Chayne returned to London on the following day, restless and troubled. Jealousy, he knew, was the natural lot of the lover. But that he should have to be jealous of a Walter Hine—there was the sting. He asked the old question over and over again, the old futile question which the unrewarded suitor puts to himself with amazement and a despair at the ridiculous eccentricities of human nature. "What in the world can she see in the fellow?" However, he did not lose heart. It was not in his nature to let go once he had clearly set his desires upon a particular goal. Sooner or later, people and things would adjust themselves to their proper proportions in Sylvia's eyes. Meanwhile there was something to be done—a doubt to be set at rest, perhaps a discovery to be made.
His conversation with Garratt Skinner, the subject which Garratt Skinner had chosen, and the knowledge with which he had spoken, had seemed to Chayne rather curious. A man might sit by his fireside and follow with interest, nay almost with the passion of the mountaineer, the history of Alpine exploration and adventure. That had happened before now. And very likely Chayne would have troubled himself no more about Garratt Skinner's introduction of the theme but for one or two circumstances which the more he reflected upon them became the more significant. For instance: Garratt Skinner had spoken and had asked questions about the new ascents made, the new passes crossed within the last twenty years, just as a man would ask who had obtained his knowledge out of books. But of the earlier ascents he had spoken differently, though the difference was subtle and hard to define. He seemed to be upon more familiar ground. He left in Chayne's mind a definite suspicion that he was speaking no longer out of books, but from an intimate personal knowledge, the knowledge of actual experience. The suspicion had grown up gradually, but it had strengthened almost into a conviction.
It was to the old climbs that Garratt Skinner's conversation perpetually recurred—the Aiguille Verte, the Grand and the Petit Dru and the traverse between them, the Col Dolent, the Grandes Jorasses and the Brenva route—yes, above all, the Brenva route up Mont Blanc. Moreover, how in the world should he know that those slabs of black granite on the top of the Grépon were veined with red—splashed with red as he described them? Unless he had ascended them, or the Aiguille des Charmoz opposite—how should he know? The philosophy of his guide Michel Revailloud flashed across Chayne's mind. "One needs some one with whom to exchange one's memories."
Had Garratt Skinner felt that need and felt it with so much compulsion that he must satisfy it in spite of himself? Yet why should he practise concealment at all? There certainly had been concealment. Chayne remembered how more than once Garratt Skinner had checked himself before at last he had yielded. It was in spite of himself that he had spoken. And then suddenly as the train drew up at Vauxhall Station for the tickets to be collected, Chayne started up in his seat. On the rocks of the Argentière, beside the great gully, as they descended to the glacier, Sylvia's guide had spoken words which came flying back into Chayne's thoughts. She had climbed that day, though it was her first mountain, as if knowledge of the craft had been born in her. How to stand upon an ice-slope, how to hold her ax—she had known. On the rocks, too! Which foot to advance, with which hand to grasp the hold—she had known. Suppose that knowledgehadbeen born in her! Why, then those words of her guide began to acquire significance. She had reminded him of some one—some one whose name he could not remember—but some one with whom years ago he had climbed. And then upon the rocks, some chance movement of Sylvia's, some way in which she moved from ledge to ledge, had revealed to him the name—Gabriel Strood.
Was it possible, Chayne asked? If so, what dark thing was there in the record of Strood's life that he must change his name, disappear from the world, and avoid the summer nights, the days of sunshine and storm on the high rock-ledges and the ice-slope?
Chayne was minded to find an answer to that question. Sylvia was in trouble; that house under the downs was no place for her. He himself was afraid of what was being planned there. It might help him if he knew something more of Garratt Skinner than he knew at present. And it seemed to him that there was just a chance of acquiring that knowledge.
He dined at his club, and at ten o'clock walked up St. James' Street. The street was empty. It was a hot starlit night of the first week in August, and there came upon him a swift homesickness for the world above the snow-line. How many of his friends were sleeping that night in mountain huts high up on the shoulders of the mountains or in bivouacs open to the stars with a rock-cliff at their backs and a fire of pine wood blazing at their feet. Most likely amongst those friends was the one he sought to-night.
"Still there's a chance that I may find him," he pleaded, and crossing Piccadilly passed into Dover Street. Half way along the street of milliners, he stopped before a house where a famous scholar had his lodging.
"Is Mr. Kenyon in London?" he asked, and the man-servant replied to his great relief:
"Yes, sir, but he is not yet at home."
"I will wait for him," said Chayne.
He was shown into the study and left there with a lighted lamp. The room was lined with books from floor to ceiling. Chayne mounted a ladder and took down from a high corner some volumes bound simply in brown cloth. They were volumes of the "Alpine Journal." He had chosen those which dated back from twenty years to a quarter of a century. He drew a chair up beside the lamp and began eagerly to turn over the pages. Often he stopped, for the name of which he was in search often leaped to his eyes from the pages. Chayne read of the exploits in the Alps of Gabriel Strood. More than one new expedition was described, many variations of old ascents, many climbs already familiar. It was clear that the man was of the true brotherhood. A new climb was very well, but the old were as good to Gabriel Strood, and the climb which he had once made he had the longing to repeat with new companions. None of the descriptions were written by Strood himself but all by companions whom he had led, and most of them bore testimony to an unusual endurance, an unusual courage, as though Strood triumphed perpetually over a difficulty which his companions did not share and of which only vague hints were given. At last Chayne came to that very narrative which Sylvia had been reading on her way to Chamonix—and there the truth was bluntly told for the first time.
Chayne started up in that dim and quiet room, thrilled. He had the proof now, under his finger—the indisputable proof. Gabriel Strood suffered from an affection of the muscles in his right thigh, and yet managed to out-distance all his rivals. Hine's words drummed in Chayne's ears:
"Nevertheless he left us all behind."
Garratt Skinner: Gabriel Strood. Surely, surely! He replaced the volumes and took others down. In the first which he opened—it was the autumn number of nineteen years ago—there was again mention of the man; and the climb described was the ascent of Mont Blanc from the Brenva Glacier. Chayne leaned back in his chair fairly startled by this confirmation. It was to the Brenva route that Garratt Skinner had continually harked back. The Aiguille Verte, the Grandes Jorasses, the Charmoz, the Blaitière—yes, he had talked of them all, but ever he had come back, with an eager voice and a fire in his eyes, to the ice-arête of the Brenva route. Chayne searched on through the pages. But there was nowhere in any volume on which he laid his hands any further record of his exploits. Others who followed in his steps mentioned his name, but of the man himself there was no word more. No one had climbed with him, no one had caught a glimpse of him above the snow-line. For five or six seasons he had flashed through the Alps. Arolla, Zermatt, the Montanvert, the Concordia hut—all had known him for five or six seasons, and then just under twenty years ago he had come no more.
