The gymnasium itself was a source of immense surprise to both Francis and Wilmore. It stretched along the entire top storey of a long block of buildings, and was elaborately fitted with bathrooms, a restaurant and a reading-room. The trapezes, bars, and all the usual appointments were of the best possible quality. The manager, a powerful-looking man dressed with the precision of the prosperous city magnate, came out of his office to greet them.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” he enquired.
“First of all,” Francis replied, “accept our heartiest congratulations upon your wonderful gymnasium.”
The man bowed.
“It is the best appointed in the country, sir,” he said proudly. “Absolutely no expense has been spared in fitting it up. Every one of our appliances is of the latest possible description, and our bathrooms are an exact copy of those in a famous Philadelphia club.”
“What is the subscription?” Wilmore asked.
“Five shillings a year.”
“And how many members?”
“Two thousand.”
The manager smiled as he saw his two visitors exchange puzzled glances.
“Needless to say, sir,” he added, “we are not self-supporting. We have very generous patrons.”
“I lave heard my brother speak of this place as being quite wonderful,” Wilmore remarked, “but I had no idea that it was upon this scale.”
“Is your brother a member?” the man asked.
“He is. To tell you the truth, we came here to ask you a question about him.”
“What is his name?”
“Reginald Wilmore. He was here, I think, last Wednesday night.”
While Wilmore talked, Francis watched. He was conscious of a curious change in the man's deportment at the mention of Reginald Wilmore's name. From being full of bumptious, almost condescending good-nature, his expression had changed into one of stony incivility. There was something almost sinister in the tightly-closed lips and the suspicious gleam in his eyes.
“What questions did you wish to ask?” he demanded.
“Mr. Reginald Wilmore has disappeared,” Francis explained simply. “He came here on leaving the office last Monday. He has not been seen or heard of since.”
“Well?” the manager asked.
“We came to ask whether you happen to remember his being here on that evening, and whether he gave any one here any indication of his future movements. We thought, perhaps, that the instructor who was with him might have some information.”
“Not a chance,” was the uncompromising reply. “I remember Mr. Wilmore being here perfectly. He was doing double turns on the high bar. I saw more of him myself than any one. I was with him when he went down to have his swim.”
“Did he seem in his usual spirits?” Wilmore ventured.
“I don't notice what spirits my pupils are in,” the man answered, a little insolently. “There was nothing the matter with him so far as I know.”
“He didn't say anything about going away?”
“Not a word. You'll excuse me, gentlemen—”
“One moment,” Francis interrupted. “We came here ourselves sooner than send a detective. Enquiries are bound to be made as to the young man's disappearance, and we have reason to know that this is the last place at which he was heard of. It is not unreasonable, therefore, is it, that we should come to you for information?”
“Reasonable or unreasonable, I haven't got any,” the man declared gruffly. “If Mr. Wilmore's cleared out, he's cleared out for some reason of his own. It's not my business and I don't know anything about it.”
“You understand,” Francis persisted, “that our interest in young Mr. Wilmore is entirely a friendly one?”
“I don't care whether it's friendly or unfriendly. I tell you I don't know anything about him. And,” he added, pressing his thumb upon the button for the lift, “I'll wish you two gentlemen good afternoon. I've business to attend to.”
Francis looked at him curiously.
“Haven't I seen you somewhere before?” he asked, a little abruptly.
“I can't say. My name is John Maclane.”
“Heavy-weight champion about seven years ago?”
“I was,” the man acknowledged. “You may have seen me in the ring. Now, gentlemen, if you please.”
The lift had stopped opposite to them. The manager's gesture of dismissal was final.
“I am sorry, Mr. Maclane, if we have annoyed you with our questions,” Francis said. “I wish you could remember a little more of Mr. Wilmore's last visit.”
“Well, I can't, and that's all there is to it,” was the blunt reply. “As to being annoyed, I am only annoyed when my time's wasted. Take these gents down, Jim. Good afternoon!”
The door was slammed to and they shot downwards. Francis turned to the lift man.
“Do you know a Mr. Wilmore who comes here sometimes?” he asked.
“Not likely!” the man scoffed. “They're comin' and goin' all the time from four o'clock in the afternoon till eleven at night. If I heard a name I shouldn't remember it. This way out, gentlemen.”
Wilmore's hand was in his pocket but the man turned deliberately away. They walked out into the street.
