tapping the table impatiently. “I believe I hear the motors outside. We shall have the whole crowd here directly.”
“They won’t find their way here,” their hostess assured them calmly. “My deal, I believe.”
They played the hand in silence. At its conclusion, Wilhelmina leaned back in her chair and listened.
“You were right, Peggy,” she said, “they are all in the hall. I can hear your brother’s voice.”
Lady Peggy nodded.
“Sounds healthy, doesn’t it?”
Gilbert Deyes leaned across to the side table and helped himself to a cigarette.
“Healthy! I call it boisterous,” he declared. “Where have they all been?”
“Motoring somewhere,” Wilhelmina answered. “They none of them have any idea how to pass the time away until the first run.”
“Sport, my dear hostess,” Deyes remarked, “is the one thing which makes life in a country house almost unendurable.”
Wilhelmina shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s all very well, Gilbert,” she said, “but what should we do if we couldn’t get rid of some of these lunatics for at least part of the day?”
“Reasonable, I admit,” Deyes answered, “but think what an intolerable nuisance they make of themselves for the other part. I double No Trumps, Lady Peggy.”
Lady Peggy laid down her cards.
“For goodness’ sake, no more digressions,” she implored. “Remember, please, that I play this game for the peace of mind of my tradespeople! I redouble!”
The hand was played almost in silence. Lady Peggy lost the odd trick and began to add up the score with a gentle sigh.
“After all,” her partner remarked, returning to the subject which they had been discussing, “I don’t think that we could get on very well in this country without sport, of some sort.”
“Of course not,” Deyes answered. “We are all sportsmen, every one of us. We were born so. Only, while some of us are content to wreak our instinct for destruction upon birds and animals, others choose the nobler game—our fellow-creatures! To hunt or trap a human being is finer sport than to shoot a rocketing pheasant, or to come in from hunting with mud all over our clothes, smelling of ploughed fields, steaming in front of the fire, telling lies about our exploits—all undertaken in pursuit of a miserable little animal, which as often as not outwits us, and which, in an ordinary way, we wouldn’t touch with gloves on! What do you say, Lady Peggy?”
“You’re getting beyond me,” she declared. “It sounds a little savage.”
Deyes dealt the cards slowly, talking all the while.
“Sport is savage,” he declared. “No one can deny it. Whether the quarry be human or animal, the end is death. But of all its varieties, give me the hunting of man by man, the brain of the hunter coping with the wiles of the hunted, both human, both of the same order. The game’s even then, for at any moment they may change places—the hunter and his quarry. It’s finer work than slaughtering birds at the coverside. It gives your sex a chance, Lady Peggy.”
“It sounds exciting,” she admitted.
“It is,” he answered.
His hostess looked up at him languidly.
“You speak like one who knows!”
“Why not?” he murmured. “I have been both quarry and hunter. Most of us have more or less! I declare Hearts!”
Again there was an interval of silence, broken only by the stock phrases of the game, and the soft patter of the cards upon the table. Once more the hand was played out and the cards gathered up. Captain Austin delivered his quota to the general discussion.
“After all,” he said, “if it wasn’t for sport, our country houses would be useless.”
“Not at all!” Deyes declared. “Country houses should exist for——”
“For what, Mr. Deyes? Do tell us,” Lady Peggy implored.
“For bridge!” he declared. “For giving weary married people the opportunity for divorce, and as an asylum from one’s creditors.”
Wilhelmina shook her head as she gathered up her cards.
“You are not at your best to-day, Gilbert,” she said. “The allusion to creditors is prehistoric! No one has them nowadays. Society is such a hop-scotch affair that our coffers are never empty.”
“What a Utopian sentiment!” Lady Peggy murmured.
“We can’t agree, can we?” Deyes whispered in her ear.
“You! Why they say that you are worth a million,” she protested.
“If I am I remain poor, for I cannot spend it,” he declared.
“Why not?” his hostess asked him from across the table.
“Because,” he answered, “I am cursed with a single vice, trailing its way through a labyrinth of virtues. I am a miser!”
Lady Peggy laughed incredulously.
“Rubbish!” she exclaimed.
“Dear lady, it is nothing of the sort,” he answered, shaking his head sadly. “I have felt it growing upon me for years. Besides, it is hereditary. My mother opened a post-office savings bank account for me. At an early age I engineered a corner in marbles and sold out at a huge profit. I am like the starving dyspeptic at the rich man’s feast.”
Captain Austin intervened.
“I declare Diamonds,” he announced, and the hand proceeded.
Wilhelmina leaned back in her chair as the last trick fell. Her eyes were turned towards the window. She could just see the avenue of elms down which her agent had ridden a short while since. Deyes, through half closed eyes, watched her with some curiosity.
“If one dared offer a trifling coin of the realm——” he murmured.
“I was thinking of your theory,” she interrupted. “According to you, I suppose the whole world is made up of hunters and their quarry. Can you tell, I wonder, by looking at people, to which order they belong?”
“It is easy,” he answered. “Yet you must remember we are continually changing places. The man who cracks the whip to-day is the hunted beast to-morrow. The woman who mocks at her lover this afternoon is often the slave-bearer when dusk falls. Swift changes like this are like rain upon the earth. They keep us, at any rate, out of the asylums.”
Wilhelmina was still looking out of the window. Up the great avenue, in and out amongst the tree trunks, but moving always with swift buoyant footsteps towards the house, came a slim, dark figure, soberly dressed in ill-fitting clothes. He walked with the swing of early manhood, his head was thrown back, and he carried his hat in his hand. She leaned forward to watch him more closely—he seemed to have associated himself in some mysterious manner with the mocking words of Gilbert Deyes. Half maliciously, she drew his attention to the swiftly approaching figure.
“Come, my friend of theories,” she said mockingly. “There is a stranger there, the young man who walks so swiftly. To which of your two orders does he belong?”
Deyes looked out of the window—a brief, careless glance.
“To neither,” he answered. “His time has not come yet. But he has the makings of both.”
CHAPTER III
FIRST BLOOD
A footman entered the room a few minutes later, and obedient, without a doubt, to some previously given command, waited behind his mistress’ chair until a hand had been played. When it was over, she spoke to him without turning her head.
“What is it, Perkins?” she asked.
He bent forward respectfully.
“There is a young gentleman here, madam, who wishes to see you most particularly. He has no card, but he said that his name would not be known to you.”
“Tell him that I am engaged,” Wilhelmina said. “He must give you his name, and tell you what business he has come upon.”
“Very good, madam!” the man answered, and withdrew.
He was back again before the next hand had been played. Once more he stood waiting in respectful silence.
“Well?” his mistress asked.
“His name, madam, is Mr. Victor Macheson. He said that he would wait as long as you liked, but he preferred telling you his business himself.”
“I fancy that I know it,” Wilhelmina answered. “You can show him in here.”
“Is it the young man, I wonder,” Lady Peggy remarked, “who came up the avenue as though he were walking on air?”
“Doubtless,” Wilhelmina answered. “He is some sort of a missionary. I had him shown in here because I thought his coming at all an impertinence, and I want to make him understand it. You will probably find him amusing, Mr. Deyes.”
Gilbert Deyes shook his head quietly.
“There was a time,” he murmured, “when the very word missionary was a finger-post to the ridiculous. The comic papers rob us, however, of our elementary sources of humour.”
They all looked curiously towards the door as he entered, all except Wilhelmina, who was the last to turn her head, and found him hesitating in some embarrassment as to whom to address. He was somewhat above medium height, fair, with a mass of wind-tossed hair, and had the smooth face of a boy. His eyes were his most noticeable feature. They were very bright and very restless. Lady Peggy called them afterwards uncomfortable eyes, and the others, without any explanation, understood what she meant.
“I am Miss Thorpe-Hatton,” Wilhelmina said calmly. “I am told that you wished to see me.”
She turned only her head towards him. Her words were cold and unwelcoming. She saw that he was nervous and she had no pity. It was unworthy of her. She knew that. Her eyes questioned him calmly. Sitting there in her light muslin dress, with her deep-brown hair arranged in the Madonna-like fashion, which chanced to be the caprice of the moment, she herself—one of London’s most beautiful women—seemed little more than a girl.
“I beg your pardon,” he began hurriedly. “I understood—I expected——”
“Well?”
The monosyllable was like a drop of ice. A faint spot of colour burned in his cheeks. He understood now that for some reason this woman was inimical to him. The knowledge seemed to have a bracing effect. His eyes flashed with a sudden fire which gave force to his face.
“I expected,” he continued with more assurance, “to have found Miss Thorpe-Hatton an older lady.”
She said nothing. Only her eyebrows were very slightly raised. She seemed to be asking him silently what possible concern the age of the lady of Thorpe-Hatton could be to him. He was to understand that his remark was almost an impertinence.
“I wished,” he said, “to hold a service in Thorpe on Sunday afternoon, and also one during the week, and I wrote to your agent asking for the loan of a barn, which is generally, I believe, used for any gathering of the villagers. Mr. Hurd found himself unable to grant my request. I have ventured to appeal to you.”
“Mr. Hurd,” she said calmly, “decided, in my opinion, quite rightly. I do not see what possible need my villagers can have of further religious services than the Church affords them.”
“Madam,” he answered, “I have not a word to say against your parish church, or against your excellent vicar. Yet I believe, and the body to which I am attached believes, that change is stimulating. We believe that the great truths of life cannot be presented to our fellow-creatures too often, or in too many different ways.”
“And what,” she asked, with a faint curl of her beautiful lips, “do you consider the great truths of life?”
“Madam,” he answered, with slightly reddening cheeks, “they vary for every one of us, according to our capacity and our circumstances. What they may mean,” he added, after a moment’s hesitation, “to people of your social order, I do not know. It has not come within the orbit of my experience. It was your villagers to whom I was proposing to talk.”
There was a moment’s silence. Gilbert Deyes and Lady Peggy exchanged swift glances of amused understanding. Wilhelmina bit her lip, but she betrayed no other sign of annoyance.
“To what religious body do you belong?” she asked.
“My friends,” he answered, “and I, are attached to none of the recognized denominations. Our only object is to try to keep alight in our fellow-creatures the flame of spirituality. We want to help them—not to forget.”
“There is no name by which you call yourselves?” she asked.
“None,” he answered.
“And your headquarters are where?” she asked.
“In Gloucestershire,” he answered—“so far as we can be said to have any headquarters at all.”
“You have no churches then?” she asked.
“Any building,” he answered, “where the people are to whom we desire to speak, is our church. We look upon ourselves as missioners only.”
“I am afraid,” Wilhelmina said quietly, “that I am only wasting your time in asking these questions. Still, I should like to know what induced you to choose my village as an appropriate sphere for your labours.”
“We each took a county,” he answered. “Leicestershire fell to my lot. I selected Thorpe to begin with, because I have heard it spoken of as a model village.”
Wilhelmina’s forehead was gently wrinkled.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that I am a somewhat dense person. Your reason seems to me scarcely an adequate one.”
“Our belief is,” he declared, “that where material prosperity is assured, especially amongst this class of people, the instincts towards spirituality are weakened.”
“My people all attend church; we have no public-house; there are never any scandals,” she said.
“All these things,” he admitted, “are excellent. But they do not help you to see into the lives of these people. Church-going may become a habit, a respectable and praiseworthy thing—and a thing expected of them. Morality, too, may become a custom—until temptation comes. One must ask oneself what is the force which prompts these people to direct their lives in so praiseworthy a manner.”
“You forget,” she remarked, “that these are simple folk. Their religion with them is simply a matter of right or wrong. They need no further instruction in this.”
“Madam,” he said, “so long as they are living here, that may be so. Frankly, I do not consider it sufficient that their lives are seemly, so long as they live in the shadow of your patronage. What happens to those who pass outside its influence is another matter.”
“What do you know about that?” she asked coldly.
“What I do know about it,” he answered, “decided me to come to Thorpe.”
There was a moment’s silence. Any of the other three, Gilbert Deyes especially, perhaps, would have found it hard to explain, even to realize the interest with which they listened to the conversation between these two—the somewhat unkempt, ill-attired boy, with the nervous, forceful manner and burning eyes, and the woman, so sure of herself, so coldly and yet brutally ungracious. It was not so much the words themselves that passed between them that attracted as the undernote of hostility, more felt than apparent—the beginning of a duel, to all appearance so ludicrously onesided, yet destined to endure. Deyes turned in his chair uneasily. He was watching this intruder—a being outwardly so far removed from their world. The niceties of a correct toilet had certainly never troubled him, his clothes were rough in material and cut, he wore a flannel shirt, and a collar so low that his neck seemed ill-shaped. He had no special gifts of features or figure, his manner was nervous, his speech none too ready. Deyes found himself engaged in a swift analysis of the subtleties of personality. What did this young man possess that he should convey so strong a sense of power? There was something about him which told. They were all conscious of it, and, more than any of them, the woman who was regarding him with such studied ill-favour. To the others, her still beautiful face betrayed only some languid irritation. Deyes fancied that he saw more there—that underneath the mask which she knew so well how to wear there were traces of some deeper disturbance.
“Do you mind explaining yourself?” she asked. “That sounds rather an extraordinary statement of yours.”
“A few months ago,” he said, “I attended regularly one of the police courts in London. Day by day I came into contact with the lost souls who have drifted on to the great rubbish-heap. There was a girl, Martha Gullimore her name was, whose record for her age was as black as sin could make it. Her father, I believe, is the blacksmith in your model village! I spoke to him of his daughter yesterday, and he cursed me!”
“You mean Samuel Gullimore—my farrier?” she asked.
“That is the man,” he answered.
“Have you any other—instances?” she asked.
“More than one, I am sorry to say,” he replied. “There were two young men who left here only a year ago—one is the son of your gardener, the other was brought up by his uncle at your lodge gates. I was instrumental in saving them from prison a few months ago. One we have shipped to Canada—the other, I am sorry to say, has relapsed. We did what we could, but beyond a certain point we cannot go.”
She leaned her head for a moment upon the slim, white fingers of her right hand, innocent of rings save for one great emerald, whose gleam of colour was almost barbaric in its momentary splendour. Her face had hardened a little, her tone was almost an offence.
“You would have me believe, then,” she said, “that my peaceful village is a veritable den of iniquity?”
“Not I,” he answered brusquely. “Only I would have you realize that roses and honeysuckle and regular wages, the appurtenances of material prosperity, are after all things of little consequence. They hear the song of the world, these people, in their leisure moments; their young men and girls are no stronger than their fellows when temptation comes.”
Deyes leaned suddenly forward in his chair. He felt that his intervention dissipated a dramatic interest, of which he was keenly conscious, but he could not keep silence any longer.
“To follow out your argument, sir, to its logical conclusion,” he said, “why not aim higher still? It is your contention, is it not, that the seeds of evil things are sown in indifference, that prosperity might even tend towards their propagation. Why not direct your energies, then, towards the men and women of Society? There is plenty of scope here for your labours.”
The young man turned towards him. The lines of his mouth had relaxed into a smile of tolerant indifference.
“I have no sympathy, sir,” he answered, “with the class you name. On a sinking ship, the cry is always, ‘Save the women and children.’ It is the less fortunate in the world’s possessions who represent the women and children of shipwrecked morality. It is for their betterment that we work.”
Deyes sighed gently.
“It is a pity,” he declared. “I am convinced that there is a magnificent opening for mission work amongst the idle classes.”
“No doubt,” the young man agreed quickly. “The question is whether the game is worth the candle.”
Deyes made no reply. Lady Peggy was laughing softly to herself.
“I have heard all that you have to say, Mr. Macheson,” the mistress of Thorpe said calmly, “and I can only repeat that I think your presence here as a missioner most unnecessary. I consider it, in fact, an——”
She hesitated. With a sudden flash of humour in his deep-set eyes, he supplied the word.
“An impertinence, perhaps!”
“The word is not mine,” she answered, “but I accept it willingly. I cannot interfere with Mr. Hurd’s decision as to the barn.”
“I am sorry,” he said slowly. “I must hold my meetings out of doors! That is all!”
There was a dangerous glitter in her beautiful eyes.
“There is no common land in the neighbourhood,” she said, “and you will of course understand that I will consider you a trespasser at any time you are found upon my property.”
He bowed slightly.
“I am here to speak to your people,” he said, “and I will do so, if I have to stop in these lanes and talk to them one by one. You will pardon my reminding you, madam, that the days of feudalism are over.”
Wilhelmina carefully shuffled the pack of cards which she had just taken up.
“We will finish our rubber, Peggy,” she said. “Mr. Deyes, perhaps I may trouble you to ring the bell!”
The young man was across the room before Deyes could move.
“You will allow me,” he said, with a delightfully humourous smile, “to facilitate my own dismissal. I shall doubtless meet your man in the hall. May I be allowed to wish you all good afternoon!”
They all returned his farewell save Wilhelmina, who had begun to deal. She seemed determined to remember his existence no more. Yet on the threshold, with the handle of the door between his fingers, he turned back. He said nothing, but his eyes were fixed upon her. Deyes leaned forward in his chair, immensely curious. Softly the cards fell into their places, there was no sign in her face of any consciousness of his presence. Deyes alone knew that she was fighting. He heard her breath come quicker, saw the fingers which gathered up her cards shake. Slowly, but with obvious unwillingness, she turned her head. She looked straight into the eyes of the man who still lingered.
“Good afternoon, Miss Thorpe-Hatton,” he said pleasantly. “I am sorry to have troubled you.”
Her lips moved, but she said nothing. She half inclined her head. The door was softly closed.
CHAPTER IV
BEATING HER WINGS
Never was a young man more pleased with himself than Stephen Hurd, on the night he dined at Thorpe-Hatton. He had shot well all day, and been accepted with the utmost cordiality by the rest of the party. At dinner time, his hostess had placed him on her left hand, and though it was true she had not much to say to him, it was equally obvious that her duties were sufficient to account for her divided attention. He was quite willing to be ignored by the lady on his other side—a little elderly, and noted throughout the country for her husband-hunting proclivities. He recognized the fact that, apart from the personal side of the question, he could scarcely hope to be of any interest to her. The novelty of the situation, Wilhelmina’s occasional remarks, and a dinner such as he had never tasted before were sufficient to keep him interested. For the rest he was content to twirl his moustache, of which he was inordinately proud, and lean back in his chair with the comfortable reflection that he was the first of his family to be offered the complete hospitality of Thorpe-Hatton.
Towards the close of dinner, his hostess leaned towards him.
“Have you seen or heard anything of a young man named Macheson in the village?” she asked.
“I have seen him once or twice,” he answered. “Here on a missionary expedition or something of the sort, I believe.”
“Has he made any attempt to hold a meeting?” she asked.
“Not that I have heard of,” he replied. “He has been talking to some of the people, though. I saw him with old Gullimore yesterday.”
“That reminds me,” she remarked, “is it true that Gullimore has had trouble with his daughter?”
“I believe so,” young Hurd admitted, looking downwards at his plate.
“The man was to blame for letting her leave the place,” Wilhelmina declared, in cold, measured tones. “A pretty girl, I remember, but very vain, and a fool, of course. But about this young fellow Macheson. Do you know who he is, and where he came from?”
Stephen Hurd shook his head.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said doubtfully. “He belongs to some sort of brotherhood, I believe. I can’t exactly make out what he’s at. Seems a queer sort of place for him to come missioning, this!”
“So I told him,” she said. “By the bye, do you know where he is staying?”
“At Onetree farm,” the young man answered.
Wilhelmina frowned.
“Will you execute a commission for me to-morrow?” she asked.
“With pleasure!” he answered eagerly.
“You will go to the woman at Onetree farm, I forget her name, and say that I desire to take her rooms myself from to-morrow, or as soon as possible. I will pay her for them, but I do not wish that young man to be taken in by any of my tenants. You will perhaps make that known.”
“I will do so,” he declared. “I hope he will have the good sense to leave the neighbourhood.”
“I trust so,” Wilhelmina replied.
She turned away to speak once more to the man on her other side, and did not address Stephen Hurd again. He watched her covertly, with tingling pulses, as she devoted herself to her neighbour—the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. He considered himself a judge of the sex, but he had had few opportunities even of admiring such women as the mistress of Thorpe. He watched the curve of her white neck with its delicate, satin-like skin, the play of her features, the poise of her somewhat small, oval head. He admired the slightly wearied air with which she performed her duties and accepted the compliments of her neighbour. “A woman of mysteries” some one had once called her, and he realized that it was the mouth and the dark, tired eyes which puzzled those who attempted to classify her. What a triumph—to bring her down to the world of ordinary women, to drive the weariness away, to feel the soft touch, perhaps, of those wonderful arms! He was a young man of many conquests, and with a sufficiently good idea of himself. The thought was like wine in his blood. If only it were possible!
He relapsed into a day-dream, from which he was aroused only by the soft flutter of gowns and laces as the women rose to go. There was a momentary disarrangement of seats. Gilbert Deyes, who was on the other side of the table, rose, and carrying his glass in his hand, came deliberately round to the vacant seat by the young man’s side. In his evening clothes, the length and gauntness of his face and figure seemed more noticeable than ever. His skin was dry, almost like parchment, and his eyes by contrast appeared unnaturally bright. His new neighbour noticed, too, that the glass which he carried so carefully contained nothing but water.
“I will come and talk to you for a few minutes, if I may,” Deyes said. “I leave the Church and agriculture to hobnob. Somehow I don’t fancy that as a buffer I should be a success.”
Young Hurd smiled amiably. He was more than a little flattered.
“The Archdeacon,” he remarked, “is not an inspiring neighbour.”
Deyes lit one of his own cigarettes and passed his case.
“I have found the Archdeacon very dull,” he admitted—“a privilege of his order, I suppose. By the bye, you are having a dose of religion from a new source hereabouts, are you not?”
“You mean this young missioner?” Hurd inquired doubtfully.
Deyes nodded.
“I was with our hostess when he came up to ask for the loan of a barn to hold services in. A very queer sort of person, I should think?”
“I haven’t spoken to him,” Hurd answered, “but I should think he’s more or less mad. I can understand mission and Salvation Army work and all that sort of thing in the cities, but I’m hanged if I can understand any one coming to Thorpe with such notions.”
“Our hostess is annoyed about it, I imagine,” Deyes remarked.
“She seems to have taken a dislike to the fellow,” Hurd admitted. “She was speaking to me about him just now. He is to be turned out of his lodgings here.”
Gilbert Deyes smiled. The news interested him.
“Our hostess is practical in her dislikes,” he remarked.
“Why not?” his neighbour answered. “The place belongs to her.”
Deyes watched for a moment the smoke from his cigarette, curling upwards.
“The young man,” he said thoughtfully, “impressed me as being a person of some determination. I wonder whether he will consent to accept defeat so easily.”
The agent’s son scarcely saw what else there was for him to do.
“There isn’t anywhere round here,” he remarked, “where they would take him in against Miss Thorpe-Hatton’s wishes. Besides, he has nowhere to preach. His coming here at all was a huge mistake. If he’s a sensible person he’ll admit it.”