Chayne put back the volumes in their places on the shelf, and sat down again in the arm-chair before the empty grate. It was a strange and a haunting story which he was gradually piecing together in his thoughts. Men like Gabriel Stroodalwayscome back to the Alps. They sleep too restlessly at nights, they needs must come. And yet this man had stayed away. There must have been some great impediment. He fell into another train of thought. Sylvia was eighteen, nearly nineteen. Had Gabriel Strood married just after that last season when he climbed from the Brenva Glacier to the Calotte. The story was still not unraveled, and while he perplexed his fancies over the unraveling, the door opened, and a tall, thin man with a pointed beard stood upon the threshold. He was a man of fifty years; his shoulders were just learning how to stoop; and his face, fine and delicate, yet lacking nothing of strength, wore an aspect of melancholy, as though he lived much alone—until he smiled. And in the smile there was much companionship and love. He smiled now as he stretched out his long, finely-molded hand.
"I am very glad to see you, Chayne," he said, in a voice remarkable for its gentleness, "although in another way I am sorry. I am sorry because, of course, I know why you are in England and not among the Alps."
Chayne had risen from his chair, but Kenyon laid a hand upon his shoulder and forced him down again with a friendly pressure. "I read of Lattery's death. I am grieved about it—for you as much as for Lattery. I know just what that kind of loss means. It means very much," said he, letting his deep-set eyes rest with sympathy upon the face of the younger man. Kenyon put a whisky and soda by Chayne's elbow, and setting the tobacco jar on a little table between them, sat down and lighted his pipe.
"You came back at once?" he asked.
"I crossed the Col Dolent and went down into Italy," replied Chayne.
"Yes, yes," said Kenyon, nodding his head. "But you will go back next year, or the year after."
"Perhaps," said Chayne; and for a little while they smoked their pipes in silence. Then Chayne came to the object of his visit.
"Kenyon," he asked, "have you any photographs of the people who went climbing twenty to twenty-five years ago? I thought perhaps you might have some groups taken in Switzerland in those days. If you have, I should like to see them."
"Yes, I think I have," said Kenyon. He went to his writing-desk and opening a drawer took out a number of photographs. He brought them back, and moving the green-shaded lamp so that the light fell clear and strong upon the little table, laid them down.
Chayne bent over them with a beating heart. Was his suspicion to be confirmed or disproved?
One by one he took the photographs, closely examined them, and laid them aside while Kenyon stood upright on the other side of the table. He had turned over a dozen before he stopped. He held in his hand the picture of a Swiss hotel, with an open space before the door. In the open space men were gathered. They were talking in groups; some of them leaned upon ice-axes, some carriedRücksacksupon their backs, as though upon the point of starting for the hills. As he held the photograph a little nearer to the lamp, and bent his head a little lower, Kenyon made a slight uneasy movement. But Chayne did not notice. He sat very still, with his eyes fixed upon the photograph. On the outskirts of the group stood Sylvia's father. Younger, slighter of build, with a face unlined and a boyish grace which had long since gone—but undoubtedly Sylvia's father.
The contours of the mountains told Chayne clearly enough in what valley the hotel stood.
"This is Zermatt," he said, without lifting his eyes.
"Yes," replied Kenyon, quietly, "a Zermatt you are too young to know," and then Chayne's forefinger dropped upon the figure of Sylvia's father.
"Who is this?" he asked.
Kenyon made no answer.
"It is Gabriel Strood," Chayne continued.
There was a pause, and then Kenyon confirmed the guess.
"Yes," he said, and some hint of emotion in his voice made Chayne lift his eyes. The light striking upward through the green shade gave to Kenyon's face an extraordinary pallor. But it seemed to Chayne that not all the pallor was due to the lamp.
"For six seasons," Chayne said, "Gabriel Strood came to the Alps. In his first season he made a great name."
"He was the best climber I have ever seen," replied Kenyon.
"He had a passion for the mountains. Yet after six years he came back no more. He disappeared. Why?"
Kenyon stood absolutely silent, absolutely still. Perhaps the trouble deepened a little on his face; but that was all. Chayne, however, was bent upon an answer. For Sylvia's sake alone he must have it, he must know the father into whose clutches she had come.
"You knew Gabriel Strood. Why?"
Kenyon leaned forward and gently took the photograph out of Chayne's hand. He mixed it with the others, not giving to it a single glance himself, and then replaced them all in the drawer from which he had taken them. He came back to the table and at last answered Chayne:
"John Lattery was your friend. Some of the best hours of your life were passed in his company. You know that now. But you will know it still more surely when you come to my age, whatever happiness may come to you between now and then. The camp-fire, the rock-slab for your floor and the black night about you for walls, the hours of talk, the ridge and the ice-slope, the bad times in storm and mist, the good times in the sunshine, the cold nights of hunger when you were caught by the darkness, the off-days when you lounged at your ease. You won't forget John Lattery."
Kenyon spoke very quietly but with a conviction, and, indeed, a certain solemnity, which impressed his companion.
"No," said Chayne, gently, "I shall not forget John Lattery." But his question was still unanswered, and by nature he was tenacious. His eyes were still upon Kenyon's face and he added: "What then?"
"Only this," said Kenyon. "Gabriel Strood was my John Lattery," and moving round the table he dropped his hand upon Chayne's shoulder. "You will ask me no more questions," he said, with a smile.
"I beg your pardon," said Chayne.
He had his answer. He knew now that there was something to conceal, that there was a definite reason why Gabriel Strood disappeared.
"Good-night," he said; and as he left the room he saw Kenyon sink down into his arm-chair. There seemed something sad and very lonely in the attitude of the older man. Once more Michel Revailloud's warning rose up within his mind.
"When it is all over, and you go home, take care that there is a lighted lamp in the room and the room not empty. Have some one to share your memories when life is nothing but memories."
At every turn the simple philosophy of Michel Revailloud seemed to obtain an instance and a confirmation. Was that to be his own fate too? Just for a moment he was daunted. He closed the door noiselessly, and going down the stairs let himself out into the street. The night was clear above his head. How was it above the Downs of Dorsetshire, he wondered. He walked along the street very slowly. Garratt Skinner was Gabriel Strood. There was clearly a dark reason for the metamorphosis. It remained for Chayne to discover that reason. But he did not ponder any more upon that problem to-night. He was merely thinking as he walked along the street that Michel Revailloud was a very wise man.
"Between gentlemen," said Wallie Hine. "Yes, between gentlemen."
He was quoting from a letter which he held in his hand, as he sat at the breakfast table, and, in his agitation, he had quoted aloud. Garratt Skinner looked up from his plate and said:
"Can I help you, Wallie?"
Hine flushed red and stammered out: "No, thank you. I must run up to town this morning—that's all."
"Sylvia will drive you into Weymouth in the dog-cart after breakfast," said Garratt Skinner, and he made no further reference to the journey. But he glared at the handwriting of the letter, and then with some perplexity at Walter Hine. "You will be back this evening, I suppose?"
"Rather," said Walter Hine, with a smile across the table at Sylvia; but his agitation got the better of his gallantry, and as she drove him into Weymouth, he spoke as piteously as a child appealing for protection. "I don't want to go one little bit, Miss Sylvia. But between gentlemen. Yes, I mustn't forget that. Between gentlemen." He clung to the phrase, finding some comfort in its reiteration.