“For downright incivility,” the former observed, “commend me to the attendants of a young men's gymnasium!”
Francis smiled.
“All the same, old fellow,” he said, “if you worry for another five minutes about Reggie, you're an ass.”
At six o'clock that evening Francis turned his two-seater into a winding drive bordered with rhododendrons, and pulled up before the porch of a charming two-storied bungalow, covered with creepers, and with French-windows opening from every room onto the lawns. A man-servant who had heard the approach of the car was already standing in the porch. Sir Timothy, in white flannels and a panama hat, strolled across the lawn to greet his approaching guest.
“Excellently timed, my young friend,” he said. “You will have time for your first cocktail before you change. My daughter you know, of course. Lady Cynthia Milton I think you also know.”
Francis shook hands with the two girls who were lying under the cedar tree. Margaret Hilditch seemed to him more wonderful than ever in her white serge boating clothes. Lady Cynthia, who had apparently just arrived from some function in town, was still wearing muslin and a large hat.
“I am always afraid that Mr. Ledsam will have forgotten me,” she observed, as she gave him her hand. “The last time I met you was at the Old Bailey, when you had been cheating the gallows of a very respectable wife murderer. Poynings, I think his name was.”
“I remember it perfectly,” Francis assented. “We danced together that night, I remember, at your aunt's, Mrs. Malcolm's, and you were intensely curious to know how Poynings had spent his evening.”
“Lady Cynthia's reminder is perhaps a little unfortunate,” Sir Timothy observed. “Mr. Ledsam is no longer the last hope of the enterprising criminal. He has turned over a new leaf. To secure the services of his silver tongue, you have to lay at his feet no longer the bags of gold from your ill-gotten gains but the white flower of the blameless life.”
“This is all in the worst possible taste,” Margaret Hilditch declared, in her cold, expressionless tone. “You might consider my feelings.”
Lady Cynthia only laughed.
“My dear Margaret,” she said, “if I thought that you had any, I should never believe that you were your father's daughter. Here's to them, anyway,” she added, accepting the cocktail from the tray which the butler had just brought out. “Mr. Ledsam, are you going to attach yourself to me, or has Margaret annexed you?”
“I have offered myself to Mrs. Hilditch,” Francis rejoined promptly, “but so far I have made no impression.”
“Try her with a punt and a concertina after dinner,” Lady Cynthia suggested. “After all, I came down here to better my acquaintance with my host. You flirted with me disgracefully when I was a debutante, and have never taken any notice of me since. I hate infidelity in a man. Sir Timothy, I shall devote myself to you. Can you play a concertina?”
“Where the higher forms of music are concerned,” he replied, “I have no technical ability. I should prefer to sit at your feet.”
“While I punt, I suppose?”
“There are backwaters,” he suggested.
Lady Cynthia sipped her cocktail appreciatively.
“I wonder how it is,” she observed, “that in these days, although we have become callous to everything else in life, cocktails and flirtations still attract us. You shall take me to a backwater after dinner, Sir Timothy. I shall wear my silver-grey and take an armful of those black cushions from the drawing-room. In that half light, there is no telling what success I may not achieve.”
Sir Timothy sighed.
“Alas!” he said, “before dinner is over you will probably have changed your mind.”
“Perhaps so,” she admitted, “but you must remember that Mr. Ledsam is my only alternative, and I am not at all sure that he likes me. I am not sufficiently Victorian for his taste.”
The dressing-bell rang. Sir Timothy passed his arm through Francis'.
“The sentimental side of my domain;” he said, “the others may show you. My rose garden across the stream has been very much admired. I am now going to give you a glimpse of The Walled House, an edifice the possession of which has made me more or less famous.”
He led the way through a little shrubbery, across a further strip of garden and through a door in a high wall, which he opened with a key attached to his watch-chain. They were in an open park now, studded with magnificent trees, in the further corner of which stood an imposing mansion, with a great domed roof in the centre, and broad stone terraces, one of which led down to the river. The house itself was an amazingly blended mixture of old and new, with great wings supported by pillars thrown out on either side. It seemed to have been built without regard to any definite period of architecture, and yet to have attained a certain coherency—a far-reaching structure, with long lines of outbuildings. In the park itself were a score or more of horses, and in the distance beyond a long line of loose boxes with open doors. Even as they stood there, a grey sorrel mare had trotted up to their side and laid her head against Sir Timothy's shoulder. He caressed her surreptitiously, affecting not to notice the approach of other animals from all quarters.
