The Sundial

by Fred M. White

"What has become of your mistress?" Charlock asked hoarsely. "Now, don't tell any of your lies to me! Where has she gone?"

The maid began to whimper, but it was no use to wriggle and prevaricate under those stern eyes. There was something in the square, grim face of John Charlock that caused most people to fear him. He looked positively cruel.

"She has gone out, sir," the maid stammered.

"Oh, she has gone out, and she left you to wait up for her? She went early? It was a few minutes past ten when your mistress came to bed, and I was to wake her if anything—happened."

An insolent look came over the maid's face.

"If you want to know, she's gone to Mrs. Bromley-Martin's," she said. "It's no business of mine, and, though I am a servant, I am not used to being spoken to like this. If you looked after your wife a bit better there wouldn't be so much talk."

"Talk!" Charlock echoed. "What do you mean?"

"Ask the other servants. Ask your neighbours. Ask them what Mrs. Charlock does in the garden by night. It is all very well to be fond of solitude. If it could only speak, that old sundial could tell a story or two. Once they used to hide love-letters in trees. Nowadays they have got a better idea than that. If I were you——"

But Charlock was not listening. It was doubtful, even, if he had noticed the studied insolence of the French maid. He strode back to the chamber of death and locked the door behind him. He was thinking of men who had killed their wives for less than this. He was filled with the heartless cruelty of it, the cold-blooded cruelty and deceit. How could a mother have slipped away in this fashion, knowing that her child was so ill? It was no excuse that she had been sanguine of his recovery. From the very first she had refused to believe that there was anything wrong with the boy. And doubtless that was why she had gone off, thinking that her husband would be none the wiser. And once he had regarded her as one of the best of women and the sweetest. He had not been much of a squire of dames, except from a business point of view. But Kate Chantrey had been different from the rest. Her beauty was so spirituelle. Those great brown eyes of hers were clear and pure and soulful as those of a Madonna.

Bare-headed, Charlock walked through the garden and out into the road. The dawn was breaking in the east and pearly mists were rolling up the valleys. But Charlock saw none of these things. In a vague kind of way he noticed the old sundial at the bottom of the garden, with the fountain round it—that marvellous piece of carving which had been one of his extravagances on his last trip to Venice. It looked fair and chaste in the light of the early morn. There was nothing about it to suggest a vulgar liaison such as that at which Hortense, the French maid, had hinted. Charlock would have dismissed the idea contemptuously, but somehow he could not get it out of his mind; and yet it must have been mere servants' gossip. Kate Charlock was too inordinately selfish, too fond of the luxuries that her husband's money provided, to compromise herself even for so fascinating a man as Arnold Rent. Charlock knew that Rent was a friend of his wife's, a man whom she professed to understand and sympathise with. But the matter had never troubled him before. He could trust Kate. Assuredly he had confidence in her so long as her interests were his.