"You have given me your promise," said Sylvia. "There will be no cards, no bets."
Walter Hine laughed bitterly.
"I shan't break it. I have had my lesson. By Jove, I have."
Walter Hine traveled to Waterloo and drove straight to the office ofMr. Jarvice.
"I owe some money," he began, bleating the words out the moment he was ushered into the inner office.
Mr. Jarvice grinned.
"This interview is concluded," he said. "There's the door."
"I owe it to a friend, Captain Barstow," Hine continued, in desperation. "A thousand pounds. He has written for it. He says that debts of honor between gentlemen—" But he got no further, for Mr. Jarvice broke in upon his faltering explanations with a snarl of contempt.
"Barstow! You poor little innocent. I have something else to do with my money than to pour it into Barstow's pockets. I know the man. Send him to me to-morrow, and I'll talk to him—as between gentlemen."
Walter Hine flushed. He had grown accustomed to deference and flatteries in the household of Garratt Skinner. The unceremonious scorn of Mr. Jarvice stung his vanity, and vanity was the one strong element of his character. He was in the mind hotly to defend Captain Barstow from Mr. Jarvice's insinuations, but he refrained.
"Then Barstow will know that I draw my allowance from you, and not from my grandfather," he stammered. There was the trouble for Walter Hine. If Barstow knew, Garratt Skinner would come to know. There would be an end to the deference and the flatteries. He would no longer be able to pose as the favorite of the great millionaire, Joseph Hine. He would sink in Sylvia's eyes. At the cost of any humiliation that downfall must be avoided.
His words, however, had an immediate effect upon Mr. Jarvice, though for quite other reasons.
"Why, that's true," said Mr. Jarvice, slowly, and in a voice suddenly grown smooth. "Yes, yes, we don't want to mix up my name in the affair at all. Sit down, Mr. Hine, and take a cigar. The box is at your elbow. Young men of spirit must have some extra license allowed to them for the sake of the promise of their riper years. I was forgetting that. No, we don't want my name to appear at all, do we?"
Publicity had no charms for Mr. Jarvice. Indeed, on more than one occasion he had found it quite a hindrance to the development of his little plans. To go his own quiet way, unheralded by the press and unacclaimed of men—that was the modest ambition of Mr. Jarvice.
"However, I don't look forward to handing over a thousand pounds to Captain Barstow," he continued, softly. "No, indeed. Did you lose any of your first quarter's allowance to him besides the thousand?"
Walter Hine lit his cigar and answered reluctantly:
"Yes."
"All of it?"
"Oh no, no, not all of it."
Jarvice did not press for the exact amount. He walked to the window and stood there with his hands in his pockets and his back toward his visitor. Walter Hine watched his shoulders in suspense and apprehension. He would have been greatly surprised if he could have caught a glimpse at this moment of Mr. Jarvice's face. There was no anger, no contempt, expressed in it at all. On the contrary, a quiet smile of satisfaction gave to it almost a merry look. Mr. Jarvice had certain plans for Walter Hine's future—so he phrased it with a smile for the grim humor of the phrase—and fate seemed to be helping toward their fulfilment.
"I can get you out of this scrape, no doubt," said Jarvice, turning back to his table. "The means I must think over, but I can do it. Only there's a condition. You need not be alarmed. A little condition which a loving father might impose upon his only son," and Mr. Jarvice beamed paternally as he resumed his seat.
"What is the condition?" asked Walter Hine.
"That you travel for a year, broaden your mind by visiting the great countries and capitals of Europe, take a little trip perhaps into the East and return a cultured gentleman well equipped to occupy the high position which will be yours when your grandfather is in due time translated to a better sphere."
Mr. Jarvice leaned back in his chair, and with a confident wave of his desk ruler had the air of producing the startling metamorphosis like some heavy but benevolent fairy. Walter Hine, however, was not attracted by the prospect.
"But—" he began, and at once Mr. Jarvice interrupted him.
"I anticipate you," he said, with a smile. "Standing at the window there, I foresaw your objection. But—it would be lonely. Quite true. Why should you be lonely? And so I am going to lay my hands on some pleasant and companionable young fellow who will go with you for his expenses. An Oxford man, eh? Fresh from Alma Mater with a taste for pictures and statuettes and that sort of thing! Upon my word, I envy you, Mr. Hine. If I were young, bless me, if I wouldn't throw my bonnet over the mill, as after a few weeks in La Ville Lumière you will be saying, and go with you. You will taste life—yes, life."
And as he repeated the word, all the jollity died suddenly out of the face of Mr. Jarvice. He bent his eyes somberly upon his visitor and a queer inscrutable smile played about his lips. But Walter Hine had no eyes for Mr. Jarvice. He was nerving himself to refuse the proposal.
"I can't go," he blurted out, with the ungracious stubbornness of a weak mind which fears to be over-persuaded. Afraid lest he should consent, he refused aggressively and rudely.
Mr. Jarvice repressed an exclamation of anger. "And why?" he asked, leaning forward on his elbows and fixing his bright, sharp eyes on Walter Hine's face.
Walter Hine shifted uncomfortably in his chair but did not answer.
"And why can't you go?" he repeated.
"I can't tell you."
"Oh, surely," said Mr. Jarvice, with a scarcely perceptible sneer. "Come now! Between gentlemen! Well?"
Walter Hine yielded to Jarvice's insistence.
"There's a girl," he said, with a coy and odious smile.
Mr. Jarvice beat upon his desk with his fists in a savage anger. His carefully calculated plan was to be thwarted by a girl.
"She's a dear," cried Walter Hine. Having made the admission, he let himself go. His vanity pricked him to lyrical flights. "She's a dear, she's a sob, she would never let me go, she's my little girl."
Such was Sylvia's reward for engaging in a struggle which she loathed for the salvation of Walter Hine. She was jubilantly claimed by him as his little girl in a money-lender's office. Mr. Jarvice swore aloud.
"Who is she?" he asked, sternly.
A faint sense of shame came over Walter Hine. He dimly imagined what Sylvia would have thought and said, and what contempt her looks would have betrayed, had she heard him thus boast of her goodwill.
"You are asking too much, Mr. Jarvice," he said.
Mr. Jarvice waved the objection aside.
"Of course I ask it as between gentlemen," he said, with an ironical politeness.
"Well, then, as between gentlemen," returned Walter Hine, seriously. "She is the daughter of a great friend of mine, Mr. Garratt Skinner. What's the matter?" he cried; and there was reason for his cry.
It had been an afternoon of surprises for Mr. Jarvice, but this simple mention of the name of Garratt Skinner was more than a surprise. Mr. Jarvice was positively startled. He leaned back in his chair with his mouth open and his eyes staring at Walter Hine. The high color paled in his face and his cheeks grew mottled. It seemed that fear as well as surprise came to him in the knowledge that Garratt Skinner was a friend of Walter Hine.