“Let me introduce you to The Walled House,” its owner observed, “so called, I imagine, because this wall, which is a great deal older than you or I, completely encloses the estate. Of course, you remember the old house, The Walled Palace, they called it? It belonged for many years to the Lynton family, and afterwards to the Crown.”
“I remember reading of your purchase,” Francis said, “and of course I remember the old mansion. You seem to have wiped it out pretty effectually.”
“I was obliged to play the vandal,” his host confessed. “In its previous state, the house was picturesque but uninhabitable. As you see it now, it is an exact reproduction of the country home of one of the lesser known of the Borgias—Sodina, I believe the lady's name was. You will find inside some beautiful arches, and a sense of space which all modern houses lack. It cost me a great deal of money, and it is inhabited, when I am in Europe, about once a fortnight. You know the river name for it? 'Timothy's Folly!”'
“But what on earth made you build it, so long as you don't care to live there?” Francis enquired.
Sir Timothy smiled reflectively.
“Well,” he explained, “I like sometimes to entertain, and I like to entertain, when I do, on a grand scale. In London, if I give a party, the invitations are almost automatic. I become there a very insignificant link in the chain of what is known as Society, and Society practically helps itself to my entertainment, and sees that everything is done according to rule. Down here things are entirely different. An invitation to The Walled House is a personal matter. Society has nothing whatever to do with my functions here. The reception-rooms, too, are arranged according to my own ideas. I have, as you may have heard, the finest private gymnasium in England. The ballroom and music-room and private theatre, too, are famous.”
“And do you mean to say that you keep that huge place empty?” Francis asked curiously.
“I have a suite of rooms there which I occasionally occupy,” Sir Timothy replied, “and there are always thirty or forty servants and attendants of different sorts who have their quarters there. I suppose that my daughter and I would be there at the present moment but for the fact that we own this cottage. Both she and I, for residential purposes, prefer the atmosphere there.”
“I scarcely wonder at it,” Francis agreed.
They were surrounded now by various quadrupeds. As well as the horses, half-a-dozen of which were standing patiently by Sir Timothy's side, several dogs had made their appearance and after a little preliminary enthusiasm had settled down at his feet. He leaned over and whispered something in the ear of the mare who had come first. She trotted off, and the others followed suit in a curious little procession. Sir Timothy watched them, keeping his head turned away from Francis.
“You recognise the mare the third from the end?” he pointed out. “That is the animal I bought in Covent Garden. You see how she has filled out?”
“I should never have recognised her,” the other confessed.
“Even Nero had his weaknesses,” Sir Timothy remarked, waving the dogs away. “My animals' quarters are well worth a visit, if you have time. There is a small hospital, too, which is quite up to date.”
“Do any of the horses work at all?” Francis asked.
Sir Timothy smiled.
“I will tell you a very human thing about my favourites,” he said. “In the gardens on the other side of the house we have very extensive lawns, and my head groom thought he would make use of one of a my horses who had recovered from a serious accident and was really quite a strong beast, for one of the machines. He found the idea quite a success, and now he no sooner appears in the park with a halter than, instead of stampeding, practically every one of those horses comes cantering up with the true volunteering spirit. The one which he selects, arches his neck and goes off to work with a whole string of the others following. Dodsley—that is my groom's name—tells me that he does a great deal more mowing now than he need, simply because they worry him for the work. Gratitude, you see, Mr. Ledsam, sheer gratitude. If you were to provide a dozen alms-houses for your poor dependants, I wonder how many of them would be anxious to mow your lawn.... Come, let me show you your room now.”
They passed back through the postern-gate into the gardens of The Sanctuary. Sir Timothy led the way towards the house.
“I am glad that you decided to spend the night, Mr. Ledsam,” he said. “The river sounds a terribly hackneyed place to the Londoner, but it has beauties which only those who live with it can discover. Mind your head. My ceilings are low.”
Francis followed his host along many passages, up and down stairs, until he reached a little suite of rooms at the extreme end of the building. The man-servant who had unpacked his bag stood waiting. Sir Timothy glanced around critically.
“Small but compact,” he remarked. “There is a little sitting-room down that stair, and a bathroom beyond. If the flowers annoy you, throw them out of the window. And if you prefer to bathe in the river to-morrow morning, Brooks here will show you the diving pool. I am wearing a short coat myself to-night, but do as you please. We dine at half-past eight.”