Deyes nodded as he rose to his feet and lounged towards the door with the other men.
“Play bridge?” he asked his companion, as they crossed the hall.
“A little,” the young man answered, “for moderate stakes.”
They entered the drawing-room, and Deyes made his way to a secluded corner, where Lady Peggy sat scribbling alone in a note-book.
“My dear Lady Peggy,” he inquired, “whence this exceptional industry?”
She closed the book and looked up at him with twinkling eyes.
“Well, I didn’t mean to tell a soul until it was finished,” she declared, “but you’ve just caught me. I’ve had such a brilliant idea. I’m going to write a Society Encyclopædia!”
Deyes looked at her solemnly.
“A Society Encyclopædia!” he repeated uncertainly. “’Pon my word, I’m not quite sure that I understand.”
She motioned him to sit down by her side.
“I’ll explain,” she said. “You know we’re all expected to know something about everything nowadays, and it’s such a bore reading up things. I’m going to compile a little volume of definitions. I shall sell it at a guinea a copy, pay all my debts, and become quite respectable again.”
Deyes shook his head. His attitude was scarcely sympathetic.
“My dear Lady Peggy, what nonsense!” he declared. “Respectable, indeed! I call it positively pandering to the middle classes!”
Lady Peggy looked doubtful.
“It is a horrid word, isn’t it?” she admitted, “but it would be lovely to make some money. Of course, I haven’t absolutely decided how to spend it yet. It does seem rather a waste, doesn’t it, to pay one’s debts, but think of the luxury of feeling one could do it if one wanted to!”
“There’s something in that,” Deyes admitted. “But an encyclopædia! My dear Lady Peggy, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got one somewhere, I know. It came in a van, and it took two of the men to unload it.”
Lady Peggy laughed softly.
“Oh! I don’t mean that sort, of course,” she declared. “I mean just a little gilt-edged text book, bound in morocco, you know, with just those things in it we’re likely to run up against. Radium, for instance. Now every one’s talking about radium. Do you know what radium is?”
Deyes swung his eyeglass carefully by its black riband.
“Well,” he admitted, “I’ve a sort of idea, but I’m not very good at definitions.”
“Of course not,” Lady Peggy declared triumphantly. “When it comes to the point, you see what a good idea mine is. You turn to my textbook,” she added, turning the pages over rapidly, “and there you are. Radium! ‘A hard, rare substance, invented by Mr. Gillette to give tone to his bachelor parties.’ What do you think of that?”
“Wonderful!” Deyes declared solemnly. “Where do you get your information from?”
“Oh! I poke about in dictionaries and things, and ask every one questions,” Lady Peggy declared airily. “Would you like to hear some more?”
“Our hostess is beckoning to me,” Deyes answered, rising. “I expect she wants some bridge.”
“I’m on,” Lady Peggy declared cheerfully. “Whom shall we get for a fourth?”
“Wilhelmina has found him already,” Deyes declared. “It’s the new young man, I think.”
Lady Peggy shrugged her shoulders.
“The agent’s son?” she remarked. “I shouldn’t have thought that he would have cared about our points.”
“He can afford it for once in a way, I should imagine,” Deyes answered. “I can’t understand, though——”
He stopped short. She looked at him curiously.
“Is it possible,” she murmured, “that there exists anything which Gilbert Deyes does not understand?”
“Many things,” he answered; “amongst them, why does Wilhelmina patronize this young man? He is well enough, of course, but——” he shrugged his shoulders expressively; “the thing needs an explanation, doesn’t it?”
“If Wilhelmina—were not Wilhelmina, it certainly would,” Lady Peggy answered. “I call her craving for new things and new people positively morbid. All the time she beats her wings against the bars. There are no new things. There are no new experiences. The sooner one makes up one’s mind to it the better.”
Gilbert Deyes laughed softly.
“If my memory serves me,” he said, “you are repeating a cry many thousand years old. Wasn’t there a prophet——”
“There was,” she interrupted, “but they are beckoning us. I hope I don’t cut with the young man. I don’t believe he has a bridge face.”
CHAPTER V
EVICTED
Victor Macheson smoked his after-breakfast pipe with the lazy enjoyment of one who is thoroughly at peace with himself and his surroundings. The tiny strip of lawn on to which he had dragged his chair was surrounded with straggling bushes of cottage flowers, and flanked by a hedge thick with honeysuckle. Straight to heaven, as the flight of a bird, the thin line of blue smoke curled upwards to the summer sky; the very air seemed full of sweet scents and soothing sounds. A few yards away, a procession of lazy cows moved leisurely along the grass-bordered lane; from the other side of the hedge came the cheerful sound of a reaping-machine, driven slowly through the field of golden corn.
The man, through half closed eyes, looked out upon these things, and every line in his face spelt contentment. In repose, the artistic temperament with which he was deeply imbued, asserted itself more clearly—the almost fanatical light in his eyes was softened; one saw there was something of the wistfulness of those who seek to raise but a corner of the veil that hangs before the world of hidden things—something, too, of the subdued joy which even the effort brings. The lines of his forceful mouth were less firm, more sensitive—a greater sense of humanity seemed somehow to have descended upon him as he lounged there in the warmth of the sun, with the full joy of his beautiful environment creeping through his blood.
“If you please, Mr. Macheson,” some one said in his ear.
He turned his head at once. A tall, fair girl had stepped out of the room where he had been breakfasting, and was standing by his elbow. She was neatly dressed, pretty in a somewhat insipid fashion, and her hands and hair showed signs of a refinement superior to her station. Just now she was apparently nervous. Macheson smiled at her encouragingly.
“Well, Letty,” he said, “what is it?”
“I wanted—can I say something to you, Mr. Macheson?” she began.
“Why not?” he answered kindly. “Is it anything very serious? Out with it!”
“I was thinking, Mr. Macheson,” she said, “that I should like to leave home—if I could—if there was anything which I could do. I wanted to ask your advice.”
He laid down his pipe and looked at her seriously.
“Why, Letty,” he said, “how long have you been thinking of this?”
“Oh! ever so long, sir,” she exclaimed, speaking with more confidence. “You see there’s nothing for me to do here except when there’s any one staying, like you, sir, and that’s not often. Mother won’t let me help with the rough work, and Ruth’s growing up now, she’s ever such a strong girl. And I should like to go away if I could, and learn to be a little more—more ladylike,” she added, with reddening cheeks.
Macheson was puzzled. The girl was not looking him in the face. He felt there was something at the back of it all.
“My dear girl,” he said, “you can’t learn to be ladylike. That’s one of the things that’s born with you or it isn’t. You can be just as much a lady helping your mother here as practising grimaces in a London drawing-room.”
“But I want to improve myself,” she persisted.
“Go for a long walk every day, and look about you,” he said. “Read. I’ll lend you some books—the right sort. You’ll do better here than away.”
She was frankly dissatisfied.
“But I want to go away,” she declared. “I want to leave Thorpe for a time. I should like to go to London. Couldn’t I get a situation as lady’s help or companion or something of that sort? I shouldn’t want any money.”
He was silent for a moment.
“Does your mother know of this, Letty?” he asked.
“She wouldn’t object,” the girl answered eagerly. “She lets me do what I like.”
“Hadn’t you better tell me—the rest?” Macheson asked quietly.
The girl looked away uneasily.
“There is no rest,” she protested weakly.
Macheson shook his head.
“Letty,” he said, “if you have formed any ideas of a definite future for yourself, different from any you see before you here, tell me what they are, and I will do my best to help you. But if you simply want to go away because you are dissatisfied with the life here, because you fancy yourself superior to it, well, I’m sorry, but I’d sooner prevent your going than help you.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh! Mr. Macheson, it isn’t that,” she declared, “I—I don’t want to tell any one, but I’m very—very fond of some one who’s—quite different. I think he’s fond of me, too,” she added softly, “but he’s always used to being with ladies, and I wanted to improve myself so much! I thought if I went to London,” she added wistfully, “I might learn?”
Macheson laughed cheerfully. He laid his hand for a moment upon her arm.
“Oh! Letty, Letty,” he declared, “you’re a foolish little girl! Now, listen to me. If he’s a good sort, and I’m sure he is, or you wouldn’t be fond of him, he’ll like you just exactly as you are. Do you know what it means to be a lady, the supreme test of good manners? It means to be natural. Take my advice! Go on helping your mother, enter into the village life, make friends with the other girls, don’t imagine yourself a bit superior to anybody else. Read when you have time—I’ll manage the books for you, and spend all the time you can out of doors. It’s sound advice, Letty. Take my word for it. Hullo, who’s this?”
A new sound in the lane made them both turn their heads. Young Hurd had just ridden up and was fastening his pony to the fence. He looked across at them curiously, and Letty retreated precipitately into the house. A moment or two later he came up the narrow path, frowning at Macheson over the low hedge of foxgloves and cottage roses, and barely returning his courteous greeting. For a moment he hesitated, however, as though about to speak. Then, changing his mind, he passed on and entered the farmhouse.
He met Mrs. Foulton herself in the passage, and she welcomed him with a smiling face.
“Good morning, Mr. Hurd, sir!” she exclaimed, plucking at her apron. “Won’t you come inside, sir, and sit down? The parlour’s let to Mr. Macheson there, but he’s out in the garden, and he won’t mind your stepping in for a moment. And how’s your father, Mr. Hurd? Wonderful well he was looking when I saw him last.”
The young man followed her inside, but declined a chair.
“Oh! the governor’s all right, Mrs. Foulton,” he answered. “Never knew him anything else. Good weather for the harvest, eh?”
“Beautiful, sir!” Mrs. Foulton answered.
“Were you wanting to speak to John, Mr. Stephen? He’s about the home meadow somewhere, or in the orchard. I can send a boy for him, or perhaps you’d step out.”
“It’s you I came to see, Mrs. Foulton,” the young man said, “and ’pon my word, I don’t like my errand much.”
Mrs. Foulton was visibly anxious.
“There’s no trouble like, I hope, sir?” she began.
“Oh! it’s nothing serious,” he declared reassuringly. “To tell you the truth, it’s about your lodger.”
“About Mr. Macheson, sir!” the woman exclaimed.
“Yes! Do you know how long he was proposing to stay with you?”
“He’s just took the rooms for another week, sir,” she answered, “and a nicer lodger, or one more quiet and regular in his habits, I never had or wish to have. There’s nothing against him, sir—surely?”
“Nothing personal—that I know of,” Hurd answered, tapping his boots with his riding-whip. “The fact of it is, he has offended Miss Thorpe-Hatton, and she wants him out of the place.”
“Well, I never did!” Mrs. Foulton exclaimed in amazement. “Him offend Miss Thorpe-Hatton! So nice-spoken he is, too. I’m sure I can’t imagine his saying a wry word to anybody.”
“He has come to Thorpe,” Hurd explained, “on an errand of which Miss Thorpe-Hatton disapproves, and she does not wish to have him in the place. She knows that he is staying here, and she wishes you to send him away at once.”
Mrs. Foulton’s face fell.
“Well, I’m fair sorry to hear this, sir,” she declared. “It’s only this morning that he spoke for the rooms for another week, and I was glad and willing enough to let them to him. Well I never did! It does sound all anyhow, don’t it, sir, to be telling him to pack up and go sudden-like!”
“I will speak to him myself, if you like, Mrs. Foulton,” Stephen said. “Of course, Miss Thorpe-Hatton does not wish you to lose anything, and I am to pay you the rent of the rooms for the time he engaged them. I will do so at once, if you will let me know how much it is.”
He thrust his hand into his pocket, but Mrs. Foulton drew back. The corners of her mouth were drawn tightly together.
“Thank you, Mr. Stephen,” she said, “I’ll obey Miss Thorpe-Hatton’s wishes, of course, as in duty bound, but I’ll not take any money for the rooms. Thank you all the same.”
“Don’t be foolish, Mrs. Foulton,” the young man said pleasantly. “It will annoy Miss Thorpe-Hatton if she knows you have refused, and you may just as well have the money. Let me see. Shall we say a couple of sovereigns for the week?”
Mrs. Foulton shook her head.
“I’ll not take anything, sir, thank you all the same, and if you’d say a word to Mr. Macheson, I’d be much obliged. I’d rather any one spoke to him than me.”
Stephen Hurd pocketed the money with a shrug of the shoulders.
“Just as you like, of course, Mrs. Foulton,” he said. “I’ll go out and speak to the young gentleman at once.”
He strolled out and looked over the hedge.
“Mr. Macheson, I believe?” he remarked interrogatively.
Macheson nodded as he rose from his chair.
“And you are Mr. Hurd’s son, are you not?” he said pleasantly. “Wonderful morning, isn’t it?”
Young Hurd stepped over the rose bushes. The two men stood side by side, something of a height, only that the better cut of Hurd’s clothes showed his figure to greater advantage.
“I’m sorry to say that I’ve come on rather a disagreeable errand,” the agent’s son began. “I’ve been talking to Mrs. Foulton about it.”
“Indeed?” Macheson remarked interrogatively.
“The fact is you seem to have rubbed up against our great lady here,” young Hurd continued. “She’s very down on these services you were going to hold, and she wants to see you out of the place.”
“I am sorry to hear this,” Macheson said—and once more waited.
“It isn’t a pleasant task,” Stephen continued, liking his errand less as he proceeded; “but I’ve had to tell Mrs. Foulton that—that, in short, Miss Thorpe-Hatton does not wish her tenants to accept you as a lodger.”
“Miss Thorpe-Hatton makes war on a wide scale,” Macheson remarked, smiling faintly.
“Well, after all, you see,” Hurd explained, “the whole place belongs to her, and there is no particular reason, is there, why she should tolerate any one in it of whom she disapproves?”
“None whatever,” Macheson assented gravely.
“I promised Mrs. Foulton I would speak to you,” Stephen continued, stepping backwards. “I’m sure, for her sake, you won’t make any trouble. Good morning!”
Macheson bowed slightly.
“Good morning!” he answered.
Stephen Hurd lingered even then upon the garden path. Somehow he was not satisfied with his interview—with his own position at the end of it. He had an uncomfortable sense of belittlement, of having played a small part in a not altogether worthy game. The indifference of the other’s manner nettled him. He tried a parting shaft.
“Mrs. Foulton said something about your having engaged the rooms for another week,” he said, turning back. “Of course, if you insist upon staying, it will place the woman in a very awkward position.”
Macheson had resumed his seat.
“I should not dream,” he said coolly, “of resisting—your mistress’ decree! I shall leave here in half an hour.”
Young Hurd walked angrily down the path and slammed the gate. The sense of having been worsted was strong upon him. He recognized his own limitations too accurately not to be aware that he had been in conflict with a stronger personality.
“D—— the fellow!” he muttered, as he cantered down the lane. “I wish he were out of the place.”
A genuine wish, and one which betrayed at least a glimmering of a prophetic instinct. In some dim way he seemed to understand, even before the first move on the board, that the coming of Victor Macheson to Thorpe was inimical to himself. He was conscious of his weakness, of a marked inferiority, and the consciousness was galling. The fellow had no right to be a gentleman, he told himself angrily—a gentleman and a missioner!
Macheson re-lit his pipe and called to Mrs. Foulton.
“Mrs. Foulton,” he said pleasantly, “I’ll have to go! Your great lady doesn’t like me on the estate. I dare say she’s right.”
“I’m sure I’m very sorry, sir,” Mrs. Foulton declared shamefacedly. “You’ve seen young Mr. Hurd?”
“He was kind enough to explain the situation to me,” Macheson answered. “I’m afraid I am rather a nuisance to everybody. If I am, it’s because they don’t quite understand!”
“I’m sure, sir,” Mrs. Foulton affirmed, “a nicer lodger no one ever had. And as for them services, and the Vicar objecting to them, I can’t see what harm they’d do! We’re none of us so good but we might be a bit better!”
“A very sound remark, Mrs. Foulton,” Macheson said, smiling. “And now you must make out my bill, please, and what about a few sandwiches? You could manage that? I’m going to play in a cricket match this afternoon.”
“Why you’ve just paid the bill, sir! There’s only breakfast, and the sandwiches you’re welcome to, and very sorry I am to part with you, sir.”
“Better luck another time, I hope, Mrs. Foulton,” he answered, smiling. “I must go upstairs and pack my bag. I shan’t forget your garden with its delicious flowers.”
“It’s a shame as you’ve got to leave it, sir,” Mrs. Foulton said heartily. “If my Richard were alive he’d never have let you go for all the Miss Thorpe-Hattons in the world. But John—he’s little more than a lad—he’d be frightened to death for fear of losing the farm, if I so much as said a word to him.”
Macheson laughed softly.
“John’s a good son,” he said. “Don’t you worry him.”
He went up to his tiny bedroom and changed his clothes for a suit of flannels. Then he packed his few belongings and walked out into the world. He lit a pipe and shouldered his portmanteau.
“There is a flavour of martyrdom about this affair,” he said to himself, as he strolled along, “which appeals to me. I don’t think that young man has any sense of humour.”
He paused every now and then to listen to the birds and admire the view. He had the air of one thoroughly enjoying his walk. Presently he turned off the main road, and wandered along a steep green lane, which was little more than a cart-track. Here he met no one. The country on either side was common land, sown with rocks and the poorest soil, picturesque, but almost impossible of cultivation. A few sheep were grazing upon the hills, but other sign of life there was none. Not a farmhouse—scarcely a keeper’s cottage in sight! It was a forgotten corner of a not unpopulous county—the farthest portion of a belt of primeval forest land, older than history itself. Macheson laughed softly as he reached the spot he had had in his mind, and threw his bag over the grey stone wall into the cool shade of a dense fragment of wood.
“So much,” he murmured softly, “for the lady of Thorpe!”
CHAPTER VI
CRICKET AND PHILOSOPHY
“
The instinct for games,” Wilhelmina remarked, “is one which I never possessed. Let us see whether we can learn something.”
In obedience to her gesture, the horses were checked, and the footman clambered down and stood at their heads. Deyes, from his somewhat uncomfortable back seat in the victoria, leaned forward, and, adjusting his eyeglass, studied the scene with interest.
“Here,” he remarked, “we have the ‘flannelled fool’ upon his native heath. They are playing a game which my memory tells me is cricket. Everyone seems very hot and very excited.”
Wilhelmina beckoned to the footman to come round to the side of the carriage.
“James,” she said, “do you know what all this means?”
She waved her hand towards the cricket pitch, the umpires with their white coats, the tent and the crowd of spectators. The man touched his hat.
“It is a cricket match, madam,” he answered, “between Thorpe and Nesborough.”
Wilhelmina looked once more towards the field, and recognized Mr. Hurd upon his stout little cob.
“Go and tell Mr. Hurd to come and speak to me,” she ordered.
The man hastened off. Mr. Hurd had not once turned his head. His eyes were riveted upon the game. The groom found it necessary to touch him on the arm before he could attract his attention. Even when he had delivered his message, the agent waited until the finish of the over before he moved. Then he cantered his pony up to the waiting carriage. Wilhelmina greeted him graciously.
“I want to know about the cricket match, Mr. Hurd,” she asked, smiling.
Mr. Hurd wheeled his pony round so that he could still watch the game.
“I am afraid that we are going to be beaten, madam,” he said dolefully. “Nesborough made a hundred and ninety-eight, and we have six wickets down for fifty.”
Wilhelmina seemed scarcely to realize the tragedy which his words unfolded.
“I suppose they are the stronger team, aren’t they?” she remarked. “They ought to be. Nesborough is quite a large town.”
“We have beaten them regularly until the last two years,” Mr. Hurd answered. “We should beat them now but for their fast bowler, Mills. I don’t know how it is, but our men will not stand up to him.”
“Perhaps they are afraid of being hurt,” Wilhelmina suggested innocently. “If that is he bowling now, I’m sure I don’t wonder at it.”
Mr. Hurd frowned.
“We don’t have men in the eleven who are afraid of getting hurt,” he remarked stiffly.
A shout of dismay from the onlookers, a smothered exclamation from Mr. Hurd, and a man was seen on his way to the pavilion. His wickets were spreadeagled, and the ball was being tossed about the field.
“Another wicket!” the agent exclaimed testily. “Crooks played all round that ball!”
“Isn’t that your son going in, Mr. Hurd?” Wilhelmina asked.
“Yes! Stephen is in now,” his father answered. “If he gets out, the match is over.”
“Who is the other batsman?” Deyes asked.
“Antill, the second bailiff,” Mr. Hurd answered. “He’s captain, and he can stay in all day, but he can’t make runs.”
They all leaned forward to witness the continuation of the match. Stephen Hurd’s career was brief and inglorious. He took guard and looked carefully round the field with the air of a man who is going to give trouble. Then he saw the victoria, with its vision of parasols and fluttering laces, and the sight was fatal to him. He slogged wildly at the first ball, missed it, and paid the penalty. The lady in the carriage frowned, and Mr. Hurd muttered something under his breath as he watched his son on the way back to the tent.
“I’m afraid it’s all up with us now,” he remarked. “We have only three more men to go in.”
“Then we are going to be beaten,” Wilhelmina remarked.
“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Hurd assented gloomily.
The next batsman had issued from the tent and was on his way to the wicket. Wilhelmina, who had been about to give an order to the footman, watched him curiously.
“Who is that going in?” she asked abruptly.
Mr. Hurd was looking not altogether comfortable.
“It is the young man who wanted to preach,” he answered.
Wilhelmina frowned.
“Why is he playing?” she asked. “He has nothing to do with Thorpe.”
“He came down to see them practise a few evenings ago, and Antill asked him,” the agent answered. “If I had known earlier I would have stopped it.”
Wilhelmina did not immediately reply. She was watching the young man who stood now at the wicket, bat in hand. In his flannels, he seemed a very different person from the missioner whose request a few days ago had so much offended her. Nevertheless, her lip curled as she saw the terrible Mills prepare to deliver his first ball.
“That sort of person,” she remarked, “is scarcely likely to be much good at games. Oh!”
Her exclamation was repeated in various forms from all over the field. Macheson had hit his first ball high over their heads, and a storm of applause broke from the bystanders. The batsman made no attempt to run.
“What is that?” Wilhelmina asked.
“A boundary—magnificent drive,” Mr. Hurd answered excitedly. “By Jove, another!”
The agent dropped his reins and led the applause. Along the ground this time the ball had come at such a pace that the fieldsman made a very half-hearted attempt to stop it. It passed the horses’ feet by only a few yards. The coachman turned round and touched his hat.
“Shall I move farther back, madam?” he asked.
“Stay where you are,” Wilhelmina answered shortly. Her eyes were fixed upon the tall, lithe figure once more facing the bowler. The next ball was the last of the over. Macheson played it carefully for a single, and stood prepared for the bowling at the other end. He began by a graceful cut for two, and followed it up by a square leg hit clean out of the ground. For the next half an hour, the Thorpe villagers thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Never since the days of one Foulds, a former blacksmith, had they seen such an exhibition of hurricane hitting. The fast bowler, knocked clean off his length, became wild and erratic. Once he only missed Macheson’s head by an inch, but his next ball was driven fair and square out of the ground for six. The applause became frantic.
