Then with a lightning-like intuition, almost akin to inspiration, he saw that he had made a mistake. His best hold upon the woman had been through that mixture of sentiment and pity, which something in their conversation had reawakened in her. He was destroying it ruthlessly and of his own accord. What folly!
“Bah! I am lying,” he said softly; “why should I? Between you and me, Constance, there should be nothing but truth. We at least should be sincere one to the other. You are right, I have brought you something which should have been yours long ago.”
She looked at him with wondering eyes.
“You are going to give me the letters?”
“I am going to give them to you,” he said. “With the destruction of this little packet falls away the last link which held us together.”
He had taken a little bundle of letters, tied with a faded ribbon, from his pocket and held them out to her. Even in that salt-odorous air the perfume of strange scents seemed to creep out from those closely written sheets as they fluttered in the breeze. Lady Deringham clasped the packet with both hands, and her eyes were very bright and very soft.
“It is not so, Victor,” she murmured. “There is anew and a stronger link between us now, the link of my everlasting gratitude. Ah! you were always generous, always quixotic! Someday I felt sure that you would do this.”
“When I left Europe,” he said, “you would have had them, but there was no trusted messenger whom I could spare. Yet if I had never returned they were so bestowed that they would have come into your hands with perfect safety. Even now, Constance, will you think me very weak when I say that I part with them with regret? They have been with me through many dangers and many strange happenings.”
“You are,” she whispered, “the old Victor again! Thank God that I have had this one glimpse of you! I am ashamed to think how terrified I have been.”
She held out her hand impulsively. He took it in his and, with a glance at her servants, let it fall almost immediately.
“Constance,” he said, “I am going away now. I have accomplished what I came for. But first, would you care to do me a small service? It is only a trifle.”
A thrill of the old mistrustful fear shook her heart. Half ashamed of herself she stifled it at once, and strove to answer him calmly.
“If there is anything within my power which I can do for you, Victor,” she said, “it will make me very happy. You would not ask me, I know, unless—unless——”
“You need have no fear,” he interrupted calmly; “it is a very little thing. Do you think that Lord Deringham would know me again after so many years?”
“My husband?”
“Yes!”
She looked at him in something like amazement. Before she could ask the question which was framing itself upon her lips, however, they were both aware of a distant sound,rapidly drawing nearer—the thunder of a horse’s hoofs upon the soft sand. Looking up they both recognised the rider at the same instant.
“It is your son,” Mr. Sabin said quickly; “you need not mind. Leave me to explain. Tell me when I can find you at home alone?”
“I am always alone,” she answered. “But come to-morrow.”
Mr. Sabin and his niece had finished their dinner, and were lingering a little over an unusually luxurious dessert. Wolfenden had sent some muscatel grapes and peaches from the forcing houses at Deringham Hall—such peaches as Covent Garden could scarcely match, and certainly not excel. Mr. Sabin looked across at Helène as they were placed upon the table, with a significant smile.
“An Englishman,” he remarked, pouring himself out a glass of burgundy and drawing the cigarettes towards him, “never knows when he is beaten. As a national trait it is magnificent, in private life it is a little awkward.”
Helène had been sitting through the meal, still and statuesque in her black dinner gown, a little more pale than usual, and very silent. At Mr. Sabin’s remark she looked up quickly.
“Are you alluding to Lord Wolfenden?” she asked.
Mr. Sabin lit his cigarette, and nodded through the mist of blue smoke.
“To no less a person,” he answered, with a shade of mockery in his tone. “I am beginning to find my guardianship no sinecure after all! Do you know, it never occurred to me, when we concluded our little arrangement, that I might have to exercise my authority against so ardent a suitor. You would have found his lordship hardto get rid of this morning, I am afraid, but for my opportune arrival.”
“By no means,” she answered. “Lord Wolfenden is a gentleman, and he was not more persistent than he had a right to be.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “you would have been better pleased if I had not come?”
“I am quite sure of it,” she admitted; “but then it is so like you to arrive just at a crisis! Do you know, I can’t help fancying that there is something theatrical about your comings and goings! You appear—and one looks for a curtain and a tableau. Where could you have dropped from this morning?”
“From Cromer, in a donkey-cart,” he answered smiling. “I got as far as Peterborough last night, and came on here by the first train. There was nothing very melodramatic about that, surely!”
“It does not sound so, certainly. Your playing golf with Lord Wolfenden afterwards was commonplace enough!”
“I found Lord Wolfenden very interesting,” Mr. Sabin said thoughtfully. “He told me a good deal which was important for me to know. I am hoping that to-night he will tell me more.”
“To-night! Is he coming here?”
Mr. Sabin assented calmly.
“Yes. I thought you would be surprised. But then you need not see him, you know. I met him riding upon the sands this afternoon—at rather an awkward moment, by the bye—and asked him to dine with us.”
“He refused, of course?”
“Only the dinner; presumably he doubted our cook, for he asked to be allowed to come down afterwards. He will be here soon.”
“Why did you ask him?”
Mr. Sabin looked keenly across the table. Therewas something in the girl’s face which he scarcely understood.
“Well, not altogether for the sake of his company, I must confess,” he replied. “He has been useful to me, and he is in the position to be a great deal more so.”
The girl rose up. She came over and stood before him. Mr. Sabin knew at once that something unusual was going to happen.
“You want to make of him,” she said, in a low, intense tone, “what you make of every one—a tool! Understand that I will not have it!”
“Helène!”
The single word, and the glance which flashed from his eyes, was expressive, but the girl did not falter.
“Oh! I am weary of it,” she cried, with a little passionate outburst. “I am sick to death of it all! You will never succeed in what you are planning. One might sooner expect a miracle. I shall go back to Vienna. I am tired of masquerading. I have had more than enough of it.”