"What is the matter?" repeated Hine.
"It's nothing," replied Mr. Jarvice, hastily. "The heat, that is all." He crossed the room, and throwing up the window leaned for a few moments upon the sill. Yet even when he spoke again, there was still a certain unsteadiness in his voice. "How did you come across Mr. Garratt Skinner?" he asked.
"Barstow introduced me. I made Barstow's acquaintance at the CriterionBar, and he took me to Garratt Skinner's house in Hobart Place."
"I see," said Mr. Jarvice. "It was in Garratt Skinner's house that you lost your money, I suppose."
"Yes, but he had no hand in it," exclaimed Walter Hine. "He does not know how much I lost. He would be angry if he did."
A faint smile flickered across Jarvice's face.
"Quite so," he agreed, and under his deft cross-examination the whole story was unfolded. The little dinner at which Sylvia made her appearance and at which Walter Hine was carefully primed with drink; the little round game of cards which Garratt Skinner was so reluctant to allow in his house on a Sunday evening, and from which, being an early riser, he retired to bed, leaving Hine in the hands of Captain Barstow and Archie Parminter; the quiet secluded house in the country; the new gardener who appeared for one day and shot with so surprising an accuracy, when Barstow backed him against Walter Hine, that Hine lost a thousand pounds; the incidents were related to Mr. Jarvice in their proper succession, and he interpreted them by his own experience. Captain Barstow, who was always to the fore, counted for nothing in the story as Jarvice understood it. He was the mere creature, the servant. Garratt Skinner, who was always in the background, prepared the swindle and pocketed the profits.
"You are staying at the quiet house in Dorsetshire now, I suppose. Just you and Garratt Skinner and the pretty daughter, with occasional visits from Barstow?"
"Yes," answered Hine. "Garratt Skinner does not care to see much company."
Once more the smile of amusement played upon Mr. Jarvice's face.
"No, I suppose not," he said, quietly. There were certain definite reasons of which he was aware, to account for Garratt Skinner's reluctance to appear in a general company. He turned back from the window and returned to his table. He had taken his part. There was no longer either unsteadiness or anger in his voice.
"I quite understand your reluctance to leave your new friends," he said, with the utmost friendliness. "I recognize that the tour abroad on which I had rather set my heart must be abandoned. But I have no regrets. For I think it possible that the very object which I had in mind when proposing that tour may be quite as easily effected in the charming country house of Garratt Skinner."
He spoke in a quiet matter-of-fact voice, looking benevolently at his visitor. If the words were capable of another and a more sinister meaning than they appeared to convey, Walter Hine did not suspect it. He took them in their obvious sense.
"Yes, I shall gain as much culture in Garratt Skinner's house as I should by seeing picture-galleries abroad," he said eagerly, and then Mr. Jarvice smiled.
"I think that very likely," he said. "Meanwhile, as to Barstow and his thousand pounds. I must think the matter over. Barstow will not press you for a day or two. Just leave me your address—the address in Dorsetshire."
He dipped a pen in the ink and handed it to Hine. Hine took it and drew a sheet of paper toward him. But he did not set the pen to the paper. He looked suddenly up at Jarvice, who stood over against him at the other side of the table.
"Garratt Skinner's address?" he said, with one of his flashes of cunning.
"Yes, since you are staying there. I shall want to write to you."
Walter Hine still hesitated.
"You won't peach to Garratt Skinner about the allowance, eh?"
"My dear fellow!" said Mr. Jarvice. He was more hurt than offended. "To put it on the lowest ground, what could I gain?"
Walter Hine wrote down the address, and at once the clerk appeared at the door and handed Jarvice a card.
"I will see him," said Jarvice, and turning to Hine: "Our business is over, I think."
Jarvice opened a second door which led from the inner office straight down a little staircase into the street. "Good-by. You shall hear from me," he said, and Walter Hine went out.
Jarvice closed the door and turned back to his clerk.
"That will do," he said.
There was no client waiting at all. Mr. Jarvice had an ingenious contrivance for getting rid of his clients at the critical moment after they had come to a decision and before they had time to change their minds. By pressing a particular button in the leather covering of the right arm of his chair, he moved an indicator above the desk of his clerk in the outer office. The clerk thereupon announced a visitor, and the one in occupation was bowed out by the private staircase. By this method Walter Hine had been dismissed.
Jarvice had the address of Garratt Skinner. But he sat with it in front of him upon his desk for a long time before he could bring himself to use it. All the amiability had gone from his expression now that he was alone. He was in a savage mood, and every now and then a violent gesture betrayed it. But it was with himself that he was angry. He had been a fool not to keep a closer watch on Walter Hine.
"I might have foreseen," he cried in his exasperation. "Garratt Skinner!If I had not been an ass, Ishouldhave foreseen."
For Mr. Jarvice was no stranger to Walter Hine's new friend. More than one young buck fresh from the provinces, heir to the great factory or the great estate, had been steered into this inner office by the careful pilotage of Garratt Skinner. In all the army of the men who live by their wits, there was not one to Jarvice's knowledge who was so alert as Garratt Skinner to lay hands upon the new victim or so successful in lulling his suspicions. He might have foreseen that Garratt Skinner would throw his net over Walter Hine. But he had not, and the harm was done.
Mr. Jarvice took the insurance policy from his safe and shook his head over it sadly. He had seen his way to making in his quiet fashion, and at comparatively little cost, a tidy little sum of one hundred thousand pounds. Now he must take a partner, so that he might not have an enemy. Garratt Skinner with Barstow for his jackal and the pretty daughter for his decoy was too powerful a factor to be lightly regarded. Jarvice must share with Garratt Skinner—unless he preferred to abandon his scheme altogether; and that Mr. Jarvice would not do.
There was no other way. Jarvice knew well that he could weaken Garratt Skinner's influence over Walter Hine by revealing to the youth certain episodes in the new friend's life. He might even break the acquaintanceship altogether. But Garratt Skinner would surely discover who had been at work. And then? Why, then, Mr. Jarvice would have upon his heels a shrewd and watchful enemy; and in this particular business, such an enemy Mr. Jarvice could not afford to have. Jarvice was not an impressionable man, but his hands grew cold while he imagined Garratt Skinner watching the development of his little scheme—the tour abroad with the pleasant companion, the things which were to happen on the tour—watching and waiting until the fitting moment had come, when all was over, for him to step in and demand the price of his silence and hold Mr. Jarvice in the hollow of his hand for all his life. No, that would never do. Garratt Skinner must be a partner so that also he might be an accessory.
Accordingly, Jarvice wrote his letter to Garratt Skinner, a few lines urging him to come to London on most important business. Never was there a letter more innocent in its appearance than that which Jarvice wrote in his inner office on that summer afternoon. Yet even at the last he hesitated whether he should seal it up or no. The sun went down, shadows touched with long cool fingers the burning streets; shadows entered into that little inner office of Mr. Jarvice. But still he sat undecided at his desk.