Wilhelmina was leaning back amongst the cushions of her carriage, watching the game through half closed eyes, and with some apparent return of her usual graceful languor. Nevertheless, she remained there, and her eyes seldom wandered for a moment from the scene of play. Beneath her apparent indifference, she was watching this young man with an interest for which she would have found it hard to account, and which instinct alone prompted her to conceal. It was a very ordinary scene, after all, of which he was the dominant figure. She had seen so much of life on a larger scale—of men playing heroic parts in the limelight of a stage as mighty as this was insignificant. Yet, without stopping to reason about it, she was conscious of a curious sense of pleasure in watching the doings of this forceful young giant. With an easy good-humoured smile, replaced every now and then with a grim look of determination as he jumped out from the crease to hit, he continued his victorious career, until a more frantic burst of applause than usual announced that the match was won. Then Wilhelmina turned towards Stephen Hurd, who was standing by the side of the carriage.
“You executed my commission,” she asked, “respecting that young man?”
“The first thing this morning,” he answered. “I went up to see Mrs. Foulton, and I also spoke to him.”
“Did he make any difficulty?”
“None at all!” the young man answered.
“What did he say?”
Stephen hesitated, but Wilhelmina waited for his reply. She had the air of one remotely interested, yet she waited obviously to hear what this young man had said.
“I think he said something about your making war upon a large scale,” Stephen explained diffidently.
She sat still for a moment. She was looking towards the deserted cricket pitch.
“Where is he staying now?” she asked.
“I do not know,” he answered. “I have warned all the likely people not to receive him, and I have told him, too, that he will only get your tenants into trouble if he tries to get lodgings here.”
“I should like,” she said, “to speak to him. Perhaps you would be so good as to ask him to step this way for a moment.”
Stephen departed, wondering. Deyes was watching his hostess with an air of covert amusement.
“Do you continue the warfare,” he asked, “or has the young man’s prowess softened your heart?”
Wilhelmina raised her parasol and looked steadily at her questioner.
“Warfare is scarcely the word, is it?” she remarked carelessly. “I have no personal objection to the young man.”
They watched him crossing the field towards them. Notwithstanding his recent exertions, he walked lightly, and without any sign of fatigue. Deyes looked curiously at the crest upon the cap which he was carrying in his hand.
“Magdalen,” he muttered. “Your missioner grows more interesting.”
Wilhelmina leaned forwards. Her face was inscrutable, and her greeting devoid of cordiality.
“So you have decided to teach my people cricket instead of morals, Mr. Macheson,” she remarked.
“The two,” he answered pleasantly, “are not incompatible.”
Wilhelmina frowned.
“I hope,” she said, “that you have abandoned your idea of holding meetings in the village.”
“Certainly not,” he answered. “I will begin next week.”
“You understand,” she said calmly, “that I consider you—as a missioner—an intruder—here! Those of my people who attend your services will incur my displeasure!”
“Madam,” he answered, “I do not believe that you will visit it upon them.”
“But I will,” she interrupted ruthlessly. “You are young and know little of the world. You have not yet learnt the truth of one of the oldest of proverbs—that it is well to let well alone!”
“It is a sop for the idle, that proverb,” he answered. “It is the motto for the great army of those who drift.”
“I have been making inquiries,” she said. “I find that my villagers are contented and prosperous. There are no signs of vice in the place.”
“There is such a thing,” he answered, “as being too prosperous, over-contented. The person in such a state takes life for granted. Religion is a thing he hears about, but fails to realize. He has no need of it. He becomes like the prize cattle in your park! He has a mind, but has forgotten how to use it.”
She looked at him steadily, perhaps a trifle insolently.
“How old are you, Mr. Macheson?” she asked.
“Twenty-eight,” he answered, with a slight flush.
“Twenty-eight! You are young to make yourself the judge of such things as these. You will do a great deal of mischief, I am afraid, before you are old enough to realize it.”
“To awaken those who sleep in the daytime—is that mischief?” he asked.
“It is,” she answered deliberately. “When you are older you will realize it. Sleep is the best.”
He bent towards her. The light in his eyes had blazed out.
“You know in your heart,” he said, “that it is not true. You have brains, and you are as much of an artist as your fettered life permits you to be. You know very well that knowledge is best.”
“Do you believe,” she answered, “that I—I take myself not personally but as a type—am as happy as they are?”
She moved her parasol to where the village lay beyond the trees. He hesitated.
“Madam,” he answered gravely, “I know too little of your life to answer your question.”
She shrugged her shoulders. For a moment her parasol hid her face.
“We are quite à la mode, are we not, my dear Peggy?” she remarked, with a curious little laugh. “Philosophy upon the village green. Gilbert, tell them to drive on.”
She turned deliberately to Macheson.
“Come and convert us instead,” she said. “We need it more.”
“I do not doubt it, madam,” he answered. “Good afternoon!”
The carriage drove off. Macheson, obeying an impulse which he did not recognize, watched it till it was out of sight. At the bend, Wilhelmina deliberately turned in her seat and saw him standing there. She waved her parasol in ironical farewell, and Macheson walked back to the tent with burning cheeks.
CHAPTER VII
AN UNDERNOTE OF MUSIC
A great dinner party had come to an end, and the Lord-Lieutenant of the county bowed low over the cold hand of his departing guest, in whose honour it had been given. A distant relationship gave Lord Westerdean privileges upon which he would willingly have improved.
“You are leaving us early, Wilhelmina,” he murmured reproachfully. “How can I expect to keep my other guests if you desert us?”
Wilhelmina withdrew the hand and nodded her other farewells. The heat of the summer evening had brought every one out from the drawing-room. The hall doors stood open. Those of the guests who were not playing bridge or billiards were outside upon the terrace—some had wandered into the gardens.
“My dear Leslie,” she said, as she stood upon the broad steps, “you are losing your habit of gallantry. A year ago you would not have ventured to suggest that in my absence the coming or going of your other guests could matter a straw.”
“You know very well that it doesn’t,” he answered, dropping his voice. “You know very well——”
“To-night,” she interrupted calmly, “I will not be made love to! I am not in the humour for it.”
He looked down at her curiously. He was a man of exceptional height, thin, grey, still handsome, an ex-diplomat, whose career, had he chosen to follow it, would have been a brilliant one. Wealth and immense estates had thrust their burdens upon him, however, and he was content to be the most popular man in his county.
“There is nothing the matter?” he asked anxiously.
She shook her head.
“You are well?” he persisted, dropping his voice.
“Absolutely,” she answered. “It is not that. It is a mood. I used to welcome moods as an escape from the ruts. I suppose I am getting too old for them now.”
He shook his head.
“I wonder,” he said, “if the world really knows how young you are.”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, with a shudder, “I have outlived my years.”
A motor omnibus and a small victoria came round from the stables. The party from Thorpe began slowly to assemble upon the steps.
“I am going in the victoria—alone,” she said, resting her fingers upon his arm. “Don’t you envy me?”
“I envy the vacant place,” he answered sadly. “Isn’t this desire for solitude somewhat of a new departure, though?”
“Perhaps,” she admitted. “I am rather looking forward to my drive. To-night, as we came here, the whole country seemed like a great garden of perfumes and beautiful places. That is why I had them telephone for a carriage. There are times when I hate motoring!”
He broke off a cluster of pink roses and placed them in her hands.
“If your thoughts must needs fill the empty seat,” he whispered, as he bent over her for his final adieux, “remember my claims, I beg. Perhaps my thoughts might even meet yours!”
She laughed under her breath, but the light in his eyes was unanswered.
“Perhaps!” she answered. “It is a night for thoughts and dreams, this. Even I may drift into sentiment. Good night! Such a charming evening.”
The carriage rolled smoothly down the avenue from the great house, over which she might so easily have reigned, and turned into the road. A few minutes later the motor-car flashed by. Afterwards there was solitude, for it was already past midnight. Gilbert Deyes looked thoughtfully out at the carriage from his place in the car. He had begged—very hard for him—for that empty seat.
“Of what is it a sign,” he asked, “when a woman seeks solitude?”
Lady Peggy shrugged her shoulders.
“Wilhelmina is tired of us all, I suppose,” she remarked. “She gets like that sometimes.”
“Then of what is it a sign,” he persisted, “when a woman tires of people—like us?”
Lady Peggy yawned.
“In a woman of more primitive instincts,” she said, “it would mean an affair. But Wilhelmina has outgrown all that. She is the only woman of our acquaintance of whom one would dare to say it, but I honestly believe that to Wilhelmina men are like puppets. Was she born, I wonder, with ice in her veins?”
“One wonders,” Deyes remarked softly. “A woman like that is always something of a mystery. By the bye, wasn’t there a whisper of something the year she lived in Florence?”
“People have talked of her, of course,” Lady Peggy answered. “In Florence, a woman without a lover is like a child without toys. To be virtuous there is the one offence which Society does not pardon.”
“I believe,” Deyes said, “that a lover would bore Wilhelmina terribly.”
“Why the dickens doesn’t she marry Leslie?” Austin asked, opening his eyes for a moment.
“Too obvious,” Deyes murmured. “Some day I can’t help fancying that she will give us all a shock.”
A mile or more behind, the lady with ice in her veins, leaned back amongst the cushions of her carriage, drinking in, with a keenness of appreciation which surprised even herself, the beauties of the still, hot night. The moon was as yet barely risen. In the half light, the country and the hills beyond, with their tumbled masses of rock, seemed unreal—of strange and mysterious outline. More than anything, she was conscious of a sense of softness. The angles were gone from all the crude places, it was peace itself which had settled upon the land. Peace, and a wonderful silence! The birds had long ago ceased to sing, no breath of wind was abroad to stir the leaves of the trees. All the cheerful chorus of country sounds which make music throughout the long summer day had ceased. Once, when a watch-dog barked in the valley far below, she started. The sound seemed unreal—as though, indeed, it came from a different world!
The woman in the carriage looked out with steady tireless eyes upon this visionary land. The breath of the honeysuckle and the pleasant odour of warm hay seemed to give life to the sensuous joy of the wonderful night. She herself was a strange being to be abroad in these quiet lanes. Her only wrap was a long robe of filmy lace, which she had thrown back, so that her shoulders and neck, with its collar of lustrous pearls, were bare to the faint breeze, which only their own progress made. Her gleaming dress of white satin, undecorated, unadorned, fell in delicate lines about her limbs. No wonder that the only person whom they passed, a belated farmer, rubbed his eyes and stared at her as at a ghost!
It seemed to her that something of the confusion of this delightful, half-seen world, had stolen, too, into her thoughts. All day long she had been conscious of it. There was something alien there, something wholly unrecognizable. She felt a new light falling upon her life. From where? She could not tell. Only she knew that its pitiless routine, its littleness, its frantic struggle for the front place in the great pleasure-house, seemed suddenly to stand revealed in pitiful colours. Surely it belonged to some other woman! It could not be she who did those things and called them life. She, who scarcely knew what nerves were, was suddenly afraid. Some change was coming upon her; she felt herself caught in a silent, swift-flowing current. She was being carried away, and she had not strength to resist. And all the time there was an undernote of music. That was what made it so strange. The light that was falling was like summer rain upon the bare, dry places. She was conscious of a new vitality, a new life, and she feared it. Fancy being endowed with a new sense, in the midst of an ordinary work-a-day existence! She felt like that. It was unbelievable, and yet its tumult was stirring in her heart, was rushing through her veins. Often before, her tired eyes had rested unmoved upon a country as beautiful as this, even the mystery of this half light was no new thing. To-night she saw farther—she felt the throbbing, half-mad delight of the wanderer in the enchanted land, the pilgrim who hears suddenly the Angelus bell from the shrine he has journeyed so far to visit. What it meant she could not, she dared not ask herself. She was content to sit there, her eyes wide open now, the tired lines smoothed from her forehead, her face like the face of an eager and beautiful child. No one of her world would have recognized her, as she travelled that night through the perfumed lanes.
It was when they were within a mile or two of home that an awakening came. They had turned into a lonely lane leading to one of the back entrances to Thorpe, and were climbing a somewhat steep hill. Suddenly the horses plunged and almost stopped. She leaned forward.
“What is it, Johnson?” she asked.
The man touched his hat.
“The ’osses shied, madam, at the light in the trees there. Enough to frighten ’em, too.”
Her eyes followed his pointing finger. A few yards back from the roadside, a small, steady light was burning amongst the trees.
“What is it?” she asked quickly.
“I can’t say, madam,” the man answered. “It looks like a lantern or a candle, or something of that sort.”
“There is no cottage there?” she asked.
The man shook his head.
“There’s none nearer than the first lodge, madam,” he answered. “There’s a bit of a shelter there—Higgs, the keeper, built it for a watchman.”
“Can I take care of the horses for a moment, while you go and see what it is?” she asked.
“They take a bit of holding, madam,” the man answered doubtfully. “We got your message so late at the stables, or I should have had a second man.”
Wilhelmina stepped softly out into the road.
“I will go myself,” she said. “I daresay it is nothing. If I call, though, you must leave the horses and come to me.”
She opened the gate, and raising her skirts with both hands, stepped into the plantation. Her small, white-shod feet fell noiselessly upon the thick undergrowth; she reached the entrance of the shelter without making any sound. Cautiously she peeped in. Her eyes grew round with surprise, her bosom began rapidly to rise and fall. It was Macheson who lay there, fast asleep! He had fallen asleep evidently whilst reading. A book was lying by his side, and a covered lantern was burning by his left shoulder. He was dressed in trousers and shirt; the latter was open at the throat, showing its outline firm and white, and his regular breathing. She drew a step nearer, and leaned over him. Curiously enough, in sleep the boyishness of his face was less apparent. The straight, firm mouth, rigidly closed, was the mouth of a man; his limbs, in repose, seemed heavy, even massive, especially the bare arm upon which his head was resting. His shirt was old, but spotlessly clean; his socks were neatly darned in many places. He occupied nearly the whole of the shelter, in fact one foot was protruding through the opening. In the corner a looking-glass was hanging from a stick, and a few simple toilet articles were spread upon the ground.
She bent more closely over him, holding her breath, although he showed no signs of waking. Her senses were in confusion, and there was a mist before her eyes. An unaccountable impulse was urging her on, driving her, as it seemed, into incredible folly. Lower and lower she bent, till her hot breath fell almost upon his cheek. Suddenly he stirred. She started back. After all he did not open his eyes, but the moment was gone. She moved backwards towards the opening. She was seized now with sudden fright. She desired to escape. She was breathless with fear, the fear of what she might not have escaped. Yet in the midst of it, with hot trembling fingers she loosened the roses from her dress and dropped them by his side. Then she fled into the semi-darkness.
The habits of a lifetime die hard. They are proof, as a rule, against these fits of temporary madness.
Wilhelmina stepped languidly into her carriage, and commanded her coachman’s attention.
“Johnson,” she said, “I found a poor man sleeping there. There is no necessity for him to be disturbed. It is my wish that you do not mention the occurrence to any one—to any one at all. You understand?”
The man touched his hat. He would have been dull-witted, indeed, if he had not appreciated the note of finality in his mistress’ tone. His horses sprang forward, and a few minutes later turned into the dark avenue which led to the house.
CHAPTER VIII
ROSES
Macheson woke with the daylight, stiff, a little tired, and haunted with the consciousness of disturbing dreams. He sprang to his feet and stretched himself. Then he saw the roses.
For a moment or two he stared at them incredulously. Then his thoughts flashed backwards—where or how had he become possessed of them? A few seconds were sufficient. Some one had been there in the night—most likely a woman.
His cheeks burned at the thought. He stooped and took them hesitatingly, reverently, into his hand. To him they represented part of the mystery of life, the mystery of which he knew so little. Soft and fragrant, the touch of the drooping blossoms was like fire to his fingers. Had he been like those predecessors of his in the days of the Puritans, he would have cast them away, trampled them underfoot; he would have seen in them only the snare of the Evil One. But to Macheson this would have seemed almost like sacrilege. They were beautiful and he loved beautiful things.
He made his way farther into the plantation, to where the trees, suddenly opening, disclosed a small, disused slate quarry, the water in which was kept fresh by many streams. Stripping off his clothes, he plunged into the deep cool depths, swimming round for several minutes on his back, his face upturned to the dim blue sky. Then he dressed—in the ugly black suit, for it was Sunday, and made a frugal breakfast, boiling the water for his coffee over a small spirit-lamp. And all the time he kept looking at the roses, now fresh with the water which he had carefully sprinkled over them. Their coming seemed to him to whisper of beautiful things, they turned his thoughts so easily into that world of poetry and sentiment in which he was a habitual wanderer. Yet, every now and then, their direct significance startled, almost alarmed. Some one had actually been in the place while he slept, and had retreated without disturbing him. Roses do not drop from the sky, and of gardens there were none close at hand. Was it one of the village girls, who had seen him that afternoon? His cheeks reddened at the thought. Perhaps he had better leave his shelter. Another time if she came she might not steal away so quietly. Scandal would injure his work. He must run no risks. Deep down in his heart he thrust that other, that impossibly sweet thought. He would not suffer his mind to dwell upon it.
After breakfast he walked for an hour or so across the hills, watching the early mists roll away in the valleys, and the sunlight settle down upon the land. It was a morning of silence, this—that peculiar, mysterious silence which only the first day of the week seems to bring. The fields were empty of toilers, the harvest was stayed. From its far-away nest amongst the hills, he could just hear, carried on the bosom of a favouring breeze, the single note of a monastery bell, whose harshness not even distance, or its pleasant journey across the open country, could modify. Macheson listened to it for a moment, and sat down upon a rock on the topmost pinnacle of the hills he was climbing.
Below him, the country stretched like a piece of brilliant patchwork. Thorpe, with its many chimneys and stately avenues, and the village hidden by a grove of elms, was like a cool oasis in the midst of the landscape. Behind, the hills ran rockier and wilder, culminating in a bleak stretch of country, in the middle of which was the monastery. Macheson looked downwards at Thorpe, with the faint clang of that single bell in his ears. The frown on his forehead deepened as the rush of thoughts took insistent hold of him.
For a young man blessed with vigorous health, free from all material anxieties, and with the world before him, Macheson found life an uncommonly serious matter. Only a few years ago, he had left the University with a brilliant degree, a splendid athletic record, and a host of friends. What to do with his life! That was the problem which pressingly confronted him. He recognized in himself certain gifts inevitably to be considered in this choice. He was possessed of a deep religious sense, an immense sympathy for his fellows, and a passion for the beautiful in life, from which the physical side was by no means absent.
How to find a career which would satisfy such varying qualities! A life of pleasure, unless it were shared by his fellows, did not appeal to him at all; personal ambition he was destitute of; his religion, he was very well aware, was not the sort which would enable him to enter with any prospect of happiness any of the established churches. For a time he had travelled, and had come back with only one definite idea in his mind. Chance had brought him, on his return, into contact with two young men of somewhat similar tastes. A conversation between them one night had given a certain definiteness to his aims. He recalled it to himself as he sat looking down at the thin blue line of smoke rising from the chimneys of Thorpe.
“To use one’s life for others,” he had repeated thoughtfully—it was the enthusiast of the party who had spoken—“but how?”
“Teach them to avoid like filth the ugly things of life—help them in their search for the things beautiful.”
“What are the things beautiful?” he had asked. “Don’t they mean something different to every man?”
Holderness had lifted his beautiful head—the boy with whom he had played at school—the friend of his younger life.
“The Christian morality,” he had answered.
Macheson had been surprised.
“But you——” he said, “you don’t believe anything.”
“It is not necessary,” Holderness had answered. “It is a matter of the intelligence. As an artist, if I might dare to call myself one, I say that the Christian life, if honestly lived, is the most beautiful thing of all the ages.”
Macheson walked down to the village with the memory of those words still in his brain. The bell was ringing for service from the queer, ivy-covered church, the villagers were coming down the lane in little groups. Macheson found himself one of a small knot of people, who stood reverently on one side, with doffed hats, just by the wooden porch. He looked up, suddenly realizing the cause.
A small vehicle, something between a bath-chair and a miniature carriage, drawn by a fat, sleek pony, was turning into the lane from one of the splendid avenues which led to the house. A boy led the pony, a footman marched behind. Wilhelmina, in a plain white muslin dress and a black hat, was slowly preparing to descend. She smiled languidly, but pleasantly enough, at the line of curtseying women and men with doffed hats. The note of feudalism which their almost reverential attitudes suggested appealed irresistibly to Macheson’s sense of humour. He, too, formed one of them; he, too, doffed his hat. His greeting, however, was different. Her eyes swept by him unseeing, his pleasant “Good morning” was unheeded. She even touched her skirt with her fingers, as though afraid lest it might brush against him in passing. With tired, graceful footsteps, she passed into the cool church, leaving him to admire against his will the slim perfection of her figure, the wonderful carriage of her small but perfect head.
He followed with the others presently, and found a single seat close to the door. The service began almost at once, a very beautiful service in its way, for the organ, a present from the lady of the manor, was perfectly played, and the preacher’s voice was clear and as sweet as a boy’s. Macheson, however, was nervous and ill at ease. From the open door he heard the soft whispering of the west wind—for the first time in his life he found the simple but dignified ritual unconvincing. He was haunted by the sense of some impending disaster. When the prayers came, he fell on his knees and remained there! Even then he could not collect himself! He was praying to an unknown God for protection against some nameless evil! He knew quite well that the words he muttered were vain words. Through the stained glass windows, the sunlight fell in a subdued golden stream upon the glowing hair, the gracefully bent head of the woman who sat alone in the deep square pew. She, too, seemed to be praying. Macheson got up and softly, but abruptly, stole from the church.
Up into the hills, as far away, as high up as possible! A day of sabbath calm, this! Macheson, with the fire in his veins and a sharp pain in his side, climbed as a man possessed. He, too, was fleeing from the unknown. He was many miles away when down in the valley at Thorpe some one spoke of him.
“By the bye,” Gilbert Deyes remarked, looking across the luncheon table at his hostess, “when does this athletic young missioner of yours begin his work of regeneration?”
Wilhelmina raised her eyebrows.
“To-morrow evening, I believe,” she answered. “He is going to speak at the cross-roads. I fancy that his audience will consist chiefly of the children, and Mrs. Adnith’s chickens.”
“Can’t understand,” Austin remarked, “why a chap who can play cricket like that—he did lay on to ’em, too—can be such a crank!”
“He is very young,” Wilhelmina remarked composedly, “and I fancy that he must be a little mad. I hope that Thorpe will teach him a lesson. He needs it.”
“You do not anticipate then,” Deyes remarked, “that his labours here will be crowned with success?”
