"Lady Caroom has such a delightfully easy way of romancing," Brooks said.
Sybil nodded.
"It's quite true," she answered. "She ought to write the prospectuses for gold mines and things."
Arranmore smiled across the table at Brooks.
"This," he said, "is what I have had to endure for the last six weeks. Do you wonder that I am getting balder, or that I set all my people to work tonight to try and find some one to suffer with me?"
"He'll be so dull when we've gone," Lady Caroom sighed.
"You've no idea how we've improved him," Sybil murmured. "He used to read Owen Meredith after dinner, and go to sleep. By the bye, where are you going when we leave Enton?"
Lord Arranmore hesitated.
"Well, I really am not sure," he said. "You have alarmed me. Don't go."
Lady Caroom laughed.
"My dear man," she said, "we must! I daren't offend the Redcliffes. He's my trustee, and he'll never let me overdraw a penny unless I'm civil to him. If I were you I should go to the Riviera. We'll lend you our cottage at Lugiano. It has been empty for a year."
"Come and be hostess," he said. "I promise you that I will not hesitate then."
She shook her head towards Sybil.
"How can I marry that down there?" she demanded. "No young men who are really respectable go abroad at this time of the year. They are all hunting or shooting. The Riviera is thronged with roues and invalids and adventurers, and we don't want any of them. Dear me, what sacrifices a grown-up daughter does entail. This coming season shall be your last, Sybil. I won't drag on round again. I'm really getting ashamed of it."
"Isn't she dreadful?" Sybil murmured to Brooks. "I hope you will come to Enton before we leave."
"It is very kind of you, Lady Sybil," Brooks said, "but you must remember that I am not like most of the men you meet. I have to work hard, especially just now."
"And if I were you I would be thankful for it," she said, warmly. "From our point of view, at any rate, there is nothing so becoming to a man as the fact that he is a worker. Sport is an excellent thing, but I detest young men who do nothing else but shoot and hunt and loaf about. It seems to me to destroy character where work creates it. All the same, I hope you will find an opportunity to come to Enton and say good-bye to us."
Brooks was suddenly conscious that it would be no pleasant thing to say good-bye to Lady Sybil. He had never known any one like her, so perfectly frank and girlish, and yet with character enough underneath in her rare moments of seriousness. More than ever he was struck with the wonderful likeness between mother and daughter.
"I will come at any time I am asked," he answered, quietly, "but I am sorry that you are going."
They had finished supper, and had drawn their chairs around the fire.Arranmore was smoking a cigarette, and Brooks took one from his case.The carriage was ordered in a quarter of an hour. Brooks found that heand Sybil were a little apart from the others.
"Do you know, I am sorry too," she declared. "Of course it has been much quieter at Enton than most of the houses we go to, and we only came at first, I think, because many years ago my mother and Lord Arranmore were great friends, and she fancied that he was shutting himself up too much. But I have enjoyed it very much indeed."
He looked at her curiously. He was trying to appreciate what a life of refined pleasure which she must live would really be like—how satisfying—whether its limitations ever asserted themselves. Sybil was a more than ordinarily pretty girl, but her face was as smooth as a child's. The Joie de vivre seemed to be always in her eyes. Yet there were times, as he knew, when she was capable of seriousness.
"I am glad," he said, "Lord Arranmore will miss you."
She laughed at him, her eyebrows raised, a challenge in her bright eyes.
"May I add that I also shall?" he whispered.
"You may," she answered. "In fact, I expected it. I am not sure that I did not ask for it. And that reminds me. I want you to do me a favour, if you will."
"Anything I can do for you," he answered, "you know will give me pleasure."
She laughed softly.
"It is wonderful how you have improved," she murmured. "I want you to go and see Lord Arranmore as often as you can. We are both very fond of him really, mamma especially, and you know that he has a very strange disposition. I am convinced that solitude is the very worst thing for him. I saw him once after he had been alone for a month or two, and really you would not have known him. He was as thin as a skeleton, strange in his manner, and he had that sort of red light in his eyes sometimes which always makes me think of mad people. He ought not to be alone at all, but the usual sort of society only bores him. You will do what you can, won't you?"
"I promise you that most heartily," Brooks declared. "But you must remember, Lady Sybil, that after all it is entirely in his hands. He has been most astonishingly kind to me, considering that I have no manner of claim upon him. He has made me feel at home at Enton, too, and been most thoughtful in every way. For, after all, you see I am only his man of business. I have no friends much, and those whom I have are Medchester people. You see I am scarcely in a position to offer him my society. But all the same, I will take every opportunity I can of going to Enton if he remains there."
She thanked him silently. Lady Caroom was on her feet, and Sybil and she went out for their wraps. Lord Arranmore lit a fresh cigarette and sent for his bill.
"By the bye, Brooks," he remarked, "one doesn't hear much of your manHenslow."
"Mr. Bullsom and I were talking about it this evening," Brooks answered. "We are getting a little anxious.
"You have had seven years of him. You ought to know what to expect."
"The war has blocked all legislation," Brooks said. "It has been the usual excuse. Henslow was bound to wait. He would have done the particular measures which we are anxious about more harm than good if he had tried to force them upon the land. But now it is different. We are writing to him. If nothing comes of it, Mr. Bullsom and I are going up to see him."
Arranmore smiled.
"You are young to politics, Brooks," he remarked, "yet I should scarcely have thought that you would have been imposed upon by such a man as Henslow. He is an absolute fraud. I heard him speak once, and I read two of his speeches. It was sufficient. The man is not in earnest. He has some reason, I suppose, for wishing to write M.P. after his name, but I am perfectly certain that he has not the slightest idea of carrying out his pledges to you. You will have to take up politics, Brooks."
He laughed—a little consciously.
"Some day," he said, "the opportunity may come. I will confess that it is amongst my ambitions. But I have many years' work before me yet."
Lord Arranmore paid the bill, and they joined the women. As Brooks stood bareheaded upon the pavement Arranmore turned towards him.