Mr. Sabin’s expression did not alter one iota; he spoke as soothingly as one would speak to a child.
“I am afraid,” he said quietly, “that it must be dull for you. Perhaps I ought to have taken you more into my confidence; very well, I will do so now. Listen: you say that I shall never succeed. On the contrary, I am on the point of success; the waiting for both of us is nearly over.”
The prospect startled, but did not seem altogether to enrapture her. She wanted to hear more.
“I received this dispatch from London this morning,” he said. “Baron Knigenstein has left for Berlin to gain the Emperor’s consent to an agreement which we have already ratified. The affair is as good as settled; it is a matter now of a few days only.”
“Germany!” she exclaimed, incredulously, “I thought it was to be Russia.”
“So,” he answered, “did I. I have to make a certain rather humiliating confession. I, who have always considered myself keenly in touch with the times, especially since my interest in European matters revived, have remained wholly ignorant of one of the most extraordinary phases of modern politics. In years to come history will show us that it was inevitable, but I must confess that it has come upon me like a thunder clap. I, like all the world, have looked upon Germany and England as natural and inevitable allies. That is neither more nor less than a colossal blunder! As a matter of fact, they are natural enemies!”
She sank into a chair, and looked at him blankly.
“But it is impossible,” she cried. “There are all the ties of relationship, and a common stock. They are sister countries.”
“Don’t you know,” he said, “that it is the like which irritates and repels the like. It is this relationship which has been at the root of the great jealousy, which seems to have spread all through Germany. I need not go into all the causes of it with you now; sufficient it is to say that all the recent successes of England have been at Germany’s expense. There has been a storm brewing for long; to-day, to-morrow, in a week, surely within a month, it will break.”
“You may be right,” she said; “but who of all the Frenchwomen I know would care to reckon themselves the debtors of Germany?”
“You will owe Germany nothing, for she will be paid and overpaid for all she does. Russia has made terms with the Republic of France. Politically, she has nothing to gain by a rupture; but with Germany it is different. She and France are ready at this moment to fly at one another’sthroats. The military popularity of such a war would be immense. The cry to arms would ring from the Mediterranean to the Rhine.”
“Oh! I hope that it may not be war,” she said. “I had hoped always that diplomacy, backed by a waiting army, would be sufficient. France at heart is true, I know. But after all, it sounds like a fairy tale. You are a wonderful man, but how can you hope to move nations? What can you offer Germany to exact so tremendous a price?”
“I can offer,” Mr. Sabin said calmly, “what Germany desires more than anything else in the world—the key to England. It has taken me six years to perfect my schemes. As you know, I was in America part of the time I was supposed to be in China. It was there, in the laboratory of Allison, that I commenced the work. Step by step I have moved on—link by link I have forged the chain. I may say, without falsehood or exaggeration, that my work would be the work of another man’s lifetime. With me it has been a labour of love. Your part, my dear Helène, will be a glorious one; think of it, and shake off your depression. This hole and corner life is not for long—the time for which we have worked is at hand.”
She did not look up, there was no answering fire of enthusiasm in her dark eyes. The colour came into her cheeks and faded away. Mr. Sabin was vaguely disturbed.
“In what way,” she said, without directly looking at him, “is Lord Wolfenden likely to be useful to you?”
Mr. Sabin did not reply for some time, in fact he did not reply at all. This new phase in the situation was suddenly revealed to him. When he spoke his tone was grave enough—grave with an undertone of contempt.
“Is it possible, Helène,” he said, “that you have allowed yourself to think seriously of the love-making of this young man? I must confess that such a thing in connection with you would never have occurred to me in my wildest dreams!”
“I am the mistress of my own affections,” she said coldly. “I am not pledged to you in any way. If I were to say that I intended to listen seriously to Lord Wolfenden—even if I were to say that I intended to marry him—well, there is no one who would dare to interfere! But, on the other hand, I have refused him. That should be enough for you. I am not going to discuss the matter at all; you would not understand it.”
“I must admit,” Mr. Sabin said, “that I probably should not. Of love, as you young people conceive it, I know nothing. But of that greater affection—the passionate love of a man for his race and his kind and his country—well, that has always seemed to me a thing worth living and working and dying for! I had fancied, Helène, that some spark of that same fire had warmed your blood, or you would not be here to-day.”
“I think,” she answered more gently, “that it has. I too, believe me, love my country and my people and my order. If I do not find these all-engrossing, you must remember that I am a woman, and I am young; I do not pretend to be capable only of impersonal and patriotic love.”
“Ay, you are a woman, and the blood of some of your ancestors will make itself felt,” he added, looking at her thoughtfully. “I ought to have considered the influence of sex and heredity. By the bye, have you heard from Henri lately?”
She shook her head.
“Not since he has been in France. We thought that whilst he was there it would be better for him not to write.”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“Most discreet,” he remarked satirically. “I wonder what Henri would say if he knew?”
The girl’s lip curled a little.
“If even,” she said, “there was really something serious for him to know, Henri would survive it. His is not the temperament for sorrow. For twenty minutes he would be in a paroxysm. He would probably send out for poison, which he would be careful not to take; and play with a pistol, if he were sure that it was not loaded. By dinner time he would be calm, the opera would soothe him still more, and by the time it was over he would be quite ready to take Mademoiselle Somebody out to supper. With the first glass of champagne his sorrow would be drowned for ever. If any wound remained at all, it would be the wound to his vanity.”
“You have considered, then, the possibility of upsetting my schemes and withdrawing your part?” Mr. Sabin said quietly. “You understand that your marriage with Henri would be an absolute necessity—that without it all would be chaos?”
“I do not say that I have considered any such possibility,” she answered. “If I make up my mind to withdraw, I shall give you notice. But I will admit that I like Lord Wolfenden, and I detest Henri! Ah! I know of what you would remind me; you need not fear, I shall not forget! It will not be to-day, nor to-morrow, that I shall decide.”
