BOOK II
THE DARK
The years sped.
In the autumn of 1916 Helen was twenty.
The governess had left three years ago. Helen had found her a curate, and had given her her silver abundant.
Already that curate had had preferment. Richard Bransby had contrived that, but Helen had instigated.
Stephen and Hugh had gone, in due course, from the tutor to Harrow, from Harrow to Oxford.
Stephen would have preferred education more technical, and Hugh would have preferred none.
Hugh was not lazy, but he had little thirst for learning and none for tables, declensions or isms.
Stephen, might he have followed his own bent, would have studied only those things which promised to coach him toward aviation in all its branches and corollaries. But Richard was not to be handled, and to the school and the ’varsity he chose the boys went.
Being there, Stephen worked splendidly—took honors and contrived to gain no little of the very things he desired. He had carpentry at Harrow—and excelled in it. And at Magdalen he bent physics and chemistry to his particular needs. At both places his conduct and his industry were exemplary.
Hugh barely passed into Harrow, and barely stayed there. He ran and he boxed, and at that glorified form of leap-frog which public schools dignify as “hurdles” he excelled. But he was lax and mischievous, and twice he only just escaped expulsion. His stay at Oxford was brief and curtailed. The authorities more than hinted to Bransby that his younger nephew was not calculated to receive or to give much benefit at Oxford.
Hence the brothers began on the same day a severe novitiate at the great shipbuilding and shipping offices.
Strangely enough they both did well. Hugh had a happy knack of jumping to the right conclusions, and he got his first big step up from dreaming in his sleep the correct solution of a commercial tangle that was vexing his uncle greatly.
That Hugh’s mind had worked so in his sleep, accomplishing what it had failed to finish when normally awake, as human minds do now and then, proved that at core he was interested in the business his careless manner had sometimes seemed to indicate that he took too lightly. And this pleased and gratified Richard Bransby even more than the elucidation of a business difficulty did. As an evidence of the peculiar psychological workings of human intelligence it interested Bransby not at all.
Stephen worked hard and brilliantly. From the first he had dreams of inducing his uncle to add the building of aircraft to their already enormous building of ships. He nursed his dream and it nursed his patience and fed his industry. Morton Grant watched over both young men impartially and devotedly. All his experience was sorted and furbished for them. All his care and solicitude were shared between them and the business.
At the first beat of Kitchener’s drum Hugh begged to follow the flag. And when Bransby at last realized that the war would not “be over by Christmas” he withdrew his opposition, and Hugh was allowed to join the army. He had not done ill in the O. T. C. at Harrow. He applied for a commission and got it. But it was understood that at the end of the war he would return to the firm. Richard Bransby would tolerate nothing else.
There had been no talk—no thought even—of soldiering for Stephen. He was nearly thirty, and seemed older. Never ill, he was not too robust. He was essential now to his uncle’s great business concern. And “Bransby’s” was vitally essential to the Government and to the prosecution of the war: no firm in Britain more so. Stephen was no coward, but soldiering did not attract him. He had no wish to join the contemptible little army, destined saviors of England. Had he wished to do so, the Government itself and the great soldier-dictator would have forbidden it. Emphatically Hugh belonged in the army. As emphatically Stephen did not; but did, even more emphatically, belong in the great shiphouse.
Time and its passing had changed and developed the persons with whom this history is concerned—as time usually does—along the lines of least resistance.
Helen had “grown up” and, no longer interested, even intermittently, in dolls—“Gertrude” and her band quite forgotten—introduced a dozen new interests, a score of new friends into the home-circle. Guests came and went. Helen flitted from function to function, and took her cousins with her, and sometimes even Bransby himself. Aunt Caroline was a sociable creature for all her Martha-like qualities. She was immensely proud of the ultra-nice gowns Helen ordered and made her wear, and quite enjoyed the dinners and small dances they occasionally gave in return for the constant hospitalities pressed upon the girl and her cousins.
Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the rest of the world put together, or had until recently—but after him her keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of nice girlhood—perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but always felt and delightful to feel.
Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and quiet arrogance.
Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. Grant, still his man Friday and, even more than indispensable Stephen, his good right-hand, trusted but ruled, still stood, as he always had and always would, in considerable awe of him. But the years had sweetened Bransby—the Helen-ruled years. He had always striven to be a just man—in justice to himself—but his just-dealing was easier now and kindlier, and he strove to be just to others for their sakes rather than for his own. It was less a duty and more an enjoyment than it had been: almost even a species of stern self-indulgence. Once it had been a penance. It was penance no longer. With good men penances conscientiously practised tend to grow easy and even agreeable. The devout penitent and the zealot need to find new substitutes periodically for old scourges smooth-worn.
Caroline’s fussinesses amused Richard more than they irritated him. And Helen no longer was sole in his love. He loved the boys—both of them. Stephen he loved with pride and some reservation. Their wills clashed not infrequently, and on one matter always. Hugh, who often compelled his disapproval, he loved almost as an own son.
Latham found him a more tractable patient than of old. Horace Latham had reached no slight professional importance now; owned his place on Harley Street, made no daily rounds, studied more than he practised, had an eloquent bank account, and “consulted” more often than he directly practised.
Helen’s little coterie of friends and acquaintances found him an amiable, if not a demonstrative, host. Even Angela Hilary he suffered suavely, if not eagerly.
A Mrs. Hilary had bought a bijou place near theirs a few years ago, and cordial, if not intimate, relations had been established quickly between Helen Bransby and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes, a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, Frenchchic, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech, most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic, never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her: an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of her.
One evening, early in the autumn of 1916, Morton Grant passed nervously by the lodge of Deep Dale, and along the carriage drive that twisted and curled to the house.
He had cause enough to be nervous. For the second time in thirty years he was disobeying his chief grossly; and the cause of his present turpitude could scarcely have been more unpleasant or less reassuring.
Under one arm he carried a large book carefully wrapped in brown paper. He carried it as if he feared and disliked it, and yet it and its fellows had been the vessels of his temple and his own dedication for years.