The tour upon the Continent must be abandoned, and with it the journey under canvas to the near East—a scheme so simple, so sure, so safe. Still Garratt Skinner might confidently be left to devise another. And he had always kept faith. To that comforting thought Mr. Jarvice clung. He sealed up his letter in the end, and stood for a moment or two with the darkness deepening about him. Then he rang for his clerk and bade him post it, but the voice he used was one which the clerk did not know, so that he pushed his head forward and peered through the shadows to make sure that it was his master who spoke.
Two days afterward Garratt Skinner paid a long visit to Mr. Jarvice, and that some agreement was reached between the two men shortly became evident. For Walter Hine received a letter from Captain Barstow which greatly relieved him.
"Garratt Skinner has written to me," wrote the 'red-hot' Captain, "that he has discovered that the gardener, whom he engaged for a particular job, is notorious as a poacher and a first-class shot. Under these circumstances, my dear old fellow, the red-hot one cannot pouch your pennies. As between gentlemen, the bet must be considered o-p-h."
Hilary Chayne stayed away from Dorsetshire for ten complete days; and though the hours crept by, dilatory as idlers at a street corner, he obtained some poor compensation by reflecting upon his fine diplomacy. In less than a week he would surely be missed; by the time that ten days had passed the sensation might have become simply poignant. So for ten days he wandered about the Downs of Sussex with an aching heart, saying the while, "It serves her right." On the morning of the eleventh he received a letter from the War Office, bidding him call on the following afternoon.
"That will just do," he said. "I will go down to Weymouth to-day, and I will return to London to-morrow." And with an unusual lightness of spirit, which he ascribed purely to his satisfaction that he need punish Sylvia no longer, he started off upon his long journey. He reached the house of the Running Water by six o'clock in the evening; and at the outset it seemed that his diplomacy had been sagacious.
He was shown into the library, and opposite to him by the window Sylvia stood alone. She turned to him a white terror-haunted face, gazed at him for a second like one dazed, and then with a low cry of welcome came quickly toward him. Chayne caught her outstretched hands and all his joy at her welcome lay dead at the sight of her distress. "Sylvia!" he exclaimed in distress. He was hurt by it as he had never thought to be hurt.
"I am afraid!" she said, in a trembling whisper. He drew her toward him and she yielded. She stood close to him and very still, touching him, leaning to him like a frightened child. "Oh, I am afraid," she repeated; and her voice appealed piteously for sympathy and a little kindness.
In Chayne's mind there was suddenly painted a picture of the ice-slope on the Aiguille d'Argentière. A girl had moved from step to step, across that slope, looking down its steep glittering incline without a tremor. It was the same girl who now leaned to him and with shaking lips and eyes tortured with fear cried, "I am afraid." By his recollection of that day upon the heights Chayne measured the greatness of her present trouble.
"Why, Sylvia? Why are you afraid?"
For answer she looked toward the open window. Chayne followed her glance and this was what he saw: The level stretch of emerald lawn, the stream running through it and catching in its brown water the red light of the evening sun, the great beech trees casting their broad shadows, the high garden walls with the dusky red of their bricks glowing amongst fruit trees, and within that enclosure pacing up and down, in and out among the shadows of the trees, Garratt Skinner and Walter Hine. Yet that sight she must needs have seen before. Why should it terrify her beyond reason now?
"Do you see?" Sylvia said in a low troubled voice. For once distress had mastered her and she spoke without her usual reticence. "There can be no friendship between those two. No real friendship! You have but to see them side by side to be sure of it. It is pretence."
Yet that too she must have known before. Why then should the pretence now so greatly trouble her? Chayne watched the two men pacing in the garden. Certainly he had never seen them in so intimate a comradeship. Garratt Skinner had passed his arm through Walter Hine's and held him so, plying him with stories, bending down his keen furrowed aquiline face toward him as though he had no thought in the world but to make him his friend and bind him with affection; and Walter Hine looked up and listened and laughed, a vain, weak wisp of a creature, flattered to the skies and defenceless as a rabbit.
"Why the pretence?" said Sylvia. "Why the linked arms? The pretence has grown during these last days. What new thing is intended?" Her eyes were on the garden, and as she looked it seemed that her terror grew. "My father went away a week ago. Since he has returned the pretence has increased. I am afraid! I am afraid!"
Garratt Skinner turned in his walk and led Walter Hine back toward the house. Sylvia shrank from his approach as from something devilish. When he turned again, she drew her breath like one escaped from sudden peril.
"Sylvia! Of what are you afraid?"
"I don't know!" she cried. "That's just the trouble. I don't know!" She clenched her hands together at her breast. Chayne caught them in his and was aware that in one shut palm she held something which she concealed. Her clasp tightened upon it as his hands touched hers. Sylvia had more reason for her fears than she had disclosed. Barstow came no more. There were no more cards, no more bets; and this change taken together with Garratt Skinner's increased friendship added to her apprehensions. She dreaded some new plot more sinister, more terrible than that one of which she was aware.
"If only I knew," she cried. "Oh, if only I knew!"
Archie Parminter had paid one visit to the house, had stayed for one night; and he and Garratt Skinner and Walter Hine had sat up till morning, talking together in the library. Sylvia waking up from a fitful sleep, had heard their voices again and again through the dark hours; and when the dawn was gray, she had heard them coming up to bed as on the first night of her return; and as on that night there was one who stumbled heavily. It was since that night that terror had distracted her.
"I have no longer any power," she said. "Something has happened to destroy my power. I have no longer any influence. Something was done upon that night," and she shivered as though she guessed; and she looked at her clenched hand as though the clue lay hidden in its palm. There lay her great trouble. She had lost her influence over Walter Hine. She had knowledge of the under side of life—yes, but her father had a greater knowledge still. He had used his greater knowledge. Craftily and with a most ingenious subtlety he had destroyed her power, he had blunted her weapons. Hine was attracted by Sylvia, fascinated by her charm, her looks, and the gentle simplicity of her manner. Very well. On the other side Garratt Skinner had held out a lure of greater attractions, greater fascination; and Sylvia was powerless.
"He has changed," Sylvia went on, with her eyes fixed on Walter Hine."Oh, not merely toward me. He has changed physically. Can you understand?He has grown nervous, restless, excitable, a thing of twitching limbs.Oh, and that's not all. I will tell you. This morning it seemed to methat the color of his eyes had changed."
Chayne stared at her. "Sylvia!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, I have not lost my senses," she answered, and she resumed: "I only noticed that there was an alteration at first. I did not see in what the alteration lay. Then I saw. His eyes used to be light in color. This morning they were dark. I looked carefully to make sure, and so I understood. The pupils of his eyes were so dilated that they covered the whole eyeball. Can you think why?" and even as she asked, she looked at that clenched hand of hers as though the answer to that question as well lay hidden there. "I am afraid," she said once more; and upon that Chayne committed the worst of the many indiscretions which had signalized his courtship.
"You are afraid? Sylvia! Then let me take you away!"
