I
“But, Bill, I don’t understand. How much did you borrow from this man?”
Sybil Daventry looked at her brother, sitting huddled up in his chair, with a little frown.
“I borrowed a thousand,” he answered, sulkily. “And like a fool I didn’t read the thing he made me sign—at least, not carefully. Hang it, I’ve only had the money six months, and now he’s saying that I owe him over two. I saw something about twenty-five per cent., and now I find it was twenty-five per cent. a month. And the swine is pressing for payment unless——” He broke off and stared into the fire shamefacedly.
“Unless what?” demanded his sister.
“Well, you see, it’s this way.” The boy stammered a little, and refused to look at her. “I was jolly well up the spout when this blighter told me what I owed him, and I suppose I must have showed it pretty clearly. Anyway, I was propping up the bar at the Cri., getting a cocktail, when a fellow standing next me started gassing. Not a bad sort of cove at all; knows you very well by sight.”
“Knows me?” said the girl, bewildered. “Who was he?”
“I’m coming to that later,” went on her brother. “Well, we had a couple more and then he suggested tearing a chop together. And I don’t know—he seemed so decent and all that—that I told him I was in the soup. Told him the whole yarn and asked his advice sort of business. Well, as I say, he was bally sporting about it all, and finally asked me who the bird was who had tied up the boodle. I told him, and here’s the lucky part of the whole show—this fellow Perrison knew him. Perrison was the man I was lunching with.”
He paused and lit a cigarette, while the girl stared at him gravely.
“Well,” she said at length, “go on.”
“It was after lunch that he got busy. He said to me: ‘Look here, Daventry, you’ve made a bally fool of yourself, but you’re not the first. I’ll write a note to Messrs. Smith and Co.’—those are the warriors who gave me the money—‘and try and persuade them to give you more time, or even possibly reduce the rate of interest.’ Of course, I was all on this, and I arranged to lunch with him again next day, after Smith and Co. had had time to function. And sure enough they did. Wrote a letter in which they were all over me; any friend of Mr. Perrison’s was entitled to special treatment, and so on and so forth. Naturally I was as bucked as a dog with two tails, and asked Perrison if I couldn’t do something more material than just thank him. And—er—he—I mean it was then he told me he knew you by sight.”
He glanced at his sister, and then quickly looked away again.
“He suggested—er—that perhaps I could arrange to introduce him to you; that it would be an honour he would greatly appreciate, and all that sort of rot.”
The girl was sitting very still. “Yes,” she said, quietly, “and you—agreed.”
“Well, of course I did. Hang it, he’s quite a decent fellow. Bit Cityish to look at, and I shouldn’t think he knows which end of a horse goes first. But he’s got me out of the devil of a hole, Sybil, and the least you can do is to be moderately decent to the bird. I mean it’s not asking much, is it? I left the governor looking at him in the hall as if he was just going to tread on his face, and that long slab—your pal—is gazing at him through his eyeglasses as if he was mad.”
“He’s not my pal, Bill.” Sybil Daventry’s colour heightened a little.
“Well, you asked him here, anyway,” grunted the boy. Then with a sudden change of tone he turned to her appealingly. “Syb, old girl—for the Lord’s sake play the game. You know what the governor is, and if he hears about this show—especially as it’s—as it’s not the first time—there’ll be the deuce to pay. You know he said last time that if it happened again he’d turn me out of the house. And the old man is as stubborn as a mule. I only want you to be a bit decent to Perrison.”
She looked at him with a grave smile. “If Mr. Perrison is satisfied with my being decent to him, as you put it, I’m perfectly prepared to play the game. But——” She frowned and rose abruptly. “Come on, and I’ll have a look at him.”
In silence they went downstairs. Tea had just been brought in, and the house-party was slowly drifting into the hall. But Sybil barely noticed them; her eyes were fixed on the man talking to her father. Or rather, at the moment, her father was talking to the man, and his remark was painfully audible.
“There is a very good train back to London at seven-thirty, Mr.—ah—Mr.——”
Her brother stepped forward. “But I say, Dad,” he said, nervously, “I asked Perrison to stop the night. I’ve just asked Sybil, and she says she can fix him up somewhere.”
“How do you do, Mr. Perrison?” With a charming smile she held out her hand. “Of course you must stop the night.”
Then she moved away to the tea-table, feeling agreeably relieved; it was better than she had expected. The man was well-dressed; perhaps, to her critical eye, a little too well-dressed—but still quite presentable.
“You averted a catastrophe, Miss Daventry.” A lazy voice beside her interrupted her thoughts, and with a smile she turned to the speaker.
“Dad is most pestilentially rude at times, isn’t he? And Bill told me he left you staring at the poor man as if he was an insect.”
Archie Longworth laughed.
“He’d just contradicted your father flatly as you came downstairs. And on a matter concerning horses. However—the breeze has passed. But, tell me,” he stared at her gravely, “why the sudden invasion?”
Her eyebrows went up a little. “May I ask why not?” she said, coldly. “Surely my brother can invite a friend to the house if he wishes.”
“I stand corrected,” answered Longworth, quietly. “Has he known him long?”
“I haven’t an idea,” said the girl. “And after all, Mr. Longworth, I hadn’t known you very long when I asked you.”
And then, because she realised that there was a possibility of construing rather more into her words than she had intended, she turned abruptly to speak to another guest. So she failed to see the sudden inscrutable look that came into Archie Longworth’s keen blue eyes—the quick clenching of his powerful fists. But when a few minutes later she again turned to him, he was just his usual lazy self.
“Do you think your logic is very good?” he demanded. “You might have made a mistake as well.”
“You mean that you think my brother has?” she said, quickly.
“It is visible on the surface to the expert eye,” he returned, gravely. “But, in addition, I happen to have inside information.”
“Do you know Mr. Perrison, then?”
He nodded. “Yes, I have—er—met him before.”
“But he doesn’t know you,” cried the girl.
“No—at least—er—we’ll leave it at that. And I would be obliged, Miss Daventry, in case you happen to be speaking to him, if you would refrain from mentioning the fact that I know him.” He stared at her gravely.
“You’re very mysterious, Mr. Longworth,” said the girl, with an attempt at lightness.
“And if I may I will prolong my visit until our friend departs,” continued Longworth.
“Why, of course,” she said, bending over the tea-tray. “You weren’t thinking of going—going yet, were you?”
“I was thinking after lunch that I should have to go to-morrow,” he said, putting down his tea-cup.
“But why so soon?” she asked, and her voice was low. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“In the course of a life that has taken me into every corner of the globe,” he answered, slowly, “I have never dreamed that I could be so utterly and perfectly happy as I have been here. It has opened my mind to a vista of the Things that Might Be—if the Things that Had Been were different. But as you grow older, Sybil, you will learn one bitter truth: no human being can ever be exactly what he seems. Masks? just masks! And underneath—God and that being alone know.”
He rose abruptly, and she watched him bending over Lady Granton with his habitual lazy grace. The indolent smile was round his lips—the irrepressible twinkle was in his eyes. But for the first time he had called her Sybil; for the first time—she knew. The vague forebodings conjured up by his words were swamped by that one outstanding fact; she knew. And nothing else mattered.