Grant barely came to Deep Dale. Richard Bransby dealt with his subordinates not meanly. A turkey at Christmas, a suitable sum of money on boxing-day, leniency at illness, and a coffin when requisite, were always forthcoming—but an invitation to dinner was unheard and unthought of, and even Grant, in spite of the responsibility and implicit trustedness of his position, and of the intimacy of their boyhood, scarcely once had tasted a brew of his master’s tea.
A nervous little maid, palpably a war-substitute either for the spruce man-servant or the sprucer parlor-maid, one of whom had always admitted him heretofore, answered his ring, and showed him awkwardly into the library. She collided with him as they went in, and collided with the door itself as she went out to announce his presence.
“Tell Mr. Bransby I should be most grateful if he would see me when he is disengaged, and—er—you might add that the matter is—er—urgent—er—that is, as soon as they have quite finished dinner. Just don’t mention my being here until he has left the dining-room—er—in fact, not until he is disengaged—er—alone.”
Left by himself Grant placed his top hat on a table and laid his parcel beside it. He unfastened the string, and partly unwrapped the ledger. Walking to the fireplace, he rolled up the string very neatly and put it carefully in his waistcoat pocket; ready to his hand should he carry the ledger back to London with him; ready to some other service for “Bransby and Co.”—if the ledger remained with his chief.
The clerk glanced about the room—and possibly saw it—but he never turned his back on the big buff book, or his eyes from it long.
It was a fine old-fashioned room, paneled in dark oak. Not in the least gloomy, yet even when, as now, brilliantly lit, fire on the hearth, the electric lamps and wall-lights turned up, it seemed invested with shadows, shadows lending it an impalpable suggestion of mystery. The room was not greatly changed since the spring evening thirteen years ago when Helen had sat on her father’s knee here and grown sleepy at his reading of Dickens. The curtains were new, and two of the pictures. The valuable carpet was the same and most of the furniture. The flowers might have been the same—Helen’s favorite heliotrope and carnations. The dolls were gone. But the banjo on the chesterfield and the box of chocolates on the window-seat scarcely spoke of Bransby, unless they told of a subjugation that had outlasted the dollies.
In the old days the room had been rather exclusively its master’s “den,” more than library, and into which others were not apt to come very freely uninvited. Helen had changed all that, and so had the years’ slow mellowing of Bransby himself. “Daddy’s room” had become the heart of the house, and the gathering-place of the family. But it washisroom still, and in his absence, as his presence, it seemed to breathe of his personality.
Grant had waited some minutes, but he still stood nervously, when the employer came in. He eyed Grant rather sourly. Grant stood confused and tongue-tied.
The master let the man wait long enough to grow still more uncomfortable, and then said crisply, “Good-evening, Grant.”
The clerk moved then—one eye in awe on Bransby, one in dread on the ledger. He took a few steps towards Bransby, and began apologetically, “Good—er—ahem—good-evening, Mr. Bransby. I—er—I trust I am not disturbing you, but——”
Bransby interrupted sharply, just a glint of wicked humor in his eye, “Just come from town, eh?”
“Yes, sir—er—quite right——”
“Come straight here from the office, I dare say?” Bransby spoke with a harshness that was a little insolent to so old, and so tried, a servant.
Morton Grant’s pitiful uneasiness was growing. “Well—er—yes, sir, as a matter of fact, I did.”
“I knew it,” Bransby said in cold triumph. It was one of the ineradicable defects of his nature that he enjoyed small and cheap triumphs, and irrespective of what they cost others.
Grant winced. His uneasiness was making him ridiculous, and it threatened to overmaster him. “Er—ahem—” he stammered, “the matter on which I have come is so serious——”
“Grant,” Bransby’s tone was smooth, and so cold that its controlled sneer pricked, “when my health forced me to take a holiday, what instructions did I give you?”
“Why, sir—er—you said that you must not be bothered with business affairs upon any account—not until you instructed me otherwise.”
“And have I instructed you otherwise?” The tone was absolutely sweet, but it made poor Morton Grant’s veins curdle.
“Well, sir,” he said wretchedly—“er—no, sir, you haven’t.”
Bransby looked at his watch. Almost the tyrant was smiling. “There’s a train leaving for town in about forty-five minutes—you will just have time to catch it.” He turned on his heel—he had not sat down—and went towards the door.
Grant began to feel more like jelly than like flesh and bone, but he pulled himself together, remembering what was at stake, and spoke more firmly than he had yet done—more firmly than his employer had often heard him speak. “I beg your pardon,”—he took a step towards Bransby—“sir”—there was entreaty in his voice, and command too—“but you must not send me away like this.”
His tone caught Bransby’s attention. It could not well have failed to do so. The shipbuilder turned and looked at the other keenly. “Why not?” he snapped.
“The thing that brought me here is most important.”
“So important that you feel justified in setting my instructions aside?”
“Yes, sir!” holding his ground now.
Bransby eyed him for a long moment.
Grant did not flinch.
“Sit down.”
Grant did so, and with a sigh of relief—the tension a little eased. What he had before him was hard enough, Heaven knew—but the first point was gained: Bransby would hear him.
“I always thought,” moving towards his own chair beside the writing-table, “that obeying orders was the most sacred thing in your life, Grant. I am anxious to know what could have deprived you of that idea.”
Anxious to know! And when he did know!—Morton Grant began to tremble again, and was speechless.
Bransby studied him thoughtfully. “Well?” he spoke a shade more kindly.
“The matter I—I—I——”
“Yes—yes?” impatience and some sympathy for the other’s distress were struggling.
Well—it had to be told. He had come here to tell it—and to tell it had braved and breasted Bransby’s displeasure as he had never done before. But he could not say it with his eyes on the other’s. He hung his head, ashamed and broken. But he spoke—and without stammer or break: “We’ve been robbed of a large sum of money, sir.”
Bransby watched Grant under beetling brows, his thin lips set, stiff and angry. He valued his money. He had earned it hard, and to be robbed of a farthing had always enraged him. But more than any money—much more, he valued the prestige of his business and the triumphant working of his own business methods. Its success was the justification of his arbitrariness and his egoism.