Sir Timothy disappeared with a courteous little inclination of the head. Francis dismissed the manservant at once as being out of keeping with his quaint and fascinating surroundings. The tiny room with its flowers, its perfume of lavender, its old-fashioned chintzes, and its fragrant linen, might still have been a room in a cottage. The sitting-room, with its veranda looking down upon the river, was provided with cigars, whisky and soda and cigarettes; a bookcase, with a rare copy of Rabelais, an original Surtees, a large paper Decameron, and a few other classics. Down another couple of steps was a perfectly white bathroom, with shower and plunge. Francis wandered from room to room, and finally threw himself into a chair on the veranda to smoke a cigarette. From the river below him came now and then the sound of voices. Through the trees on his right he could catch a glimpse, here and there, of the strange pillars and green domed roof of the Borghese villa.
It was one of those faultless June evenings when the only mission of the faintly stirring breeze seems to be to carry perfumes from garden to garden and to make the lightest of music amongst the rustling leaves. The dinner-table had been set out of doors, underneath the odorous cedar-tree. Above, the sky was an arc of the deepest blue through which the web of stars had scarcely yet found its way. Every now and then came the sound of the splash of oars from the river; more rarely still, the murmur of light voices as a punt passed up the stream. The little party at The Sanctuary sat over their coffee and liqueurs long after the fall of the first twilight, till the points of their cigarettes glowed like little specks of fire through the enveloping darkness. Conversation had been from the first curiously desultory, edited, in a way, Francis felt, for his benefit. There was an atmosphere about his host and Lady Cynthia, shared in a negative way by Margaret Hilditch, which baffled Francis. It seemed to establish more than a lack of sympathy—to suggest, even, a life lived upon a different plane. Yet every now and then their references to everyday happenings were trite enough. Sir Timothy had assailed the recent craze for drugs, a diatribe to which Lady Cynthia had listened in silence for reasons which Francis could surmise.
“If one must soothe the senses,” Sir Timothy declared, “for the purpose of forgetting a distasteful or painful present, I cannot see why the average mind does not turn to the contemplation of beauty in some shape or other. A night like to-night is surely sedative enough. Watch these lights, drink in these perfumes, listen to the fall and flow of the water long enough, and you would arrive at precisely the same mental inertia as though you had taken a dose of cocaine, with far less harmful an aftermath.”
Lady Cynthia shrugged her shoulders.
“Cocaine is in one's dressing-room,” she objected, “and beauty is hard to seek in Grosvenor Square.”
“The common mistake of all men,” Sir Timothy continued, “and women, too, for the matter of that, is that we will persist in formulating doctrines for other people. Every man or woman is an entity of humanity, with a separate heaven and a separate hell. No two people can breathe the same air in the same way, or see the same picture with the same eyes.”
Lady Cynthia rose to her feet and shook out the folds of her diaphanous gown, daring alike in its shapelessness and scantiness. She lit a cigarette and laid her hand upon Sir Timothy's arm.
“Come,” she said, “must I remind you of your promise? You are to show me the stables at The Walled House before it is dark.”
“You would see them better in the morning,” he reminded her, rising with some reluctance to his feet.
“Perhaps,” she answered, “but I have a fancy to see them now.”
Sir Timothy looked back at the table.
“Margaret,” he said, “will you look after Mr. Ledsam for a little time? You will excuse us, Ledsam? We shall not be gone long.”
They moved away together towards the shrubbery and the door in the wall behind. Francis resumed his seat.
“Are you not also curious to penetrate the mysteries behind the wall, Mr. Ledsam?” Margaret asked.
“Not so curious but that I would much prefer to remain here,” he answered.
“With me?”
“With you.”
She knocked the ash from her cigarette. She was looking directly at him, and he fancied that there was a gleam of curiosity in her beautiful eyes. There was certainly a little more abandon about her attitude. She was leaning back in a corner of her high-backed chair, and her gown, although it lacked the daring of Lady Cynthia's, seemed to rest about her like a cloud of blue-grey smoke.
“What a curious meal!” she murmured. “Can you solve a puzzle for me, Mr. Ledsam?”
“I would do anything for you that I could,” he answered.