At once Sylvia drew back. Had Chayne not spoken, she would have told him all that there was to tell. She was in the mood at this unguarded moment. She would have told him that during these last days Walter Hine had taken to drink once more. She would have opened that clenched fist and showed the thing it hid, even though the thing condemned her father beyond all hope of exculpation. But Chayne had checked her as surely as though he had laid the palm of his hand upon her lips. He would talk of love and flight, and of neither had she any wish to hear. She craved with a great yearning for sympathy and a little kindness. But Chayne was not content to offer what she needed. He would add more, and what he added marred the whole gift for Sylvia. She shook her head, and looking at him with a sad and gentle smile, said:
"Love is for the happy people."
"That is a hard saying, Sylvia," Chayne returned, "and not a true one."
"True to me," said Sylvia, with a deep conviction, and as he advanced to her she raised her hand to keep him off. "No, no," she cried, and had he listened, he might have heard a hint of exasperation in her voice. But he would not be warned.
"You can't go on, living here, without sympathy, without love, without even kindness. Already it is evident. You are ill, and tired. And you think to go on all your life or all your father's life. Sylvia, let me take you away!"
And each unwise word set him further and further from his aim. It seemed to her that there was no help anywhere. Chayne in front of her seemed to her almost as much her enemy as her father, who paced the lawn behind her arm in arm with Walter Hine. She clasped her hands together with a quick sharp movement.
"I will not let you take me away," she cried. "For I do not love you"; and her voice had lost its gentleness and grown cold and hard. Chayne began again, but whether it was with a renewal of his plea, she did not hear. For she broke in upon him quickly:
"Please, let me finish. I am, as you said, a little over-wrought! Just hear me out and leave me to bear my troubles by myself. You will make it easier for me"; she saw that the words hurt her lover. But she did not modify them. She was in the mood to hurt. She had been betrayed by her need of sympathy into speaking words which she would gladly have recalled; she had been caught off her guard and almost unawares; and she resented it. Chayne had told her that she looked ill and tired; and she resented that too. No wonder she looked tired when she had her father with his secret treacheries on one side and an importunate lover upon the other! She thought for a moment or two how best to put what she had still to stay:
"I have probably said to you," she resumed, "more than was right or fair—I mean fair to my father. I have no doubt exaggerated things. I want you to forget what I have said. For it led you into a mistake."
Chayne looked at her in perplexity.
"A mistake?"
"Yes," she answered. She was standing in front of him with her forehead wrinkled and a somber, angry look in her eyes. "A mistake which I must correct. You said that I was living here without kindness. It is not true. My father is kind!" And as Chayne raised his eyes in a mute protest, she insisted on the word. "Yes, kind and thoughtful—thoughtful for others besides myself." A kind of obstinacy forced her on to enlarge upon the topic. "I can give you an instance which will surprise you."
"There is no need," Chayne said, gently, but Sylvia was implacable.
"But there is need," she returned. "I beg you to hear me. When my father and I were at Weymouth we drove one afternoon across the neck of the Chesil beach to Portland."
Chayne looked at Sylvia quickly.
"Yes?" he said, and there was an indefinable change in his voice. He had consented to listen, because she wished it. Now he listened with a keen attention. For a strange thought had crept into his mind.
"We drove up the hill toward the plateau at the top of the island, but as we passed through the village—Fortune's Well I think they call it—my father stopped the carriage at a tobacconist's, and went into the shop. He came out again with some plugs of tobacco—a good many—and got into the carriage. You won't guess why he bought them. I didn't."
"Well?" said Chayne, and now he spoke with suspense. Suspense, too, was visible in his quiet attitude. There was a mystery which for Sylvia's sake he wished to unravel. Why did Gabriel Strood now call himself Garratt Skinner? That was the mystery. But he must unravel it without doing any hurt to Sylvia. He could not go too warily—of that he had been sure, ever since Kenyon had refused to speak of it. There might be some hidden thing which for Sylvia's sake must not be brought to light. Therefore he must find out the truth without help from any one. He wondered whether unconsciously Sylvia herself was going to give him the clue. Was she to tell him what she did not know herself—why Gabriel Strood was now Garratt Skinner? "Well?" he repeated.
"As we continued up the hill," she resumed, "my father cut up the tobacco into small pieces with his pocket knife. 'Why are you doing that?' I asked, and he laughed and said, 'Wait, you will see.' At the top of the hill we got out of the carriage and walked across the open plateau. In front of us, rising high above a little village, stood out a hideous white building. My father asked if I knew what it was. I said I guessed."
"It was the prison," Chayne interrupted, quickly.
"Yes."
"You went to it?"
Upon the answer to the question depended whether or no Chayne was to unravel his mystery, to-day.
"No," replied Sylvia, and Chayne drew a breath. Had she answered "Yes," the suspicion which had formed within his mind must needs be set aside, as clearly and finally disproved. Since she answered "No," the suspicion gathered strength. "We went, however, near to it. We went as close to it as the quarries. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and as we came to the corner of the wall which surrounds the quarries, my father said, 'They have stopped work now.'"
"He knew that?" asked Chayne.
"Yes. We turned into a street which runs down toward the prison. On one side are small houses, on the other the long wall of the Government quarries. The street was empty; only now and then—very seldom—some one passed along it. On the top of the wall, there were sentry-boxes built at intervals, for the warders to overlook the convicts. But these were empty too. The wall is not high; I suppose—in fact my father said—the quarry was deep on the other side."
"Yes," said Chayne, quietly. "And then?"
"Then we walked slowly along the street, and whenever there was no one near, my father threw some tobacco over the wall. 'I don't suppose they have a very enjoyable time,' he said. 'They will be glad to find the tobacco there to-morrow.' We walked up the street and turned and came back, and when we reached the corner he said with a laugh, 'That's all, Sylvia. My pockets are empty.' We walked back to the carriage and drove home again to Weymouth."
Sylvia had finished her story, and the mystery was clear to Chayne. She had told him the secret which she did not know herself. He was sure now why Gabriel Strood had changed his name; he knew now why Gabriel Strood no longer climbed the Alps; and why Kenyon would answer no question as to the disappearance of his friend.
"I have told you this," said Sylvia, "because you accused my father of unkindness and want of thought. Would you have thought of those poor prisoners over there in the quarries? If you had, would you have taken so much trouble just to give them a small luxury? I think they must have blessed the unknown man who thought for them and showed them what so many want—a little sympathy and a little kindness."
Chayne bowed his head.
"Yes," he said, gently. "I was unjust."
Indeed even to himself he acknowledged that Garratt Skinner had shown an unexpected kindness, although he was sure of the reason for the act. He had no doubt that Garratt Skinner had labored in those quarries himself, and perhaps had himself picked up in bygone days, as he stooped over his work, tobacco thrown over the walls by some more fortunate man.
"I am glad you acknowledge that," said Sylvia, but her voice did not relent from its hostility. She stood without further word, expecting him to take his leave. Chayne recollected with how hopeful a spirit he had traveled down from London. His fine diplomacy had after all availed him little. He had gained certainly some unexpected knowledge which convinced him still more thoroughly that the sooner he took Sylvia away from her father and his friends the better it would be. But he was no nearer to his desire. It might be that he was further off than ever.
