She came slowly towards the two men through the overgrown rose garden, a thin, pale, wild-eyed child, dressed in most uncompromising black. It was a matter of doubt whether she was the more surprised to see them, or they to find anyone else, in this wilderness of desolation. They stood face to face with her upon the narrow path.
“Have you lost your way?” she inquired politely.
“We were told,” Aynesworth answered, “that there was a gate in the wall there, through which we could get on to the cliffs.”
“Who told you so?” she asked.
“The housekeeper,” Aynesworth answered. “I will not attempt to pronounce her name.”
“Mrs. Tresfarwin,” the child said. “It is not really difficult. But she had no right to send you through here! It is all private, you know!”
“And you?” Aynesworth asked with a smile, “you have permission, I suppose?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I have lived here all my life. I go where I please. Have you seen the pictures?”
“We have just been looking at them,” Aynesworth answered.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” she exclaimed. “I—oh!”
She sat suddenly down on a rough wooden seat and commenced to cry. For the first time Wingrave looked at her with some apparent interest.
“Why, what is the matter with you, child?” Aynesworth exclaimed.
“I have loved them so all my life,” she sobbed; “the pictures, and the house, and the gardens, and now I have to go away! I don’t know where! Nobody seems to know!”
Aynesworth looked down at her black frock.
“You have lost someone, perhaps?” he said.
“My father,” she answered quietly. “He was organist here, and he died last week.”
“And you have no other relatives?” he asked.
“None at all. No one—seems—quite to know—what is going to become of me!” she sobbed.
“Where are you staying now?” he inquired.
“With an old woman who used to look after our cottage,” she answered. “But she is very poor, and she cannot keep me any longer. Mrs. Colson says that I must go and work, and I am afraid. I don’t know anyone except at Tredowen! And I don’t know how to work! And I don’t want to go away from the pictures, and the garden, and the sea! It is all so beautiful, isn’t it? Don’t you love Tredowen?”
“Well, I haven’t been here very long, you see,” Aynesworth explained.
Wingrave spoke for the first time. His eyes were fixed upon the child, and Aynesworth could see that she shrank from his cold, unsympathetic scrutiny.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Juliet Lundy,” she answered.
“How long was your father organist at the church?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Ever since I was born, and before.”
“And how old are you?”
“Fourteen next birthday.”
“And all that time,” he asked, “has there been no one living at Tredowen?”
“No one except Mrs. Tresfarwin,” she answered. “It belongs to a very rich man who is in prison.”
Wingrave’s face was immovable. He stood on one side, however, and turned towards his companion.
“We are keeping this young lady,” he remarked, “from what seems to be her daily pilgrimage. I wonder whether it is really the pictures, or Mrs. Tresfarwin’s cakes?”
She turned her shoulder upon him in silent scorn, and looked at Aynesworth a little wistfully.
“Goodbye!” she said.
He waved his hand as he strolled after Wingrave.
“There you are, Mr. Lord of the Manor,” he said. “You can’t refuse to do something for the child. Her father was organist at your own church, and a hard struggle he must have had of it, with an absentee landlord, and a congregation of seagulls, I should think.”
“Are you joking?” Wingrave asked coldly.
“I was never more in earnest in my life,” Aynesworth answered. “The girl is come from gentlefolks. Did you see what a delicate face she had, and how nicely she spoke? You wouldn’t have her sent out as a servant, would you?”
Wingrave looked at his companion ominously.
“You have a strange idea of the duties of a landlord,” he remarked. “Do you seriously suppose that I am responsible for the future of every brat who grows up on this estate?”
“Of course not!” Aynesworth answered. “You must own for yourself that this case is exceptional. Let us go down to the Vicarage and inquire about it.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” Wingrave answered. “Nor will you! Do you see the spray coming over the cliffs there? The sea must be worth watching.”
Aynesworth walked by his side in silence. He dared not trust himself to speak. Wingrave climbed with long, rapid strides to the summit of the headland, and stood there with his face turned seawards. The long breakers were sweeping in from the Atlantic with a low, insistent roar; as far as the eye could reach the waves were crusted with white foam. Every now and then the spray fell around the two men in a little dazzling shower; the very atmosphere was salt. About their heads the seagulls whirled and shrieked. From the pebbled beach to the horizon there was nothing to break the monotony of that empty waste of waters.
Wingrave stood perfectly motionless, with his eyes fixed upon the horizon. Minute after minute passed, and he showed no signs of moving. Aynesworth found himself presently engaged in watching him. Thoughts must be passing through his brain. He wondered what they were. It was here that he had spent his boyhood; barely an hour ago the two men had stood before the picture of his father. It was here, if anywhere, that he might regain some part of his older and more natural self. Was it a struggle, he wondered, that was going on within the man? There were no signs of it in his face. Simply he stood and looked, and looked, as though, by infinite perseverance, the very horizon itself might recede, and the thing for which he sought become revealed....