“Tell me, then, why my father asked you here to-night? I can understand his bringing you to the opera, that was just a whim of the moment, but an invitation down here savours of deliberation. Studiously polite though you are to one another, one is conscious all the time of the hostility beneath the surface.”
“I think that so far as your father is concerned, it is part of his peculiar disposition,” Francis replied. “You remember he once said that he was tired of entertaining his friends—that there was more pleasure in having an enemy at the board.”
“Are you an enemy, Mr. Ledsam?” she asked curiously.
He rose a little abruptly to his feet, ignoring her question. There were servants hovering in the background.
“Will you walk with me in the gardens?” he begged. “Or may I take you upon the river?”
She rose to her feet. For a moment she seemed to hesitate.
“The river, I think,” she decided. “Will you wait for three minutes while I get a wrap. You will find some punts moored to the landing-stage there in the stream. I like the very largest and most comfortable.”
Francis strolled to the edge of the stream, and made his choice of punts. Soon a servant appeared with his arms full of cushions, and a moment or two later, Margaret herself, wrapped in an ermine cloak. She smiled a little deprecatingly as she picked her way across the lawn.
“Don't laugh at me for being such a chilly mortal, please,” she enjoined. “And don't be afraid that I am going to propose a long expedition. I want to go to a little backwater in the next stream.”
She settled herself in the stern and they glided down the narrow thoroughfare. The rose bushes from the garden almost lapped the water as they passed. Behind, the long low cottage, the deserted dinner-table, the smooth lawn with its beds of scarlet geraniums and drooping lilac shrubs in the background, seemed like a scene from fairyland, to attain a perfection of detail unreal, almost theatrical.
“To the right when you reach the river, please,” she directed. “You will find there is scarcely any current. We turn up the next stream.”
There was something almost mysterious, a little impressive, about the broad expanse of river into which they presently turned. Opposite were woods and then a sloping lawn. From a house hidden in the distance they heard the sound of a woman singing. They even caught the murmurs of applause as she concluded. Then there was silence, only the soft gurgling of the water cloven by the punt pole. They glided past the front of the great unlit house, past another strip of woodland, and then up a narrow stream.
“To the left here,” she directed, “and then stop.”
They bumped against the bank. The little backwater into which they had turned seemed to terminate in a bed of lilies whose faint fragrance almost enveloped them. The trees on either side made a little arch of darkness.
“Please ship your pole and listen,” Margaret said dreamily. “Make yourself as comfortable as you can. There are plenty of cushions behind you. This is where I come for silence.”
Francis obeyed her orders without remark. For a few moments, speech seemed impossible. The darkness was so intense that although he was acutely conscious of her presence there, only a few feet away, nothing but the barest outline of her form was visible. The silence which she had brought him to seek was all around them. There was just the faintest splash of water from the spot where the stream and the river met, the distant barking of a dog, the occasional croaking of a frog from somewhere in the midst of the bed of lilies. Otherwise the silence and the darkness were like a shroud. Francis leaned forward in his place. His hands, which gripped the sides of the punt, were hot. The serenity of the night mocked him.
“So this is your paradise,” he said, a little hoarsely.
She made no answer. Her silence seemed to him more thrilling than words. He leaned forward. His hands fell upon the soft fur which encompassed her. They rested there. Still she did not speak. He tightened his grasp, moved further forward, the passion surging through his veins, his breath almost failing him. He was so near now that he heard her breathing, saw her face, as pale as ever. Her lips were a little parted, her eyes looked out, as it seemed to him, half in fear, half in hope. He bent lower still. She neither shrank away nor invited him.
“Dear!” he whispered.
Her arms stole from underneath the cloak, her fingers rested upon his shoulders. He scarcely knew whether it was a caress or whether she were holding him from her. In any case it was too late. With a little sob of passion his lips were pressed to hers. Even as she closed her eyes, the scent of the lilies seemed to intoxicate him.
He was back in his place without conscious movement. His pulses were quivering, the passion singing in his blood, the joy of her faint caress living proudly in his memory. It had been the moment of his life, and yet even now he felt sick at heart with fears, with the torment of her passiveness. She had lain there in his arms, he had felt the thrill of her body, some quaint inspiration had told him that she had sought for joy in that moment and had not wholly failed. Yet his anxiety was tumultuous, overwhelming. Then she spoke, and his heart leaped again. Her voice was more natural. It was not a voice which he had ever heard before.