“He won’t get a soul to hear him,” Stephen Hurd replied confidently. “The villagers all know what Miss Thorpe-Hatton thinks of his coming here. It will be quite sufficient.”
Wilhelmina lit a cigarette and rose to her feet.
“Let us hope so,” she remarked drily. “Please remember, all of you, that this is the Palace of Ease! Do exactly what you like, all of you, till five o’clock. I shall be ready for bridge then.”
Lady Peggy rose briskly.
“No doubt about what I shall do,” she remarked. “I’m going to bed.”
Deyes smiled.
“I,” he said, “shall spend the afternoon in the rose garden. I need—development.”
Wilhelmina looked at him questioningly.
“Please don’t be inexplicable,” she begged. “It is too hot.”
“Roses and sentiment,” he declared, “are supposed to go together. I want to grow into accord with my surroundings.”
Wilhelmina was silent for a moment.
“If you have found sentiment here,” she said carelessly, “you must have dug deep.”
“On the contrary,” he answered, “I have scarcely scratched the surface!”
Stephen Hurd looked uneasily from Deyes to his hostess. Never altogether comfortable, although eager to accept the most casually offered invitation to Thorpe, he had always the idea that the most commonplace remark contained an innuendo purposely concealed from him.
“Mr. Deyes,” he remarked, “looks mysterious.”
Deyes glanced at him through his eyeglass.
“It is a subtle neighbourhood,” he said. “By the bye, Mr. Hurd, have you ever seen the rose gardens at Carrow?”
“Never,” Hurd replied enviously. “I have heard that they are very beautiful.”
Wilhelmina passed out.
“The gardens are beautiful,” she said, looking back, “but the roses are like all other roses, they fade quickly. Till five o’clock, all of you!”
CHAPTER IX
SUMMER LIGHTNING
Stephen Hurd walked into the room which he and his father shared as a sanctum, half office, half study. Mr. Hurd, senior, was attired in his conventional Sabbath garb, the same black coat of hard, dull material, and dark grey trousers, in which he had attended church for more years than many of the villagers could remember. Stephen, on the other hand, was attired in evening clothes of the latest cut. His white waistcoat had come from a London tailor, and his white tie had cost him considerable pains. His father looked him over with expressionless face.
“You are going to the House again, Stephen?” he asked calmly.
“I am asked to dine there, father,” he answered. “Sorry to leave you alone.”
“I have no objection to being alone,” Mr. Hurd answered. “I think that you know that. You lunched there, didn’t you?”
Stephen nodded.
“Miss Thorpe-Hatton asked me as we came out of church,” he answered.
“You play cards?”
The directness of the question allowed of no evasion. Stephen flushed as he answered.
“They play bridge. I may be asked to join. It—is a sort of whist, you know.”
“So I understand,” the older man remarked. “I have no remark to make concerning that. Manners change, I suppose, with the generations. You are young and I am old. I have never sought to impose my prejudices upon you. You have seen more of the world than I ever did. Perhaps you have found wisdom there.”
Stephen was not at his ease.
“I don’t know about that, sir,” he answered. “Of course, Sunday isn’t kept so strictly as it used to be. I like a quiet day myself, but it’s pretty dull here usually, and I didn’t think it would be wise to refuse an invitation from Miss Thorpe-Hatton.”
“Perhaps not,” Mr. Hurd answered. “On the other hand, I might remind you that during the forty years during which I have been agent to this estate I have never accepted—beyond a glass of wine—the hospitality offered to me by Miss Thorpe-Hatton’s father and grandfather, and by the young lady herself. It is not according to my idea of the fitness of things. I am a servant of the owner of these estates. I prefer to discharge my duties honestly and capably—as a servant.”
Stephen frowned at his reflection in the glass. He did not feel in the least like a servant.
“That’s rather an old-fashioned view, dad,” he declared.
“It may be,” his father answered. “In any case, I do not seek to impose it upon you. You are free to come and go according to your judgment. But you are young, and I cannot see you expose yourself to trouble without some warning. Miss Thorpe-Hatton is not a lady whom it is wise for you to see too much of.”
The directness of this speech took the young man aback.
“I—she seems very pleasant and gracious,” he faltered.
“Not even to you,” his father continued gravely, “can I betray the knowledge of such things as have come under my notice as the servant of these estates and this young lady. Her father was a fine, self-respecting gentleman, as all the Thorpe-Hattons have been; her mother came from a noble, but degenerate, French family. I, who live here a life without change, who mark time for the years and watch the striplings become old men, see many things, and see them truthfully. The evil seed of her mother’s family is in this young woman’s blood. She lives without a chaperon, without companionship, as she pleases—and to please herself only.”
Stephen frowned irritably. His father’s cold, measured words were like drops of ice.
“But, father,” he protested, “she is a leader of Society, she goes to Court and you see her name at the very best places. If there was anything wrong about her, she wouldn’t be received like that.”
“I know nothing about Society or its requirements,” his father answered. “She has brains and wealth, and she is a woman. Therefore, I suppose the world is on her side. I have said all that I wish to say. You can perhaps conjecture the reason of my speaking at all.”
“She wouldn’t take the trouble to make a fool of me,” Stephen answered bitterly. “I just happen to make up a number, that’s all.”
“I am glad that you understand the young lady so well,” his father answered. “Before you go, will you be good enough to pass me the Bible and my spectacles, and let Mary know that Mr. Stuart will be in to supper with me.”
Stephen obeyed in silence. He remembered the time, not so long ago, when he would have been required to seat himself on the opposite side of the fireplace, with a smaller Bible in his hand, and read word for word with his father. His mind went back to those days as he walked slowly up the great grass-grown avenue to the house, picking his steps carefully, lest he should mar the brilliancy of his well-polished patent-leather boots. He compared that old time curiously with the evening which was now before him; the round table drawn into the midst of the splendid dining-room, an oasis of exquisitely shaded light and colour; Lady Peggy with her daring toilette and beautiful white shoulders; Deyes with his world-worn face and flippant tongue; the mistress of Thorpe herself, more subdued, perhaps, in dress and speech, and yet with the ever-present mystery of eyes and lips wherein was always the fascination of the unknown. More than ever that night Stephen Hurd felt himself to be her helpless slave. All his former amours seemed suddenly empty and vulgar things. She came late into the drawing-room, her greeting was as carelessly kind as usual, there was no perceptible difference in her manner of speech. Yet his observation of her was so intense that he found readily the signs of some subtle, indefinable change, a change which began with her toilette, and ended—ah! as yet there was no ending. Her gown of soft white silk was daring as a French modiste could make it, but its simplicity was almost nun-like. She wore a string of pearls, no earrings, no rings, and her hair was arranged low down, almost like a schoolgirl’s. She had more colour than usual, a temporary restlessness seemed to have taken the place of her customary easy languor. What did it mean? he asked himself breathlessly. Was it Deyes? Impossible, for Deyes himself was a watcher, a thin smile parting sometimes the close set lips of his white, mask-like face. After all, how hopelessly at sea he was! He knew nothing of her life, of which these few days at Thorpe were merely an interlude. She might have lovers by the score of whom he knew nothing. He was vain, but he was not wholly a fool.
She talked more than usual at dinner-time, but afterwards she spoke of a headache, and sat on the window-seat of the library, a cigarette between her lips, her eyes half closed. When the bridge table was laid out, she turned her head languidly.
“I will come in in the next rubber,” she said. “You four can start.”
They obeyed her, of course, but Lady Peggy shrugged her shoulders slightly. She had no fancy for Stephen’s bridge, and they cut together. Wilhelmina waited until the soft fall of the cards had ceased, and the hands were being examined. Then, with a graceful movement, she slipped out of the window and away into the shadows. No signs of her headache were left. She passed swiftly along a narrow path, bordered by gigantic shrubs, until she reached a small iron gate. Here for the first time she paused.
For several moments she listened. There was no sound from the great house, whose outline she could barely see but whose long row of lights stretched out behind her. She turned her head and looked along the grass-grown lane beyond the gate. There was no one in sight—no sound. She lifted the latch and passed through.
For a summer night it was unusually dark. All day the heat had been almost tropical, and now the sky was clouded over, and a south wind, dry and unrefreshing, was moving against the tall elms. Every few seconds the heavens were ablaze with summer lightning; once the breathless silence was broken by a low rumble of distant thunder.
She reached the end of the lane. Before her, another gate led out on to a grass-covered hill, strewn with fragments of rocks. She paused for a moment and looked backwards. She was suddenly conscious that her heart was beating fast; the piquant sense of adventure with which she had started had given place to a rarer and more exciting turmoil of the senses. Her breath was coming short, as though she had been running.
The silence seemed more complete than ever. She lifted her foot and felt the white satin slipper. It was perfectly dry, there was no dew, and as yet no rain had fallen. She lifted the latch of the gate and passed through.
The footpath skirted the side of a plantation, and she followed it closely, keeping under the shelter of the hedge. Every now and then a rabbit started up almost from under her feet, and rushed into the hedge. The spinney itself seemed alive with birds and animals, startled by her light footsteps in the shelter which they had sought, disturbed too by their instinct of the coming storm. Her footsteps grew swifter. She was committed now to her enterprise, vague though it had seemed to her. She passed through a second gate into a ragged wood, and along a winding path into a country road. She turned slowly up the hill. Her breath was coming faster than ever now. What folly!—transcendental!—exquisite! Her footsteps grew slower. She kept to the side of the hedge, raising her skirts a little, for the grass was long. A few yards farther was the gate. The soft swish of her silken draperies as she stole along, became a clearly recognizable sound against the background of intense silence. Macheson had been leaning against a tree just inside. He opened the gate. She stepped almost into his arms. Her white face was suddenly illuminated by the soft blaze of summer lightning which poured from the sky. He had no time to move, to realize. He felt her hands upon his cheek, his face drawn downwards, her lips, soft and burning, pressed against his for one long, exquisite second. And then—the darkness once more and his arms were empty.
CHAPTER X
THE STILL FIGURE IN THE CHAIR
With upraised skirts, and feet that flashed like silver across the turf and amongst the bracken, Wilhelmina flew homewards. Once more her heart was like the heart of a girl. Her breath came in little sobs mingled with laughter, the ground beneath her feet was buoyant as the clouds. She had no fear of being pursued—least of anything in the world did she desire it. The passion of a woman is controlled always by her sentiment. It seemed to her that that breathless episode was in itself an epic, she would not for worlds have added to it, have altered it in any shape or form. A moment’s lingering might so easily have spoilt everything. Had he attempted to play either the prude or the Lothario, the delicate flavour would have passed away from the adventure, which had set her heart beating once more, and sent the blood singing so sweetly through her veins. So she sped through the darkness, leaving fragments of lace upon the thorns, like some beautiful bird, escaped from long captivity, rushing through a strange world.
Before she reached the grounds the storm came. There was a crash of thunder, which seemed to tear apart the heavens above, and then the big raindrops began to fall upon her bare shoulders and her clothes as light and airy as butterfly’s wings. She abandoned herself to the ruin of a Paquin gown without a thought of regret; she even laughed softly with pleasure as she lifted her burning face to the cool sweet deluge, and lessened her pace in the avenue, walking with her hands behind her and her head still upraised. It was a wonderful night, this. She had found something of her lost girlhood.
She reached the house at last, and stole through the hall like a truant schoolgirl. Her shoes were nothing but pulp; her dress clung to her limbs like a grey, sea-soaked bathing-costume; everywhere on the oak floor and splendid rugs she left a trail of wet. On tiptoe she stole up the stairs, looking guiltily around, yet with demure laughter in her glowing eyes. She met only one amazed servant, whom she dispatched at once for her own maid. In the bath-room she began to strip off her clothes, even before Hortense, who loved her, could effect a breathless entrance.
“Eh! Madame, Madame!” the girl exclaimed, with uplifted hands.
Wilhelmina stopped her, laughing.
“It’s all right, Hortense,” she exclaimed gaily. “I was out in the grounds, and got caught in the storm. Turn on the hot water and cut these laces—so!”
To Hortense the affair was a tragedy. Her mistress’ indifference could not lessen it.
“Madame,” she declared, “the gown is ruined—a divine creation. Madame has never looked so well in anything else.”
“Then I am glad I wore it to-night,” was the astonishing reply. “Quick, quick, quick, Hortense! Get me into the bath, and bring me some wine and biscuits. I am hungry. I don’t think I could have eaten any dinner.”
Hortense worked with nimble fingers, but her eyes at every opportunity were studying her mistress’ face. Was it the English rain which could soften and beautify like this? Madame was brilliant—and so young! Such a colour! Such a fire in the eyes! Madame laughed as she thrust her from the room.
“The wine, Hortense, and the biscuits—no sandwiches! I die of hunger. And send word to the library that I have been caught in the storm, and must change my clothes, but shall be down presently. So!”
She found them, an hour later, just finishing a rubber. Their languid post-mortem upon a curiously played hand was broken off upon her entrance. They made remarks about the storm and her ill-luck—had she been far from shelter? was she not terrified by the lightning? Lady Peggy remembered her gown. Deyes alone was silent. She felt him watching her all the time, taking cold note of her brilliant colour, the softer light in her eyes. She felt that he saw her as she was—a woman suddenly set free, even though for a few short hours. She had broken away from them all, and she gloried in it.
She played bridge later—brilliantly as usual, and with success. Then she leaned back in her chair and faced them all.
“Dear guests,” she murmured, “you remember the condition, the only condition upon which we bestowed our company upon one another in this benighted place. You remember it was agreed that when you were bored, you left without excuse or any foolish apologies. The same to apply to your hostess.”
“My dear Wilhelmina,” Lady Peggy exclaimed, “I know what you’re going to say, and I won’t go! I’m not due anywhere till the thirteenth. I won’t be stranded.”
Wilhelmina laughed.
“You foolish woman!” she exclaimed. “Who wants you to go? You shall be chatelaine—play hostess and fill the place if you like. Only you mustn’t have Leslie over more than twice a week.”
“You are going to desert us?” Deyes asked coolly.
“It was in the bond, wasn’t it?” she answered. “Peggy will look after you all, I am sure.”
“You mean that you are going away, to leave Thorpe?” Stephen Hurd asked abruptly.
She turned her head to look at him. He was sitting a little outside the circle—an attitude typical, perhaps, of his position there. The change in her tone was slight indeed, but it was sufficient.
“I am thinking of it,” she answered. “You, Gilbert, and Captain Austin can find some men to shoot, no doubt. Ask any one you like. Peggy will see about some women for you. I draw the line at that red-haired Egremont woman. Anybody else!”
“This is a blow,” Deyes remarked, “but it was in the bond. Nothing will move me from here till the seventeenth—unless your chef should leave. Do we meet in Marienbad?”
“I am not sure,” Wilhelmina answered, playing idly with the cards. “I feel that my system requires something more soothing.”
“I hate them all—those German baths,” Lady Peggy declared. “Ridiculous places every one of them.”
“After all, you see,” Wilhelmina declared, “illness of any sort is a species of uncleanliness. I think I should like to go somewhere where people are healthy, or at least not so disgustingly frank about their livers.”
“Why not stay here?” Stephen ventured to suggest. “I doubt whether any one in Thorpe knows what a liver is.”
“‘Inutile!’” Lady Peggy exclaimed. “Wilhelmina has the ‘wander fever.’ I can see it in her face. Is it the thunder, I wonder?”
Deyes walked to the window and threw it open. The storm was over, but the rain was still falling, a soft steady downpour. The cooler air which swept into the room was almost faint with the delicious perfume of flowers and shrubs bathed in the refreshing downpour.
“I think,” he said, “that there is some magic abroad to-night. Did you meet Lucifer walking in the rose garden?” he asked, turning slightly towards his hostess. “The storm may have brought him—even here!”
“Neither Lucifer nor any other of his princely fellows,” she answered. “The only demon is here,”—she touched her bosom lightly—“the demon of unrest. It is not I alone who am born with the wanderer’s curse! There are many of us, you know.”
He shook his head.
“You have not the writing in your face,” he said. “I do not believe that you are one of the accursed at all. To-night——”
She was standing by his side now, looking out into the velvety darkness. Her eyes challenged his.
“Well! To-night?”
“To-night you have the look of one who has found what she has sought for for a long time. This sounds bald, but it is as near to truth as I can get.”
She was silent for a moment. She stood by his side listening to the soft constant patter of the rain, the far-away rumblings of the dying storm.
“One has moods,” she murmured.
“Heaven forbid that a woman should be without them!” he answered.
“Do you ever feel as though something were going to happen?” she asked suddenly.
“Often,” he answered; “but nothing ever does!”
Lady Peggy came yawning over to them.
“My dear,” she said, “I feel it in my very bones. I firmly believe that something is going to happen to every one of us. I have a most mysterious pricking about my left elbow!”
“To every one of us?” Stephen Hurd asked, idly enough.
“To every one of us!” she answered. “To you, even, who live in Thorpe. Remember my words when you get home to-night, or when you wake in the morning. As for you, Wilhelmina, I am not at all sure that you have not already met with your adventure.”
Deyes lit a cigarette.
“Let us remember this,” he declared. “In a week’s time we will compare notes.”
Stephen Hurd stood up to take his leave.
“You are really going—soon?” he asked, as he bent over her carelessly offered hand.
“As soon as I can decide where to go to,” she answered.
“Can I give my father any message? Would you care to see him to-morrow morning?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“It is not necessary,” she answered.
He made his adieux reluctantly. Somehow he felt that the night had not been a success. She was going away. Very likely he would not see her again. The great house and all its glories would be closed to him. To do him justice, he thought of that less than the casual manner of her farewell. His vanity was deeply wounded. She had begun by being so gracious—no wonder that he had lost his head a little. He thought over the events of the last few days. Something had occurred to alter her. Could he have offended in any way?
He walked dejectedly home, heedless of the sodden path and wet grass. A light was still burning in the study. He hesitated for a moment, and then, turning the handle, entered.
“You’re late, father,” he remarked, going towards the cupboard to select a pipe.
There was no answer. The still figure in the chair never moved. Something in the silence struck Stephen as ominous. He turned abruptly round, and for the first time noticed the condition of the room. A chair was overturned, a vase of flowers spilt upon the table, the low window, from which one stepped almost into the village street, was wide open. The desk in front of the motionless figure was littered all over with papers in wild confusion. Stephen, with a low cry of horror, crossed the room and laid his hand upon his father’s shoulder. He tried to speak to him, but the words stuck in his throat. He knew very well that there could be no reply. His father was sitting dead in his chair.
CHAPTER XI
THE BAYING OF THE HOUNDS
Out amongst the broken fragments of the storm, on the hill-top and down the rain-drenched lane, Macheson sought in vain by physical exertion to still the fever which burned in his veins. Nothing he could do was able to disturb that wonderful memory, to lessen for an instant the significance of those few amazing seconds. The world of women, all the lighter and quieter joys of life, he had, with the fierce asceticism of the young reformer, thrust so resolutely behind him. But he had never imagined anything like this! Its unexpectedness had swept him off his feet. The memory of it was most delicious torture!
Sleep?—he dared not think of it. Who could sleep with such a fire in his blood as this? He heard the storm die away, thunder and wind and rain melted into the deep stillness of midnight. A dim moon shone behind a veil of mist. The dripping of rain from the trees alone remained. Then he heard a footstep coming down the lane. His first wild thought was that she had returned. His eyes burned their way through the darkness. Soon he saw that it was a man who came unsteadily, but swiftly, down the roadway.
Macheson leaned over the gate. He would have preferred not to disclose himself, but as the man passed, he was stricken with a sudden consciousness that for him the events of the night were not yet over. This was no villager; he had not even the appearance of an Englishman. He was short and inclined to be thick-set, his coat collar was turned up, and a tweed cap was drawn down to his eyes. He walked with uneven footsteps and muttered to himself words that sounded like words of prayer, only they were in some foreign language. Macheson accosted him.
“Hullo!” he said. “Have you lost your way?”
The man cried out and then stood still, trembling on the roadside. He turned a white, scared face to where Macheson was leaning against the gate.
“Who is that?” he cried. “What do you want with me?”
Macheson stepped into the lane.
“Nothing at all,” he answered reassuringly. “I simply thought that you might have lost your way. These are lonely parts.”
The newcomer drew a step nearer. He displayed a small ragged beard, a terror-stricken face, and narrow, very bright eyes. His black clothes were soaked and splashed with mud.
“I want a railway station,” he said rapidly. “Where is the nearest?”
Macheson pointed into the valley.
“Just where you see that light burning,” he answered, “but there will be no trains till the morning.”
“Then I must walk,” the man declared feverishly. “How far is it to Nottingham?”
“Twenty-five miles,” Macheson answered.
“Too far! And Leicester?”
“Twelve, perhaps! But you are walking in the wrong direction.”
The man turned swiftly round.
“Point towards Leicester,” he said. “I shall find my way.”
Macheson pointed across the trees.
“You can’t miss it,” he declared. “Climb the hill till you get to a road with telegraph wires. Turn to the left, and you will walk into Leicester.”
For some reason the stranger seemed to be occupied in looking earnestly into Macheson’s face.
“What are you doing here?” he asked abruptly.
“I am close to where I am staying,” Macheson answered. “Just in the wood there.”
The man took a quick step forwards and then reeled. His hand flew to his side. He was attacked by sudden faintness and would have fallen, but for Macheson’s outstretched arm.
“God!” he muttered, “it is finished.”
He was obviously on the verge of a collapse. Macheson dragged him into the shelter and poured brandy between his teeth. He revived a little and tried to rise.
“I must go on,” he cried. “I dare not stay here.”
The terror in his face was unmistakable. Macheson looked at him gravely.
“You had better stay where you are till morning,” he said. “You are not in a fit state to travel.”
The man had raised himself upon one arm. He looked wildly about him.
“Where am I?” he demanded. “What is this place?”
“It is a gamekeeper’s shelter,” Macheson answered, “which I am making use of for a few days. You are welcome to stay here until the morning.”
“I must go on,” the man moaned. “I am afraid.”
Almost as he uttered the words he fell back, and went off immediately into an uneasy doze. Macheson threw his remaining rug over the prostrate figure, and, lighting his pipe, strolled out into the spinney. The man’s coming filled him with a vague sense of trouble. He seemed so utterly out of keeping with the place, he represented an alien and undesirable note—a note almost of tragedy. All the time in his broken sleep he was muttering to himself. Once or twice he cried out in terror, once especially—Macheson turned round to find him sitting up on the rug, his brown eyes full of wild fear, and the perspiration running down his face. A stream of broken words flowed from his lips. Macheson thrust him back on the rug.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”
After that the man slept more soundly. Macheson himself dozed for an hour until he was awakened by the calling of the birds. Directly he opened his eyes he knew that something had happened to him. It was not only the music of the birds—there was a strange new music stirring in his heart. The pearly light in the eastern sky had never seemed so beautiful; never, surely, had the sunlight streamed down upon so perfect a corner of the earth. And then, with a quick rush of blood to his cheeks, he remembered what it was that had so changed the world. He lived again through that bewildering moment, again he felt the delicious warmth of her presence, the touch of her hair as it had brushed his cheek, the soft passionate pressure of her lips against his. It was like an episode from a fairy story, there was something so delicate, so altogether fanciful in that flying visit. Something, too, so unbelievable when he thought of her as the mistress of Thorpe, the languid, insolent woman of the world who had treated him so coldly.