"We must have a farewell dinner," he said. "How would to-morrow suit you—or Sunday?"
"I should like to walk over on Sunday, if I might," Brooks answered, promptly.
"We shall expect you to lunch. Good-night."
The carriage drove off. Brooks walked thoughtfully through the silent streets to his rooms.
Mr. Bullsom was an early riser, and it chanced that, as was frequently the case, on the morning following Brooks' visit he and Mary sat down to breakfast together. But when, after a cursory glance through his letters, he unfolded the paper, she stopped him.
"Uncle," she said, "I want to talk to you for a few minutes, if I may."
"Go ahead," he answered. "No fear of our being interrupted. I shall speak to those girls seriously about getting up. Now, what is it?
"I want to earn my own living, uncle," she said, quietly.
He looked over his spectacles at her.
"Eh?"
"I want to earn my own living," she repeated. "I have been looking about for a means of doing so, and I think that I have succeeded."
Mr. Bullsom took off his spectacles and wiped them carefully.
"Earn your own living, eh!" he repeated. "Well! Go on!"
Mary leaned across the table towards him.
"Don't think that I am not grateful for all you have done for me, uncle," she said. "I am, indeed. Only I have felt lately that it was my duty to order my life a little differently. I am young and strong, and able to work. There is no reason why I should be a burden upon any one."
She found his quietness ominous, but she did not flinch.
"I am not accomplished enough for a governess, or good-tempered enough for a companion," she continued, "but I believe I have found something which I can do. I have written several short stories for a woman's magazine, and they have made me a sort of offer to do some regular work for them. What they offer would just keep me. I want to accept."
"Where should you live?" he asked.
"In London!"
"Alone?
"There is a girls' club in Chelsea somewhere. I should go there at first, and then try and share rooms with another girl."
"How much a week will they give you?"
"Twenty-eight shillings, and I shall be allowed to contribute regularly to the magazine at the usual rates. I ought to make at least forty shillings a week."
Mr. Bullsom sighed.
"Is this owing to any disagreement between you and the girls?" he asked, sharply.
"Certainly not," she answered.
"You ain't unhappy here? Is there anything we could do? I don't want to lose you."
Mary was touched. She had expected ridicule or opposition. This was more difficult.
"Of course I am not unhappy," she answered. "You and aunt have been both of you most generous and kind to me. But I do feel that a busy life—and I'm not a bit domestic, you know would be good for me. I believe, uncle, if you were in my place you would feel just like me. If you were able to, I expect you'd want to earn your own living."
"You shall go!" he said, decidedly. "I'll help you all I can. You shall have a bit down to buy furniture, if you want it, or an allowance till you feel your way. But, Mary, I'm downright sorry. No, I'm not blaming you. You've a right to go. I—I don't believe I'd live here if I were you.
"You are very good, uncle," Mary said, gratefully. "And you must remember it isn't as though I were leaving you alone. You have the girls."
Mr. Bullsom nodded.
"Yes," he said, "I have the girls. Look here, Mary," he added, suddenly, looking her in the face, "I want to have a word with you. I'm going to talk plainly. Be honest with me."
"Of course," she murmured.
"It's about the girls. It's a hard thing to say, but somehow—I'm a bit disappointed with them."
She looked at him in something like amazement.
"Yes, disappointed," he continued. "That's the word. I'm an uneducated man myself—any fool can see that—but I did all I could to have them girls different. They've been to the best school in Medchester, and they've been abroad. They've had masters in most everything, and I've had 'em taught riding and driving, and all that sort of thing, properly. Then as they grew up I built this 'ouse, and came up to live here amongst the people whom I reckoned my girls'd be sure to get to know. And the whole thing's a damned failure, Mary. That's the long and short of it."
"Perhaps—a little later on" Mary began, hesitatingly.
"Don't interrupt me," he said, brusquely. "This is the first honest talk I've ever had about it, and it's doing me good. The girls'd like to put it down to your mother and me, but I don't believe it. I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm afraid it's the girls themselves. There's something not right about them, but I'm blessed if I know what it is. Their mother and I are a bit vulgar, I know, but I've done my best to copy those who know how to behave—and I believe we'd get through for what we are anywhere without giving offence. But my girls oughtn't to be vulgar. It's education as does away with that, and I've filled em chock-full of education from the time they were babies. It's run out of them, Mary, like the sands through an hour-glass. They can speak correctly, and I dare say they know all the small society tricks. But that isn't everything. They don't know how to dress. They can spend just as much as they like, and then you can come into the room in a black gown as you made yourself, and you look a lady, and they don't. That's the long and short of it. The only decent people who come to this house are your friends, and they come to see you. There's young Brooks, now. I've no son, Mary, and I'm fond of young men. I never knew one I liked as I like him. My daughters are old enough to be married, and I'd give fifty thousand pounds to have him for a son-in-law. And, of course, he won't look at 'em. He sees it. He'll talk to you. He takes no more notice of them than is civil. They fuss round him, and all that, but they might save themselves the pains. It's hard lines, Mary. I'm making money as no one knows on. I could live at Enton and afford it. But what's the good of it? If people don't care to know us here, they won't anywhere. Mary, how was it education didn't work with them girls? Your mother was my own sister, and she married a gentleman. He was a blackguard, but hang it, Mary, if I were you I'd sooner be penniless and as you are than be my daughters with five thousand apiece."
There was an embarrassed silence. Then Mary faced the situation boldly.
"Uncle," she said, "you are asking my advice. Is that it?"
"If there's any advice you can give, for God's sake let's have it. ButI don't know as you can make black white."
"Selina and Louise are good girls enough," she said, "but they are a little spoilt, and they are a little limited in their ideas. A town like this often has that effect. Take them abroad, uncle, for a year, or, better still, if you can find the right person, get a companion for them—a lady—and let her live in the house."
"That's sound!" he answered. "I'll do it."