A servant entered the room and announced Lord Wolfenden. Mr. Sabin looked up.
“Where have you shown him?” he asked.
“Into the library, sir,” the girl answered.
Mr. Sabin swore softly between his teeth, and sprang to his feet.
“Excuse me, Helène,” he exclaimed, “I will bring Lord Wolfenden into the drawing-room. That girl is an idiot; she has shown him into the one room in the house which I would not have had him enter for anything in the world!”
Wolfenden had been shown, as he supposed, into an empty room by the servant of whom he had inquired for Mr. Sabin. But the door was scarcely closed before a familiar sound from a distant corner warned him that he was not alone. He stopped short and looked fixedly at the slight, feminine figure whose white fingers were flashing over the keyboard of a typewriter. There was something very familiar about the curve of her neck and the waving of her brown hair; her back was to him, and she did not turn round.
“Do leave me some cigarettes,” she said, without lifting her head. “This is frightfully monotonous work. How much more of it is there for me to do?”
“I really don’t know,” Wolfenden answered hesitatingly. “Why, Blanche!”
She swung round in her chair and gazed at him in blank amazement; she was, at least, as much surprised as he was.
“Lord Wolfenden!” she exclaimed; “why, what are you doing here?”
“I might ask you,” he said gravely, “the same question.”
She stood up.
“You have not come to see me?”
He shook his head.
“I had not the least idea that you were here,” he assured her.
Her face hardened.
“Of course not. I was an idiot to imagine that you would care enough to come, even if you had known.”
“I do not know,” he remarked, “why you should say that. On the contrary——”
She interrupted him.
“Oh! I know what you are going to say. I ran away from Mrs. Selby’s nice rooms, and never thanked you for your kindness. I didn’t even leave a message for you, did I? Well, never mind; you know why, I daresay.”
Wolfenden thought that he did, but he evaded a direct answer.
“What I cannot understand,” he said, “is why you are here.”
“It is my new situation,” she answered. “I was bound to look for one, you know. There is nothing strange about it. I advertised for a situation, and I got this one.”
He was silent. There were things in connection with this which he scarcely understood. She watched him with a mocking smile parting her lips.
“It is a good deal harder to understand,” she said, “why you are here. This is the very last house in the world in which I should have thought of seeing you.”
“Why?” he asked quickly.
She shrugged her shoulders; her speech had been scarcely a discreet one.
“I should not have imagined,” she said, “that Mr. Sabin would have come within the circle of your friends.”
“I do not know why he should not,” Wolfenden said. “I consider him a very interesting man.”
She smiled upon him.
“Yes, he is interesting,” she said; “only I should not have thought that your tastes were at all identical.”
“You seem to know a good deal about him,” Wolfenden remarked quietly.
For a moment an odd light gleamed in her eyes; she was very pale. Wolfenden moved towards her.
“Blanche,” he said, “has anything gone wrong with you? You don’t look well.”
She withdrew her hands from her face.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” she said. “Hush! he is coming.”
She swung round in her seat, and the quick clicking of the instrument was resumed as her fingers flew over it. The door opened, and Mr. Sabin entered. He leaned on his stick, standing on the threshold, and glanced keenly at both of them.
“My dear Lord Wolfenden,” he said apologetically, “this is the worst of having country servants. Fancy showing you in here. Come and join us in the other room; we are just going to have our coffee.”
Wolfenden followed him with alacrity; they crossed the little hall and entered the dining-room. Helène was still sitting there sipping her coffee in an easy chair. She welcomed him with outstretched hand and a brilliantly soft smile. Mr. Sabin, who was watching her closely, appreciated, perhaps for the first time, her rare womanly beauty, apart from its distinctly patrician qualities. There was a change, and he was not the man to be blind to it or to under-rate its significance. He felt that on the eve of victory he had another and an unexpected battle to fight; yet he held himself like a brave man and one used to reverses, for he showed no signs of dismay.
“I want you to try a glass of this claret, Lord Wolfenden,” he said, “before you begin your coffee. I know that you are a judge, and I am rather proud of it. You are not going away, Helène?”
“I had no idea of going,” she laughed. “This is reallythe only habitable room in the house, and I am not going to let Lord Wolfenden send me to shiver in what we call the drawing-room.”
“I should be very sorry if you thought of such a thing,” Wolfenden answered.
“If you will excuse me for a moment,” Mr. Sabin said, “I will unpack some cigarettes. Helène, will you see that Lord Wolfenden has which liqueur he prefers?”
He limped away, and Helène watched him leave the room with some surprise. These were tactics which she did not understand. Was he already making up his mind that the game could be played without her? She was puzzled—a little uneasy.
She turned to find Wolfenden’s admiring eyes fixed upon her; she looked at him with a smile, half-sad, half-humorous.
“Let me remember,” she said, “I am to see that you have—what was it? Oh! liqueurs. We haven’t much choice; you will find Kummel and Chartreuse on the sideboard, and Benedictine, which my uncle hates, by the bye, at your elbow.”
“No liqueurs, thanks,” he said. “I wonder, did you expect me to-night? I don’t think that I ought to have come, ought I?”
“Well, you certainly show,” she answered with a smile, “a remarkable disregard for all precedents and conventions. You ought to be already on your way to foreign parts with your guns and servants. It is Englishmen, is it not, who go always to the Rocky Mountains to shoot bears when their love affairs go wrong?”
He was watching her closely, and he saw that she was less at her ease than she would have had him believe. He saw, too, or fancied that he saw, a softening in her face, a kindliness gleaming out of her lustrous eyes which suggested new things to him.
“The Rocky Mountains,” he said slowly, “mean despair. A man does not go so far whilst he has hope.”