“Give me a cigarette, please—and I want to go back.”
He leaned over her again, struck a match with trembling fingers and gave her the cigarette. She smiled at him very faintly.
“Please go back now,” she begged. “Smoke yourself, take me home slowly and say nothing.”
He obeyed, but his knees were shaking when he stood up. Slowly, a foot at a time, they passed from the mesh of the lilies out into the broad stream. Almost as they did so, the yellow rim of the moon came up over the low hills. As they turned into their own stream, the light was strong enough for him to see her face. She lay there like a ghost, her eyes half closed, the only touch of colour in the shining strands of her beautiful hair. She roused herself a little as they swung around. He paused, leaning upon the pole.
“You are not angry?” he asked.
“No, I am not angry,” she answered. “Why should I be? But I cannot talk to you about it tonight.”
They glided to the edge of the landing-stage. A servant appeared and secured the punt.
“Is Sir Timothy back yet?” Margaret enquired.
“Not yet, madam.”
She turned to Francis.
“Please go and have a whisky and soda in the smoking-room,” she said, pointing to the open French windows. “I am going to my favourite seat. You will find me just across the bridge there.”
He hesitated, filled with a passionate disinclination to leave her side even for a moment. She seemed to understand but she pointed once more to the room.
“I should like very much,” she added, “to be alone for five minutes. If you will come and find me then—please!”
Francis stepped through the French windows into the smoking-room, where all the paraphernalia for satisfying thirst were set out upon the sideboard. He helped himself to whisky and soda and drank it absently, with his eyes fixed upon the clock. In five minutes he stepped once more back into the gardens, soft and brilliant now in the moonlight. As he did so, he heard the click of the gate in the wall, and footsteps. His host, with Lady Cynthia upon his arm, came into sight and crossed the lawn towards him. Francis, filled though his mind was with other thoughts, paused for a moment and glanced towards them curiously. Lady Cynthia seemed for a moment to have lost all her weariness. Her eyes were very bright, she walked with a new spring in her movements. Even her voice, as she addressed Francis, seemed altered.
“Sir Timothy has been showing me some of the wonders of his villa—do you call it a villa or a palace?” she asked.
“It is certainly not a palace,” Sir Timothy protested, “and I fear that it has scarcely the atmosphere of a villa. It is an attempt to combine certain ideas of my own with the requirements of modern entertainment. Come and have a drink with us, Ledsam.”
“I have just had one,” Francis replied. “Mrs. Hilditch is in the rose garden and I am on my way to join her.”
He passed on and the two moved towards the open French windows. He crossed the rustic bridge that led into the flower garden, turned down the pergola and came to a sudden standstill before the seat which Margaret had indicated. It was empty, but in the corner lay the long-stalked lily which she had picked in the backwater. He stood there for a moment, transfixed. There were other seats and chairs in the garden, but he knew before he started his search that it was in vain. She had gone. The flower, drooping a little now though the stalk was still wet with the moisture of the river, seemed to him like her farewell.
Francis was surprised, when he descended for breakfast the next morning, to find the table laid for one only. The butler who was waiting, handed him the daily papers and wheeled the electric heater to his side.
“Is no one else breakfasting?” Francis asked.
“Sir Timothy and Mrs. Hilditch are always served in their rooms, sir. Her ladyship is taking her coffee upstairs.”
Francis ate his breakfast, glanced through the Times, lit a cigarette and went round to the garage for his car. The butler met him as he drove up before the porch.
“Sir Timothy begs you to excuse him this morning, sir,” he announced. “His secretary has arrived from town with a very large correspondence which they are now engaged upon.”
“And Mrs. Hilditch?” Francis ventured.
“I have not seen her maid this morning, sir,” the man replied, “but Mrs. Hilditch never rises before midday. Sir Timothy hopes that you slept well, sir, and would like you to sign the visitors' book.”
Francis signed his name mechanically, and was turning away when Lady Cynthia called to him from the stairs. She was dressed for travelling and followed by a maid, carrying her dressing-case.
“Will you take me up to town, Mr. Ledsam?” she asked.
“Delighted,” he answered.
Their dressing-cases were strapped together behind and Lady Cynthia sank into the cushions by his side. They drove away from the house, Francis with a backward glance of regret. The striped sun-blinds had been lowered over all the windows, thrushes and blackbirds were twittering on the lawn, the air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, a boatman was busy with the boats. Out beyond, through the trees, the river wound its placid way.