He was angry now, in hot earnest—very angry. “Robbed?” he said at last quietly. It was an ominous quietude. When he was angriest, invariably he was quietest.
“Ten thousand pounds, sir,” Grant said wearily.
“Ten thousand pounds. Have you reported it to the police?”
“No, sir.”
“Why do you come to me instead of them?”
“Well, sir, you see it only came to light this afternoon. You know the war has disturbed all our arrangements—made us very backward.”
Richard Bransby knew nothing of the sort. His business prevision and his business arrangements were far too masterly to be greatly disarranged by a mere war, had Heaven granted him subordinates with half his own grit and devise. But he let that pass.
And Grant continued. “The accountants have been unable to make their yearly audit of our books until this week. It was during their work to-day that they discovered the theft. So I thought before taking any action I had best come straight to you.”
“Who stole it?”
Morton Grant’s terrible moment had come—his ordeal excruciating and testing. He looked piteously toward his hat. He felt that it might help him to hold on to it. But the hat was too far to reach, and alone, without prop, he braced himself for his supreme moment of loyalty.
“Who stole it?” Bransby’s patience was wearing thin. The fumbling man prayed for grit to take the plunge clean and straight. But the deep was too cold for his nerve. He shivered and slacked.
“Why—er—the fact of the matter is—we are not quite sure.”
“Yes, you are—who stole it?”
“Mr. Bransby, I—” the dry old lips refused their office.
Even in his own impatience, tinged with anxiety now (it disturbed him to have trusted and employed untrustworthy servants), Bransby was sorry for the other’s painful embarrassment. And for that he said all the more roughly, “Come, come, man. Out with it.”
“Well, sir,” Grant’s voice was nervously timid, almost craven—and not once had he looked at Richard Bransby—“all the evidence goes to prove that only one man could have done it.”
“And who is that man?” demanded the quick, hard voice.
With a supreme effort of courage, which a brave man never knows—it is reserved for the cowards—Grant lifted his eyes square to the other, and answered in a voice so low that Bransby scarcely could have heard the words had they not rung clear with desperation and resolve, “Your—your nephew, Mr. Hugh Pryde.”
For a moment Richard Bransby yielded himself up to amazement, over-sweeping and numb. Then his face flushed and he half rose. For that one instant Morton Grant was in danger of his employer’s fingers fiercely strangling at his throat—and he knew it. His eyes filled with tears—not for himself, pity for Bransby.
Then Bransby laughed. It was a natural laugh—he was genuinely amused—but full of contempt. “My nephew Hugh?” he said good-humoredly.
“Yes, sir.” The low words were emphatic. Grant was past flinching now.
“Grant, you must be out of your senses——”
“It’s the truth, sir; I am sorry, but it’s the truth.”
Bransby disputed him roughly. “It can’t be. He is my own flesh and blood. I love the boy. Why, he’s just received his commission, Grant. And you come sneaking to me accusing him like this—” He threw his head up angrily and his eyes encountered Helen’s eyes in the portrait of her that hung over the fireplace: a breathing, beautiful thing, well worth the great price he had paid for it. As he looked at it his words died on his lips, and then rushed on anew in fresh and uncontrolled fury—“How dare you say he’s a thief—how dare you?”
Grant rose too. He was standing his ground resolutely now. The worst was over for him: the worst for Richard Bransby was just to come. Pity made the clerk brave and direct. “I’ve only told you the truth, sir,” he said very quietly.
Grant’s calmness checked Bransby’s rage. For a moment or two he wavered and then, reseating himself quietly, he said in a voice quiet and restrained, “What evidence do you base this extraordinary charge on?” As he spoke he picked up from the table a little jade paper-weight and fingered it idly. He had had it for years and often handled it so. No one else ever touched it—not even Helen. He dusted it himself, with a silk handkerchief kept for that purpose in a drawer to his hand. It was worth its weight in pure gold, a moon-faced, green Chinese god squatted on a pink lotus flower.
Grant answered him immediately. “The shortage occurred in the African trading account.”
“Well?”
“That was entirely in charge of Mr. Hugh; except for him,” Grant continued, with the kind relentlessness of a surgeon, “no one has access to those accounts but his brother, Mr. Stephen, and myself. I do not think that you will believe that either Mr. Stephen Pryde or myself tampered——”
Bransby brushed that aside with a light sharpness that was something of an apology, and completely a vote of credit. “Of course not. Go on.”
“Those accounts have been tampered with.”
“But Hugh has not been at the office for months,” Bransby said eagerly, the hopefulness of his voice betraying how sharp his fear had been in spite of himself. Acute masters do not easily doubt the conviction of the word of this world’s rare Morton Grants—“not for months. He’s been training.”
“The theft occurred before he left us.”
“Oh!” trying to conceal his disappointment, but succeeding not too well.
“Drafts made payable to us are not entered in the books. The accounts were juggled with so that the shortage would escape our notice.”
Bransby’s teeth closed on his lip. “Is that the entire case against Hugh?” he demanded sharply, clutching at any hope.
Grant stood up beside the ledger, and opened it remorselessly. What the remorse at his old heart was only the spirit of a dead woman knew—ifthe dead know. “The alterations in the books are in his handwriting,” he said.
“I don’t believe it.”
“I brought the ledger down so that you might see for yourself, sir.” He placed the volume on the table before Bransby, took a memorandum from his waistcoat pocket, and consulted it. “The irregularities occur on pages forty-three——”
Bransby put on his glasses and opened the book scornfully. He believed in Hugh, and now his belief would be vindicated. Grant was faithful, no question of that, but a doddering old blunderer. Well, he must not be too hard on Grant, and he would not, for really he had been half afraid—from the so-far evidence—himself for a breath or two.
“Page forty-three—yes.” He looked at it. “Yes.” His face was puzzled—his voice lacked triumph.
“Fifty-nine,” Grant prompted.
Bransby turned to it. “Fifty-nine—yes.”
“Eighty-eight.”