She did not answer him; he gathered courage from her silence.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I might now have been on my way there but for a somewhat sanguine disposition—a very strong determination, and,” he added more softly, “a very intense love.”
“It takes,” she remarked, “a very great deal to discourage an Englishman.”
“Speaking for myself,” he answered, “I defy discouragement; I am proof against it. I love you so dearly, Helène, that I simply decline to give you up; I warn you that I am not a lover to be shaken off.”
His voice was very tender; his words sounded to her simple but strong. He was so sure of himself and his love. Truly, she thought, for an Englishman this was no indifferent wooer; his confidence thrilled her; she felt her heart beat quickly under its sheath of drooping black lace and roses.
“I am giving you,” she said quietly, “no hope. Remember that; but I do not want you to go away.”
The hope which her tongue so steadfastly refused to speak he gathered from her eyes, her face, from that indefinable softening which seems to pervade at the moment of yielding a woman’s very personality. He was wonderfully happy, although he had the wit to keep it to himself.
“You need not fear,” he whispered, “I shall not go away.”
Outside they heard the sound of Mr. Sabin’s stick. She leaned over towards him.
“I want you,” she said, “to—kiss me.”
His heart gave a great leap, but he controlled himself. Intuitively he knew how much was permitted to him; heseemed to have even some faint perception of the cause for her strange request. He bent over and took her face for a moment between his hands; her lips touched his—she had kissed him!
He stood away from her, breathless with the excitement of the moment. The perfume of her hair, the soft touch of her lips, the gentle movement with which she had thrust him away, these things were like the drinking of strong wine to him. Her own cheeks were scarlet; outside the sound of Mr. Sabin’s stick grew more and more distinct; she smoothed her hair and laughed softly up at him.
“At least,” she murmured, “there is that to remember always.”
The Countess of Deringham was sitting alone in her smaller drawing-room, gazing steadfastly at a certain spot in the blazing fire before her. A little pile of grey ashes was all that remained of the sealed packet which she had placed within the bars only a few seconds ago. She watched it slowly grow shapeless—piece after piece went fluttering up the broad chimney. A gentle yet melancholy smile was parting her lips. A chapter of her life was floating away there with the little trembling strips lighter than the air, already hopelessly destroyed. Their disintegration brought with it a sense of freedom which she had lacked for many years. Yet it was only the folly of a girl, the story of a little foolish love-making, which those grey, ashen fragments, clinging so tenaciously to the iron bars, could have unfolded. Lady Deringham was not a woman who had ever for a single moment had cause to reproach herself with any real lack of duty to the brave young Englishman whom she had married so many years ago. It was of those days she was thinking as she sat there waiting for the caller, whose generosity had set her free.
At precisely four o’clock there was the sound of wheels in the drive, the slow movement of feet in the hall, and a servant announced a visitor.
“Mr. Sabin.”
Lady Deringham smiled and greeted him graciously.Mr. Sabin leaned upon his wonderful stick for a moment, and then bent low over Lady Deringham’s hand. She pointed to an easy chair close to her own, and he sank into it with some appearance of weariness. He was looking a little old and tired, and he carried himself without any of his usual buoyancy.
“Only a few minutes ago,” she said, “I burnt my letters. I was thinking of those days in Paris when the man announced you! How old it makes one feel.”
He looked at her critically.
“I am beginning to arrive at the conclusion,” he said, “that the poets and the novelists are wrong. It is the man who suffers! Look at my grey hairs!”
“It is only the art of my maid,” she said smiling, “which conceals mine. Do not let us talk of the past at all; to think that we lived so long ago is positively appalling!”
He shook his head gently.
“Not so appalling,” he answered, “as the thought of how long we still have to live! One regrets one’s youth as a matter of course, but the prospect of old age is more terrible still! Lucky those men and those women who live and then die. It is that interregnum—the level, monotonous plain of advancing old age, when one takes the waters at Carlsbad and looks askance at theentrées—that is what one has to dread. To watch our own degeneration, the dropping away of our energies, the decline of our taste—why, the tortures of the Inquisition were trifles to it!”
She shuddered a little.
“You paint old age in dreary colours,” she said.
“I paint it as it must seem to men who have kept the kernel of life between their teeth,” he answered carelessly. “To the others—well, one cares little about them. Most men are like cows, they are contented so long as they are fed. To that class I daresay old age may seem something of a rest. But neither you nor I are akin to them.”
“You talk as you always talked,” she said. “Mr. Sabin is very like——”
He stopped her.
“Mr. Sabin, if you please,” he exclaimed. “I am particularly anxious to preserve my incognito just now. Ever since we met yesterday I have been regretting that I did not mention it to you—I do not wish it to be known that I am in England.”
“Mr. Sabin it shall be, then,” she answered; “only if I were you I would have chosen a more musical name.”
“I wonder—have you by chance spoken of me to your son?” he asked.
“It is only by chance that I have not,” she admitted. “I have scarcely seen him alone to-day, and he was out last evening. Do you wish to remain Mr. Sabin to him also?”
“To him particularly,” Mr. Sabin declared; “young men are seldom discreet.”
Lady Deringham smiled.
“Wolfenden is not a gossip,” she remarked; “in fact I believe he is generally considered too reserved.”
“For the present, nevertheless,” he said, “let me remain Mr. Sabin to him also. I do not ask you this without a purpose.”
Lady Deringham bowed her head. This man had a right to ask her more than such slight favours.
“You are still,” she said, “a man of mystery and incognitos. You are still, I suppose, a plotter of great schemes. In the old days you used to terrify me almost; are you still as daring?”
“Alas! no,” he answered. “Time is rapidly drawing me towards the great borderland, and when my foot is once planted there I shall carry out my theories and make my bow to the world with the best grace a man may whose life has been one long chorus of disappointments. No! Ihave retired from the great stage; mine is now only a passive occupation. One returns always, you know, and in a mild way I have returned to the literary ambitions of my youth. It is in connection, by the bye, with this that I arrive at the favour which you so kindly promised to grant me.”
