"Oh, you can count on me for that," laughed Saltash. "I never was a drifter. Life is too short. We'll meet again to-morrow then. Come and dine if you like, and tell me what you've arranged! Good night!" He turned in his sudden fashion. "Good luck to you!"
He was gone upon the words, vanishing into the larches almost noiselessly as he had come, and Bunny was left alone.
He stood motionless at the gate for some time longer gazing out over the quiet, night-wrapt down. There was no elation in his attitude, only a deep thoughtfulness. He had never understood Charlie though oddly enough he had always believed in him. But to-night for the first time a curious doubt pierced his mind—a doubt that recurred again and again, banishing all sense of exultation. Why had Charlie returned like this? Why was he so eager to meddle in this affair? Why so recklessly generous? He had a strong feeling that there was something behind it all, some motive unrealized, some spur goading him, of which he, Bunny, might not approve if he came to know of it. He wished he could fathom the matter. It was unlike Saltash to take so much trouble over anything. He felt as if in some inexplicable fashion he were being tricked.
He put the thought from him, but he could not drive it away. Just as he had felt himself baffled a little earlier by Toby, so now he felt the same inability to comprehend Saltash. He seemed to be groping at a locked door, feeling and feeling for a key, that always eluded him. And again he wished that Jake was within reach.
He turned homewards at length, dissatisfied and ill at ease, yet calling himself a fool for scenting a mystery that did not exist.
CHAPTER XI
SUSPICION
The Graydown Stables were always a model of well-ordered efficiency, and it had ever been Bunny's pride to show them to his friends. But he awaited General Melrose and his daughter on the following afternoon in a mood of some impatience. He had arrived early in the hope of finding Toby at liberty, but his young fianceé was nowhere to be found. She had gone out riding, Maud said, immediately after luncheon, and he realized with some disgust that he had forgotten to tell her on the previous day of his coming.
"She will be in to tea, dear," Maud said, and he was obliged to content himself with the prospect of seeing her and acquainting her with Saltash's energetic interest on their behalf after the visitors had gone. He had never felt less in the mood for entertaining casual friends than he felt on that sunny afternoon in September as he lounged in the wide stable-yard and waited for them. He had always liked Sheila Melrose, they had a good deal in common. But curiously enough it was that very fact that made him strangely reluctant to meet her now. In some inexplicable fashion, he found her simple directness disconcerting. Toby's words stuck obstinately in his mind, refusing to be dislodged. "She likes you well enough not to want you to marry me." He realized beyond question that those words had not been without some significance. It might be just instinct with her, as Toby had declared, but that Sheila regarded his engagement as a mistake he was fairly convinced. That she herself had any feeling for him beyond that of friendship he did not for a moment imagine. Bunny had no vanity in that direction. There was too much of the boy, too much of the frank comrade, in his disposition for that. They were pals, and the idea of anything deeper than palship on either side had never seriously crossed his mind. He was honest in all his ways, and his love for Toby—that wild and wonderful flower of first love—filled all his conscious thoughts to the exclusion of aught beside. The odd, sweet beauty of her had him in thrall. She was so totally different from everyone else he had ever encountered. He felt the lure of her more and more with every meeting, the wonder and the charm.
But Sheila did not want him to marry her, and a very natural feeling of irritation against her possessed him in consequence. Doubtless Sheila had a perfect right to her opinions, but she might keep them to herself. Between Saltash's headlong resolve to help and Sheila's veiled desire to hinder, he felt that his course was becoming too complicated, as if in spite of his utmost efforts to guide his own craft there were contrary currents at work that he was powerless to avoid.