“Eighty-eight.” He looked at it steadily. Slowly belief in Hugh was sickened into suspicion. Bransby put down the jade toy held till now idly, and took up a magnifying glass. Suspicion was changing to conviction. “Yes,” he said grimly. Just the one word—but the one word was defeat. He was convinced, convinced with the terrible conviction of love betrayed and outraged—loyalty befouled by disloyalty. Violet seemed to stand before him—Violet as a child. A lump sobbed in his throat.
“One hundred and two.”
Staring straight before him, “What number?” he said.
“One hundred and two,” Grant repeated.
“One hundred and two—yes.” But he did not look at the page, he was still staring straight before him, looking through the long years at the sister he had loved—Violet in her wedding dress. “Yes.” Still it was Violet he saw—he had no sight for the page of damnation and treachery. Violet as he had seen her last, cold in her shroud. Slowly he closed the book—slowly and gently. He needed it no more. He had nothing more to fear from it, nothing more to hope. He was convinced of his nephew’s guilt. “My God.” It was a cry to his Maker for sympathy—and rebuke rather than prayer.
“The alterations are unmistakably in Mr. Hugh’s handwriting, sir,” Grant said sorrowfully.
“But why,” Richard Bransby cried with sudden passion, “why should he steal from me, Grant? Answer me that. Why should he steal from me?”
“Some time ago, sir—after Mr. Hugh had joined the army—it came to my ears—quite by accident, as a matter of fact—through an anonymous letter——”
Bransby uttered a syllable of contempt.
Grant acquiesced, “Yes, sir, of course—but—I—er—verified its statements that while Mr. Hugh was still with us—he had been gambling rather heavily and for a time was in the hands of the money-lenders.”
“Certain of this?”
“Quite.”
“And I trusted that boy, Grant. I would have trusted him with anything”—his eyes turned to the pictured face over the fireplace—“anything”—and his hand playing with the jade paper-weight trembled.
“I know.” And Grant did know. Had not he trusted him too—and loved him—and for the same woman’s sake?
The hand on the little jade god grew steady and still. The man gripped it calmly; he had regained his grip of self. “Except yourself, who has any knowledge of this affair?”
“Only the accountants, sir. Mr. Stephen Pryde has not been at the office for the past few days.”
“I know. He is staying here with me.” Then the mention of Stephen’s name suggested to him a pretext and a vent to give relief to his choking feelings, and he added in querulous irritation, “He’s down here to worry me again about that cracked-brain scheme of his for controlling the world’s output of aeroplane engines. He’s as mad as the Kaiser, and about as ambitious and pig-headed. I’ve told him that Bransby and Co. built ships and sailed ’em, and that was enough. But not for him. He’s the first man I’ve ever met who thinks he knows how to conduct my business better than I do—the business I built up myself. Of course I know he has brains—but he should have ’em—he’s my nephew—that’s why I left him the management of my business at my death—fortunate, fortunate——”
“Yes, sir. But about Mr. Hugh?”
“Ah!” In his irritation over Stephen—an old irritation—the thought of Hugh had for a moment escaped their uncle. It returned to him now, and his face fell from anger to brooding sorrow, “Yes, yes, about Hugh.” He stared in front of him in deep thought, his face working a little.
“I think that, perhaps——” the clerk began timidly.
But Bransby silenced him with an impatient gesture. “The accountants? Can you trust them?”
“Absolutely.”
“They won’t talk?”
“Not one word.”
“I know there is no need to caution you.”
“Thank you.”
“I must think this over for a day or two—I must think what is best to be done. Go back to town and have everything go on as if nothing had happened. Go back on the next train. And, Grant, you’d best leave the house at once. Hugh is staying here with me, too. I don’t want him to know you’ve been here.”
“Very good, Mr. Bransby,” Grant said, picking up his hat, and turning to the ledger.
But Bransby stayed him. “I’ll keep the ledger here with me. I shall want to look over it again.”
Grant took the memorandum slip from the pocket to which he had restored it when Bransby shut the book, and held it towards his employer in silence. In silence Bransby took it.
“I am—er—I am very sorry, sir,” Grant faltered, half afraid to voice the sympathy that would not be stifled.
“Yes, yes, Grant, I know,” Richard Bransby returned gently. They looked in each other’s eyes, two old men stricken by a common trouble, a common disappointment, and for the moment, as they had not been before, in a mutual sympathy. “You shall hear from me in a day or two.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And, Grant——”
Grant turned back, nearly at the door, “Yes, sir?”
With a glint of humor, a touch of affection, and a touch of pathos, Bransby said, “You were quite justified in setting aside my orders.”
The two stricken men parted then, one going down the road with slouched shoulders and aimless gait, feeling more than such a type of such years and so circumstanced often has to feel, but devising nothing, suffering but not fighting. There was no fight in him—none left—his interview with Bransby had used it all up—to the last atom.
Richard Bransby sat alone with his trouble, cut, angry, at bay—already devising, weighing, fighting, twisting and turning the bit of jade in his nervous fingers. He rose and pulled open a drawer of his table and laid the ledger in it with a quiet that was pathetic. For a moment he stood looking at the book sadly.
How much that book had meant to this man only just such men could gauge. It was hislibra d’ora, his high commission in the world’s great financial army, and his certificate of success in its far-flung battle front. It was his horoscope, predicted and cast in his own keen boy’s heart and head, fulfilled in his graying old age. It was the record of over forty years of fierce fight, always waged fairly, of a business career as stiff and sometimes as desperate and as venturesome as Napoleon’s or Philip’s, but never once smirched or touched with dishonor—no, not with so much as one shadow of shame. He had fought—ah! how he had fought, from instinct, for Alice, for Helen—and, by God! yes, lately for Violet’s boys too—he had fought, and always he had fought on and on to success: bulldog and British in tenacity, he had been Celtic-skillful, and many a terrible corner had he turned with a deft fling of wrist and a glow in his eye that might have been envied—and certainly would have been applauded and loved—on Wall Street, or that fleeter, less scrupulous street of high-finance—La Salle. It was his escutcheon—all the blazon he had ever craved—and now——He closed the drawer swiftly and softly. Many a coffin lid has been closed with pain less profound.