"And about their clothes, uncle. Take them up to London, go to one of the best places, and leave the people to make their things. Don't let them interfere. Down here they've got to choose for themselves. They wouldn't care about taking advice here, but in London they'd probably be content to leave it. Take them up to town for a fortnight. Stay at one of the best hotels, the Berkeley or the Carlton, and let them see plenty of nice people. And don't be discouraged, uncle."
"Where the devil did you get your common-sense from?" he inquired, fiercely. "Your mother hadn't got it, and I'll swear your father hadn't."
She laughed heartily.
"Above all, be firm with them, uncle," she said. "Put your foot down, and stick to it. They'll obey you.
"Obey me? Good Lord, I'll make 'em," Mr. Bullsom declared, vigorously. "Mary, you're a brick. I feel quite cheerful. And, remember this, my girl. I shall make you an allowance, but that's nothing. Come to me when you want a bit extra, and if ever the young man turns up, then I've got a word or two to say. Mind, I shall only be giving you your own. My will's signed and sealed."
She kissed him fondly.
"You're a good sort, uncle," she said. "And now will you tell me what you think of this letter?"
"Read it to me, dear," he said. "My eyes aren't what they were."
She obeyed him.
"We have received a communication from our agents at Montreal, asking us to ascertain the whereabouts of Miss Mary Scott, daughter of Richard Scott, at one time a resident in that city.
"We believe that you are the young lady in question, and if you will do us the favour of calling at the above address, we may be able to give you some information much to your advantage.
"We are, dear madam,
"Yours respectfully,
Mr. Bullsom stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"Sounds all right," he remarked. "Of course you'll go. But I always understood that your father's relations were as poor as church mice."
"Poorer, uncle! His father—my grandfather, that is—was a clergyman with barely enough to live on, and his uncle was a Roman Catholic priest. Both of them have been dead for years."
"And your father—well, I know there was nothing there," Mr. Bullsom remarked, thoughtfully.
"You cabled out the money to bring me home," Mary reminded him.
"Well, well!" Mr. Bullsom declared. "You must go and see these chaps.There's no harm in that, at any rate. We must all have that trip toLondon. I expect Brooks will be wanting to go and see Henslow. We'llhave to give that chap what for, I know."
Selina sailed into the room in a salmon-coloured wrapper, which should long ago have been relegated to the bath-room. She pecked her father on the cheek and nodded to Mary.
"Don't you see Mr. Brooks, dear?" her father remarked, with a twinkle in his eye and something very much like a wink to Mary.
Selina screamed, and looked fearfully around the room.
"What do you mean, papa?" she exclaimed. "There is no one here."
"Serve you right if there had been," Mr. Bullsom declared, gruffly."A pretty state to come down in the morning at past nine o'clock."
Selina tossed her head.
"I am going to dress directly after breakfast," she remarked.
"Then if you'll allow me to say so," her father declared, "before breakfast is the time to dress, and not afterwards. You're always the same, Selina, underdressed when you think there's no one around to see you, and overdressed when there is."
Selina poured herself out some coffee and yawned.
"La, papa, what do you know about it?" she exclaimed.
"What my eyes tell me," Mr. Bullsom declared, sternly. "You've no allowance to keep to. You've leave to spend what you want, and you're never fit to be seen. There's Mary there taking thirty pounds a year from me, and won't have a penny more, though she's heartily welcome to it, and she looks a lady at any moment of the day."
Selina drew herself up, and her eyes narrowed a little.
"You're talking about what, you don't understand, pa," she answered with dignity. "If you prefer Mary's style of dress"—she glanced with silent disparagement at her cousin's grey skirt and plain white blouse—"well, it's a matter of taste, isn't it?
"Taste!" Mr. Bullsom replied, contemptuously. "Taste! What sort of taste do you call that beastly rug on your shoulders, eh? Or your hair rolled round and just a pin stuck through it? Looks as though it hadn't been brushed for a week. Faugh! When your mother and I lived on two pounds a week she never insulted me by coming down to breakfast in such a thing."
Selina eyed her father in angry astonishment.
"Thing indeed!" she repeated. "This wrapper cost me four guineas, and came from Paris. That shows how much you know about it."
"From Paris, did it?" Mr. Bullsom retorted, fiercely. "Then up-stairs you go and take it off. You girls have had your own way too much, and I'm about tired of it."
"I shall change it—after breakfast," Selina said, doubtfully.
Mr. Bullsom threw open the door.
"Up-stairs," he repeated, "and throw it into the rag-bag."
Selina hesitated. Then she rose, and with scarlet cheeks and a poor show of dignity, left the room. Mr. Bullsom drew himself up and beamed upon Mary.
"I'll show'em a bit," he declared, with great good-humour. "I may be an ignorant old man, but I'm going to wake these girls up."
Mary struggled for a moment, but her sense of humour triumphed. She burst out laughing.
"Oh, uncle, uncle," she exclaimed, "you're a wonderful man."
He beamed upon her.
"You come shopping with us in London," he said. "We'll have some fun."
"Really," Lady Caroom exclaimed, "Enton is the cosiest large house I was ever in. Do throw that Bradshaw away, Arranmore. The one o'clock train will do quite nicely."
Lord Arranmore obeyed her literally. He jerked the volume lightly into a far corner of the room and came over to her side. She was curled up in a huge easy-chair, and her face caught by the glow of the dancing firelight almost startled him by its youth. There was not a single sign of middle age in the smooth cheeks, not a single grey hair, no sign of weariness in the soft full eyes raised to his.
She caught his glance and smiled.
"The firelight is so becoming!" she murmured.
"Don't go!" he said.
"My dear Arranmore. The Redcliffes would never forgive me, and we must go some time."
"I don't see the necessity," he answered, slowly. "You like Enton.Make it your home."
She raised her eyebrows.
"How improper!" "Not necessarily," he answered. "Take me too."
She sat up in her chair and regarded him steadily.
"Am I to regard this," she asked, "as an offer of marriage?"
"Well, it sounds like it," he admitted.
"Dear me. You might have given me a little more notice," she said."Let me think for a moment, please."