“If you knew, Victor,” she said, “how grateful I feel towards you, you would not hesitate to ask me anything within my power to grant.”
Mr. Sabin toyed with his stick and gazed steadfastly into the fire. He was pensive for several minutes; then, with the air of a man who suddenly detaches himself from a not unpleasant train of thought, he looked up with a smile.
“I am not going to tax you very severely,” he said. “I am writing a critical paper on the armaments of the world for a European review. I had letters of introduction to Mr. C., and he gave me a great deal of valuable information. There were one or two points, however, on which he was scarcely clear, and in the course of conversation he mentioned your husband’s name as being the greatest living authority upon those points. He offered to give me a letter to him, but I thought it would perhaps scarcely be wise. I fancied, too, you might be inclined, for reasons which we need not enlarge upon, to help me.”
For a simple request Lady Deringham’s manner of receiving it was certainly strange; she was suddenly white almost to the lips. A look of positive fear was in her eyes. The frank cordiality, the absolute kindliness with which she had welcomed her visitor was gone. She looked at him with new eyes; the old mistrust was born again. Once more he was the man to be feared and dreaded above all other men; yet she would not give way altogether. He was watching her narrowly, and she made a brave effort to regain her composure.
“But do you not know,” she said hesitatingly, “that my husband is a great invalid? It is a very painful subject for all of us, but we fear that his mind is not what it used to be. He has never been the same man since that awful night in the Solent. His work is more of a hobby with him; it would not be at all reliable for reference.”
“Not all of it, certainly,” he assented. “Mr. C. explained that to me. What I want is an opportunity to discriminate. Some would be very useful to me—the majority, of course, worse than useless. The particular information which I want concerns the structural defects in some of the new battleships. It would save an immense amount of time to get this succinctly.”
She looked away from him, still agitated.
“There are difficulties,” she murmured; “serious ones. My husband has an extraordinary idea as to the value of his own researches, and he is always haunted by a fear lest some one should break in and steal his papers. He would not suffer me to glance at them; and the room is too closely guarded for me to take you there without his knowledge. He is never away himself, and one of the keepers is stationed outside.”
“The wit of a woman,” Mr. Sabin said softly, “is all-conquering.”
“Providing always,” Lady Deringham said, “that the woman is willing. I do not understand what it all means. Do you know this? Perhaps you do. There have been efforts made by strangers to break into my husband’s room. Only a few days ago a stranger came here with a forged letter of introduction, and obtained access to the Admiral’s library. He did not come to steal. He came to study my husband’s work; he came, in fact, for the very purpose which you avow. Only yesterday my son began to take the same interest in the same thing. The whole of this morning he spent with his father, under the pretence ofhelping him; really he was studying and examining for himself. He has not told me what it is, but he has a reason for this; he, too, has some suspicions. Now you come, and your mission is the same. What does it all mean? I will write to Mr. C. myself; he will come down and advise me.”
“I would not do that if I were you,” Mr. Sabin said quietly. “Mr. C. would not thank you to be dragged down here on such an idle errand.”
“Ay, but would it be an idle errand?” she said slowly. “Victor, be frank with me. I should hate to refuse anything you asked me. Tell me what it means. Is my husband’s work of any real value, and if so to whom, and for what purpose?”
Mr. Sabin was gently distressed.
“My dear Lady Deringham,” he said, “I have told you the exact truth. I want to get some statistics for my paper. Mr. C. himself recommended me to try and get them from your husband; that is absolutely all. As for this attempted robbery of which you were telling me, believe me when I assure you that I know nothing whatever about it. Your son’s interest is, after all, only natural. The study of the papers on which your husband has been engaged is the only reasonable test of his sanity. Frankly, I cannot believe that any one in Lord Deringham’s mental state could produce any work likely to be of the slightest permanent value.”
The Countess sighed.
“I suppose that I must believe you, Victor,” she said; “yet, notwithstanding all that you say, I do not know how to help you—my husband scarcely ever leaves the room. He works there with a revolver by his side. If he were to find a stranger near his work I believe that he would shoot him without hesitation.”
“At night time——”
“At night time he usually sleeps there in an ante-room, and outside there is a man always watching.”
Mr. Sabin looked thoughtful.
“It is only necessary,” he said, “for me to be in the room for about ten minutes, and I do not need to carry anything away; my memory will serve me for all that I require. By some means or other I must have that ten minutes.”
“You will risk your life,” Lady Deringham said, “for I cannot suggest any plan; I would help you if I could, but I am powerless.”
“I must have that ten minutes,” Mr. Sabin said slowly.
“Must!” Lady Deringham raised her eyebrows. There was a subtle change in the tone of the man, a note of authority, perhaps even the shadow of a threat; he noted the effect and followed it up.
“I mean what I say, Constance,” he declared. “I am not asking you a great thing; you have your full share of woman’s wit, and you can arrange this if you like.”
“But, Victor, be reasonable,” she protested; “suggest a way yourself if you think it so easy. I tell you that he never leaves the room!”
“He must be made to leave it.”
“By force?”
“If necessary,” Mr. Sabin answered coolly.
Lady Deringham raised her hand to her forehead and sat thinking. The man’s growing earnestness bewildered her. What was to be done—what could she say? After all he was not changed; the old fear of him was creeping through her veins, yet she made her effort.
“You want those papers for something more than a magazine article!” she declared. “There is something behind all this! Victor, I cannot help you; I am powerless. I will take no part in anything which I cannot understand.”
He stood up, leaning a little upon his stick, the dull, green stone of which flashed brightly in the firelight.
