“He was very weak, but he seemed perfectly well able to take care of himself,” she answered. “A telegram came for him about half an hour ago. I took it up to his room, and he opened and read it without remark. He asked where you were, but I could only tell him that you were out. Directly afterwards I heard him getting up, and I went to the door of his room to see if I could help him. He told me that I was to order the dog cart, and that he was going away. I was too surprised to say a word.”
My first impulse was unmistakable. It was a sense of great relief. Then I began to wonder what this Berdenstein girl would think. Would she connect it with her presence here? Would she think that he had gone away to avoid her? There was that risk, but it was no greater than the risk of her coming here some day and meeting him face to face. On the whole it was good news. It was a respite at any rate.
In the morning came a letter from him, dated simply London. He had been called away, he said, on some business, the details of which would not interest us, but it was a call which it would not have been his duty to have neglected. Immediately he had concluded it, he went on to say, he proposed to take a short vacation by the sea somewhere. Accordingly he had engaged a locum tenens, who was now on his way down, and he would write us again as soon as he had definitely decided where to go.
Alice and I laid down the letter with varying thoughts. To her, ignorant of any reasons for conduct which was on the face of it somewhat eccentric, it brought some concern. With me it was different. I was at once relieved and glad. I had arrived at that acutely nervous and overwrought state when even a respite is welcome. The explanations between us were for the present necessarily postponed, and, at any rate, I could meet Olive Berdenstein now without trembling. It was the truth which I had to tell. My father was not here. I did not know where he was. She could come and search for him.
Yet that was a time of fierce disquiet with me. To settle down to any manner of work seemed impossible. Later in the day I went out into the garden, and the cool touch of the soft, damp wind upon my face tempted me past the line of trees which hemmed in our little demesne out into the muddy road and across to the broad expanse of green common which was really a part of the Deville home park. As I stood there, bareheaded, with the wind blowing through my hair and wrapping my skirts around me, I could see in the distance a man coming on horseback from the Court. I stood still and watched him. There was no mistaking man or horse—Bruce Deville on his great chestnut—though they were half a mile away. Then, as I stood there waiting for him, a sudden darkness came into the faintly sunlit air, a poisoned darkness—the poison of a hideous thought. I turned away and plunged into the plantation on my left, flying along the narrow footpath as though the thought had taken to itself the shape of some loathsome beast and was indeed pursuing me, close on my heels. In less than five minutes I was standing breathless before Adelaide Fortress. She was looking white and ill. When she came into the room she threw across at me a glance which was almost supplicatory. Her firm lips trembled a little. Her eyes were soft and full of invisible tears.
“Is it bad news?” she faltered. “You have been running. Sit down.”
I shook my head.
“No. Another question, that is all. Mr. Deville?”
She looked puzzled for a moment. Then she drew herself up and stood a little away from me. Her firm, dark eyebrows resolved themselves into a frown. Some subtle instinct, quick to fly backwards and forwards between us two, had helped her towards the meaning of my words.
“Mr. Bromley Deville, Mr. Deville’s father, was my father’s oldest friend,” she said, slowly. “Bruce and I were children together, and except that I, of course, was five years the elder, we were great friends. Mr. Bromley Deville was my father’s executor, and since his death Bruce has taken his place.”