Perhaps their thoughts travelled back in the same direction. He remembered his cousin and his playfellow, the fairest and daintiest girl he had ever seen, his best friend, his constant companion. He remembered the days when she had first become something more to him, the miseries of that time, his hopeless ineligibility—the separation. Then the years of absence, the terrible branding years of his life, the horrible pit, the time when night and day his only prayer had been the prayer for death. The self-repression of years seemed to grow weaker and weaker. He held out his hands. But she hesitated.
"Dear," she said, "you make me very happy. It is wonderful to think this may come after all these years. But there is something which I wish to say to you first."
"Well?"
"You are very, very dear to me now—as you are—but you are not the man I loved years ago. You are a very different person indeed. Sometimes I am almost afraid of you.
"You have no cause to be," he said. "Indeed, you have no cause to be.So far as you are concerned I have never changed. I am the same man."
She took one of his hands in hers.
"Philip," she said, "you must not think hardly of me. You must not think of me as simply afflicted with the usual woman's curiosity. I am not curious at all. I would rather not know. But remember that for nearly twenty years you passed out of my life. You have come back again wonderfully altered. You do not wish to keep the story of those years for ever a sort of Bluebeards chamber in our lives?"
"Not I," he answered. "I would have you do as I have done, rip them out page and chapter, annihilate them utterly. What have they to do with the life before us? To you they would seem evil enough, to me they are thronged with horrible memories, with memories which, could I take them with me, would poison heaven itself. So let us blot them out for ever. Come to me, Catherine, and help me to forget."
She looked at him with strained eyes.
"Philip," she said, "I must understand you. I must understand what has made you the man you are."
"Fifteen years in hell has done it," he answered, fiercely. "Not even my memory shall ever take me back."
"If I marry you," she said, "remember that I marry your past as well as your future. And there are things—which need explanation."
"Well?"
"You have been married."
"She is dead."
"You have a son."
He reeled as though he had been struck, and the silence between them was as the silence of tragedy.
"You see," she continued, "I am bound to ask you to lift the curtain a little. Fate or instinct, or whatever you may like to call it, has led me a little way. I am not afraid to know. I have seen too much of life to be a hard judge. But you must hold out your hand and take me a little further."
"I cannot."
She held him tightly. Her voice trembled a little. "Dear, you must. I am not an exacting woman, and I love you too well to be a hard judge of anything you might have to tell me. Ignorance is the only thing which I cannot bear. Remember how greatly you are changed, you are almost a stranger to me in some of your moods. I could not have you wandering off into worlds of which I knew nothing. Sit down by my side and talk to me. I will ask no questions. You shall tell me your own way, and what you wish to leave out—leave it out. Come, is this so hard a task?"
He seemed frozen into inanition. His face was like the cast of a dead man's. His voice was cold and hopeless.
"The key," he said, "is gone. I shall never seek for it, I shall never find it. I have known what madness is, and I am afraid. Shall we go into the hall? I fancy that they are serving tea."
She looked at him, half terrified, half amazed.
"You mean this as final?" she said, deliberately. "You refuse to offer any explanation, the explanation which common decency even would require of these things?"
"I expected too much," he answered. "I know it very well. Forgive me, and let us forget."
She rose to her feet.
"I do not know that you will ever regret this," she said. "I pray that you may."
To Brooks she seemed the same charming woman as usual, as he heard her light laugh come floating across the hall, and bowed over her white fingers. But Sybil saw the over-bright eyes and nervous mouth and had hard work to keep back the tears. She piled the cushions about a dark corner of the divan, and chattered away recklessly.
"This is a night of sorrows," she exclaimed, pouring out the tea. "Mr. Brooks and I were in the midst of a most affecting leave-taking—when the tea came. Why do these mundane things always break in upon the most sacred moments?"
"Life," Lady Caroom said, helping herself recklessly to muffin, "is such a wonderful mixture of the real and the fanciful, the actual and the sentimental, one is always treading on the heels of the other. The little man who turns the handle must have lots of fun."
"If only he has a sense of humour," Brooks interposed. "After all, though, it is the grisly, ugly things which float to the top. One has to probe always for the beautiful, and it requires our rarest and most difficult sense to apprehend the humorous."
Lord Arranmore stirred his tea slowly. His face was like the face of a carved image. Only Brooks seemed still unconscious of the shadow which was stalking amongst them.
"We talk of life so glibly," he said. "It is a pity that we cannot realize its simplest elements. Life is purely subjective. Nothing exists except in our point of view. So we are continually making and marring our own lives and the lives of other people by a word, an action, a thought."
"Dear me!" Lady Caroom murmured. "How-ever shall I be able to play bridge after tea if you all try to addle my brain by paradoxes and subtle sayings beforehand! What does Arranmore mean?"
He put down his cup.
"Do not dare to understand me," he said. "It is the most sincere unkindness when one talks only to answer. And as for bridge—remember that this is a night of mourning. Bridge is far too frivolous a pursuit."
"Bridge a frivolous pursuit?" Sybil exclaimed. "Heavens, what sacrilege. What ought we to do, Lord Arranmore?"
"Sit in sackcloth and ashes, and hear Brooks lecture on the poor," he answered, lightly. "Brooks is a mixture of the sentimentalist and the hideous pessimist, you know, and it is the privilege of his years to be sometimes in earnest. I know nothing more depressing than to listen to a man who is in earnest."
"You are getting positively light-headed," Sybil laughed. "I can see no pleasure in life save that which comes from an earnest pursuit of things, good or evil."
"My dear child," Lord Arranmore answered, "when you are a little older you will know that to take life seriously is a sheer impossibility. You may think that you are doing it, but you are not."
"There must be exceptions," Sybil declared.
"There are none," Lord Arranmore answered, lightly, "outside the madhouse. For the realization of life comes only hand in hand with insanity. The people who have come nearest to it carry the mark with them all their life. For the fever of knowledge will scorch even those who peer over the sides of the cauldron."
Lady Caroom helped herself to some more tea.
"Really, Arranmore," she drawled, "for sheer and unadulterated pessimism you are unsurpassed. You must be a very morbid person."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"One is always called morbid," he remarked, "who dares to look towards the truth."