Then a movement behind reminded him of his strange visitor. He turned round. The man was already on his feet. He looked better for his sleep, but the wild look was still in his eyes.
“I must go,” he said. “I ought to have started before. Thank you for your shelter.”
Macheson reached out for his spirit lamp.
“Wait a few minutes,” he said, “and I will have some coffee ready.”
The man hesitated. He looked sorely in need of something of the sort. As he came to the opening of the shelter, the trembling seized him again. He looked furtively out as though he feared the daylight. The sunshine and the bright open day seemed to terrify him.
“I ought to have gone on last night,” he muttered. “I must——”
He broke off his sentence. Macheson, too, had turned his head to listen.
“What is that?” he asked sharply.
“The baying of dogs,” Macheson answered.
“Dogs! What dogs?” he demanded.
“Colonel Harvey’s bloodhounds!”
The man’s face was ashen now to the lips. He clutched Macheson’s arm frantically.
“They are after me!” he exclaimed. “Where can I hide? Tell me quick!”
Macheson looked at him gravely.
“What have you been doing?” he asked. “They do not bring bloodhounds out for nothing.”
“I have hurt a man down in the village,” was the terrified answer. “I didn’t mean to—no! I swear that I did not mean to. I went to his house and I asked him for money. I had a right to it! And I asked him to tell me where—but oh! you would not understand. Listen! I swear to you that I did not mean to hurt him. Why should I? He was old, and I think he fainted. God! do you hear that?”
He clung to Macheson in a frenzy. The deep baying of the dogs was coming nearer and nearer.
“Listen,” Macheson said, “the dogs will not be allowed to hurt you, but if you are loose I promise that I will protect you from them. You had better wait here with me.”
The man fell upon his knees.
“Sir,” he begged, “I am innocent of everything except a blow struck in anger. Help me to escape, I implore you. There are others who will suffer—if anything happens to me.”
“The law is just,” Macheson answered. “You will suffer nothing except justice.”
“I want mercy, not justice,” the man sobbed. “For the love of God, help me!”
Macheson hesitated. Again the early morning stillness was broken by that hoarse, terrifying sound. His sporting instincts were aroused. He had small sympathy with the use of such means against human beings.
“I will give you a chance,” he said. “Remember it is nothing more. Follow me!”
He led the way to the slate pit.
“Can you swim?” he asked.
“Yes!” the man answered.
“This is where I take my morning bath,” Macheson said. “You will see that though you can scramble down and dive in, it is too precipitous to get out. Therefore, I have fixed up a rope on the other side—it goes through those bushes, and is attached to the trunk of a tree beneath the bracken. If you swim across, you can pull yourself out of the water and hide just above the water in the bushes. There is just a chance that you may escape observation.”
Already he was on his way down, but Macheson stopped him.
“I shall leave a suit of dry clothes in the shelter,” he said. “If they should give up the chase you are welcome to them. Now you had better dive. They are in the spinney.”
The man went in, after the fashion of a practised diver. Macheson turned round and retraced his steps towards his temporary dwelling-house.
CHAPTER XII
RETREAT
Out in the lane a motley little group of men were standing. Stephen Hurd was in the act of springing off his brown cob. The dogs were already in the shelter.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Hurd asked, as Macheson strode through the undergrowth.
Macheson pointed to the shelter.
“I could find no other lodging,” he answered, “thanks to circumstances of which you are aware.”
Stephen Hurd kicked the gate open. He was pale and there were deep lines under his eyes. He was still in his evening clothes, except for a rough tweed coat, but his white tie was hanging loose, and his patent-leather shoes were splashed with mud.
“We are chasing a man,” he said. “Have you seen him?”
“I have,” Macheson answered. “What has he done?”
There was a momentary silence. Hurd spoke with a sob.
“Murdered—my father!”
Macheson was shocked.
“You mean—that Mr. Hurd is dead?” he asked, in an awe-stricken tone.
“Dead!” the young man answered with a sob. “Killed in his chair!”
The dogs came out of the shelter. They turned towards the interior of the spinney. The little crowd came streaming through the gate.
“I gave shelter to a man who admitted that he was in trouble,” he said gravely. “He heard the dogs and he was terrified. He has jumped into the slate quarry.”
The dogs were on the trail now. They followed them to the edge of the quarry. Here the bushes were trodden down, a man’s cap was hanging on one close to the bottom. They all peered over into the still water, unnaturally black. Amies, the head keeper, raised his head.
“It’s twenty-five feet deep—some say forty, and a sheer drop,” he declared impressively. “We’ll have to drag it for the body.”
“Best take the dogs round the other side, and make sure he ain’t got out again,” one of the crowd suggested.
Amies pointed scornfully to the precipitous side. Such a feat was clearly impossible. Nevertheless the dogs were taken round. For a few minutes they were uneasy, but eventually they returned to the spot from which their intended victim had dived. Every one was peering down into the dark water as though fascinated.
“I thought as they come up once or twice before they were drownded,” somebody remarked.
“Not unless they want to,” another answered. “This chap wasn’t too anxious. He knew his goose was cooked.”
The dogs were muzzled and led away. One by one the labourers and servants dispersed. Two of them started off to telegraph for a drag. Stephen Hurd was one of the last to depart.
“I hope you will allow me to say how sorry I am for you,” Macheson declared earnestly. “Such a tragedy in a village like Thorpe seems almost incredible. I suppose it was a case of attempted robbery?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” Hurd answered. “There was plenty of money left untouched, and I can’t find that there is any short. The man arrived after the maids had gone to bed, but they heard him knock at the door, and heard my father let him in.”
“They didn’t hear any struggle then?” Macheson asked.
Hurd shook his head.
“There was only one blow upon his head,” he answered. “Graikson says that death was probably through shock.”
Macheson felt curiously relieved.
“The man did not go there as a murderer then,” he remarked. “Perhaps not even as a thief. There may have been a quarrel.”
“He killed him, anyhow,” Hurd said brokenly. “What time was it when you first saw him?”
“About midnight, I should think,” Macheson answered. “He came down the lane like a drunken man.”
“What was he like?” Hurd asked.
“Small, and I should say a foreigner,” Macheson answered. “He spoke English perfectly, but there was an accent, and when he was asleep he talked to himself in a language which, to the best of my belief, I have never heard before in my life.”
“A foreigner?” Hurd muttered. “You are sure of that?”
“Quite,” Macheson answered. “There could be no mistake about it.”
Stephen Hurd mounted his cob and turned its head towards home. He asked no more questions; he seemed, if possible, graver than ever. Before he started, however, he pointed with his whip towards the shelter.
“You’ve no right there, you know,” he said. “We can’t allow it. You must clear out at once.”
“Very well,” Macheson answered. “I’m trespassing, of course, but one must sleep somewhere.”
“There is no necessity for you to remain in Thorpe at all,” Hurd said. “I think, in the circumstances, the best thing you can do is to go.”
“In the circumstances!” The irony of the phrase struck home. What did this young man know of the circumstances? There were reasons now, indeed, why he should fly from Thorpe as from a place stricken with the pestilence. But no other soul in this world could know of those reasons save himself—and she.
“I should not, of course, think of holding my services at present,” Macheson said gravely. “If you think it would be better, I will go away.”
Stephen Hurd nodded as he cantered off.
“I am glad to hear you say so,” he declared shortly. “Go and preach in the towns where this scum is reared. There’s plenty of work for missioners there.”
Macheson stood still until the young man on his pony had disappeared. Then he turned round and walked slowly back towards the slate quarry. The black waters remained smooth and unrippled; there was no sound of human movement anywhere. In the adjoining field a harvesting-machine was at work; in the spinney itself the rabbits, disturbed last night by the storm, were scurrying about more frolicsome than usual; a solitary thrush was whistling in the background. The sunlight lay in crooked beams about the undergrowth, a gentle west breeze was just stirring the foliage overhead. There was nothing in the air to suggest in any way the strange note of tragedy which the coming of this hunted man had nevertheless brought.
Macheson was turning away when a slight disturbance in the undergrowth on the other side of the quarry attracted his notice. He stood still and watched the spot. The bracken was shaking slightly—then the sound of a dry twig, suddenly snapped! For a moment he hesitated. Then he turned on his heel and walked abruptly away. With almost feverish haste, he flung his few belongings into his portmanteau, leaving in the shelter his flask, a suit of clothes, and several trifles. Five minutes later he was on his way down the hill, with his bag upon his shoulder and his face set southwards.
CHAPTER XIII
A CREATURE OF IMPULSE
Up the broad avenue to the great house of Thorpe, Stephen Hurd slowly made his way, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes fixed upon the ground. But his appearance was not altogether the appearance of a man overcome with grief. The events of the last few days had told upon him, and his deep mourning had a sombre look. Yet there were thoughts working even then in his brain which battled hard with his natural depression. Strange things had happened—stranger things than he was able all at once to digest. He could not see the end, but there were possibilities upon which he scarcely dared to brood.
He was shown into the library and left alone for nearly twenty minutes. Then Wilhelmina came, languid, and moving as though with tired feet. Yet her manner was gentler and kinder than usual. She leaned back in one of the vast easy-chairs, and murmured a few graceful words of sympathy.
“We were all so sorry for you, Mr. Hurd,” she said. “It was a most shocking affair.”
“I thank you very much—madam,” he replied, after a moment’s pause. It was better, perhaps, for the present, to assume that their relations were to continue those of employer and employed.
“I do not know,” she continued, “whether you care to speak about this shocking affair. Perhaps you would prefer that we did not allude to it for the present.”
He shook his head.
“I am not sure,” he answered, “that it is not rather a relief to have it spoken of. One can’t get it out of one’s mind, of course.”
“There is no news of the man—no fresh capture?”
“None,” he answered. “They are dragging the slate quarry again to-day. I believe there are some very deep holes where the body may have drifted.”
“Do you believe that that is the case?” she asked; “or do you think that he got clean away?”
“I cannot tell,” he answered. “It seems impossible that he should have escaped altogether without help.”
“And that he could not have had, could he?” she asked.
He looked across at her thoughtfully, watching her face, curious to see whether his words might have any effect.
“Only from one person,” he said.
“Yes?”
“From Macheson, the fellow who came here to convert us all,” he said deliberately.
Beyond a slight elevation of the eyebrows, his scrutiny was in vain, for she made no sign.
“He scarcely seems a likely person, does he, to aid a criminal?” she asked in measured tones.
Stephen Hurd shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps not,” he admitted, “but at any rate he sheltered him.”
“As he doubtless would have done any passer-by on such a night,” she remarked. “By the bye, what has become of that young man?”
“He has left the neighbourhood,” Hurd answered shortly.
“Left altogether?” she inquired.
“I imagine so,” Hurd answered. “I had the shelter destroyed, and I gave him to understand pretty clearly what your wishes were. There really wasn’t much else for him to do.”
Her eyelids drooped over her half closed eyes. For a moment she was silent.
“If you hear of him again,” she said quietly, “be so good as to let me know.”
Her indifference seemed too complete to be assumed. Yet somehow or other Hurd felt that she was displeased with him.
“I will do so,” he said, “if I hear anything about him. It scarcely seems likely.”
Wilhelmina sat quite still. Her head, resting slightly upon the long delicate fingers of her right hand, was turned away from the young man who was daring to watch her. She was apparently gazing across the park, down the magnificent avenue of elms which led to the village. So he was gone—without a word! How else? On the whole she could not but approve! And yet!—and yet!
She turned once more to Hurd.
“I read the account of the inquest on your father’s death,” she said, speaking very slowly, with her usual drawl, yet with a softer note in her voice, as though out of respect for the dead man. “Does it not seem very strange that the money was left untouched?”
“Yes!” he answered. “Yet, after all, I don’t know. You see, the governor must have closed with the fellow and shown fight before he got that knock on the head. If the thief was really only an ordinary tramp, he’d be scared to death at what he’d done, and probably bolt for his life without stopping to take anything with him.”
“Isn’t it rather surprising to have tramps—in Thorpe?” she asked.
“I have scarcely ever seen one,” he answered.
Wilhelmina turned her head slightly, so that she was now directly facing him. She looked him steadily in the eyes.
“Has it occurred to you, Mr. Hurd,” she asked, “that this young man may not have been a tramp at all, and that his visit to your father may have been on other business than that of robbery?”
He hesitated for a moment.
“My father’s connexions with the outside world,” he said slowly, “were so slight.”
“Yet it has occurred to you?”
“Yes!” he admitted.
“And have you come to any conclusion?”
“None,” he declared.
“You carried out my instructions with regard to the papers and documents belonging to the estate?”
“Certainly, madam,” he answered. “Within five minutes of receiving your message, they were all locked up in the safe and the key handed to your messenger.”
“You did not go through them yourself?” she asked.
“I did not,” he answered, lying with admirable steadiness. “I scarcely felt that I was entitled to do so.”
“So that you could not tell if any were missing?” she continued.
“I could not,” he admitted.
“Your father never spoke, then, of any connexions with people—outside Thorpe—likely to prove of a dangerous character?”
The young man smiled. “My father,” he said, “had not been farther than Loughborough for twenty years.”
There was a short silence. Wilhelmina, deliberately, and without any attempt at concealment, was meditatively watching the young man, studying his features with a half-contemptuous and yet searching interest. Perhaps the slightly curving lips, the hard intentness of her gaze, suggested that he was disbelieved. He lost colour and fidgeted about. It was a scrutiny not easy to bear, and he felt that it was going against him. Already she had written him down a liar.
She spoke to him at last. If the silence had not ended soon, he would have made some blundering attempt to retrieve his position. She spoke just in time to avert such ignominy.
“Mr. Hurd,” she said, “the question of your father’s successor is one that has doubtless occurred to you as it has to me. I trust that you will, at any rate, remain here. As to whether I can offer you your father’s position in its entirety, I am not for the present assured.”
He glanced up at her furtively. He was certain now that he had played his cards ill. She had read through him easily. He cursed himself for a lout.
“You see,” she continued, “the post is one of great responsibility, because it entails the management of the whole estates. It is necessary for me to feel absolute confidence in the person who undertakes it. I have not known you very long, Mr. Hurd.”
He bowed. He could not trust himself to words.
“I have instructed them to send some one down from my solicitor’s office for a week or so,” she continued, “to assist you. In the meantime, I must think the matter over.”
“I am very much obliged to you, madam,” he said. “You will find me, I think, quite as trustworthy and devoted to your interests as my father.”
She smiled slightly. She recognized exactly his quandary, and it amused her. The slightest suggestion of menace in his manner would be to give the lie to himself.
“I am coming down this afternoon,” she said, “to go through the safes. Please be there in case I want you. You will not forget, in case you should hear anything of Mr. Macheson, that I desire to be informed.”
He took his leave humiliated and angry. He had started the game with a wrong move—retrievable, perhaps, but annoying. Wilhelmina passed into the library, where Lady Peggy, in a wonderful morning robe, was leaning back in an easy-chair dictating letters to Captain Austin.
“You dear woman!” she exclaimed, “don’t interrupt us, will you? I have found an ideal secretary, writes everything I tell him, and spells quite decently considering his profession. My conscience is getting lighter every moment.”
“And my heart heavier,” Austin grumbled. “A most flirtatious correspondence yours.”
She laughed softly.
“My next shall be to my dressmaker,” she declared. “Such a charming woman, and so trustful. Behave yourself nicely, and you shall go with me to call on her next week, and see her mannikins. By the bye, Wilhelmina, am I hostess or are you?”
“You, by all means,” Wilhelmina answered. “I shall go to-morrow or the next day. Is any one coming to lunch?”
“His Grace, I fancy—no one else.”
Wilhelmina yawned.
“Where is Gilbert?” she asked.
“Asleep on the lawn last time I saw him.”
“No one shooting, then?”
“We’re going to beat up the home turnips after lunch,” Captain Austin answered. “It’s rather an off day with us. Gilbert is nursing his leg—fancies he has rheumatism coming.”
She strolled out into the garden, but she avoided the spot where Gilbert Deyes lounged in an easy-chair, reading the paper and smoking cigarettes, with his leg carefully arranged on a garden chair in front of him. She took the winding path which skirted the kitchen gardens and led to the green lane, along which the carts passed to the home farm. She felt that what she was doing was in the nature of an experiment, she was yielding again to that most astonishing impulse which once before had taken her so completely by surprise. She passed out of the gate and along the lane. She began to climb the hill. About the success of her experiment she no longer had any doubt. Her heart was beating with pleasant insistence, a feeling of suppressed excitement sent the blood gliding through her veins with delicious softness. All the time she mocked at herself—that this should be Wilhelmina Thorpe-Hatton, to whom the most distinguished men, not only in one capital, but in Europe, had paid court, whom the most ardent wooer had failed to move, who had found, indeed, in all the professions of love-making something insufferably tedious. She was at once amused and annoyed at herself, but an instinctive habit of truthfulness forbade even self-deception. Her cheeks were aflame, and her heart was beating like a girl’s as she reached the spinney. She recognized the fact that she was experiencing a new and delightful pleasure, an emotion as unexpected and ridiculous as it was inexplicable. But she hugged it to herself. It pleased her immensely to feel that the impossible had happened. What all this army of men, experienced in the wiles of love-making, had failed to do, a crazy boy had accomplished without an effort. Absolutely bizarre, of course, but not so wonderful after all! She was so secure against any ordinary assault. She felt herself like the heroine of one of Gautier’s novels. If he had been there himself, she would have taken him into her arms with all the passionate simplicity of a child.
But he was not there. On the contrary, the place was looking forlorn and deserted. The shelter had been razed to the ground—she felt that she hated Stephen Hurd as she contemplated its ruin—the hedge was broken down by the inrush of people a few days ago. In the absence of any sunshine, the country around seemed bleak and colourless. She leaned over the gate and half closed her eyes. Memory came more easily like that!
CHAPTER XIV
SEARCHING THE PAPERS
The late Stephen Hurd had been a methodical man. Every one of those many packets of foolscap and parchment bore in the left-hand corner near the top a few carefully written words summarizing their contents. It was clear from the first that Wilhelmina had undertaken not an examination but a search. Mortgages, leases, agreements, she left unopened and untouched. One by one she passed them back to the young man who handed them out to her, for replacement. In the end she had retained one small packet of letters only, on the outside of which were simply the initials P. N. These she held for a moment thoughtfully in her hand.
“Do you happen to remember, Mr. Hurd,” she said, “whether this small packet which I have here was amongst the papers which you found had been disturbed after the attack upon your father?”
“I am sorry,” the young man answered, “but it is quite impossible for me to say. I do not remember it particularly.”
Wilhelmina turned it over thoughtfully. It was an insignificant packet to hold the tragedy of a woman’s life.
“You see,” she continued, “that it has the appearance of having been tampered with. There are marks of sealing wax upon the tape and upon the paper here. Then, too,” she continued, turning it over, “it has been tied up hastily, unlike any of the other packets. The tape, too, is much too long. It looks almost as though some letters or papers had been withdrawn.”
“I am afraid I cannot help you at all,” he admitted regretfully. “My father never allowed any one but himself to open that safe. Mine was the out-of-door share of the work—and the rent-book, of course. I kept that.”
She slowly undid the tape. The contents of the packet consisted of several letters, which she smoothed out with her fingers before beginning to read. Stephen Hurd stood with his back towards her, rearranging the bundles of documents in the safe.
“You have no idea then,” she asked softly, “of the contents of this packet?”
He turned deliberately round. He was not in the least comfortable. It was almost as though she could see through his tweed shooting-jacket into that inner pocket.
“May I see which packet you refer to?” he asked.
She showed it to him without placing it in his hand. He shook his head.
“No!” he said, “I have not noticed them before.”
She sighed—or was it a yawn? At any rate, her eyes left his face, for which he was immediately grateful. She began to read the papers, and, having finished his task, he walked towards the window and stood there looking out. He stood there minute after minute, hearing only the sound of rustling paper behind. When at last it ceased he turned around.
She had risen to her feet and was slowly drawing on her gloves. The letters had disappeared, presumably into her pocket, but she made no reference to them. When she spoke, her voice was smooth and deliberate as usual. Somehow or other he was at once conscious, however, that she had received a shock.
“I presume, Mr. Hurd,” she said quietly, “that amongst your father’s private papers you did not discover anything—unexpected?”
“I am afraid I scarcely follow you, madam,” he answered.
“I am asking you,” she repeated deliberately, “whether amongst your father’s private papers, which I presume you have looked through, you found anything of a surprising nature?”
He shook his head.
“I found scarcely any,” he answered, “only his will and a memorandum of a few investments. May I ask——”
She turned towards the door.
“No!” she said, “do not ask me any questions. To tell you the truth, I am not yet fully persuaded that the necessity exists.”
“I do not understand,” he protested.
“Forgive me,” he said, with his hand upon the gate. Page [117]
She shrugged her shoulders. She did not trouble to explain her words. He followed her along the cool, white-flagged hall, hung with old prints and trophies of sport, into the few yards of garden outside, brilliant with cottage flowers. Beyond the little iron gate her carriage was waiting—a low victoria, drawn by a pair of great horses, whose sleek coats and dark crimson rosettes suggested rather a turn in the Park than these country lanes. The young man was becoming desperate. She was leaving him altogether mystified. Somewhere or other he had missed his cue: he had meant to have conducted the interview so differently. And never had she looked so provokingly well! He recognized, with hopeless admiration, the perfection of her toilette—the trim white flannel dress, shaped by the hand of an artist to reveal in its simple lines the peculiar grace of her slim figure; the patent shoes with their suggestion of open-work silk stockings; the black picture hat and veil, a delicate recognition of her visit to a house of mourning, yet light and gossamer-like, with no suggestion of gloom. Never had she seemed so desirable to him, so fascinating and yet so unattainable. He made a last and clumsy effort to re-establish himself.
“Forgive me,” he said, with his hand upon the gate, “but I must ask you what you mean by that last question. My father had no secrets that I know of. How could he, when for the last forty years his life was practically spent in this village street?”
She nodded her head slowly.
“Sometimes,” she murmured, “events come to those even who sit and wait, those whose lives are absolutely secluded. No one is safe from fate, you know.”
“But my father!” he answered. “He had no tastes, no interests outside the boundary of your estates.”
She motioned to him to open the gate.
“Perhaps not,” she assented, “yet I suppose that there is not one of us who knows as much of his neighbour’s life as he imagines he does. Good afternoon, Mr. Hurd! My visit has given me something to think about. I may send for you to come to the house before I go away.”