Then his quiet broke, and for a moment the frozen tears melted down his trembling face, and the terrible sobs of manhood and age thwarted and hurt to the quick shook his gaunt body. A cry broke from him—a cry of torture and love. “Hugh—Hugh!”
For a few moments he let the storm have its will of him; he had to. Then his will took its turn, asserted itself and he commanded himself again.
Bransby turned quietly away with a sigh. For a space he stood in deep thought. Quite suddenly a pain and a faintness shot through him, bullet-quick, nerve-racking. He forgot everything else—everything: which is perhaps the one pleasant thing that can be said of such physical pain; it banishes all other aches, and shows heart and head who is their master.
White to his lips, pure fright in his eyes, Bransby contrived to reach a chair by a side-table on which a tantalus stood unobtrusively. It always was there. There was one like it in his bedroom, and another in his private room at the office. And Richard Bransby was an abstemious man, caring little for his meat, nothing at all for his drink. Tobacco he had liked once, but Latham had stinted him of tobacco. With the greatest difficulty he managed to pour out some brandy—and to gulp it. For a short space he sat motionless with closed eyes. But some one was coming.
With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together. He got out of the chair, tell-tale near that tantalus, and with the criminal-like secretiveness of a very sick man, pushed his glass behind the decanter. He had sauntered to another seat, moving with a lame show of nonchalance, and taking up his old plaything, when the footsteps he had heard came through the door.
It was Horace Latham. “Alone?”
“Oh! is that you, doctor? Come in—come in. Have a cigar?”
The physician stood behind his host, smiling, debonair, groomed to a fault, suspiciously easy of manner, lynx-eyes apparently unobservant, he himself palpably unconcerned. “Thanks,” he said—“I find a subtle joy in indulging myself in luxuries which my duties compel me to deny to others.” He chose a cigar—very carefully—from the box Bransby had indicated. But he diagnosed those Havanas with his touch-talented finger-tips. His microscope eyes were on Bransby.
Bransby knew this, or at least feared it, though Latham stood behind him.
Still fighting desperately against his weakness (he had much to do just now; Latham must not get in his way), he said, doing it as well as he could, “Oh, I—I don’t mind—next to smoking myself—I like to watch some one else enjoying a good cigar.”
Latham’s face did not change in the least, nor did his eyes shift. He came carelessly around the table, facing his host now, never relaxing a covert scrutiny, as bland as it was keen. “In order,” he said, “to give you as much pleasure as possible I shall enjoy this one thoroughly. Can you give me a match?”
“Of course. Stupid of me.” Bransby caught up a match-stand with an effort and offered it. Latham pretended not to see it. Bransby was forced to light a match. He contrived to, and held it towards Latham, in a hand that would shake. The physician threw his cigar aside with a quick movement, and caught his friend’s wrist, seized the flaming match and blew it out.
“I knew it,” Latham said sternly. “Bransby, you are not playing fair with me. You’ve just had another of those heart attacks.”
“Nonsense,” the other replied with uneasy impatience.
“Then why are you all of a tremble? Why is your hand shaking? Why is your pulse jumping?”
“I had a slight dizziness,” Bransby admitted wearily.
“What caused it?” Latham asked sharply.
“Grant brought me some bad news from the office.”
“Well—what of it? The air is full of bad news now. You can afford to lose an odd million now and then. But what business had Grant here? What business had you to see him? You promised me that you would not even think of business, much less discuss it with any one, until I gave you leave.”
“This was exceptional.”
The physician sat down, his eyes still on his patient, and said, his voice changed to a sudden deep kindness, “Bransby, I am going to be frank with you—brutally frank. You’re an ill man—a very ill man indeed. A severe attack of this—‘dizziness’ as you call it—will—well, it might prove fatal. Your heart’s beat shown by the last photograph we had taken by the electric cardigraph was bad—very bad.”
“I’ve heard all this before.”
“And have paid no heed to it. Bransby, unless you give me your word to obey my instructions absolutely, I will wash my hands of your case.”
“Don’t say that.” In spite of himself Bransby’s voice shook.
“I mean it.” Latham’s voice came near shaking too, but professional training and instinct saved it. “Well?”
“This—this news I have just had—I must make a decision concerning it. It can’t cause me any further shock. As soon as I have dismissed it, and I will very soon, I give you my word, I’ll do precisely as you say.”
“Here you are! I thought you were coming back to the billiard room, Daddy.”
As Helen Bransby came gayly in, her father threw Latham an appealing look, and shifted a little from the light.
Latham stepped between them. “So he was, Miss Bransby. Forgive me, I kept him.”
“Our side won, Daddy,” said the glad young voice.
“Did we, dear? Then old Hugh owes me a bob.” As the words left his lips, a sudden spasm of memory caught him. Helen saw nothing, but Latham took a quick half-step towards him.
“Are you and Dr. Latham having a confidential chat, Daddy?”
The father contrived to answer her lightly, more lightly than Latham could have done at the moment. That physician was growing more and more anxious.
“What on earth do you think Latham and I could be having a confidential chat about?”
Helen laughed. She had the prettiest laugh in the world. And her flower-like face brimmed over with mischief. “I thought perhaps he was asking your advice about matrimony.”
“Latham?” exclaimed Bransby, so surprised that he almost dropped his precious jade god with which he was still toying.
Latham was distinctly worried—Latham the cool, imperturbable man of the world. “Now, really, Miss Bransby,” he began, and then halted lamely.
“You don’t mean to say that he is contemplating marrying? Latham the adamant bachelor of Harley Street?”
Helen wagged her pretty head impishly. “I can’t say whether he is contemplating it or not, but I know he is face to face with it.”
“Well, upon my word!” Bransby was really interested now.
Latham was intensely uncomfortable. “I am afraid,” he began again, “Miss Bransby exaggerates the danger——”
“Danger?” the girl mocked at him. “That’s not very gallant, is it?”