"There are people," Lady Caroom answered, "who look always towards the clouds, even when the sun is shining."
"I am in the minority," Lord Arranmore said, smiling. "I feel myself becoming isolated. Let us abandon the subject."
"No, let us convert you instead," Sybil declared. "We want to look at the sun, and we want to take you with us. You are really a very stupid person, you know. Why do you want to stay all alone amongst the shadows?" Arranmore smiled faintly.
"The sun shines," he said, "only for those who have eyes to see it."
"Blindness is not incurable," she answered.
"Save when the light in the eyes is dead," he answered. "Come, shall we play a game at fourhanded billiards?"
It resolved itself into a match between Lady Caroom and Lord Arranmore, who were both players far above the average. Sybil and Brooks talked, but for once her attention wandered. She seemed listening to the click of the billiard-balls, and watching the man and the woman between whom all conversation seemed dead. Brooks noticed her absorption, and abandoned his own attempts to interest her.
"Your mother and Lord Arranmore," he remarked, "are very old friends."
"They have known one another all their lives," she murmured. "LordArranmore has changed a good deal though since his younger days."
Brooks made no reply. The girl suddenly bent her head towards him.
"Are you a judge of character?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"Scarcely. I have not had enough experience. It is a fascinating study."
"Very. Now I want to ask you something. What do you think of LordArranmore?"
Her tone betokened unusual seriousness. His light answer died away on his lips.
"It is very hard for me to answer that question," he said. "LordArranmore has been most unnecessarily kind to me."
"His character?"
"I do not pretend to be able to understand it. I think that he is often wilfully misleading. He does not wish to be understood. He delights in paradoxy and moral gymnastics."
"He may blind your judgment. How do you personally feel towards him?"
"That," he answered, "might be misleading. He has shown me so much kindness. Yet I think—I am sure—that I liked him from the first moment I saw him."
She nodded.
"I like him too. I cannot help it. Yet one can be with him, can live in the same house for weeks, even months, and remain an utter stranger to him. He has self-repression which is marvellous—never at fault—never a joint loose. One wonders so much what lies beyond. One would like to know."
"Is it wise?" he asked. "After all, is it our concern?
"Not ours. But if you were a woman would you be content to take him on trust?"
"It would depend upon my own feelings," he answered, hesitatingly.
"Whether you cared for him?"
"Yes!"
She beat the floor with her foot.
"You are wrong," she said, "I am sure that you are wrong. To care for one is to wish ever to believe the best of them. It is better to keep apart for ever than to run any risks. Supposing that unknown past was of evil, and one discovered it. To care for him would only make the suffering keener."
"It may be so," he admitted. "May I ask you something?"
"Well?"
"You speak—of yourself?"
Her eyes met his, and he looked hastily downwards.
"Absurd," she murmured, and inclined her head towards the billiard-table. "They have been—attached to one another always. Come over here to the window, and I will tell you something."
They walked towards the great circular window which overlooked the drive. As they stood there together a four-wheeled cab drove slowly by, and a girl leaned forward and looked at them. Brooks started as he recognized her.
"Why, that must be some one for me," he exclaimed, in a puzzled tone."Whatever can have happened to old Bullsom?"
She looked at him politely bewildered.
"It is the niece of a man whom I know very well in Medchester," he exclaimed. "Something must have happened to her uncle. It is most extraordinary."
Brooks met the butler entering the room with a card upon his salver. He stretched out his hand for it mechanically, but the man only regarded him in mild surprise. "For his lordship, sir. Excuse me."
The man passed on. Brooks remained bewildered. Lord Arranmore took the card from the tray and examined it leisurely.
"Miss Mary Scott," he repeated aloud. "Are you sure that the young lady asked to see me?"
"Quite sure, your lordship," the servant answered.
"Scott. The name sounds familiar, somehow!" Lord Arranmore said."Haven't I heard you mention it, Brooks?
"Miss Scott is the niece of Mr. Bullsom, one of my best clients, a large builder in Medchester," Brooks answered. "Why?"
He stopped suddenly short. Arranmore glanced towards him in polite unconcern.
"You saw her with me at Mellon's, in Medchester. You asked me her name."
Lord Arranmore bent the card in his forefinger, and dropped his eyeglass.
"So that is the young lady," he remarked. "I remember her distinctly. But I do not understand what she can want within me. Is she by any chance, Brooks, one of those young persons who go about with a collecting-card—who want money for missions and that sort of thing? If so, I am afraid she has wasted her cab fare."
"She is not in the least that sort of person," Brooks answered, emphatically. "I have no idea what she wants to see you about, but I am convinced that her visit has a legitimate object."
Lord Arranmore stuck the card in his waistcoat pocket and shrugged his shoulders.
"You are my man of affairs, Brooks. I commission you to see her. Find out her business if you can, and don't let me be bothered unless it is necessary."
Brooks hesitated.
"I am not sure that I care to interfere—that my presence might not be likely to cause her embarrassment," he said. "I have seen her lately, and she made no mention of this visit."
Lord Arranmore glanced at him as though surprised. "I should like you to see her," he said, suavely. "It seems to me preferable to asking her to state her business to a servant. If you have any objection to doing so she must be sent back."
Brooks turned unwillingly away. As he had expected, Mary sprang to her feet upon his entrance into the room, and the colour streamed into her cheeks.
"You here!" she exclaimed.
He shook hands with her, and tried to behave as though he thought her presence the most natural thing in the world. "Yes. You see I am Lord Arranmore's man of affairs now, and he keeps me pretty hard at work. He seems to have a constitutional objection to doing anything for himself. He has even sent me to—to—"
"I understand," she interrupted. "To ascertain my business. Well, I can't tell it even to you. It is Lord Arranmore whom I want to see. No one else will do."
Brooks leaned against the table and looked at her with a puzzled smile.
"You see, it's a little awkward, isn't it?" he declared. "Lord Arranmore is very eccentric, and especially so upon this point. He will not see strangers. Write him a line or two and let me take it to him."