“Quite a little paradise,” Lady Cynthia murmured.
“Delightful,” her companion assented. “I suppose great wealth has its obligations, but why any human being should rear such a structure as what he calls his Borghese villa, when he has a charming place like that to live in, I can't imagine.”
Her silence was significant, almost purposeful. She unwound the veil from her motoring turban, took it off altogether and attached it to the cushions of the car with a hatpin.
“There,” she said, leaning back, “you can now gaze upon a horrible example to the young women of to-day. You can see the ravages which late hours, innumerable cocktails, a thirst for excitement, a contempt of the simple pleasures of life, have worked upon my once comely features. I was quite good-looking, you know, in the days you first knew me.”
“You were the most beautiful debutante of your season,” he agreed.
“What do you think of me now?” she asked.
She met his gaze without flinching. Her face was unnaturally thin, with disfiguring hollows underneath her cheekbones; her lips lacked colour; even her eyes were lustreless. Her hair seemed to lack brilliancy. Only her silken eyebrows remained unimpaired, and a certain charm of expression which nothing seemed able to destroy.
“You look tired,” he said.
“Be honest, my dear man,” she rejoined drily. “I am a physical wreck, dependent upon cosmetics for the looks which I am still clever enough to palm off on the uninitiated.”
“Why don't you lead a quieter life?” he asked. “A month or so in the country would put you all right.”
She laughed a little hardly. Then for a moment she looked at him appraisingly.
“I was going to speak to you of nerves,” she said, “but how would you ever understand? You look as though you had not a nerve in your body. I can't think how you manage it, living in London. I suppose you do exercises and take care of what you eat and drink.”
“I do nothing of the sort,” he assured her indignantly. “I eat and drink whatever I fancy. I have always had a direct object in life—my work—and I believe that has kept me fit and well. Nerve troubles come as a rule, I think, from the under-used brain.”
“I must have been born with a butterfly disposition,” she said. “I am quite sure that mine come because I find it so hard to be amused. I am sure I am most enterprising. I try whatever comes along, but nothing satisfies me.”
“Why not try being in love with one of these men who've been in love with you all their lives?”
She laughed bitterly.
“The men who have cared for me and have been worth caring about,” she said, “gave me up years ago. I mocked at them when they were in earnest, scoffed at sentiment, and told them frankly that when I married it would only be to find a refuge for broader life. The right sort wouldn't have anything to say to me after that, and I do not blame them. And here is the torture of it. I can't stand the wrong sort near me—physically, I mean. Mind, I believe I'm attracted towards people with criminal tastes and propensities. I believe that is what first led me towards Sir Timothy. Every taste I ever had in life seems to have become besmirched. I'm all the time full of the craving to do horrible things, but all the same I can't bear to be touched. That's the torment of it. I wonder if you can understand?”
“I think I can,” he answered. “Your trouble lies in having the wrong friends and in lack of self-discipline. If you were my sister, I'd take you away for a fortnight and put you on the road to being cured.”
“Then I wish I were your sister,” she sighed.
“Don't think I'm unsympathetic,” he went on, “because I'm not. Wait till we've got into the main road here and I'll try and explain.”
They were passing along a country lane, so narrow that twigs from the hedges, wreathed here and there in wild roses, brushed almost against their cheeks. On their left was the sound of a reaping-machine and the perfume of new-mown hay. The sun was growing stronger at every moment. A transitory gleam of pleasure softened her face.
“It is ages since I smelt honeysuckle,” she confessed, “except in a perfumer's shop. I was wondering what it reminded me of.”
“That,” he said, as they turned out into the broad main road, with its long vista of telegraph poles, “is because you have been neglecting the real for the sham, flowers themselves for their artificially distilled perfume. What I was going to try and put into words without sounding too priggish, Lady Cynthia,” he went on, “is this. It is just you people who are cursed with a restless brain who are in the most dangerous position, nowadays. The things which keep us healthy and normal physically—games, farces, dinner-parties of young people, fresh air and exercise—are the very things which after a time fail to satisfy the person with imagination. You want more out of life, always the something you don't understand, the something beyond. And so you keep on trying new things, and for every new thing you try, you drop an old one. Isn't it something like that?”
“I suppose it is,” she admitted wearily.