“And who is the happy woman?” demanded Bransby.
“Angela Hilary.”
Bransby laughed unaffectedly. “Mrs. Hilary? Our American friend, eh? Glad to see you are helping on Anglo-American friendship, my dear fellow. That’s exactly what we need now. I congratulate you, Latham.”
“Please don’t.”
“Oh! he hasn’t proposedyet, Daddy,” said the pretty persistent.
“He has not!” assented Latham briskly.
“But it’s coming!” taunted Helen wickedly.
“It is not!” Latham exclaimed hotly. “I haven’t the slightest intention of proposing to Mrs. Hilary.”
“But what if she should propose to you?” demanded his tormentor.
“I should refuse,” insisted Latham, beside himself with embarrassment.
“And if she won’t take ‘No’ for an answer?”
“You don’t really think it will come to that?” He was really considerably alarmed.
Helen was delighted. “I think it may.”
“Good heavens!”
“I had no idea, Latham,” joined in Bransby, playing up to Helen (he always did play up to Helen), “that you were so attractive to the opposite sex.”
Latham groaned.
“Oh!” Helen said with almost judicial gravity, “I don’t know that it is entirely due to Dr. Latham’s charm that the present crisis has come about. I think Angela’s sense of duty is equally to blame.”
“Mrs. Hilary’s sense of duty!” Latham muttered.
“Really?” quizzed Bransby.
“Yes, Daddy, she feels that bachelorhood is an unfit state for a physician; and because she has a high regard for Dr. Latham she has nobly resolved to cure him of it.”
“But I don’t wish to be cured.”
“Nonsense!” Bransby rebuked him, adding dryly, “what would you say to a patient of yours who talked like that?”
Latham turned to Helen desperately. “I say, Miss Bransby, does she know I am staying with you?”
“No—I think not. I think she’s still in town.”
“That’s a relief.”
“But she’ll find out,” Helen assured him, nodding sagely her naughty red head.
But respite was at hand. “Can we come in?” asked a voice at which Richard Bransby winced again.
“Yes, Hugh, come along,” Helen said cheerfully. “Dr. Latham will be glad to see you; he has finished his delicate confidences.”
“It’s all right, Stephen, we won’t be in the way,” Hugh called over his shoulder as he strolled through the doorway, a boyish, soldierly young figure, sunny-faced, frank-eyed. He wore the khaki of a second lieutenant. He went up to his uncle. Bransby’s fingers tightened at the throat of the green god, and imperiled the delicately cut pink lotus leaves.
“I suppose Helen told you that she beat us,” the young fellow said, laying a coin near Bransby’s hand. “There’s the shilling I owe you, sir—the last of an ill-spent fortune.”
“Thanks,” Bransby spoke with difficulty. But the boy noticed nothing. He already was moving to the back of the room where Helen was sitting.
“Have you told him?” Hugh said in a low voice as he sat down beside her.
“No, not yet.”
Stephen Pryde threw one quick glance to where they sat as he came quickly in, but only one, and he went at once to his uncle. “I hope Grant didn’t bring you any bad news, sir?” he said.
Bransby was sharply annoyed. He answered quickly, with a swift furtive look at his nephew. “How did you know Grant was here?”
“Barker told me. I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?”
“Wrong? What could be wrong?” The impatience of Bransby’s tone brooked no further questioning.
Latham had joined Helen, and Hugh had left her then and had been strolling about the room unconcernedly. He came up to his uncle chuckling.
“Old Grant is a funny old josser,” he said. “He is like a hen with one chick around the office. Why, if one is ten minutes late in the morning, he treats it as if it was a national calamity.”
Bransby lifted his head a little and looked Hugh straight in the face. It was the first time their eyes had met—since Grant’s visit. “Grant has always had great faith in you, Hugh,” the uncle said gravely.
Hugh responded cheerfully. “He’s been jolly kind to me, too. He is a good old sport, when you get beneath all the fuss and feathers.” And he strolled back to Helen, Richard’s eyes following him sadly. Latham gave way to Hugh and wandered over to a bookcase and began examining its treasures.
Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle again. “The business that brought him—Grant—can I attend to it for you, Uncle Dick?”
“No, thank you, Stephen, it—it is purely a personal matter.”
Pryde helped himself to a cigarette, saying, “Did he say whether he had heard from Jepson?” and trying to speak carelessly.
Bransby answered him impatiently. “No; I was glad to find out, however, that Grant agrees with me that your scheme for controlling the output of aeroplane engines is an impossible one for us.”
Pryde’s face stiffened. “Then he is wrong,” he said curtly.
Bransby angered. “He is not wrong. Haven’t I just said he agreed with me?”
“If you gave the matter serious attention, instead of opposing it blindly, simply because it came from me——”
But this was too much. Bransby stopped him hotly, “I don’t oppose it because it comes from you. I am against it because it isn’t sound. If it were, I would have thought of it.”
“You don’t realize the possibilities.” Stephen spoke as hotly as the elder had, but there was pleading in his voice.
Latham was watching them now—closely.
“There are no possibilities, I tell you,” Bransby continued roughly, “and that should be sufficient—it always has been for every one in my establishment but you”—he turned to Latham: “Stephen is trying to induce me to give up shipbuilding for aeroplane engines—and not only that, he wants to spend our surplus in buying every plant we are able that can be turned to that use.”
“Yes,” Stephen urged, “because after the war the future of the world will be in the air.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“And no one believed in steel ships.”
“That has nothing to do with this.” Bransby was growing testy, and always his troubled eyes would turn to Hugh—to Hugh and Helen.
“It has,” Stephen insisted, “for it shows how the problem of transportation has evolved. The men of the future are the men who realize the chance the conquest of the air has given them.”
“Well, let who wishes go in for it. I am quite satisfied with our business as it is, and at my time of life I am not going to embark on ambitious schemes. We make money enough.”