“You will help me,” he said slowly. “You will let me into that room at night, and you will see that your husband is not there, or that he does not interfere. And as to that magazine article, you are right! What if it were a lie! I do not fly at small game. Now do you understand?”
She rose to her feet and drew herself up before him proudly. She towered above him, handsome, dignified, angry.
“Victor,” she said firmly, “I refuse; you can go away at once! I will have no more to say or to do with you! You have given me up my letters, it is true, yet for that you have no special claim upon my gratitude. A man of honour would have destroyed them long ago.”
He looked up at her, and the ghost of an unholy smile flickered upon his lips.
“Did I tell you that I had given them all back to you?” he said. “Ah! that was a mistake; all save one, I should have said! One I kept, in case—— Well, your sex are proverbially ungrateful, you know. It is the one on the yellow paper written from Mentone! You remember it? I always liked it better than any of the others.”
Her white hands flashed out in the firelight. It seemed almost as though she must have struck him. He had lied to her! She was not really free; he was still the master and she his slave! She stood as though turned to stone.
“I think,” he said, “that you will listen now to a little plan which has just occurred to me, will you not?”
She looked away from him with a shudder.
“What is it?” she asked hoarsely.
“I am afraid,” Harcutt said, “that either the letter was a hoax, or the writer has thought better of the matter. It is half an hour past the time, and poor Mr. Blatherwick is still alone.”
Wolfenden glanced towards the distant table where his father’s secretary was already finishing his modest meal.
“Poor old Blatherwick!” he remarked; “I know he’s awfully relieved. He’s too nervous for this sort of thing; I believe he would have lost his head altogether if his mysterious correspondent had turned up.”
“I suppose,” Harcutt said, “that we may take it for granted that he is not in the room.”
“Every soul here,” Wolfenden answered, “is known to me either personally or by sight. The man with the dark moustache sitting by himself is a London solicitor who built himself a bungalow here four years ago, and comes down every other week for golf. The two men in the corner are land speculators from Norwich; and their neighbour is Captain Stoneham, who rides over from the barracks twice a week, also for golf.”
“It is rather a sell for us,” Harcutt remarked. “On the whole I am not sorry that I have to go back to town to-night. Great Scott! what a pretty girl!”
“Lean back, you idiot!” Wolfenden exclaimed softly; “don’t move if you can help it!”
Harcutt grasped the situation and obeyed at once. The portion of the dining-room in which they were sitting was little more than a recess, divided off from the main apartment by heavy curtains and seldom used except in the summer when visitors were plentiful. Mr. Blatherwick’s table was really within a few feet of theirs, but they themselves were hidden from it by a corner of the folding doors. They had chosen the position with care and apparently with success.
The girl who had entered the room stood for a moment looking round as though about to select a table. Harcutt’s exclamation was not without justification, for she was certainly pretty. She was neatly dressed in a grey walking suit, and a velvet Tam-o-shanter hat with a smart feather. Suddenly she saw Mr. Blatherwick and advanced towards him with outstretched hand and a charming smile.
“Why, my dear Mr. Blatherwick, what on earth are you doing here?” she exclaimed. “Have you left Lord Deringham?”
Mr. Blatherwick rose to his feet confused, and blushing to his spectacles; he greeted the young lady, however, with evident pleasure.
“No; that is, not yet,” he answered; “I am leaving this week. I did not know—I had no idea that you were in the vicinity! I am very pleased to see you.”
She looked at the empty place at his table.
“I was going to have some luncheon,” she said; “I have walked so much further than I intended and I am ravenously hungry. May I sit at your table?”
“With much pleasure,” Mr. Blatherwick assented. “I was expecting a—a—friend, but he is evidently not coming.”
“I will take his place then, if I may,” she said, seating herself in the chair which the waiter was holding for her, and raising her veil. “Will you order something for me? I am too hungry to mind what it is.”
Mr. Blatherwick gave a hesitating order, and the waiter departed. Miss Merton drew off her gloves and was perfectly at her ease.
“Now do tell me about the friend whom you were going to meet,” she said, smiling gaily at him, “I hope—you really must not tell me, Mr. Blatherwick, that it was a lady!”
Mr. Blatherwick coloured to the roots of his hair at the mere suggestion, and hastened to disclaim it.
“My—my dear Miss Merton!” he exclaimed, “I can assure you that it was not! I—I should not think of such a thing.”
She nodded, and began to break up her roll and eat it.
“I am very glad to hear it, Mr. Blatherwick,” she said; “I warn you that I was prepared to be very jealous. You used to tell me, you know, that I was the only girl with whom you cared to talk.”
“It is—quite true, quite true, Miss Merton,” he answered eagerly, dropping his voice a little and glancing uneasily over his shoulder. “I—I have missed you very much indeed; it has been very dull.”
Mr. Blatherwick sighed; he was rewarded by a very kind glance from a pair of very blue eyes. He fingered the wine list, and began to wonder whether she would care for champagne.
“Now tell me,” she said, “all the news. How are they all at Deringham Hall—the dear old Admiral and the Countess, and that remarkably silly young man, Lord Wolfenden?”
Wolfenden received a kick under the table, and Harcutt’s face positively beamed with delight. Mr. Blatherwick, however, had almost forgotten their proximity. He had made up his mind to order champagne.
“The Ad—Ad—Admiral is well in health, but worse mentally,” he answered. “I am leaving for that veryreason. I do not conceive that in fairness to myself I should continue to waste my time in work which can bring forth no fruit. I trust, Miss Merton, that you agree with me.”
“Perfectly,” she answered gravely.
“The Countess,” he continued, “is well, but much worried. There have been strange hap—hap—happenings at the Hall since you left. Lord Wolfenden is there. By the bye, Miss Merton,” he added, dropping his voice, “I do not—not—think that you used to consider Lord Wolfenden so very silly when you were at Deringham.”