She considered for a moment.
"Very well. Give me a piece of paper and an envelope."
She wrote a single line only. Brooks took it back into the great inner hall, where Lord Arranmore had started another game of billiards with Lady Caroom.
"Miss Scott assured me that her business with you is private," he announced. "She has written this note."
Lord Arranmore laid his cue deliberately aside and broke the seal. It was evident that the contents of the note consisted of a few words only, yet after once perusing them he moved a little closer to the light and re-read them slowly. Then with a little sigh he folded the note in the smallest possible compass and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket.
"Your young friend, my dear Brooks," he said, taking up his cue, "does me the honour to mistake me for some one else. Will you inform her that I have no knowledge of the person to whom she alludes, and suggest—as delicately as you choose—that as she is mistaken an interview is unnecessary. It is, I believe, my turn, Catherine." "You decline, then, to see her?" Brooks said.
Lord Arranmore turned upon him with a rare irritation.
"Have I not made myself clear, Brooks?" he said. "If I were to keep open house to all the young women who choose to claim acquaintance with me I should scarcely have a moment to call my own, or a house fit to ask my friends to visit. Be so good as to make my answer sufficiently explicit."
"It is unnecessary, Lord Arranmore. I have come to ask you for it yourself."
They all turned round. Mary Scott was coming slowly towards them across the thick rugs, into which her feet sunk noiselessly. Her face was very pale, and her large eyes were full of nervous apprehension. But about her mouth were certain rigid lines which spoke of determination.
Sybil leaned forward from her chair, and Lady Caroom watched her approach with lifted eyebrows and a stare of well-bred and languid insolence. Lord Arranmore laid down his cue and rose at once to meet her.
"You are Lord Arranmore," she said, looking at him fixedly. "Will you please answer the question—in my note?"
He bowed a little coldly, but he made no remark as to her intrusion. "I have already," he said, "given my answer to Mr. Brooks. The name which you mention is altogether unknown to me, nor have I ever visited the place you speak of. You have apparently been misled by a chance likeness."
"It is a very wonderful one," she said, slowly, keeping her eyes fixed upon him.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I regret," he said, "that you should have had your journey for nothing.I can, I presume, be of no further use to you."
"I do not regret my journey here," she answered. "I could not rest until I had seen you closely, face to face, and asked you that question. You deny then that you were ever called Philip Ferringshaw?"
"Most assuredly," he answered, curtly.
"That is very strange," she said.
"Strange?
"Yes. It is very strange because I am perfectly certain that you were."
He took up his cue and commenced chalking it in a leisurely manner.
"My dear young lady," he said, "you are; I understand, a friend of Mr. Brooks, and are therefore entitled to some amount of consideration from me. But I must respectfully remind you that your presence here is, to put it mildly, unsought, and that I do not find it pleasant to be called a liar under my own roof and before my friends."
"Pleasant!" she eyed him scornfully; "nor did my father find it pleasant to be ruined and murdered by you, a debauched gambler, a common swindler."
Lord Arranmore, unruffled, permitted himself to smile.
"Dear me," he said, "this is getting positively melodramatic. Brooks, for her own sake, let me beg of you to induce the young woman to leave us. In her calmer moments she will, I am sure, repent of these unwarranted statements to a perfect stranger."
Brooks was numbed—for the moment speechless. Sybil had risen to her feet as though with the intention of leaving the room. But Lord Arranmore interposed. If he were acting it was marvellously done.
"I beg," he said, "that you will none of you desert me. These accusations of—Miss Scott, I believe are unnerving. A murderer, a swindler and a rogue are hard names, young lady. May I ask if your string of invectives is exhausted, or is there any further abuse which you feel inclined to heap upon me?"
The girl never flinched.
"I have called you nothing," she said, "which you do not deserve. Do you still deny that you were in Canada—in Montreal—sixteen years ago?"
"Most assuredly I do deny it," he answered.
Brooks started, and turned suddenly towards Lord Arranmore as though doubtful whether he had heard rightly. This was a year before his father's death. The girl was unmoved.
"I see that I should come here with proofs," she exclaimed. "Well, they are easy enough to collect. You shall have them. But before I go, Lord Arranmore, let me ask you if you know who I am."
"I understand," Lord Arranmore answered, "that you are the daughter or niece of a highly respectable tradesman in Medchester, who is a client of our young friend here, Mr. Brooks. Let me tell you, young lady, that but for that fact I should not—tolerate your presence here."
"I am Mr. Bullsom's niece," the girl answered, "but I am the daughter of Martin Scott Cartnell!"
It seemed to Brooks that a smothered exclamation of some sort broke from Lord Arranmore's tightly compressed lips, but his face was so completely in the shadow that its expression was lost. But he himself now revealed it, for touching a knob in the wall a shower of electric lamps suddenly glowed around the room. He leaned forward and looked intently into the face of the girl who had become his accuser. She met his gaze coldly, without flinching, the pallor of her cheeks relieved by a single spot of burning colour, her eyes bright with purpose.
"It is incredible," he said, softly, "but it is true. You are the untidy little thing with a pigtail who used always to be playing games with the boys when you ought to have been at school. Come, I am glad to see you. Why do you come to me like a Cassandra of the Family Herald? Your father was my companion for a while, but we were never intimate. I certainly neither robbed nor murdered him."
"You did both," she answered, fiercely. "You were his evil genius from the first. It was through you he took to drink, through you he became a gambler. You encouraged him to play for stakes larger than he could afford. You won money from him which you knew was not his to lose. He came to you for help. You laughed at him. That night he shot himself."
"It was," Lord Arranmore remarked, "a very foolish thing to do."
"Who or what you were before you came to Montreal I do not know," she continued, "but there you brought misery and ruin upon every one connected with you. I was a child in those days, but I remember how you were hated. You broke the heart of Durran Lapage, an honest man whom you called your friend, and you left his wife to starve in a common lodging house. There was never a man or woman who showed you kindness that did not live to regret it. You may be the Marquis of Arranmore now, but you have left a life behind the memory of which should be a constant torture to you."