“Money!” Pryde said with bitter scorn. “It isn’t the money that makes me keen. It’s the power to be gained—the power to build and to destroy.” The tense face was fierce and transfigured. The typical face of a seer, Latham thought, watching him curiously. “I tell you, sir, that from now on the men who rule the air are the men who will rule the world.” The voice changed, imperiousness cast away, it was tender, caressingly pleading—“Uncle Dick——”
But Bransby’s irritation was now beyond all control. The day, and its revelation and pain, had tortured him enough; his nerves had no resistance left with which to meet petty annoyance largely. “And I tell you,” he said heatedly, getting on to his feet, “that I have heard all about the matter I care to hear, now or ever. I’ve said ‘No,’ and that ends it. Once I make a decision I never change it, and—I—I—I——”
Latham laid a hand on his wrist. “Tut, tut, Bransby, youmust notexcite yourself.”
Bransby sank back wearily into his chair—putting the paper-weight down with an impatient gesture; it made a small clatter.
Stephen Pryde shrugged his shoulders and turned away drearily with a half-muttered apology, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and an oath unspoken but black. There was despair on his face, misery in his eyes.
The same group was gathered in the same room just twenty-three hours later. But Mrs. Leavitt, detained last night on one of her many domestic cares (she never had learned to wear her domestic cares lightly, and probably would have enjoyed them less if she had) was here also to-night: an upright, satin-clad figure very busy with an elaborate piece of needlework. She made no contributions to the chat—the new stitch was difficult—but constantly her eye glanced from her needle, here, there and everywhere—searching for dust.
Richard Bransby had not yet readied his decision, and the self-suspense was punishing him badly. Latham was anxious. His keen eyes saw a dozen signs he disliked.
Stephen sat apart smoking moodily, but watchful—a dark, well-groomed man, with but one beauty: his agile hands. They looked gifted, deft and powerful. They were all three.
Again Helen and Hugh were together at a far end of the big room, chatting softly. Bransby watched them uneasily. (Stephen was glad to notice that.)
Bransby stood it a little longer, and then he called, “Helen!”
She rose and came to him at once, “Yes, Daddy?”
Bransby fumbled rather—at a loss what to say—what excuse to make for having called her. He even stammered a little. “Why—why—” then glancing by accident towards the book-shelves, a ruse occurred to him that would answer, that would keep her from Hugh, as his voice had called her from him. “I don’t think,” he said, “that Latham has seen that new edition of Dickens of mine. Show it to him. Show him the illustrations especially.”
Latham raised a hand in mock horror. “Anotheredition!”
But even a better diversion was to hand. Barker stood palpitating in the door with which she had just collided, her agitation in no way soothed by the fact that Hugh winked at her encouragingly. “Mrs. Hilary,” she announced, crimsoning. The girl could scarcely have blushed redder if she had been obliged to read her own banns.
Angela Hilary came in with almost a run; seeing Helen, she rushed on her and embraced her dramatically with a little cry. She was almost hysterical—but prettily so, quite altogether prettily so. She wore the unkempt emotion as perfectly as she did her ravishing frock—you couldn’t help thinking it suited her—not the frock—though indeed that did, too, to a miracle.
“Helen! Oh, my dear!” Seeing Bransby, she released the smiling Helen, and dashed at him, seizing his hand. “Mr. Bransby, oh—I am so glad! Dear Mrs. Leavitt, too: I am so relieved”—which was rather more than Caroline could have said. She disliked being hugged, especially just after dinner, and she had lost count, and dropped her fine crochet-hook.
Mrs. Hilary turned to Stephen and wrung his hand warmly, half sobbing, “It is Mr. Pryde?”
“Yes,” he told her gravely, “I have not changed my name since last week.”
But Angela paid no attention to what he said. She rarely did pay much attention to what other people said. “Dear Mr. Pryde,” she bubbled on at him, “oh! and you are quite all right.” Hugh came strolling down the room. Angela Hilary was a great favorite of his. She rushed to him and caught him by the shoulder, “Lieutenant Hugh. Oh, how do you do?” Then she caught sight of Latham. She pounced on him. He edged away, a little embarrassed. She followed the closer—“Dr. Latham! Now my cupisfull. Oh! this is wonderful.”
“Yes, isn’t it!” he stammered, greatly embarrassed. Through the back of his head he could see Helen watching him. What a nuisance the woman was, and how fiendishly pretty! Really, American women ought to be locked up when they invaded London, at least if they were half as lovely and a quarter as incalculable as this teasing specimen. Interning Huns seemed fatuous to him, when such disturbers of Britain’s placidity as this were permitted abroad. Positively he was afraid of this bizarre creature. What would she say next? What do?
What she did was to seize him by his beautifully tailored arm. Latham hated being hugged, and at any time, far more than Mrs. Leavitt did. Indeed he could not recall that he ever had been hugged. He was conscious of no desire to be initiated into that close procedure—and, of all places to suffer it, this was about as undesirable as he could imagine. And this woman respected neither places nor persons. She had hugged poor Mrs. Leavitt unmistakably. What if——He flushed and tried to extricate his coat sleeve.
Angela held him the tighter and looked tenderly into his eyes with her great Creole eyes, surely inherited from some southern foremother. He thought he heard Helen giggle softly. “MydearDr. Latham! Oh!”—then, with a sudden change of manner, that was one of her most bewildering traits, an instant change this time from the hysterical to the commonplace—“You will have lunch with me to-morrow—half-past one.” It was not a question, but simply an announcement.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Latham began. “I am returning to town on an early train.” Yes, hedidhear Helen smother a laugh?—hang the girl! and that was Hugh’s chuckle.
“Pouf!” Angela Hilary blew his words aside as if they had been a wisp of thistledown. “Then you’ll have to change your plans and take a later one.”
“But really I——”
“We’ll consider it settled. You men here all need reforming,” she added severely to Hugh, catching his eye. “In America we women bring up our men perfectly: they do us great credit.”
“But this is not America,” Stephen Pryde interposed indolently.