She drove away, leaning back amongst the cushions with half closed eyes, as though tired. The country scenery with its pastoral landscape, its Watteau-like perfections, was wholly unseen. Her memory had travelled back, she was away amongst the days when the roar of life had been in her ears, when for a short while, indeed, the waves had seemed likely to break over her head. An unpleasant echo, this! No more than an echo—and yet! The thought of old Stephen Hurd lying in his grave suddenly chilled her. She shivered as she left the carriage, and instead of entering the house, crossed the lawn to where Gilbert Deyes was lounging. He struggled to his feet at her approach, but she waved him back again.
“Sybarite,” she murmured, glancing around at his arrangements for complete comfort. “You have sent Austin out alone.”
“Dear lady, I confess it,” he answered. “What would you have? It is too fine an afternoon to kill anything.”
She sank into a chair by his side. A slight smile parted her lips as she glanced around. On a table by his side, a table drawn back into the shade of the cedar tree, were several vellum-bound volumes, a tall glass, and a crystal jug half full of some delicate amber beverage, mixed with fruit and ice, a box of cigarettes, an ivory paper-cutter, and a fan.
“Your capacity for making yourself comfortable,” she remarked, “amounts almost to genius.”
“Let it go at that,” he answered. “I like the sound of the word.”
“I want you to go to Paris for me,” she said abruptly.
He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and looked at her thoughtfully. Not a line of his face betrayed the least sign of surprise.
“To-morrow?” he asked.
“Yes!”
“I can get up in time for the two-twenty,” he remarked thoughtfully. “I wonder whether it will be too late for the Armenonville!”
She laughed quietly.
“You are a ‘poseur,’” she declared.
“Naturally,” he admitted. “We all are, even when the audience consists of ourselves alone. I fancy I’m rather better than most, though.”
She nodded.
“You won’t mind admitting—to me—that you are surprised?”
“Astonished,” he said. “To descend to the commonplace, what on earth do you want me to go to Paris for?”
“I will tell you,” she answered. “Forget for a moment the Paris that you know, and remember the Paris of the tourist.”
“Painful,” he answered; “but it is done.”
“The Hôtel de Luxe!”
“I know it well.”
“There are a race of creatures there, small, parasitical insects, who hang about the hall and the boulevard outside—guides they call themselves.”
“‘Show you something altogether new this evening, Captain,’” he quoted. “Yes; I know them.”
“There is, or was, one,” she continued, “who goes by the name of Thomas Johnson. He is undersized; he has red cheeks, and puffy brown eyes. He used to wear a glazed black hat, and he speaks every language without an accent.”
“I should know the beast anywhere,” he declared.
“Find out if he is there still. Let him take you out. Don’t lose sight of him—and write to me.”
“To-morrow night,” he said, “I will renew my youth. I will search for him on the boulevards, and see the sights which make a gay dog of the travelling Briton.”
She nodded.
“You’re a good sort, Gilbert,” she said simply. “Thanks!”
CHAPTER XV
ON THE SPREE
High up on the seventh floor of one of London’s newest and loftiest buildings, a young man sat writing in a somewhat barely furnished office. He wrote deliberately, and with the air of one who thoroughly enjoyed his occupation. The place had a bookish aspect—the table was strewn with magazines and books of reference; piles of literature of a varied order stood, in the absence of bookshelves, against the wall. The young man himself, however, was the most interesting object in the room. He was big and dark and rugged. There was strength in his square-set shoulders, in the compression of his lips, even in the way his finger guided the pen across the paper. He was thoroughly absorbed in his task. Nevertheless he raised his head at a somewhat unusual sound. The lift had swung up to his floor, he heard the metal gate thrown open. There was a knock at the door, and Macheson walked in.
“Victor, by glory!”
Down went the pen, and Richard Holderness stood up at his desk with outstretched hands. Macheson grasped them heartily and seated himself on the edge of the table.
“It’s good to see you, Dick,” he declared, “like coming back to the primitive forces of nature, unchanged, unchanging. The sight of you’s enough to stop a revolution.”
“You’re feeling like that, are you?” his friend answered, his eyes fixed upon Macheson’s face. “Yes, I see you are. Go ahead! Or will you smoke first?”
Macheson produced his pipe, and his host a great tin of honeydew. Macheson helped himself slowly. He seemed to be trying to gain time.
“Blessed compact, ours,” the giant remarked, leaning back in his chair. “No probing for confidences, no silly questions. Out with it!”
“I’ve started wrong,” Macheson said. “I’ll have to go back on my tracks a bit anyway.”
Holderness grunted affably.
“Nothing like mistakes,” he remarked. “Best discipline in the world.”
“I started on a theory,” Macheson continued thoughtfully. “It didn’t pan out. The people I have been trying to get at are better left alone.”
“Exactly why?” Holderness asked.
“I’ll tell you,” Macheson answered. “You know I’ve seen a bit of what we call village life. Their standard isn’t high enough, of course. Things come too easily, their noses are too close to the ground. They are moderately sober, moderately industrious, but the sameness of life is at work all the time. It makes machines of the factory hands, animals of the country folk. I knew that before I started. I thought I could lift their heads a little. It’s too big a task for me, Dick.”
“Of course,” Holderness assented. “You can’t graft on to dead wood.”
“They live decent lives—most of them,” Macheson continued thoughtfully. “They can’t understand that any change is needed, no more can their landlords, or their clergy. A mechanical performance of the Christian code seems all that any one expects from them. Dick, it’s all they’re capable of. You can’t alter laws. You can’t create intelligence. You can’t teach these people spirituality.”
“As well try to teach ’em to fly,” Holderness answered. “I could have told you so before, if it had been of any use. What about these Welshmen, though?”
“It’s hysteria,” Macheson declared. “If you can get through the hide, you can make the emotions run riot, stir them into a frenzy. It’s a debauch. I’ve been there to see. The true spiritual life is partly intellectual.”
“What are you going to do now?” Holderness asked.
“I don’t know,” Macheson answered. “I haven’t finished yet. Dick, curse all women!”
The giant looked thoughtful.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
Macheson swung himself from the table. He walked up and down the room.
“It isn’t serious,” he declared. “It isn’t even definite. But it’s like a perfume, or a wonderful chord of music, or the call of the sea to an inland-bred viking! It’s under my heel, Dick, but I can’t crush it. I came away from Leicestershire because I was afraid.”
“Does she—exist?” Holderness asked.
“Not for me,” Macheson declared hurriedly. “Don’t think that. I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but for our compact.”
Holderness nodded.
“Bad luck,” he said. “This craving for something we haven’t got—can’t have—I wish I could find the germ. The world should go free of it for a generation. We’d build empires, we’d reconstruct society. It’s a deadly germ, though, Victor, and it’s the princes of the world who suffer most. There’s only one antidote—work!”
“Give me some,” Macheson begged.
The giant looked at him thoughtfully.
“Right,” he answered, “but not to-day. Clothes up in town?”
Macheson nodded.
“We’ll go on the bust,” Holderness declared. “I’ve been dying for a spree! We’ll have it. Where are you staying?”
“My old rooms,” Macheson answered. “I looked in on my way from the station and found them empty.”
“Capital! We’re close together. Come on! We’ll do the West End like two gay young bucks. Five o’clock, isn’t it? We’ll walk up Regent Street and have an ‘apéritif’ at Biflore’s. Wait till I brush my hat.”
Macheson made no difficulties, but he was puzzled. Holderness he knew well enough had no leanings towards the things which he proposed with so much enthusiasm. Was it a pilgrimage they were to start upon—or what? After all, why need he worry? He was content to go his friend’s way.
So they walked up Regent Street, bright with the late afternoon sunshine, threading their way through the throngs of sauntering men and women gazing into the shops—and at one another! At Biflore’s Macheson would have felt out of his element but for Holderness’ self-possession. He had the air of going through what might have been an everyday performance, ordered vermouth mixed, lit a cigarette, leaned back at his ease upon the cushioned seat, and told with zest and point a humorous story. There were women there, a dozen or more, some alone, some in little groups, women smartly enough dressed, good-looking, too, and prosperous, with gold purses and Paris hats, yet—lacking something. Macheson did not ask himself what it was. He felt it; he knew, too, that Holderness meant him to feel it. The shadow of tragedy was there—the world’s tragedy....
They went back to their rooms to dress and met at a popular restaurant—one of the smartest. Here Macheson began to recover his spirits. The music was soft yet inspiring, the women—there were none alone here—were well dressed, and pleasant to look at, the sound of their laughter and the gay murmur of conversation was like a delightful undernote. The dinner and wine were good. Holderness seemed to know very well how to choose both. Macheson began to feel the depression of a few hours ago slipping away from him. Once or twice he laughed softly to himself. Holderness looked at him questioningly.
“You should have been with me for the last fortnight, Dick,” he remarked, smiling. “The lady of the manor at Thorpe didn’t approve of me, and I had to sleep for two nights in a gamekeeper’s shelter.”
“Didn’t approve of you to such an extent?” Holderness remarked. “Was she one of those old country frumps—all starch and prejudice?”
Then for a moment the heel was lifted, and a rush of memory kept him dumb. He felt the tearing of the blood in his veins, the burning of his cheeks, the wild, delicious sense of an exaltation, indefinable, mysterious. He was tongue-tied, suddenly apprehensive of himself and his surroundings. He felt somehow nearer to her—it was her atmosphere, this. Was he weaker than his friend—had he, indeed, more to fear? He raised his glass mechanically to his lips, and the soft fire of the amber wine soothed whilst it disquieted him. Again he wondered at his friend’s whim in choosing this manner of spending their evening.
“No!” he said at last, and he was surprised to find his voice composed and natural, “the mistress of Thorpe is not in the least that sort. Thorpe is almost a model village, and of course there is the church, and a very decent fellow for vicar. I am not at all sure that she was not right. I must have seemed a fearful interloper.”
Holderness stretched his long limbs under the table and laughed softly.
“Well,” he declared, “it was a hare-brained scheme. Theoretically, I believe you were right. There’s nothing more dangerous than content. Sort of armour you can’t get through.... Come, we mustn’t miss the ballet.”
They threaded their way down the room. Suddenly Macheson stopped short. He was passing a table set back in a recess, and occupied by two persons. The girl, who wore a hat and veil, and whose simple country clothes were conspicuous, was staring at him with something like fear in her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed; her lips parted, she was leaning forward as though to call her companion’s attention to Macheson’s approach. Macheson glanced towards him with a sudden impulse of indignant apprehension. It was Stephen Hurd, in irreproachable evening clothes save only for his black tie, and his companion was Letty.
Macheson stopped before the table. He scarcely knew what to say or how to say it, but he was determined not to be intimidated by Hurd’s curt nod.
“So you are up in town, Letty,” he said gravely. “Is your mother with you?”
The girl giggled hysterically.
“Oh, no!” she declared. “Mother can’t bear travelling. A lot of us came up this morning at six o’clock on a day excursion, six shillings each.”
“And what time does the train go back?” Macheson asked quickly.
“At twelve o’clock,” the girl answered, “or as soon afterwards as they can get it off. It was terribly full coming up.”
Macheson was to some extent relieved. At any rate there was nothing further that he could do. He bent over the girl kindly.
“I hope you have had a nice day,” he said, “and won’t be too tired when you get home. These excursions are rather hard work. Remember me to your mother.”
He exchanged a civil word with the girl’s companion, who was taciturn almost to insolence. Then he passed on and joined Holderness, who was waiting near the door.
“An oddly assorted couple, your friends,” he remarked, as they struggled into their coats.
Macheson nodded.
“The girl was my landlady’s daughter at Thorpe, and the young man’s the son of the agent there,” he said.
“Engaged?” Holderness asked.
“I’m—afraid not,” Macheson answered. “She’s up on an excursion—for the day—goes back at twelve.”
“I suppose he’s a decent fellow—the agent’s son?” Holderness remarked. “She seems such a child.”
“I suppose he is,” Macheson repeated. “I don’t care for him very much, Dick; I suppose I’m an evil-minded person, but I hate leaving them.”
Holderness looked back into the restaurant.
“You can’t interfere,” he said. “It’s probably a harmless frolic enough. Come on!”
CHAPTER XVI
THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON
“
No stalls left,” Holderness declared, turning away from the box office at the Alhambra. “We’ll go in the promenade. We can find a chair there if we want to sit down.”
Macheson followed him up the stairs and into the heavily carpeted promenade. His memory of the evening, a memory which clung to him for long afterwards, seemed like a phantasmagoria of thrilling music, a stage packed with marvellously dressed women, whose movements were blended with the music into one voluptuous chorus—a blaze of colour not wholly without its artistic significance, and about him an air heavy with tobacco smoke and perfumes, a throng of moving people, more women—many more women. A girl spoke to Holderness,—a girl heavily rouged but not ill-looking, dressed in a blue muslin gown and large black hat. Holderness bent towards her deferentially. His voice seemed to take to itself its utmost note of courtesy, he answered her inquiry pleasantly, and accepted a glance at her programme. The girl looked puzzled, but they talked together for several moments of casual things. Then Holderness lifted his hat.
“My friend and I are tired,” he said. “We are going to look for a seat.”
She bowed and they strolled on down the promenade, finding some chairs at the further end. The dresses of the women brushed their feet and the perfume from the clothes was stronger even than the odour from the clouds of tobacco smoke which hung about the place. Macheson, in whom were generations of puritanical impulses, found himself shrinking back in his corner. Holderness turned towards him frowning.
“No superiority, Victor,” he said. “These are your fellow-creatures. Don’t look at them as though you’d come down from the clouds.”
“It isn’t that,” Macheson answered, “it’s a matter of taste.”
“Taste! Rot!” Holderness answered. “The factory girl’s hat offends my taste, but I don’t shrink away from her.”
A girl, in passing, stumbled against his foot. Holderness stood up as he apologized.
“I am really very sorry,” he said. “No one with feet like mine ought to sit down in a public place. I hope you haven’t torn your dress?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” the girl answered. “I ought to have looked where I was going.”
“In which case,” Holderness remarked, with a laugh, “you could not have failed to see my feet.”
There were two empty chairs at their table. The girl glanced towards them and hesitated.
“Do you mind if we sit down here for a minute,” she asked, “my friend and I? We are rather tired.”
He drew the chairs towards them.
“By all means,” he answered courteously. “Your friend does look tired.”
The party arranged itself. Holderness called to a waiter and gave an order.
“My friend and I,” he remarked, indicating Macheson, who was fiercely uncomfortable and struggling hard not to show it, “are disappointed that we could not get stalls. We wanted to see La Guerrero and this wonderful conjurer.”
“The place is full every night,” the girl answered listlessly. “La Guerrero comes on at ten o’clock, you can see her from the front of the promenade easily. You don’t often come here, do you?”
“Not very often,” Holderness answered. “And you?”
“Every night,” the girl answered in a dull tone.
“That must be monotonous,” he said kindly.
“It is,” she admitted.
They talked for a few minutes longer, or rather it was Holderness who mostly talked, and the others who listened. It struck Macheson as curious that his friend should find it so easy to strike the note of their conversation and keep it there, as though without any definite effort he could assume control over even the thoughts of these girls, to whom he talked with such easy courtesy. He told a funny story and they all laughed naturally and heartily. Macheson had an idea that the girls had forgotten for the moment exactly where they were. Something in their faces, something which had almost terrified him at their first coming, had relaxed, if it had not passed wholly away. At the sound of a few bars of music one of them leaned almost eagerly forward.
“There,” she said, “if you want to see La Guerrero you must hurry. She is coming on now.”
The two young men rose to their feet. One of the girls looked wistfully at Holderness, but nothing was said beyond the ordinary farewells.
“Thank you so much for telling us,” Holderness said. “Come along, Victor. It is La Guerrero.”
Macheson breathed more freely when once they were in the throng. They watched the Spanish dancer with her exquisite movements, sinuous, full of grace. Holderness especially applauded loudly. Afterwards they found seats in the front and remained there for the rest of the performance.
Out in the street they hesitated. Holderness passed his arm through his companion’s.
“Supper!” he declared. “This way! Did you know what a man about town I was, Victor? Ah! but one must learn, and life isn’t all roses and honey. One must learn!”
They threaded their way through the streets, crowded with hansoms, electric broughams, and streams of foot passengers. Holderness led the way to a sombre-looking building, and into a room barely lit save for the rose-shaded lamps upon the tables. Macheson gasped as he entered. Nearly every table was occupied by women in evening dress, women alone—waiting. Holderness glanced around quite unconcernedly as he gave up his coat and hat to a waiter.
“Feeling shy, Victor?” he asked, smiling. “Never mind. We’ll find a table to ourselves all right.”
They sat in a corner. The girls chattered and talked across them—often at them. A Frenchwoman, superbly gowned in white lace, and with a long rope of pearls around her neck, paused as she passed their table. She carried a Pomeranian under her arm and held it out towards them.
“See! My little dog!” she exclaimed. “He bite you. Messieurs are lonely?”
“Alas! Of necessity,” Holderness answered in French. “Madame is too kind.”
She passed on, laughing. Macheson looked across the table almost fiercely.
“What are you doing it for, Dick?” he exclaimed. “What does it mean?”
His friend looked across at him steadfastly.
“Victor,” he said, “I want you to understand. You are an enthusiast, a reformer, a prophet of lost causes. I want you to know the truth if you can see it. There are many sides to life.”
“What am I to learn of this?” Macheson asked, almost passionately.
“If I told you,” Holderness answered, “the lesson would only be half learnt. Sit tight and don’t be a fool. Drink your wine. Mademoiselle in violet there wants to flirt with you.”
“Shall I ask her to join us?” Macheson demanded with wasted satire.
“You might do worse,” Holderness answered calmly. “She could probably teach you something.”
It was a dull evening, and many of the tables remained unoccupied—save for the one waiting figure. The women, tired of looking towards the door, were smoking cigarettes, twirling their bracelets, yawning, and looking around the room. Many a mute invitation reached the two young men, but Holderness seemed to have lost his sociability. His face had grown harder and he seemed glad when their meal was over and they were free to depart. In the hall below they had to wait for their overcoats. Macheson strolled idly towards the entrance of another supper room on the ground floor, and looked in. An exclamation broke from his lips. He turned towards Holderness.
“You see the time,” he exclaimed, “and they are here! Those two!”
Holderness nodded gravely.
“The girl has been crying,” he said, “and there is an A B C on the table. It’s up to you, Victor. We may both have to take a hand in the game. No! I wouldn’t go in. Wait till they come out!”
They stood in the throng, jostled, cajoled, besought. At last the two rose and came towards the door. Letty had dried her eyes, but she looked still pale and terrified. Hurd, on the contrary, was flushed as though with wine. Macheson took her by the arm as she passed.
“Letty,” he said gravely, “have you missed your train?”
She gave a stifled cry and shrank back, when she saw who it was. However, she recovered herself quickly.
“Mr. Macheson!” she exclaimed. “How you startled me! I didn’t expect—to see you again.”
“About this train, Letty?” he repeated.
“Mr. Hurd’s watch stopped,” she declared, her eyes filling once more with tears. “He thought it was eleven o’clock,—and it was ten minutes past twelve. I don’t know what mother will say, I am sure.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
She looked round nervously.
“Mr. Hurd is going to take me to some friends of his,” she answered. “You see it was his fault, so he has promised to see mother and explain.”
Hurd pushed angrily forward.
“Look here,” he said to Macheson, “have you been following us about?”
“I have not,” Macheson answered calmly. “I am very glad to have come across you, though.”
“Sorry I can’t return the compliment,” Hurd remarked. “Come, Letty.”
A girl who was passing tapped him on the arm. She was dressed in blue silk, with a large picture hat, and she was smoking a cigarette.
“Hullo, Stephen!” she exclaimed. “Edith wants to see you. Are you coming round to-night?”
Hurd muttered something under his breath and moved away. Letty looked at him with horror.
“Stephen!” she exclaimed. “You can’t—you don’t mean to say that you know—any of these?”
She was trembling in every limb. He tried to pass his arm through hers.
“Don’t be a fool, Letty,” he said. “It’s time we went, or my friends will have gone to bed.”
She looked at him with wide-open eyes. Her lips were quivering. It was as though she saw some new thing in his face.
“Your friends,” she murmured, “are they—that sort? Oh! I am afraid.”
She clung to Macheson. People were beginning to notice them. He led her out into the street. Hurd followed, angrily protesting. Holderness was close behind.
“I say, you know,” Hurd began, with his arm on Macheson’s shoulder. Macheson shook it off.
“Mr. Hurd,” he said, “at the risk of seeming impertinent, I must ask you precisely where you intend taking this girl to-night?”
“What the devil business is it of yours?” Hurd answered angrily.
“Tell me, all the same,” Macheson persisted.
Hurd passed his arm through Letty’s.
“Come, Letty,” he said, “we will take this hansom.”
The girl was only half willing. Macheson declined to let them go.
“No!” he said, “I will have my question answered.”
Hurd turned as though to strike him, but Holderness intervened, head and shoulders taller than the other.
“I think,” he said, “that we will have my friend’s question answered.”
Hurd was almost shaking with rage, but he answered.
“To some friends in Cambridge Terrace,” he said sullenly. “Number eighteen.”
“You will not object,” Macheson said, “if I accompany you there?”
“I’ll see you damned first,” Hurd answered savagely. “Get in, Letty.”
The girl hesitated. She turned to Macheson.
“I should like to go to the station and wait,” she declared.
“I think,” Macheson said, “that you had better trust yourself to me and my friend.”
“I am sure of it,” Holderness added calmly.
She put her hand in Macheson’s. She was as pale as death and avoided looking at Hurd. He took a quick step towards her.
“Very well, young lady,” he said. “If you go now, you understand that I shall never see you again.”
She began to cry again.
“I wish,” she murmured, “that I had never seen you at all—never!”
He turned on his heel. A row was impossible. It occurred to him that a man of the world would face such a position calmly.
“Very good,” he said, “we will leave it at that.”
He paused to light a cigarette, and strolled back down the street towards the restaurant which they had just left. Letty was crying now in good earnest. The two young men looked at one another in something like dismay. Then Holderness began to laugh quietly.
“You’re a nice sort of Don Quixote to spend an evening with,” he remarked softly.
CHAPTER XVII
THE VICTIMS OF SOCIETY
The girl was still crying, softly but persistently. She caught hold of Macheson’s arm.
“If you please, I think I had better go back to Stephen,” she said. “Do you think I could find him?”
“I think you had much better not, Letty,” he answered. “He ought not to have let you miss your train. My friend here and I are going to look after you.”
“It’s very kind of you,” the girl said listlessly, “but it doesn’t matter much what becomes of me now. Mother will never forgive me—and the others will all know—that I missed the train.”
“We must think of some way of putting that all right,” Macheson declared. “I only wish that I had some relations in London. Can you suggest anything, Dick?”