“Drugs take the place of wholesome wine,” he went on, warming to his subject. “The hideous fascination of flirting with the uncouth or the impossible some way or another, stimulates a passion which simple means have ceased to gratify. You seek for the unusual in every way—in food, in the substitution of absinthe for your harmless Martini, of cocaine for your stimulating champagne. There is a horrible wave of all this sort of thing going on to-day in many places, and I am afraid,” he concluded, “that a great many of our very nicest young women are caught up in it.”
“Guilty,” she confessed. “Now cure me.”
“I could point out the promised land, but how, could I lead you to it?” he answered.
“You don't like me well enough,” she sighed.
“I like you better than you believe,” he assured her, slackening his speed a little. “We have met, I suppose, a dozen times in our lives. I have danced with you here and there, talked nonsense once, I remember, at a musical reception—”
“I tried to flirt with you then,” she interrupted.
He nodded.
“I was in the midst of a great case,” he said, “and everything that happened to me outside it was swept out of my mind day by day. What I was going to say is that I have always liked you, from the moment when your mother presented me to you at your first dance.”
“I wish you'd told me so,” she murmured.
“It wouldn't have made any difference,” he declared. “I wasn't in a position to think of a duke's daughter, in those days. I don't suppose I am now.”
“Try,” she begged hopefully.
He smiled back at her. The reawakening of her sense of humour was something.
“Too late,” he regretted. “During the last month or so the thing has come to me which we all look forward to, only I don't think fate has treated me kindly. I have always loved normal ways and normal people, and the woman I care for is different.”
“Tell me about her?” she insisted.
“You will be very surprised when I tell you her name,” he said. “It is Margaret Hilditch.”
She looked at him for a moment in blank astonishment.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed. “Oliver Hilditch's wife!”
“I can't help that,” he declared, a little doggedly. “She's had a miserable time, I know. She was married to a scamp. I'm not quite sure that her father isn't as bad a one. Those things don't make any difference.”
“They wouldn't with you,” she said softly. “Tell me, did you say anything to her last night?”
“I did,” he replied. “I began when we were out alone together. She gave me no encouragement to speak of, but at any rate she knows.”
Lady Cynthia leaned a little forward in her place.
“Do you know where she is now?”
He was a little startled.
“Down at the cottage, I suppose. The butler told me that she never rose before midday.”
“Then for once the butler was mistaken,” his companion told him. “Margaret Hilditch left at six o'clock this morning. I saw her in travelling clothes get into the car and drive away.”
“She left the cottage this morning before us?” Francis repeated, amazed.
“I can assure you that she did,” Lady Cynthia insisted. “I never sleep, amongst my other peculiarities,” she went on bitterly, “and I was lying on a couch by the side of the open window when the car came for her. She stopped it at the bend of the avenue—so that it shouldn't wake us up, I suppose. I saw her get in and drive away.”
Francis was silent for several moments. Lady Cynthia watched him curiously.
“At any rate,” she observed, “in whatever mood she went away this morning, you have evidently succeeded in doing what I have never seen any one else do—breaking through her indifference. I shouldn't have thought that anything short of an earthquake would have stirred Margaret, these days.”
“These days?” he repeated quickly. “How long have you known her?”
“We were at school together for a short time,” she told him. “It was while her father was in South America. Margaret was a very different person in those days.”
“However was she induced to marry a person like Oliver Hilditch?” Francis speculated.
His companion shrugged her shoulders.
“Who knows?” she answered indifferently. “Are you going to drop me?”
“Wherever you like.”
“Take me on to Grosvenor Square, if you will, then,” she begged, “and deposit me at the ancestral mansion. I am really rather annoyed about Margaret,” she went on, rearranging her veil. “I had begun to have hopes that you might have revived my taste for normal things.”
“If I had had the slightest intimation—” he murmured.
“It would have made no difference,” she interrupted dolefully. “Now I come to think of it, the Margaret whom I used to know—and there must be plenty of her left yet—is just the right type of woman for you.”
They drew up outside the house in Grosvenor Square. Lady Cynthia held out her hand.
“Come and see me one afternoon, will you?” she invited.
“I'd like to very much,” he replied.
She lingered on the steps and waved her hand to him—a graceful, somewhat insolent gesture.
“All the same, I think I shall do my best to make you forget Margaret,” she called out. “Thanks for the lift up. A bientôt!”