"You are returning to London?" she asked.
"Yes. I have to call at the War Office to-morrow."
Sylvia had no curiosity as to that visit. She took no interest in it whatever, he noticed with a pang.
"And then?" she asked slowly, as she crossed the hall with him to the door. "You will go home?"
Chayne smiled rather bitterly.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Into Sussex?"
"Yes."
She opened the door, and as he came out on to the steps she looked at him with a thoughtful scrutiny for a few moments. But whether her thoughts portended good or ill for him, he could not tell.
"When I was a boy," he said abruptly, "I used to see from the garden of my house, far away in a dip of the downs, a dark high wall standing up against the sky. I never troubled myself as to how it came to have been built there. But I used to wonder, being a boy, whether it could be scaled or no. One afternoon I rode my pony over to find out, and I discovered—What do you think?—that my wall was a mere hedge just three feet high, no more."
"Well!" said Sylvia.
"Well, I have not forgotten—that's all," he replied.
"Good-by," she said, and he learned no more from her voice than he had done from her looks. He walked away down the lane, and having gone a few yards he looked back. Sylvia was still standing in the doorway, watching him with grave and thoughtful eyes. But there was no invitation to him to return, and turning away again he walked on.
Sylvia went up-stairs to her room. She unclenched her hand at last. In its palm there lay a little phial containing a colorless solution. But there was a label upon the phial, and on the label was written "cocaine." It was that which had struck at her influence over Walter Hine. It was to introduce this drug that Archie Parminter had been brought down from London and the West End clubs.
"It's drunk a good deal in a quiet way," Archie had said, as he made a pretence himself to drink it.
"You leave such drugs to the aristocracy, Walter," Garratt Skinner had chimed in. "Just a taste if you like. But go gently."
Sylvia had not been present. But she conjectured the scene, and her conjecture was not far from the truth. But why? she asked, and again fear took hold of her. "What was to be gained?" There were limits to Sylvia's knowledge of the under side of life. She did not guess.
She turned to her mirror and looked at herself. Yes, she looked tired, she looked ill. But she was not grateful for having the fact pointed out to her. And while she still looked, she heard her father's voice calling her. She shivered, as though her fear once more laid hold on her. Then she locked the bottle of cocaine away in a drawer and ran lightly down the stairs.
Chayne's house stood high upon a slope of the Sussex Downs. Built of stone two centuries ago, it seemed gradually to have taken on the brown color of the hill behind it, subduing itself to the general scheme, even as birds and animals will do; so that strangers who searched for it in the valley discovered it by the upward swirl of smoke from its wide chimneys. On its western side and just beneath the house, there was a cleft in the downs through which the high road ran and in the cleft the houses of a tiny village clustered even as at the foot of some old castle in Picardy. On the east the great ridge with its shadow-holding hollows, its rounded gorse-strewn slopes of grass, rolled away for ten miles and then dipped suddenly to the banks of the River Arun. The house faced the south, and from its high-terraced garden, a great stretch of park and forest land was visible, where amidst the green and russet of elm and beach, a cluster of yews set here and there gave the illusion of a black and empty space. Beyond the forest land a lower ridge of hills rose up, and over that ridge one saw the spires of Chichester and the level flats of Selsea reaching to the sea.
Into this garden Chayne came on the next afternoon, and as he walked along its paths alone he could almost fancy that his dead father paced with the help of his stick at his side, talking, as had been his wont, of this or that improvement needed by the farms, pointing out to him a meadow in the hollow beneath which might soon be coming into the market, and always ending up with the same plea.
"Isn't it time, Hilary, that you married and came home to look after it all yourself?"
Chayne had turned a deaf ear to that plea, but it made its appeal to him to-night. Wherever his eyes rested, he recaptured something of his boyhood; the country-side was alive with memories. He looked south, and remembered how the perished cities of history had acquired reality for him by taking on the aspect of Chichester lying low there on the flats; and how the spires of the fabled towns of his storybooks had caught the light of the setting sun, just as did now the towers of the cathedral. Eastward, in the dip between the shoulder of the downs, and the trees of Arundel Park, a long black hedge stood out with a remarkable definition against the sky—the hedge of which he had spoken to Sylvia—the great dark wall of brambles guarding the precincts of the Sleeping Beauty. He recalled the adventurous day when he had first ridden alone upon his pony along the great back of the downs and had come down to it through a sylvan country of silence and ferns and open spaces; and had discovered it to be no more than a hedge waist-high. The dusk came upon him as he loitered in that solitary garden; the lights shone out in cottage and farm-house; and more closely still his memories crowded about him weaving spells. Some one to share them with! Chayne had no need to wait for old age before he learnt the wisdom of Michel Revailloud. For his heart leaped now, as he dreamed of exploring once more with Sylvia at his side the enchanted country of his boyhood; gallops in the quiet summer mornings along that still visible track across the downs, by which the Roman legions had marched in the old days from London straight as a die to Chichester; winter days with the hounds; a rush on windy afternoons in a sloop-rigged boat down the Arun to Littlehampton. Chayne's heart leaped with a passionate longing as he dreamed, and sank as he turned again to the blank windows of the empty house.
He dined alone, and while he dined evoked Sylvia's presence at the table, setting her, not at the far end, but at the side and close, so that a hand might now and then touch hers; calling up into her face her slow hesitating smile; seeing her still gray eyes grow tender; in a word watching the Madonna change into the woman. He went into the library where, since the night had grown chilly, a fire was lit. It was a place of comfort, with high bookshelves, deep-cushioned chairs, and dark curtains. But, no less than the dining-room it needed another presence, and lacking that lacked everything. It needed the girl with the tired and terror-haunted face. Here, surely the fear would die out of her soul, the eyes would lose their shadows, the feet regain the lightness of their step.
Chayne took down his favorite books, but they failed him. Between the pages and his eyes one face would shape itself. He looked into the fire and sought as of old to picture in the flames some mountain on which his hopes were set and to discover the right line for its ascent. But even that pastime brought no solace for his discontent. The house oppressed him. It was empty, it was silent. He drew aside the curtains and looking down into the valley through the clear night air watched the lights in cottage and farm with the envy born of his loneliness.
In spite of the brave words he had used, he wondered to-night whether the three-foot hedge was not after all to prove the unassailable wall. And it was important that he should know. For if it were so, why then he had not called at the War Office in vain. A proposal had been made to him—that he should join a commission for the delimitation of a distant frontier. A year's work and an immediate departure—those were the conditions. Within two days he must make up his mind—within ten days he must leave England.
Chayne pondered over the decision which he must make. If he had lost Sylvia, here was the mission to accept. For it meant complete severance, a separation not to be measured by miles alone, but by the nature of the work, and the comrades, and even the character of the vegetation. He went to bed in doubt, thinking that the morning might bring him counsel. It brought him a letter from Sylvia instead.