“I can take the young lady to some decent rooms,” Holderness answered. “The landlady’s an old friend of mine. She’ll be as right as rain there.”
The girl shook her head.
“I’d as soon walk about the streets,” she said pathetically. “Mother’ll never listen to me—or the others. Some of them saw me with Stephen, and they said things. I think I’ll go to the station and wait till the five o’clock train.”
They were walking slowly up towards Piccadilly. A fine rain had begun to fall, and already the pavements were shining. Neither of them had an umbrella, and Letty’s hat, with its cheap flowers and ribbon, showed signs of collapse. Suddenly Macheson had an idea.
“Look here,” he said, “supposing you spent the night at Miss Thorpe-Hatton’s house in Berkeley Square—no one could say anything then, could they?”
The girl looked up with a sudden gleam of hope.
“No! I don’t suppose they could,” she admitted; “but I don’t know where it is, and I don’t suppose they’d take me in anyway.”
“I know where it is,” Macheson declared, “and we’ll see about their taking you in. I believe Miss Thorpe-Hatton may be there herself. Stop that fourwheeler, Dick.”
They climbed into a passing cab, and Macheson directed the driver. The girl was beginning to lose confidence again.
“The house is sure to be shut up,” she said.
“There will be a caretaker.” Macheson declared hopefully. “We’ll manage it, never fear. I believe Miss Thorpe-Hatton is there herself.”
Letty was trembling with excitement and fear.
“I’m scared to death of her,” she admitted. “She’s so beautiful, and she looks at you always as though you were something a long way off.”
Macheson was suddenly silent. A rush of memories surged into his brain. He had sworn to keep away! This was a different matter, an errand of mercy. Nevertheless he would see her, if only for a moment. His heart leaped like a boy’s. He looked eagerly out of the window. Already they were entering Berkeley Square. The cab stopped.
Macheson looked upwards. There were lights in many of the windows, and a small electric brougham, with a tall footman by the side of the driver, was waiting opposite the door.
“The house is open,” he declared. “Don’t be afraid, Letty.”
The girl descended and clung to his arm as they crossed the pavement.
“I shall wait here for you,” Holderness said. “Good luck to you, and good night, young lady!”
Macheson rang the bell. The door was opened at once by a footman, who eyed them in cold surprise.
“We wish to see Miss Thorpe-Hatton for two minutes,” Macheson said, producing his card. “It is really an important matter, or we would not disturb her at such an hour. She is at home, is she not?”
The footman looked exceedingly dubious. He looked from the card to Macheson, and from Macheson to the girl, and he didn’t seem to like either of them.
“Miss Thorpe-Hatton has just returned from the opera,” he said, “and she is going on to the Countess of Annesley’s ball directly. Can’t you come again in the morning?”
“Quite impossible,” Macheson declared briskly. “I am sure that Miss Thorpe-Hatton will see me for a moment if you take that card up.”
The footman studied Macheson again, and was forced to admit that he was a gentleman. He led the way into a small morning-room.
“Miss Thorpe-Hatton shall have your card, sir,” he said. “Kindly take a seat.”
He left the room. Macheson drew up a chair for Letty, but she refused it, trembling.
“Oh! I daren’t sit down, Mr. Macheson,” she declared. “And please—don’t say that I was with Mr. Hurd. I know he wouldn’t like it.”
“Probably not,” Macheson answered, “but what am I to say?”
“Anything—anything but that,” she begged.
Macheson nodded his promise. Then the door opened, and his heart seemed to stand still. She entered the room in all the glory of a wonderful toilette; she wore her famous ropes of pearls, the spotless white of her gown was the last word from the subtlest Parisian workshop of the day. But it was not these things that counted. Had he been dreaming, he wondered a moment later, or had that strange smile indeed curved her lips, that marvellous light indeed flowed from her eyes? It was the lady of his dreams who had entered—it was a very different woman who, with a slight frown upon her smooth forehead, was looking at the girl who stood trembling by Macheson’s side.
“It is Mr. Macheson, is it not?” she said calmly, “the young man who wanted to convert my villagers. And you—who are you?” she asked, turning to the girl.
“Letty Foulton, if you please, ma’am,” the girl answered.
“Foulton! Letty Foulton!” Wilhelmina repeated.
“Yes, ma’am! My brother has Onetree farm,” the girl continued.
Wilhelmina inclined her head.
“Ah, yes!” she remarked, “I remember now. And what do you two want of me at this hour of the night?” she asked frigidly.
“If you will allow me, I will explain,” Macheson interrupted eagerly. “Letty came up from Thorpe this morning on an excursion train which returned at midnight.”
Wilhelmina glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to one.
“Well?”
“She missed it,” Macheson continued. “It was very careless and very wrong, of course, but the fact remains that she missed it. I found her in great distress. She had lost her friends, and there is no train back to Thorpe till the morning. Her brother and mother are very strict, and all her friends who came from Thorpe will, of course, know that—she remained in London. The position, as you will doubtless realize, is a serious one for her.”
Wilhelmina made no sign. Nothing in her face answered in any way the silent appeal in his.
“I happened to know,” he continued, “that you were in London, so I ventured to bring her at once to you. You are the mistress of Thorpe, and in our recent conversation I remember you admitted a certain amount of responsibility as regards your people there. If she passes the night under your roof, no one can have a word to say. It will save her at once from her parent’s anger and the undesirable comments of her neighbours.”
Wilhelmina glanced once more towards the clock.
“It seems to me,” she remarked, “that a considerable portion of the night has already passed.”
Both Macheson and the girl were silent. Wilhelmina for the first time addressed the latter.
“Where have you been spending the evening?” she asked.
“We had dinner and went to a place of entertainment,” she faltered. “Then we had supper, and I found out how late it was.”
“Who is we?”
The girl’s face was scarlet. She did not answer. Wilhelmina waited for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders.
“You are to be congratulated,” she said, with cold irony, “upon your fortunate meeting with Mr. Macheson.”
She had touched the bell, and a footman entered.
“Reynolds,” she said, “show this young person into the housekeeper’s room, and ask Mrs. Brown to take charge of her for the night.”
The girl moved forward impulsively, but something in Wilhelmina’s expression checked her little speech of gratitude. She followed the man from the room without a word. Wilhelmina also turned towards the door.
“You will excuse me,” she said coldly to Macheson. “I am already later than I intended to be.”
“I can only apologize for disturbing you at such an hour,” he answered, taking up his hat. “I could think of nothing else.”
She looked at him coldly.
“The girl’s parents,” she said, “are respectable people, and I am sheltering her for their sake. But I am bound to say that I consider her story most unsatisfactory.”
They were standing in the hall—she had paused on her way out to conclude her sentence. Her maid, holding out a wonderful rose-lined opera cloak, was standing a few yards away; a man-servant was waiting at the door with the handle in his hand. She raised her eyes to his, and Macheson felt the challenge which flashed out from them. She imagined, then, that he had been the girl’s companion; the cold disdain of her manner was in itself an accusation.
His cheeks burned with a sort of shame. She had dared to think this of him—and that afterwards he should have brought the girl to her to beg for shelter! There were a dozen things which he ought to have said, which came flashing from his brain to find themselves somehow imprisoned behind his tightly locked lips. He said nothing. She passed slowly, almost unwillingly, down the hall. The maid wrapped her coat around her—still he stood like a statue. He watched her pass through the opened door and enter the electric brougham. He watched it even glide away. Then he, too, went and joined Holderness, who was waiting outside.
“Hail, succourer of damsels in distress!” Holderness called out, producing his cigar-case. “Jolly glad you got rid of her! It would have meant the waiting-room at St. Pancras and an all-night sitting. Smoke, my son, and we will walk home—unless you mind this bit of rain. Was her ladyship gracious?”
“She was not,” Macheson answered grimly, “but she is keeping the girl. I’d like to walk,” he added, lighting a cigar.
“A very elegant lady,” Holderness remarked, “but I thought she looked a bit up in the air. Did you notice her pearls, Victor?”
Macheson nodded.
“Wonderful, weren’t they?”
“Yes. She wears them round her neck, and these—these wear always their shame,” he added, pushing gently away a woman who clutched at his arm. “Funny thing, isn’t it? What are they worth? Ten thousand pounds, very likely. A lot of money for gewgaws—to hang upon a woman’s body. Shall we ever have a revolution in London, do you think, Victor?”
“Who knows?” Macheson answered wearily. “Not a political one, perhaps, but the other might come. The sewers underneath are pretty full.”
They passed along in silence for a few minutes. Neither the drizzling rain nor the lateness of the hour could keep away that weary procession of sad, staring-eyed women, who seemed to come from every shadow, and vanish Heaven knows where. Macheson gripped his companion by the arm.
“Holderness,” he cried, “for God’s sake let’s get out of it. I shall choke presently. We’ll take a side street.”
But Holderness held his arm in a grip of iron.
“No,” he said, “these are the things which you must feel. I want you to feel them. I mean you to.”
“It’s heart-breaking, Dick.”
Holderness smiled faintly.
“I know how you feel,” he declared. “I’ve gone through it myself. You are a Christian, aren’t you—almost an orthodox Christian?”
“I am not sure!”
“Don’t waste your pity, then,” Holderness declared. “God will look after these. It’s the women with the pearl necklaces and the scorn in their eyes who’re looking for hell. Your friend in the electric brougham, for instance. Can’t you see her close her eyes and draw away her skirts if she should brush up against one of these?”
“It’s hard to blame her,” Macheson declared.
Holderness looked down at him pityingly.
“Man,” he said, “you’re a long way down in the valley. You’ll have to climb. Vice and virtue are little else save relative terms. They number their adherents by accident rather than choice.”
“You mean that it is all a matter of temptation?”
Holderness laughed. They had passed into the land of silent streets. Their own rooms were close at hand.
“Wait a little time,” he said. “Some day you’ll understand.”
CHAPTER XVIII
LETTY’S DILEMMA
“
You are quite sure,” the girl said anxiously, “that Miss Thorpe-Hatton wants to see me? You see there’s a train at ten o’clock I could catch.”
The housekeeper looked up from the menu she was writing, and tapped the table impatiently with her pencil.
“My dear child,” she said, “is it likely I should keep you here without orders? We have sent a telegram to your mother, and you are to wait until the mistress is ready to see you.”
“What time does she generally get down?” Letty asked.
“Any time,” Mrs. Brown answered, resuming her task. “She was back early last night, only stayed an hour at the ball, so she may send for you at any moment. Don’t fidget about so, there’s a good girl. I’m nervous this morning. We’ve twenty-four people dining, and I haven’t an idea in my head. I’m afraid I shall have to send for François.”
“Is François the man-cook who comes down to Thorpe?” Letty asked.
Mrs. Brown nodded.
“The chef you should call him,” she answered. “A very clever man, no doubt, in his way, but takes a lot of keeping in order.”
“Do you have to look after all the servants?” Letty asked. “Doesn’t Miss Thorpe-Hatton ever order anything?”
Mrs. Brown looked pityingly at her guest.
“My dear child,” she said, “I doubt if she could tell you to three or four how many servants there are in the house, and as to ordering anything, I don’t suppose such a thought’s ever entered into her head. Here’s James coming. Perhaps it’s a message for you.”
A footman entered and greeted Letty kindly.
“Good morning, young lady!” he said. “You are to go into the morning-room at once.”
Letty rose with alacrity.
“Is—is she there?” she asked nervously.
“She is,” the man answered, “and if I were you, miss, I wouldn’t do much more than just answer her questions and skedaddle. I haven’t had any conversation with her myself, but mademoiselle says she’s more than a bit off it this morning. Slept badly or something.”
“Don’t frighten the child, James,” Mrs. Brown said reprovingly. “She’s not likely to say much to you, my dear. You hurry along, and come back and have a glass of wine and a biscuit before you go. Show her the way, James.”
“If you please, miss,” the man answered, becoming once more an automaton.
Letty was ushered into a small room, full, it seemed to her as she entered, of sunshine and flowers. Wilhelmina, in a plain white-serge gown, with a string of beads around her neck of some strange-coloured shade of blue, was sitting in a high-backed easy-chair. A small wood fire was burning in the grate, filling the room with a pleasant aromatic odour, and the window leading into the square was thrown wide open.
On a table by her side were a pile of letters, an ivory letter-opener, several newspapers, and a silver box of cigarettes. For the moment, however, none of these things claimed her attention. The lady of the house was leaning back in her chair, and her eyes were half closed. If she had not been sitting with her back to the light, Letty might have noticed the dark rings under her eyes. It was true that she had not slept well.
Letty advanced doubtfully into the room. Wilhelmina turned her head.
“Oh, it is you,” she remarked. “Come up to the table where I can see you.”
“Mrs. Brown told me that you wished to see me before I went,” the girl said hesitatingly.
Wilhelmina was silent for a moment. She was looking at the girl. Yes! she was pretty in a rustic, uncultured way. Her figure was unformed, her hands and feet what might have been expected, and it was obvious that she lacked taste. Were men really attracted by this sort of thing?
“Yes!” Wilhelmina said, “I wish to speak to you. I am not altogether satisfied about last night.”
Letty said nothing. She went red and then white. Wilhelmina’s examination of her was merciless.
“I wish to know,” Wilhelmina said, “who your companion was—with whom you had dinner and supper. I look upon that person as being responsible for your lost train.”
Letty prayed that she might sink into the ground. Her worst imaginings had not been so bad as this. She remained silent, tongue-tied.
“I’m waiting,” Wilhelmina said mercilessly. “I suppose it is obvious enough, but I wish to hear from your own lips.”
“I—he—I don’t think that he would like me to tell you, ma’am,” she faltered.
Wilhelmina smiled—unpleasantly.
“Probably not,” she answered. “That, however, is beside the question. I wish to know.”
The girl was desperate. It was indeed a quandary with her. To offend the mistress of Thorpe was something like sacrilege, but she knew very well what Stephen would have had her do.
“If you please, ma’am,” she said at last, “I can’t.”
Wilhelmina said nothing for a moment, only her eyebrows were slowly lifted.
“If you do not,” she said, calmly, “I must write to your mother and tell her what I think of your behaviour last night. I do not care to have people near me who are disobedient, or—foolish.”
The girl burst into tears. Wilhelmina watched her with cold patience.
“I presume,” she said, “that it was Mr. Macheson. You do not need to mention his name. You need only say ‘Yes!’”
The girl said nothing.
“Mr. Macheson lodged with your mother, I believe?” Wilhelmina continued.
“Yes!” the girl whispered.
“And you waited upon him?”
“Yes!”
The girl lifted her head.
“Mr. Macheson always behaved like a gentleman to me,” she said.
Wilhelmina regarded her contemptuously.
“Your ideas of what constitutes gentlemanly behaviour are probably primitive,” she said. “I do not think that I need trouble you for any direct answer. Still, it would be better for you to give it.”
The girl was again silent. There was a knock at the door. The footman ushered in Stephen Hurd.
He entered confident and smiling. He was wearing a new grey tweed suit, and he was pleased with himself and the summons which had brought him to London. But the sight of the girl took his breath away. She, too, was utterly taken by surprise, and forgot herself.
“Stephen!” she exclaimed, taking a quick step towards him.
“You! You here!” he answered.
It was quite enough! But what puzzled Letty was that Wilhelmina did not seem in the least angry. There was a strange look on her face as she looked from one to the other. Something had sprung into her eyes which seemed to transform her. Her voice, too, had lost all its hardness.
“How do you do, Mr. Hurd?” she said. “I hope you have come to explain how you dared let this child lose her train last night.”
“I—really I—it was quite a mistake,” he faltered, darting an angry glance at Letty.
“You had supper with her,” Wilhelmina said, “and you knew what time the train went.”
“She met some other friends,” Stephen answered. “She left me.”
Wilhelmina smiled. She had found out all that she wanted to know.
“Well,” she said, “I won’t inquire too closely into it this time, only I hope that nothing of the sort will occur again. You had better have lunch with Mrs. Brown in the housekeeper’s room, Letty, and I’ll send you over to St. Pancras for the four o’clock train. I’ll give you a letter to your mother this time, but mind, no more foolishness of this sort.”
The girl tried to stammer out her thanks, but she was almost incoherent. Wilhelmina dismissed her with a smile. Her manner was distinctly colder when she turned to Hurd.
“Mr. Hurd,” she said, “I hope you will understand me when I say that I do not care to have my agent, or any one connected with the estate, play the Don Juan amongst my tenants’ daughters.”
He flushed up to the eyes.
“It was idiotic of me,” he admitted frankly. “I simply meant to give the child a good time.”
“She is quite pretty in her way,” Wilhelmina said, “and her parents, I believe, are most respectable people. You were perhaps thinking of settling down?”
He looked at her in amazement.
“What, with Letty Foulton!” he exclaimed.
“Why not?” she asked.
He drew a breath through his teeth. He could scarcely trust himself to speak for anger.
“You—are not serious?” he permitted himself to ask.
“Why not?” she demanded.
Hurd struggled to express himself with dignity.
“I should not consider such a marriage a suitable one, even if I were thinking of marrying at all,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“No? Well, I suppose you know best,” she said carelessly. “Is there anything fresh down at Thorpe?”
She was angry about that fool of a girl, he told himself. A good sign. But what an actress! His conceit barely kept him up.
“There really isn’t anything I couldn’t arrange with Mr. Fields,” he admitted. “I thought, perhaps, as I was up, you might have some special instructions. That is why I sent to ask if you would see me.”
He looked at her almost eagerly. After all, she was the same woman who had been kind to him at Thorpe. And yet, was she? A sudden thought startled him. She was changed. Had she guessed that he knew her secret?
“No!” she said deliberately. “I do not think that there is anything. If you could find out Mr. Macheson’s address I should be much obliged.”
Hurd was puzzled. This was the second time. What could she have to say to Macheson?
“He was here last night, but I forgot to ask him,” she continued equably.
“Macheson, here!” he exclaimed.
“It was he who brought the girl, Letty,” she said.
He was silent for a moment.
“He’s a queer lot,” he said. “Came to Thorpe, of all places, as a sort of missioner, and he was about town last night most immaculately got up; nothing of the parson about him, I can assure you.”
“No!” she answered quietly. “Well, if you can discover his address, remember I should be glad to hear it.”
He took up his hat reluctantly. He had hoped at least that he might have been asked to luncheon. It was obvious, however, that he was expected to depart, and he did so. On the whole, although he had escaped from an exceedingly awkward situation, he could scarcely consider his visit a success. On his way out he passed Deyes, stepping out of a cab piled up with luggage. He nodded to Hurd in a friendly manner.
“Miss Thorpe-Hatton in?” he asked.
“Just left her,” Hurd answered.
Deyes passed on, and was received by the butler as a favoured guest. He was shown at once into the morning-room.
CHAPTER XIX
A REPORT FROM PARIS
“
For the first time in my life,” Deyes declared, accepting the cigarette and the easy-chair, “I have appreciated Paris. I have gone there as a tourist. I have drunk strange drinks at the Café de la Paix. I have sat upon the boulevards and ogled the obvious lady.”
“And my little guide?” she asked.
“Has disappeared!” he answered.
“Since when?”
“A month ago! It is reported that he came to England.”
Wilhelmina sat still for several moments. To a casual observer she might have seemed unmoved. Deyes, however, was watching her closely, and he understood.
“I am sorry,” he said, “to have so little to tell you. But that is the beginning and the end of it. The man had gone away.”
“That is precisely what I desired to ascertain,” she said. “It seemed to me possible that the man had come to England. I wished to know for certain whether it was true or not.”
“I think,” Deyes said, withdrawing his cigarette and looking at it thoughtfully, “that it is true.”
“You have any further reason for thinking so,” she asked, “beyond your casual inquiries?”
“Well, yes!” he admitted. “I went a little farther than those casual inquiries. It seemed such a meagre report to bring you.”
“Go on!”
“The ordinary person,” he continued smoothly, “would never believe the extreme difficulty with which one collects any particulars as to the home life of a guide. More than once I felt inclined to give up the task in despair. It seemed to me that a guide could have no home, that he must sleep in odd moments on a bench at the Hôtel de Luxe. I tried to fancy a guide in the bosom of his family, carving a Sunday joint, and surrounded by Mrs. Guide and the little Guides. I couldn’t do it. It seemed to me somehow grotesque. Just as I was giving it up in despair, the commissionaire at a night café in Montmartre told me exactly what I wanted to know. He showed me the house where Johnny, as they called him, had a room.”
“You went there?” she asked.
“I did,” he answered.
“It was locked up?”
“On the contrary,” he declared, “Mrs. or Miss Guide was at home, and very pleased to see me.”
“There was a woman there?”
“Assuredly. Whether she is there now or not I cannot say, for it is three days ago, and to me she seemed nearer than that to death!”
“And about this woman! What was she like? Was she his wife or his daughter?”
“He called her his daughter. I am not sure about the relationship. She had been good-looking, I should say, but she was very ill.”
“What did she tell you—about the man Johnson?”
“That he had gone to England to try to get some money. They were almost destitute! He was a good guide, she said, but people came so often to Paris, and they liked some one fresh. Then she coughed—how she coughed!”
“Did she tell you to what part of England the man Johnson had gone?”
“I asked her, but she was not sure. I do not believe that she knew. She said that there was some one in England who was very rich, and from whom he hoped to be able to get money.”
“Anything else?”
“No! I spoke of myself as an old client of Johnny’s, and I left money. Afterwards, at the café where I lunched, I found a commissionaire who told me more about our friend.”
“Ah! What was the name of the café?”
“The Café de Paris!”
She took up a screen and held it before her face. There seemed to be little need of it, however, for her cheeks were as pale as the white roses by her side.
“This man Johnny, as they call him,” Deyes continued, “seems to have had his ups and downs. One big stroke of luck he had, however, which seems to have kept him going for several years. The commissionaire was able to tell me something about it. Shall I go on?” he asked, dropping his voice a little.
“I should like to know what the commissionaire told you,” she answered.
“Somehow or other this fellow, Johnny or Johnson as some of them called him, was recommended to a young lady, a very young lady, who was in Paris with an invalid chaperon.”
“Stop!” she cried.
He looked at her fixedly.
“You were that young lady,” he said softly. “Of course, I know that!”
“I was,” she admitted. “Don’t speak to me for a few moments. It was years ago—but——”
She bent the screen which she held in her hand until the handle snapped.
“You seem,” she said, “to have rather exceeded your instructions. I simply wanted to know whether the man was in Paris or not.”
He bowed.
“The man is in England,” he said. “Don’t you think it might be helpful if you gave me more of your confidence, and told me why you wanted to hear about him?”
She shook her head.
“I would sooner tell you than any one, Gilbert,” she said, “but I do not want to talk about it.”
“It must be as you will, of course,” he answered, “but I hope you will always remember that you could do me no greater kindness—at any time—than to make use of my services. I do not know everything of what happened in Paris—about that time. I do not wish to know. I am content to serve you—blindly.”