Angela Hilary drew herself up to all her lovely, graceful height. “But I am American—an American woman.” She said it very quietly. No English woman living could have said it more quietly or more coldly. It was all she said. But it was quite enough. Horace Latham took out his engagement-book, an entirely unnecessary bit of social by-play on his part, and he knew it. He knew in his startled bachelor heart that he would not forget that engagement, or arrive late at the tryst. But he was not going to marry any one, much less be laughed into it by Helen Bransby, or witched into it by bewildering personality and composite loveliness. And as for marrying an American wife—he, Horace Latham, M.D., F.R.C.P.—the shades of all his ancestors forbid! But what was the tormenting thing doing now?
Suddenly remembering the object of her visit, she pushed an easy-chair into the center of the room (claiming and taking the stage as it were) and sank into it hysterically.
Mrs. Leavitt looked up uneasily; she hated the furniture moved about.
“Oh! thank Heaven,” cried Angela, “you are all here.”
“Why shouldn’t we be all here?” laughed Helen.
“I’ve seen all my friends in the neighborhood now,” Angela answered, relaxing and lying back in relief, “and every one is all right.”
Even Bransby was amused. “Why shouldn’t they be all right?” he asked, laughing, and motioning Latham towards the cigars.
“Don’t jest, Mr. Bransby,” she implored him. “I have had a very solemn communication this afternoon.”
“Good gracious!” Hugh said.
“Communication?” Helen queried.
They all gathered about her now—with their eyes—in amused bewilderment. Even Aunt Caroline looked up from her lace-making.
Angela nodded gravely. “Yes.”
“A—er—communication from whom?” Stephen asked lazily.
“From Wah-No-Tee.”
“Who in the world is Wah-No-Tee?” Pryde demanded.
“Why, my medium’s Indian control.”
Hugh chuckled—his laugh always was a nice boyish chuckle. Mrs. Leavitt looked shocked—Stephen winked at his cigarette as he lit it. Latham laid down the cigar he had selected but not yet lit.
“Indian control?” Bransby said—quite at a loss.
Helen explained. “Mrs. Hilary is interested in spiritualism, Daddy.”
“Oh!” Bransby was frankly disgusted. Either Angela did not notice this, or was perfectly indifferent.
Stephen was greatly amused. A charming smile lit his sharp face. “Is it permitted to ask what Wah-No-Tee’s communication was, Mrs. Hilary?” he said—almost caressingly.
“She told me——”
“Oh—” interjected Stephen—“Wah-No-Tee is a lady?”
“Oh! Quite. She told me this morning that one of my dearest friends was just ‘passing over.’ I was so worried. I hurried back from town as quickly as I could, and ever since dinner I have been rushing about calling on every dear friend I have”—she gave Latham a soft look. “And, as I said—they are all quite all right. Silly mistake!”
Bransby gave a short grunt. “Surely, Mrs. Hilary,” he said irritably, “you’re not serious.”
“I am always serious,” she told him emphatically. “I love being serious.”
Bransby picked up the paper-weight and shook it irritably, god, lotus and all. “But you can’t believe in such rubbish.”
Helen caught his hand warningly. “Daddy! you’ll break poor old Joss!” For a moment his hand and her young hand closed together over the costly toy, and then she made him put it down, prying under his heavy fingers with her soft ones.
“Of course, I believe in it,” Angela said superiorly. “Why, there have been quite a number of books written about it lately.”
“Foolish books,” snapped Bransby.
Mrs. Hilary answered him most impressively. “There are more what-you-may-call-’ems in Heaven and Earth, Horatio——” she said earnestly.
Bransby interrupted her, absently in his irritation taking up “Joss” again. “But, my dear lady——”
“Even men of science believe.” Angela Hilary could interrupt as well as the next.
“Now-a-days men of science believe anything—even such stuff as this.” Again Helen gently rescued the bit of jade.
“‘Stuff!’ Mr. Bransby; it is not ‘stuff’!”
“But your own words prove that it is,” Bransby continued the duel.
“My own words?”
“You’ve just admitted your—‘communication’ I think you called it—was a silly mistake.”
For one time in her life she was completely non-plused. There had not been many such times.
“Well—well——” she began, but she could find no useful words. Her annoyance was so keen that Helen feared she was going to cry. She could cry, too—Helen had seen her do it. Helen caught up a box of cigarettes and carried them to Angela, hoping to divert her.
“Do have a cigarette,” she urged.
Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently, but sadly. Helen threw Hugh a look of despair.
That warrior was no diplomatist, but a beautifully obedient lover. He hurried to Mrs. Hilary and bent over her almost tenderly, and said, “Ripping weather—what?”
Mrs. Hilary gave him a baleful look—almost a glare—and turned her shoulder on him. Hugh shrugged his shoulders helplessly, throwing Helen an apologetic look.
Helen, in despair, nodded imploringly at Stephen. He smiled, lowered his cigarette, and addressed their volatile guest. “What a charming frock that is, Mrs. Hilary.”
The delightful comedienne threw him a sharp look—and melted. “Do you think so really?”
“It’s most becoming,” he said enthusiastically.
A smile creamed sunnily over the petulant, delicate face. “I think it does suit me,” she said joyfully.
They all gave a sigh of relief.
“Who made it for you, Angela?” Helen asked hurriedly.
“Clarice—you know, in Albemarle Street.” The cure was complete.
But Helen repeated the dose. “She does make adorable things. I am going to try her. You know Mrs. Montague goes to her, and she says——”
But what Mrs. Montague said was never told, for at the Verona-like name Angela Hilary sprang to her feet with a scream of “Good Heavens!”
“Why, what’s up?” Hugh exclaimed.
“I forgot to call on the Montagues—and poor dear Mr. Montague has such dreadful gout. How could I be so heartless as to forget the Montagues? Such perfectly dreadful gout. Oh, well, one never knows—one never knows. Good-night, everybody. I am sure you won’t mind my rushing off like this”—both Bransby and Caroline looked resigned—“but I am so worried. Good-night—good-night.” She paused in the door, “Don’t forget, Dr. Latham, to-morrow at half-past one sharp.” She threw him a sweet, imperative look, and was gone—as she had come—in a silken whirl and a jangle of jewels and chains.