The letter was long; it was written in haste, it was written in great distress, so that words which were rather unkind were written down. But the message of the letter was clear. Chayne was not to come again to the House of the Running Water; nor to the little house in London when she returned to it. They were not to meet again. She did not wish for it.
Chayne burnt the letter as soon as he had read it, taking no offence at the hasty words. "I seem to have worried her more than I thought," he said to himself with a wistful smile. "I am sorry," and again as the sparks died out from the black ashes of the letter he repeated: "Poor little girl. I am very sorry."
So the house would always be silent and empty.
Sylvia had written the letter in haste on the very evening of Chayne's visit, and had hurried out to post it in fear lest she might change her mind in the morning. But in the morning she was only aware of a great lightness of spirit. She could now devote herself to the work of her life; and for two long tiring days she kept Walter Hine at her side. But now he sought to avoid her. The little energy he had ever had was gone, he alternated between exhilaration and depression; he preferred, it seemed, to be alone. For two days, however, Sylvia persevered, and on the third her lightness of spirit unaccountably deserted her.
She drove with Walter Hine that morning, and something of his own irritability seemed to have passed into her; so that he turned to her and asked:
"What have I done? Aren't you pleased with me? Why are you angry?"
"I am not angry," she replied, turning her great gray eyes upon him. "But if you wish to know, I miss something."
So much she owned. She missed something, and she knew very well what it was that she missed. Even as Chayne in his Sussex home had ached to know that the house lacked a particular presence, so it began to be with Sylvia in Dorsetshire.
"Yet he has been absent for a longer time," she argued with herself, "and I have not missed him. Indeed, I have been glad of his absence." And the answer came quickly from her thoughts.
"At any time you could have called him to your side, and you knew it. Now you have sent him away for always."
During the week the sense of loss, the feeling that everything was unbearably incomplete, grew stronger and stronger within her. She had no heart for the losing battle in which she was engaged. A dangerous question began to force itself forward in her mind whenever her eyes rested upon Walter Hine. "Was he worth while?" she asked herself: though as yet she did not define all that the "while" connoted. The question was most prominent in her mind on the seventh day after the letter had been sent. She had persuaded Walter Hine to mount with her on to the down behind the house; they came to the great White Horse, and Hine, pleading fatigue, a plea which during these last days had been ever on his lips, flung himself down upon the grass. For a little time Sylvia sat idly watching the great battle ships at firing-practice in the Bay. It was an afternoon of August; a light haze hung in the still air softening the distant promontories; and on the waveless sparkling sea the great ships, coal-black to the eye, circled about the targets, with now and then a roar of thunder and a puff of smoke, like some monstrous engines of heat—heat stifling and oppressive. By sheer contrast, Sylvia began to dream of the cool glaciers; and the Chalet de Lognan suddenly stood visible before her eyes. She watched the sunlight die off the red rocks of the Chardonnet, the evening come with silent feet across the snow, and the starlit night follow close upon its heels; night fled as she dreamed. She saw the ice-slope on the Aiguille d'Argentière, she could almost hear the chip-chip of the axes as the steps were cut and the perpetual hiss as the ice-fragments streamed down the slope. Then she looked toward Walter Hine with the speculative inquiry which had come so often into her eyes of late. And as she looked, she saw him furtively take from a pocket a tabloid or capsule and slip it secretly into his mouth.
"How long have you been taking cocaine?" she asked, suddenly.
Walter Hine flushed scarlet and turned to her with a shrinking look.
"I don't," he stammered.
"Yet you left a bottle of the drug where I found it."
"That was not mine," said he, still more confused. "That was ArchieParminter's. He left it behind."
"Yes," said Sylvia, finding here a suspicion confirmed. "But he left it for you?"
"And if I did take it," said Hine, turning irritably to her, "what can it matter to you? I believe that what your father says is true."
"What does he say?"
"That you care for Captain Chayne, and that it's no use for any one else to think of you."
Sylvia started.
"Oh, he says that!"
She understood now one of the methods of the new intrigue. Sylvia was in love with Chayne; therefore Walter Hine may console himself with cocaine. It was not Garratt Skinner who suggested it. Oh, no! But Archie Parminter is invited for the night, takes the drug himself, or pretends to take it, praises it, describes how the use of it has grown in the West End and amongst the clubs, and then conveniently leaves the drug behind, and no doubt supplies it as it is required.
Sylvia began to dilate upon its ill-effects, and suddenly broke off. A great disgust was within her and stopped her speech. She got to her feet. "Let us go home," she said, and she went very quickly down the hill. When she came to the house she ran up-stairs to her room, locked the door and flung herself upon her bed. Walter Hine, her father, their plots and intrigues, were swept clean from her mind as of no account. Her struggle for the mastery became unimportant in her thoughts—a folly, a waste. For what her father had said was true; she cared for Chayne. And what she herself had said to Chayne when first he came to the House of the Running Water was no less true. "If I loved, I think nothing else would count at all except that I loved."
She had judged herself aright. She knew that, as she lay prone upon her bed, plunged in misery, while the birds called upon the boughs in the garden and the mill stream filled the room with its leaping music. In a few minutes a servant knocked upon the door and told her that tea was ready in the library; but she returned no answer. And in a few minutes more—or so it seemed, but meanwhile the dusk had come—there came another knock and she was told that dinner had been served. But to that message again she returned no answer. The noises of the busy day ceased in the fields, the birds were hushed upon the branches, quiet and darkness took and refreshed the world. Only the throbbing music of the stream beat upon the ears, and beat with a louder significance, since all else was still. Sylvia lay staring wide-eyed into the darkness. To the murmur of this music, in perhaps this very room, she had been born. "Why," she asked piteously, "why?" Of what use was it that she must suffer?
Of all the bad hours of her life, these were the worst. For the yearning for happiness and love throbbed and cried at her heart, louder and louder, just as the music of the stream swelled to importance with the coming of the night. And she learned that she had had both love and happiness within her grasp and that she had thrown them away for a shadow. She thought of the letter which she had written, recalling its phrases with a sinking heart.
"No man could forgive them. I must have been mad," she said, and she huddled herself upon her bed and wept aloud.
She ran over in her mind the conversations which she and Hilary Chayne had exchanged, and each recollection accused her of impatience and paid a tribute to his gentleness. On the very first day he had asked her to go with him and her heart cried out now:
"Why didn't I go?"
He had been faithful and loyal ever since, and she had called his faithfulness importunity and his loyalty a humiliation. She struck a match and looked at her watch and by habit wound it up. And she drearily wondered on how many, many nights she would have to wind it up and speculate in ignorance what he, her lover, was doing and in what corner of the world, before the end of her days was reached. What would become of her? she asked. And she raised the corner of a curtain and glanced at the bright picture of what might have been. And glancing at it, the demand for happiness raised her in revolt.
She lit her candle and wrote another letter, of the shortest. It contained but these few words:
"Oh, please forgive me! Come back and forgive. Oh, you must!—SYLVIA."