“It was very dull sometimes—when you were busy, Mr. Blatherwick,” she answered, beginning her lunch. “I will confess to you that I did try to amuse myself a little with Lord Wolfenden. But he was altogether too rustic—too stupid! I like a man with brains!”
Harcutt produced a handkerchief and stuffed it to his mouth; his face was slowly becoming purple with suppressed laughter. Mr. Blatherwick ordered the champagne.
“I—I was very jealous of him,” he admitted almost in a whisper.
The blue eyes were raised again very eloquently to his.
“You had no cause,” she said gently; “and Mr. Blatherwick, haven’t you forgotten something?”
Mr. Blatherwick had sipped his glass of champagne, and answered without a stutter.
“I have not,” he said, “forgotten you!”
“You used to call me by my Christian name!”
“I should be delighted to call you Miss—Blanche for ever,” he said boldly. “May I?”
She laughed softly.
“Well, I don’t quite know about that,” she said; “you may for this morning, at least. It is so pleasant to see you again. How is the work getting on?”
He groaned.
“Don’t ask me, please; it is awful! I am truly glad that I am leaving—for many reasons!”
“Have you finished copying those awful details of the defective armour plates?” she asked, suddenly dropping her voice so that it barely reached the other side of the table.
“Only last night,” he answered; “it was very hard work, and so ridiculous! It went into the box with the rest of the finished work this morning.”
“Did the Admiral engage a new typewriter?” she inquired.
He shook his head.
“No; he says that he has nearly finished.”
“I am so glad,” she said. “You have had no temptation to flirt then with anybody else, have you?”
“To flirt—with anybody else! Oh! Miss—I mean Blanche. Do you think that I could do that?”
His little round face shone with sincerity and the heat of the unaccustomed wine. His eyes were watering a little, and his spectacles were dull. The girl looked at him in amusement.
“I am afraid,” she said, with a sigh, “that you used to flirt with me.”
“I can assure you, B—B—Blanche,” he declared earnestly, “that I never said a word to you which I—I did not hon—hon—honestly mean. Blanche, I should like to ask you something.”
“Not now,” she interrupted hastily. “Do you know, I fancy that we must be getting too confidential. That odious man with the eyeglass keeps staring at us. Tell me what you are going to do when you leave here. You can ask me—what you were going to, afterwards.”
Mr. Blatherwick grew eloquent and Blanche was sympathetic. It was quite half an hour before they rose and prepared to depart.
“I know you won’t mind,” Blanche said to him confidentially, “if I ask you to leave the hotel first; the people I am with are a little particular, and it would scarcely do, you see, for us to go out together.”
“Certainly,” he replied. “Would you l—like me to leave you here—would it be better?”
“You might walk to the door with me, please,” she said. “I am afraid you must be very disappointed that your friend did not come. Are you not?”
Mr. Blatherwick’s reply was almost incoherent in its excess of protestation. They walked down the room together. Harcutt and Wolfenden look at one another.
“Well,” the former exclaimed, drinking up his liqueur, “it is a sell!”
“Yes,” Wolfenden agreed thoughtfully, with his eyes fixed upon the two departing figures, “it is a sell!”
Wolfenden sent his phaeton to the station with Harcutt, who had been summoned back to town upon important business. Afterwards he slipped back to the hall to wait for its return, and came face to face with Mr. Blatherwick, who was starting homewards.
“I was looking for you,” Wolfenden said; “your luncheon party turned out a little differently to anything we had expected.”
“I am happy,” Mr. Blatherwick said, “to be able to believe that the letter was after all a hoax. There was no one in the room, as you would doubtless observe, likely to be in any way concerned in the matter.”
Wolfenden knocked the ash off his cigarette without replying.
“You seem,” he remarked, “to be on fairly intimate terms with Miss Merton.”
“We were fellow workers for several months,” Mr. Blatherwick reminded him; “naturally, we saw a good deal of one another.”
“She is,” Wolfenden continued, “a very charming girl.”
“I consider her, in every way,” Mr. Blatherwick said with enthusiasm, “a most delightful young lady. I—I am very much attached to her.”
Wolfenden laid his hand on the secretary’s shoulder.
“Blatherwick,” he said, “you’re a good fellow, and I likeyou. Don’t be offended at what I am going to say. You must not trust Miss Merton; she is not quite what she appears to you.”
Mr. Blatherwick took a step backward, and flushed red with anger.
“I do not understand you, Lord Wolfenden,” he said. “What do you know of Miss Merton?”
“Not very much,” Wolfenden said quietly; “quite enough, though, to justify me in warning you seriously against her. She is a very clever young person, but I am afraid a very unscrupulous one.”
Mr. Blatherwick was grave, almost dignified.
“Lord Wolfenden,” he said, “you are the son of my employer, but I take the liberty of telling you that you are al—l——”
“Steady, Blatherwick,” Wolfenden interrupted; “you must not call me names.”
“You are not speaking the truth,” Mr. Blatherwick continued, curbing himself with an effort. “I will not listen to, or—or permit in my presence any aspersion against that young lady!”
Wolfenden shook his head gently.
“Mr. Blatherwick,” he said, “don’t be a fool! You ought to know that I am not the sort of man to make evil remarks about a lady behind her back, unless I knew what I was talking about. I cannot at this moment prove it, but I am morally convinced that Miss Merton came here to-day at the instigation of the person who wrote to you, and that she only refrained from making you some offer because she knew quite well that we were within hearing.”
“I will not listen to another word, Lord Wolfenden,” Mr. Blatherwick declared vigorously. “If you are honest, you are cruelly misjudging that young lady; if not you must know yourself the proper epithet to be applied to the person who defames an innocent girl behind herback! I wish you good afternoon, sir. I shall leave Deringham Hall to-morrow.”