“I will not forget that,” she said softly. “If ever the necessity comes I will remind you. There! Let that be the end of it.”
She changed the subject, giving him to understand that she did not wish to discuss it further.
“You are for Marienbad, as usual?” she asked.
“Next week,” he answered. “One goes from habit, I suppose. No waters upon the earth or under it will ever cure me!”
“Liver?” she asked.
“Heart!” he declared.
“You shouldn’t smoke so many cigarettes.”
“Harmless,” he assured her. “I don’t inhale.”
“I think,” she said, “that I shall come over next month.”
“Do!” he begged. “I’ll answer for the bridge. May I come and lunch to-morrow?”
She turned to a red morocco book by her side.
“A bishop and Lady Sarah,” she said. “Several more parsons, and I think the duchess.”
“I’ll face ’em,” he declared.
“I think I shall send for Peggy,” Wilhelmina said. “She is always so sweet to the Church.”
Deyes grinned.
“I shall go round and look her up,” he declared. “Perhaps she’ll come and have lunch with me somewhere.”
She held out her hand.
“You’re a good sort to have gone over for me,” she said. “The things you tumbled up against you’d better forget.”
“Until you remind me of them,” he said. “Very well, I’ll do that. Sorry I didn’t run Johnny to earth.”
He went off, and Wilhelmina after a few minutes went to her desk and wrote a letter to Stephen Hurd.
“As usual,” she wrote, “when you were here this morning I forgot to mention several matters upon which I meant to speak to you. The first is with regard to the man whose brutal assault upon your father caused his death. I understand that the police have never traced him, have never even found the slightest clue to his whereabouts. The more I think of this, the more strange it seems to me, and I am inclined to believe that he never, after all, escaped from the wood in which he first took shelter. I know that the slate quarry was dragged at the time, but I have been told that this was hastily done, and that there are several very deep holes into which the man’s body may have drifted. I wish you, therefore, to send over to Nottingham to get some experienced men to bring back the drags and make an exhaustive search. Please have this done without delay.
“Further, I wish to communicate with the young man Macheson, who was in Thorpe at the time. They may know his address at the post-office, but if you are unable to procure it in any other way, you must advertise in your own name. Please carry out my instructions in these two matters immediately.”
Wilhelmina laid down her pen and looked thoughtfully through the window into the square. A policeman was coming slowly along the pavement. She watched him approach and pass the house, his eyes still fixed in front of him, his whole appearance stolid and matter-of-fact to the last degree. She watched him disappear with fascinated eyes. After all, he represented great things; behind him was a whole national code; the machinery of which he was so small a part drove the wheels of life or death. She turned away from the window with a shrug of the shoulders. Humming a tune, she threw herself back in her chair, and began the leisurely perusal of her letters.
CHAPTER XX
LIKE A TRAPPED ANIMAL
Macheson in those days felt himself rapidly growing older. An immeasurable gap seemed to lie between him and the eager young apostle who had plunged so light-heartedly into the stress of life. All that wonderful enthusiasm, that undaunted courage with which he had faced coldness and ridicule in the earlier days of his self-chosen vocation seemed to have left him. Some way, somehow, he seemed to have suffered shipwreck! There was poison in his system! Fight against it as he might—and he did fight—there were moments when memory turned the life which he had taken up so solemnly into the maddest, most fantastic fairy story. At such times his blood ran riot, the sweetness of a strange, unknown world seemed to be calling to him across the forbidden borders. Inaction wearied him horribly—and, after all, it was inaction which Holderness had recommended as the best means of re-establishing himself in a saner and more normal attitude towards life!
“Look round a bit, old chap,” he advised, “and think. Don’t do anything in a hurry. You’re young, shockingly young for any effective work. You can’t teach before you understand. Life isn’t such a sink of iniquity as you young prigs at Oxford professed to find it. See the best of it and the worst. You’ll be able to put your finger on the weak spots quick enough.”
But the process of looking around wearied Macheson excessively—or was it something else which had crept into his blood to his immense unsettlement? There were several philanthropic schemes started by himself and his college friends in full swing now, in or about London. To each of them he paid some attention, studying its workings, listening to the enthusiastic outpourings of his quondam friends and doing his best to catch at least some spark of their interest. But it was all very unsatisfactory. Deep down in his heart he felt the insistent craving for some fiercer excitement, some mode of life which should make larger and deeper demands upon his emotional temperament. A heroic war would have appealed to him instantly—for that, he realized with a sigh, he was born many centuries too late. For weeks he wandered about London in a highly unsatisfied condition. Then one afternoon, in the waning of a misty October day, he came face to face with Wilhelmina in Bond Street.
She was stepping into her motor brougham when she saw him. He had no opportunity for escape, even if he had desired it. Her tired lips were suddenly curved into a most bewildering smile. She withdrew her hand from her muff and offered it to him—for the first time.
“So you are still in London, Mr. Macheson,” she said. “I am very glad to see you.”
The words were unlike her, the tone was such as he had never heard her use. Do what he could, he could not help the answering light which sprang into his own eyes.
“I am still in London,” he said. “I thought you were to go to Marienbad?”
“I left it until it was too late,” she answered. “Walk a little way with me,” she added abruptly. “I should like to talk to you.”
“If I may,” he answered simply.
She dismissed the brougham, and they moved on.
“I am sorry,” she began, “that I was rude to you when you brought that girl to me. You did exactly what was nice and kind, and I was hateful. Please forgive me.”
“Of course,” he answered simply. “I felt sure that when you thought it over you would understand.”
“You are not going back—to Thorpe?” she asked.
“Not at present, at any rate,” he answered.
She looked up at him with a faint smile.
“You can have the barn,” she said.
His eyes answered her smile, but his tone was grave.
“I have given that up—for a little time, at any rate,” he said. “I mean that particular sort of work.”
“My villagers must content themselves with Mr. Vardon, then,” she remarked.
He nodded.
“Perhaps,” he said, “ours was a mistaken enterprise. I am not sure. But at any rate, so far as Thorpe is concerned, I have abandoned it for the present.”
She was walking close to his side, so close that the hand which raised her skirt as they crossed the street touched his, and her soft breath as she leaned over and spoke fell upon his cheek.
“Why?”
He felt the insidious meaning of her whispered monosyllable, he felt her eyes striving to make him look at her. His cheeks were flushed, but he looked steadily ahead.
“There were several reasons,” he said.
“Do tell me,” she begged; “I am curious.”
“For one,” he said steadily, “I did an unjust thing at Thorpe. I sheltered a criminal and helped him to escape.”
“So it was you who did that,” she remarked. “You mean, of course, the man who killed Mr. Hurd?”
“Yes!” he answered. “I showed him where to hide. He either got clean away, or he is lying at the bottom of the slate quarry. In either case, I am responsible for him.”
“Well,” she said, “he is not at the bottom of the slate quarry. I can at least assure you of that. I have had the place dragged, and every foot of it gone over by experienced men from Nottingham.”
“Really,” he said, surprised. “Well, I am glad of it.”
She sighed.
“I want you, if you can,” she said, “to describe the man to me. It is not altogether curiosity. I have a reason for wishing to know what he was like.”
“He was in such a state of panic,” Macheson said doubtfully, “that I am afraid I have only an imperfect impression of him. He was not very tall, he had a round face, cheeks that were generally, I should think, rather high-coloured, brown eyes and dark hair, almost black. He wore a thick gold ring on the finger of one hand, and although he spoke good English, I got the idea somehow that he was either a foreigner or had lived abroad. He was in a terrible state of fear, and from what I could gather, I should say that he struck old Mr. Hurd in a scuffle, and not with any deliberate intention of hurting him.”
She nodded.
“I have heard all that I want to,” she declared.
They walked on in silence for several minutes. Then she turned to him with a shrug of the shoulders.
“The subject,” she declared, “is dismissed. I did not ask you to walk with me to discuss such unpleasant things. I should like to know about yourself.”
He sighed.
“About myself,” he answered, “there is nothing to tell. There isn’t in the whole of London a more unsatisfactory person.”
She laughed softly.
“Such delightful humility,” she murmured, “especially amongst the young, is too touching. Nevertheless, go on. It amuses me to hear.”
The note of imperiousness in her tone was pleasantly reminiscent. It was the first reminder he had received of the great lady of Thorpe.
“Well,” he said, “what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” she answered. “I am possessed by a most unholy curiosity. Your relatives for instance, and where you were born.”
He shook his head.
“I have no relatives,” he answered. “I was born in Australia. I am an orphan, twenty-eight years old, and feel forty-eight, no profession, no settled purpose in life. I am Japhet in search of a career.”
She glanced at his shabby clothes. He had been to a mission-house in the East End.
“You are poor?” she asked softly.
“I have enough, more than enough,” he answered, “to live on.”
Her eyes lingered upon his clothes, but he offered no explanation. Enough to live on, she reflected, might mean anything!
“You say that you have no profession,” she remarked. “I suppose you would call it a vocation. But why did you want to come and preach to my villagers at Thorpe? Why didn’t you go into the Church if you cared for that sort of thing?”
“There was a certain amount of dogma in the way,” he answered. “I should make but a poor Churchman. They would probably call me a free-thinker. Besides, I wanted my independence.”
She nodded.
“I am beginning to understand a little better,” she said. “Now you must tell me this. Why did you entertain the idea of mission work in a place like Thorpe, when the whole of that awful East End was there waiting for you?”
“All the world of reformers,” he answered, “rushes to the East End. We fancied there was as important work to be done in less obvious places.”
“And you started your work,” she asked, “directly you left college?”
“Before, I think,” he answered. “You see, I wasn’t alone. There were several of us who felt the same way—Holderness, for instance, the man who came to your house with me the other night. He works altogether upon the political side. He’s a Socialist—of a sort. Two of the others went into the Church, one became a medical missionary. I joined in with a few who thought that we might do more effective work without tying ourselves down to anything, or subscribing to any religious denomination.”
She looked at him curiously. He was tall, broad-shouldered and muscular. He wore even his shabby clothes with an air of distinction.
“I suppose,” she said calmly, “that I must belong to a very different world. But what I cannot understand is why you should choose a career which you intend to pursue apparently for the benefit of other people. All the young men whom I have known who have taken life seriously enough to embrace a career at all, have at least studied their individual tastes.”
“Well,” he answered, smiling, “it isn’t that I fancy myself any better than my fellows. I was at Magdalen, you know, under Heysey. I think that it was his influence which shaped our ideas.”
“Yes! I have heard of him,” she said thoughtfully. “He was a good man. At least every one says so. I’m afraid I don’t know much about good men myself. Most of those whom I have met have been the other sort.”
The faint bitterness of her tone troubled him. There was deliberation, too, in her words. Instinctively he knew that this was no idle speech.
“You have asked me,” he reminded her, “a good many questions. I wonder if I might be permitted to ask you one?”
“Why not? I can reserve the privilege of not answering it,” she remarked.
“People call you a fortunate woman,” he said. “You are very rich, you have a splendid home, the choice of your own friends, a certain reputation—forgive me if I quote from a society paper—as a brilliant and popular woman of the world. Yours is rather a unique position, isn’t it? I wonder,” he added, “whether you are satisfied with what you get out of life!”
“I get all that there is to be got,” she answered, a slight hardness creeping into her tone. “It mayn’t be much, but it amuses me—sometimes.”
He shook his head.
“There is more to be got out of life,” he said, “than a little amusement.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“How about yourself? You haven’t exactly the appearance of a perfectly contented being.”
“I’m hideously dissatisfied,” he admitted promptly. “Something seems to have gone wrong with me—I seem to have become a looker-on at life. I want to take a hand, and I can’t. There doesn’t seem to be any place for me. Of course, it’s only a phase,” he continued. “I shall settle down into something presently. But it’s rather beastly while it lasts.”
She looked at him, her eyes soft with laughter. Somehow his confession seemed to have delighted her.
“I’m glad you are human enough to have phases,” she declared. “I was beginning to be afraid that you might turn out to be just an ordinary superior person. Perhaps you are also human enough to drink tea and eat muffins. Try, won’t you?”
They were in front of her door, which flew immediately open. She either took his consent for granted, or chose not to risk his refusal, for she went on ahead, and his faint protests were unheard. His hat and stick passed into the care of an elderly person in plain black clothes; with scarcely an effort at resistance, he found himself following her down the hall. She stopped before a small wrought-iron gate, which a footman at once threw open.
“It makes one feel as though one were in a hotel, doesn’t it?” she remarked, “but I hate stairs. Besides, I am going to take you a long, long way up.... I am not at home this afternoon, Groves.”
“Very good, madam,” the man answered.
They stepped out into a smaller hall. A dark-featured young woman came hurrying forward to meet them.
“I shall not need you, Annette,” Wilhelmina said. “Go down and see that they send up tea for two, and telephone to Lady Margaret—say I’m sorry that I cannot call for her this afternoon.”
“Parfaitement, madame,” the girl murmured, and hurried away. Wilhelmina opened the door of a sitting-room—the most wonderful apartment Macheson had ever seen. A sudden nervousness seized him. He felt his knees shaking, his heart began to thump, his brain to swim. All at once he realized where he was! It was not the lady of Thorpe, this! It was the woman who had come to him with the storm, the woman who had set burning the flame which had driven him into a new world. He looked around half wildly! He felt suddenly like a trapped animal. It was no place for him, this bower of roses and cushions, and all the voluptuous appurtenances of a chamber subtly and irresistibly feminine! He was bereft of words, awkward, embarrassed. He longed passionately to escape.
Wilhelmina closed the door and raised her veil. She laid her two hands upon his shoulders, and looked up at him with a faint but very tender smile. Her forehead was slightly wrinkled, her fingers seemed to cling to him, so that her very touch was like a caress! His heart began to beat madly. The perfume of her clothes, her hair, the violets at her bosom, were like a new and delicious form of intoxication. The touch of her fingers became more insistent. She was drawing his face down to hers.
“I wonder,” she murmured, “whether you remember!”
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
RATHER A GHASTLY PART
Mademoiselle Rosine raised her glass. Her big black eyes flashed unutterable things across the pink roses.
“I think,” she said, “that we drink the good health of our host, Meester Macheson, Meester Victor, is it not?”
“Bravo!” declared a pallid-looking youth, her neighbour at the round supper table. “By Jove, if we were at the Côte d’Or instead of the Warwick, we’d give him musical honours.”
“I drink,” Macheson declared, “to all of us who know how to live! Jules, another magnum, and look sharp.”
“Certainly, sir,” the man answered.
There flashed a quick look of intelligence between the waiter and a maître d’hôtel who was lingering near. The latter hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. It was a noisy party and none too reputable, but a magnum of champagne was an order. They were likely to make more noise still if they didn’t get it. So the wine was brought, and more toasts were drunk. Mademoiselle Rosine’s eyes flashed softer things than ever across the table, but she had the disadvantage of distance. Ella Merriam, the latest American importation, held the place of honour next Macheson, and she was now endeavouring to possess herself of his hand under the table.
“I say, Macheson, how is it none of us ever ran up against you before?” young Davenant demanded, leaning back in his chair. “Never set eyes on you myself, from the day you left Magdalen till I ran up against you at the Alhambra the other evening. Awfully studious chap Macheson was at college,” he added to the American girl. “Thought us chaps no end of rotters because we used to go the pace a bit. That’s so, isn’t it, Macheson?”
Macheson nodded.
“It is only the young who are really wise,” he declared coolly. “As we grow older we make fools of ourselves inevitably, either fools or beasts, according to our proclivities. Then we begin to enjoy ourselves.”
The girl by his side laughed.
“I guess you don’t mean that,” she said. “It sounds smart, but it’s real horrid. How old are you, Mr. Macheson?”
“Older than I look and younger than I feel,” he answered, gazing into his empty glass.
“Have you found what you call your proclivities?” she asked.
“I am searching for them,” Macheson answered. “The trouble is one doesn’t know whether to dig or to climb.”
“Why should one search at all?” the other man asked, drawing out a gold cigarette case from his trousers pocket, and carefully selecting a cigarette. “Life comes easiest to those who go blindfold. I’ve got a brother, private secretary to a Member of Parliament. He’s got views about things, and he makes an awful fag of life. What’s the good of it! He’ll be an old man before he’s made up his mind which way he wants to go. This sort of thing’s good enough for me!”
The magnum had arrived, and Macheson lifted a foaming glass.
“Davenant,” he declared, “you are a philosopher. We will drink to life as it comes! To life—as it comes!”
They none of them noticed the little break in his voice. A party of newcomers claimed their attention. Macheson, too, had seen them. He had seen her. Like a ghost at the feast, he sat quite motionless, his glass half raised in the air, the colour gone from his cheeks, his eyes set in a hard fast stare. Wilhelmina, in a plain black velvet gown, with a rope of pearls about her neck, her dark hair simply arranged about her pallid, distinguished face, was passing down the room, followed closely by the Earl of Westerdean, Deyes, and Lady Peggy. Her first impulse had been to stop; a light sprang into her eyes, and a delicate spot of colour burned in her cheeks. Then her eyes fell upon his companions; she realized his surroundings. The colour went: the momentary hesitation was gone. She passed on without recognition; Lady Peggy, after a curious glance, did the same. She whispered and laughed in Deyes’ ear as they seated themselves at an adjacent table. He looked round behind her back and nodded, but Macheson did not appear to see him.
A momentary constraint fell upon the little party. The American young lady leaned over to ask Davenant who the newcomers were.
“The elder man,” he said, “is the Earl of Westerdean, and the pretty fair woman Lady Margaret Penshore. The other woman is a Miss Thorpe-Hatton. Macheson probably knows more about them than I do!”
Macheson ignored the remark. He whispered something in his neighbour’s ear, which made her laugh heartily. The temporary check to their merriment passed away. Macheson was soon laughing and talking as much as any of them.
“Supper,” he declared, “would be the most delightful meal of the day in any other country except England. In a quarter of an hour the lights will be out.”
“But it is barbarous,” Mademoiselle Rosine declared. “Ah! Monsieur Macheson, you should come to Paris! There it is that one may enjoy oneself.”
“I will come,” Macheson answered, “whenever you will take me.”
She clapped her hands.
“Agreed,” she cried. “I have finished rehearsing. I have a week’s ‘vacance.’ We will go to Paris to-morrow, all four of us!”
“I’m on,” Davenant declared promptly. “I was going anyway in a week or two.”
Mademoiselle Rosine clapped her hands again.
“Bravo!” she cried. “And you, Mademoiselle?”
The girl hesitated. She glanced at Macheson.
“We will both come,” Macheson declared. “Miss Merriam will do me the honour to go as my guest.”
“We’ll stay at the Vivandiére,” Davenant said. “I’ve a pal there who knows the ropes right up to date. What about the two-twenty to-morrow? We shall get there in time to change and have supper at Noyeau’s.”
“And afterwards—au Rat Mort——” Mademoiselle Rosine cried. “We will drink a glass of champagne with cher Monsieur François.”
Davenant raised his glass.
“One more toast, then, before the bally lights go out!” he exclaimed. “To Paris—and our trip!”
Some one touched Macheson on the arm. He turned sharply round. Deyes was standing there. Tall and immaculately attired, there was something a little ghostly in the pallor of his worn, beardless face, with its many wrinkles and tired eyes.
“Forgive me for interrupting you, my dear fellow,” he said. “We are having our coffee outside, just on the left there. Miss Thorpe-Hatton wants you to stop for a moment on your way out.”
Macheson hesitated perceptibly. A dull flush of colour stained his cheek, fading away almost immediately. He set his teeth hard.
“I shall be very happy,” he said, “to stop for a second.”
Deyes bowed and turned away. The room now was almost in darkness, and the people were streaming out into the foyer. Macheson paid the bill and followed in the wake of the others. Seeing him approach alone, Wilhelmina welcomed him with a smile, and drew her skirts on one side to make room for him to sit down. He glanced doubtfully around. She raised her eyebrows.
“Your friends,” she said, “are in no hurry. They can spare you for a moment.”
There was nothing in her tone to indicate any surprise at finding him there, or in such company. She made a few casual remarks in her somewhat languid fashion, and recalled him to the recollection of Lady Peggy, who was to all appearance flirting desperately with Lord Westerdean. Deyes had strolled across to a neighbouring group, and was talking to a well-known actor. Wilhelmina leaned towards him.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” she asked quietly, “that you left me a little abruptly the other afternoon?”
His eyes blazed into hers. He found it hard to emulate the quiet restraint of her tone and manner. It was a trick which he had never cultivated, never inherited, this playing with the passions in kid gloves, this muzzling and harnessing of the emotions.
“You know why,” he said.
She inclined her head ever so slightly to where his late companions were seated.
“And this?” she asked. “Am I responsible for this, too?”
He laughed shortly.
“It would never have occurred to me to suggest such a thing,” he declared. “I am amusing myself a little. Why not?”
“Are you?” she asked calmly.
Her eyes drew his. He almost fancied that the quiver at the corners of her lips was of mirth.
“Somehow,” she continued, “I am not sure of that. I watched you now and then in there. It seemed to me that you were playing a part—rather a ghastly part! There’s nothing so wearisome, you know, as pretending to enjoy yourself.”
“I had a headache to-night,” he said, frowning.
She bent towards him.
“Is it better now?” she whispered, smiling.
He threw out his hands with a quick fierce gesture. It was well that the great room was wrapped in the mysterious obscurity of semi-darkness, and that every one was occupied with the business of farewells. He sprang to his feet.
“I am going,” he said thickly. “My friends are expecting me.”
She shook her head.
“Those are not your friends,” she said. “You know very well that they never could be. You can go and wish them good night. You are going to see me home.”
“No!” he declared.
“If you please,” she begged softly.
He crossed the room unsteadily, and made his excuses with the best grace he could. Mademoiselle Rosine made a wry face. Miss Ella laid her fingers upon his arm and looked anxiously up at him.
“Say you won’t disappoint us to-morrow,” she said. “It’s all fixed up about Paris, isn’t it? Two-twenty from Charing Cross.”
“Yes!” he answered. “I will let you know if anything turns up.”
They all stood around him. Davenant laid his hand upon his shoulder.
“Look here, old chap,” he said, “no backing out. We’ve promised the girls, and we mustn’t disappoint them.”
“Monsieur Macheson would not be so cruel,” Mademoiselle Rosine pleaded. “He has promised, and Englishmen never break their workd. Is it not so? A party of four, yes! that is very well. But alone with Herbert here I could not go. If you do not come, all is spoilt! Is it not so, my friends?”
“Rather!” Davenant declared.
The other girl’s fingers tightened upon his arm.
“Don’t go away now,” she whispered. “Come round to my flat and we’ll all talk it over. I will sing you my new song. I’m crazy about it.”
Macheson detached himself as well as he could.
“I must leave you now,” he declared. “I can assure you that I mean to come to-morrow.”
He hurried after Wilhelmina, who was saying good night to her friends. A few minutes later they were being whirled westwards in her brougham.