"Have you finished, young lady?" he asked, coldly.
"Yes, I have finished," she answered. "I pray Heaven that the next time we meet may be in the police-court. The police of Montreal are still looking for Philip Ferringshaw, and they will find in me a very ready witness."
"Upon my word, this is a most unpleasant young person," Lord Arranmore said. "Brooks, do see her off the premises before she changes her mind and comes for me again. You have, I hope, been entertained, ladies," he added, turning to Sybil and Lady Caroom.
He eyed them carelessly enough to all appearance, yet with an inward searchingness which seemed to find what it feared. He turned to Brooks, but he and Mary Scott had left the room together.
"The girl-was terribly in earnest," Lady Caroom said, with averted eyes. "Were you not—a little cruel to her, Arranmore? Not that I believe these horrid things, of course. But she did. She was honest."
Lord Arranmore shrugged his shoulders. He was looking out of the window, out into the grey windy darkness, listening to the raindrops splashing against the window-pane, wondering how long Brooks would be, and if in his face too he should see the shadow, and it seemed to him that Brooks lingered a very long time.
"Shall we finish our game of billiards, Catherine?" he asked, turning towards her.
"Well—I think not," she answered. "I am a little tired, and it is almost time the dressing bell rang. I think Sybil and I will go up-stairs."
They passed away—he made no effort to detain them. He lit a cigarette, and paced the room impatiently. At last he rang the bell.
"Where is Mr. Brooks?" he asked.
"Mr. Brooks has only just returned, my lord," the man answered. "He went some distance with the young lady. He has gone direct to his room."
Lord Arranmore nodded. He threw himself into his easy-chair, and his head sank upon his hand. He looked steadfastly into the heart of the red coals.
"I am so sorry," she said, softly, "our last evening is spoilt."
He shook his head with an effort at gaiety.
"Let us conspire," he said. "You and I at least will make a struggle."
"I am afraid," she said, "that it would be hopeless. Mother is an absolute wreck, and I saw Lord Arranmore go into the library just now with that terrible white look under his eyes. I saw it once before. Ugh!"
"After all," he said, "it only means that we shall be honest.Cheerfulness to-night could only be forced."
She laughed softly into his eyes.
"How correct!" she murmured. "You are improving fast."
He turned and looked at her, slim and graceful in her white muslin gown, her fair hair brushed back from her forehead with a slight wave, but drooping low over her ears, a delicate setting for her piquant face. The dark brown eyes, narrowing a little towards the lids, met his with frank kindliness, her mouth quivered a little as though with the desire to break away into a laugh. The slight duskiness of her cheeks—she had lived for three years in Italy and never worn a veil—pleased him better than the insipidity of pink and white, and the absence of jewelry—she wore neither bracelet nor rings gave her an added touch of distinction, which restless youth finds something so much harder to wear than sedate middle age. The admiration grew in his eyes. She was charming.
The lips broke away at last.
"After all," she murmured, "I think that I shall enjoy myself this evening. You are looking all sorts of nice things at me."
"My eyes," he answered, "are more daring than my lips."
"And you call yourself a lawyer?"
"Is that a challenge? Well, I was thinking that you looked charming."
"Is that all? I have a looking-glass, you know."
"And I shall miss you—very much."
She suddenly avoided his eyes, but it was for a second only. Yet Brooks was himself conscious of the significance of that second. He set his teeth hard.
"The days here," he said, slowly, "have been very pleasant. It has all been—such a different life for me. A few months ago I knew no one except a few of the Medchester people, and was working hard to make a modest living. Sometimes I feel here as though I were a modern Aladdin. There is a sense of unreality about Lord Arranmore's extraordinary kindness to me. To-night, more than ever, I cannot help feeling that it is something like a dream which may pass away at any moment."
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"Lord Arranmore is not an impulsive person," she said. "He must have had some reason for being so decent to you."
"Yes, as regards the management of his affairs perhaps," Brooks answered. "But why he should ask me here, and treat me as though I were his social equal and all that sort of thing—well, you know that is a puzzle, isn't it?"
"Well, I don't know," she answered. "Lord Arranmore is not exactly the man to be a slave to, or even to respect, the conventional, and your being—what you are, naturally makes you a pleasant companion to him—and his guests. No, I don't think that it is strange."
"You are very flattering," he said, smiling.
"Not in the least," she assured him. "Now-a-days birth seems to be rather a handicap than otherwise to the making of the right sort of people. I am sure there are more impossibilities in the peerage than in the nouveaux riches. I know heaps of people who because their names are in Debrett seem to think that manners are unnecessary, and that they have a sort of God-sent title to gentility."
Brooks laughed.
"Why," he said, "you are more than half a Radical."
"It is your influence," she said, demurely.
"It will soon pass away," he sighed. "To-morrow you will be back again amongst your friends."
She sighed.
"Why do one's friends bore one so much more than other people's?" she exclaimed.
"When one thinks of it," he remarked, "you must have been very bored here. Why, for the last fortnight there have been no other visitors in the house."
"There have been compensations," she said.
"Tell me about them!" he begged.
She laughed up at him.
"If I were to say the occasional visits of Mr. Kingston Brooks, would you be conceited?"
"It would be like putting my vanity in a hothouse," he answered, "but I would try and bear it."
"Well, I will say it, then!"
He turned and looked at her with a sudden seriousness. Some consciousness of the change in his mood seemed to be at once communicated to her. Her eyes no longer met his. She moved a little on one side and took up an ornament from an ormolu table.
"I wish that you meant it," he murmured.
"I do!" she whispered, almost under her breath.
Brooks suddenly forgot many things, but Nemesis intervened. There was the sound of much rustling of silken skirts, and—Lady Caroom's poodle, followed by herself, came round the angle of the drawing-room.
"My dear Sybil," she exclaimed, "do come and tie Balfour's ribbon for me. Marie has no idea of making a bow spread itself out, and pink is so becoming to him. Thanks, dear. Where is our host? I thought that I was late."