He strode away, and Wolfenden watched him with a faint, regretful smile upon his lips. Then he turned round suddenly; a little trill of soft musical laughter came floating out from a recess in the darkest corner of the hall. Miss Merton was leaning back amongst the cushions of a lounge, her eyes gleaming with amusement. She beckoned Wolfenden to her.
“Quite melodramatic, wasn’t it?” she exclaimed, moving her skirts for him to sit by her side. “Dear little man! Do you know he wants to marry me?”
“What a clever girl you are,” Wolfenden remarked; “really you’d make an admirable wife for him.”
She pouted a little.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I am not contemplating making any one an admirable wife; matrimony does not attract me at all.”
“I don’t know what pleasure you can find in making a fool of a decent little chap like that,” he said; “it’s too bad of you, Blanche.”
“One must amuse oneself, and he is so odd and so very much in earnest.”
“Of course,” Wolfenden continued, “I know that you had another object.”
“Had I?”
“You came here to try and tempt the poor little fellow with a thousand pounds!”
“I have never,” she interposed calmly, “possessed a thousand shillings in my life.”
“Not on your own account, of course: you came on behalf of your employer, Mr. Sabin, or some one behind him! What is this devilry, Blanche?”
She looked at him out of wide-open eyes, but she made no answer.
“So far as I can see,” he remarked, “I must confess that foolery seems a better term. I cannot imagine anything in my father’s work worth the concoction of any elaborate scheme to steal. But never mind that; there is a scheme, and you are in it. Now I will make a proposition to you. It is a matter of money, I suppose; will you name your terms to come over to my side?”
A look crept into her eyes which puzzled him.
“Over to your side,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Do you mind telling me exactly what you mean by that?”
As though by accident the delicate white hand from which she had just withdrawn her glove touched his, and remained there as though inviting his clasp. She looked quickly up at him and drooped her eyes. Wolfenden took her hand, patted it kindly, and replaced it in her lap.
“Look here, Blanche,” he said, “I won’t affect to misunderstand you; but haven’t you learnt by this time that adventures are not in my way?—less now than at any time perhaps.”
She was watching his face and read its expression with lightning-like truth.
“Bah!” she said, “there is no man who would be so brutal as you unless——”
“Unless what?”
“He were in love with another girl!”
“Perhaps I am, Blanche!”
“I know that you are.”
He looked at her quickly.
“But you do not know with whom?”
She had not guessed, but she knew now.
“I think so,” she said; “it is with the beautiful niece of Mr. Sabin! You have admirable taste.”
“Never mind about that,” he said; “let us come to my offer. I will give you a hundred a year for life, settle it upon you, if you will tell me everything.”
“A hundred a year,” she repeated. “Is that much money?”
“Well, it will cost more than two thousand pound,” he said; “still, I would like you to have it, and you shall if you will be quite frank with me.”
She hesitated.
“I should like,” she said, “to think it over till to-morrow morning; it will be better, for supposing I decide to accept, I shall know a good deal more of this than I know now.”
“Very well,” he said, “only I should strongly advise you to accept.”
“One hundred a year,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Perhaps you will have changed your mind by to-morrow.”
“There is no fear of it,” he assured her quietly.
“Write it down,” she said. “I think that I shall agree.”
“Don’t you trust me, Blanche?”
“It is a business transaction,” she said coolly; “you have made it one yourself.”
He tore a sheet from his pocket-book and scribbled a few lines upon it.
“Will that do?” he asked her.
She read it through and folded it carefully up.
“It will do very nicely,” she said with a quiet smile. “And now I must go back as quickly as I can.”
They walked to the hall door; Lord Wolfenden’s carriage had come back from the station and was waiting for him.
“How are you going?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I must hire something, I suppose,” she said. “What beautiful horses! Do you see, Hector remembers me quite well; I used to take bread to him in the stable when I was at Deringham Hall. Good old man!”
She patted the horse’s neck. Wolfenden did not like it, but he had no alternative.
“Won’t you allow me to give you a lift?” he said, with a marked absence of cordiality in his tone; “or if you would prefer it, I can easily order a carriage from the hotel.”
“Oh! I would much rather go with you, if you really don’t mind,” she said. “May I really?”
“I shall be very pleased,” he answered untruthfully. “I ought perhaps to tell you that the horses are very fresh and don’t go well together: they have a nasty habit of running away down hill.”
She smiled cheerfully, and lifting her skirts placed a dainty little foot upon the step.
“I detest quiet horses,” she said, “and I have been used to being run away with all my life. I rather like it.”
Wolfenden resigned himself to the inevitable. He took the reins, and they rattled off towards Deringham. About half-way there, they saw a little black figure away on the cliff path to the right.
“It is Mr. Blatherwick,” Wolfenden said, pointing with his whip. “Poor little chap! I wish you’d leave him alone, Blanche!”
“On one condition,” she said, smiling up at him, “I will!”
“It is granted already,” he declared.
“That you let me drive for just a mile!”
He handed her the reins at once, and changed seats. From the moment she took them, he could see that she was an accomplished whip. He leaned back and lit a cigarette.
“Blatherwick’s salvation,” he remarked, “has been easily purchased.”
She smiled rather curiously, but did not reply. A hired carriage was coming towards them, and her eyes were fixed upon it. In a moment they swept past, and Wolfenden was conscious of a most unpleasant sensation. It was Helène, whose dark eyes were glancing from the girl tohim in cold surprise; and Mr. Sabin, who was leaning back by her side wrapped in a huge fur coat. Blanche looked down at him innocently.
“Fancy meeting them,” she remarked, touching Hector with the whip. “It does not matter, does it? You look dreadfully cross!”
Wolfenden muttered some indefinite reply and threw his cigarette savagely into the road. After all he was not so sure that Mr. Blatherwick’s salvation had been cheaply won!