Lord Arranmore entered as she spoke. His evening dress, as usual, was of the most severely simple type. To-night its sombreness was impressive. With such a background his pallor seemed almost waxen-like. He offered his arm to Lady Caroom.
"I was not sure," he said, with a lightness which seemed natural enough, "whether to-night I might not have to dine alone whilst you poor people sat and played havoc with the shreds of my reputation. Groves, the cabinet Johannesburg and the '84 Heidsieck—though I am afraid," he added, looking down at his companion, "that not all the wine in my cellar could make this feast of farewells a cheerful one."
"Farewell celebrations of all sorts are such a mistake," Lady Caroom murmured. "We have been so happy here too."
"You brought the happiness with you," Lord Arranmore said, "and you take it away with you. Enton will be a very dull place when you are gone.
"Your own stay here is nearly up, is it not?" Lady Caroom asked. "Very nearly. I expect to go to Paris next week—at latest the week after, in time at any rate for Bernhardt's new play. So I suppose we shall soon all be scattered over the face of the earth."
"Except me," Brooks interposed, ruefully. "I shall be the one who will do the vegetating."
Lady Caroom laughed softly.
"Foolish person! You will be within two hours of London. You none of you have the slightest idea as to the sort of place we are going to. We are a day's journey from anywhere. The morning papers are twenty-four hours late. The men drink port wine, and the women sit round the fire in the drawing-room after dinner and wait—and wait—and wait. Oh, that awful waiting. I know it so well. And it isn't much better when the men do come. They play whist instead of bridge, and a woman in the billiard-room is a lost soul. Our hostess always hides my cue directly I arrive, and pretends that it has been lost. By the bye, what a dear little room this is, Arranmore. We haven't dined here before, have we?"
Lord Arranmore shook his head. He held up his wineglass thoughtfully as though criticizing the clearness of the amber fluid.
"No!" he said. "I ordered dinner to be served in here because over our dessert I propose to offer you a novel form of entertainment."
"How wonderful," Sybil said. "Will it be very engrossing? Will it help us to forget?"
He looked at her with a smile.
"That depends," he said, "how anxious you are to forget."
She looked hastily away. For a moment Brooks met her eyes, and his heart gave an unusual leap. Lady Caroom watched them both thoughtfully, and then turned to their host.
"You have excited our curiosity, Arranmore. You surely don't propose to keep us on tenterhooks all through dinner?"
"It will give a fillip to your appetite."
"My appetite needs no fillip. It is disgraceful to try and make me eat more than I do already. I am getting hideously stout. I found my maid in tears to-night because I positively could not get into my most becoming bodice."
"If you possess a more becoming one than this," Lord Arranmore said, with a bow, "it is well for our peace of mind that you cannot wear it."
"That is a very pretty subterfuge, but a subterfuge it remains," Lady Caroom answered. "Now be candid. I love candour. What are you going to do to amuse us?"
He shook his head.
"Do not spoil my effect. The slightest hint would make everything seem tame. Brooks, I insist upon it that you try my Johannesburg. It was given to my grandfather by the Grand Duke of Shleistein. Groves!"
Brooks submitted willingly enough, for the wine was wonderful. Sybil leaned over so that their heads almost touched.
"Look at our host," she whispered. "What does he remind you of?"
Brooks glanced across the table, brilliant with its burden of old silver, of cut-glass and hothouse flowers. Lord Arranmore's face, notwithstanding his ready flow of conversation, seemed unusually still and white—the skin drawn across the bones, even the lips pallid. The sombreness of his costume, the glitter in his eyes, the icy coldness of his lack of coloring, though time after time he set down his wineglass empty, were curiously impressive. Brooks looked back into her face, his eyes full of question.
"Mephistopheles," she whispered. "He is absolutely weird to-night. If he sat and looked at me and we were alone I should shriek."
Lord Arranmore lifted a glass of champagne to the level of his head and looked thoughtfully around the table.
"Come," he said, "a toast-to ourselves. Singly? Collectively. Lady Caroom, I drink to the delightful memories with which you have peopled Enton. Sybil, may you charm society as your mother has done. Brooks, your very good health. May your entertainment this evening be a welcome one.
"We will drink to all those things," Lady Caroom declared, "with enthusiasm. But I am afraid your good wishes for Sybil are beyond any hope of realization. She is far too honest to flourish in society. She will probably marry a Bishop or a Cabinet Minister, and become engrossed in theology or politics. You know how limiting that sort of thing is. I am in deadly fear that she may become humdrum. A woman who really studies or knows anything about anything can never be a really brilliant woman."
"You—"
"Oh, I pass for being intelligent because I parade my ignorance so, just as Sophie Mills is considered a paragon of morality because she is always talking about running off with one of the boys in her husband's regiment. It is a gigantic bluff, you know, but it comes off. Most bluffs do come off if one is only daring enough."
"You must tell them that up at Redcliffe," Lord Arranmore remarked.
Sybil laughed heartily.
"Redcliffe is the one place where mother is dumb," she declared. "Up there they look upon her as a stupid but well-meaning person. She is absolutely afraid to open her mouth."
"They are so absurdly literal," Lady Caroom sighed, helping herself to an infinitesimal portion of a wonderful savoury. "Don't talk about the place. I know I shall have an attack of nerves there."
"Mother always gets nerves if she mayn't talk," Sybil murmured.
"You're an undutiful daughter," Lady Caroom declared. "If I do talk I never say anything, so nobody need listen unless they like. About this entertainment, Arranmore. Are you going to make the wineglass disappear and the apples fly about the room a la Maskelyne and Cook? I hope our share in it consists in sitting down."
Arranmore turned to the butler behind his chair.
"Have coffee and liqueur served here, Groves, and bring some cigarettes.Then you can send the servants away and leave us alone."
The man bowed.
"Very good, your lordship."
Lord Arranmore looked around at his guests.
"The entertainment," he said, "will incur no greater hardship upon you than a little patience. I am going to tell you a story."