Aynesworth turned away at last, and there, not many yards behind, apparently watching them, stood the child. He waved his hand and advanced towards her. Her eyes were fixed upon Wingrave half fearfully.
“I am afraid of the other gentleman,” she whispered, as he reached her side. “Will you come a little way with me? I will show you a seagull’s nest.”
They left Wingrave where he was, and went hand in hand, along the cliff side. She was a curious mixture or shyness and courage. She talked very little, but she gripped her companion’s fingers tightly.
“I can show you,” she said, “where the seagulls build, and I can tell you the very spot in the sea where the sun goes down night after night.
“There are some baby seagulls in one of the nests, but I daren’t go very near for the mother bird is so strong. Father used to say that when they have their baby birds to look after, they are as fierce as eagles.”
“Your father used to walk with you here, Juliet?” Aynesworth asked.
“Always till the last few months when he got weaker and weaker,” she answered. “Since then I come every day alone.”
“Don’t you find it lonely?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“At first,” she answered, “not now. It makes me unhappy. Would you like to go down on the beach and look for shells? I can find you some very pretty ones.”
They clambered down and wandered hand in hand by the seashore. She told him quaint little stories of the smugglers, of wrecks, and the legends of the fisher people. Coming back along the sands, she clung to his arm and grew more silent. Her eyes sought his every now and then, wistfully. Presently she pointed out a tiny whitewashed cottage standing by itself on a piece of waste ground.
“That is where I live now, at least for a day or two,” she said. “They cannot keep me any longer. When are you going away?”
“Very soon, I am afraid, little girl,” he answered. “I will come and see you, though, before I go.”
“You promise,” she said solemnly.
“I promise,” Aynesworth repeated.
Then she held up her face, a little timidly, and he kissed her. Afterwards, he watched her turn with slow, reluctant footsteps to the unpromising abode which she had pointed out. Aynesworth made his way to the inn, cursing his impecuniosity and Wingrave’s brutal indifference.
He found the latter busy writing letters.
“Doing your work, Aynesworth?” he remarked coldly. “Be so good as to write to Christie’s for me, and ask them to send down a valuer to go through the pictures.”
“You are really going to sell!” Aynesworth exclaimed.
“Most certainly,” Wingrave answered. “Heirlooms and family pictures are only so much rubbish to me. I am the last of my line, and I doubt whether even my lawyer could discover a next of kin for my personal property. Sell! Of course I’m going to sell! What use is all this hoarded rubbish to me? I am going to turn it into gold!”
“And what use is gold?” Aynesworth asked curiously. “You have plenty!”
“Not enough for my purpose,” Wingrave declared. “We are going to America to make more.”
“It’s vandalism!” Aynesworth said, “rank vandalism! The place as it is is a picture! The furniture and the house have grown old together. Why, you might marry!”
Wingrave scowled at the younger man across the room.
“You are a fool, Aynesworth,” he said shortly. “Take down these letters.”
After dinner, Wingrave went out alone. Aynesworth followed him about an hour later, when his work was done, and made his way towards the Vicarage. It was barely nine o’clock, but the little house seemed already to be in darkness. He rang twice before anybody answered him. Then he heard slow, shuffling footsteps within, and a tall, gaunt man, in clerical attire, and carrying a small lamp, opened the door.
Aynesworth made the usual apologies and was ushered into a bare, gloomy-looking apartment which, from the fact of its containing a writing table and a few books, he imagined must be the study. His host never asked him to sit down. He was a long, unkempt-looking man with a cold, forbidding face, and his manner was the reverse of cordial.
“I have called to see you,” Aynesworth explained, “with reference to one of your parishioners—the daughter of your late organist.”
“Indeed!” the clergyman remarked solemnly.
“I saw her today for the first time and have only just heard her story,” Aynesworth continued. “It seems to be a very sad one.”
His listener inclined his head.
“I am, unfortunately, a poor man,” Aynesworth continued, “but I have some friends who are well off, and I could lay my hands upon a little ready money. I should like to discuss the matter with you and see if we cannot arrange something to give her a start in life.”
The clergyman cleared his throat.
“It is quite unnecessary,” he answered. “A connection of her father’s has come forward at the last moment, who is able to do all that is required for her. Her future is provided for.”
Aynesworth was a little taken aback.
“I am very glad to hear it,” he declared. “I understood that she had neither friends nor relations.”
“You were misinformed,” the other answered. “She has both.”
“May I ask who it is who has turned up so unexpectedly?” Aynesworth inquired. “I have taken a great fancy to the child.”
The clergyman edged a little towards the door, and the coldness of his manner was unmistakable.
“I do not wish to seem discourteous,” he said, “but I cannot recognize that you have any right to ask me these questions. You may accept my word that the child is to be fittingly provided for.”
Aynesworth felt the color rising in his cheeks.
“I trust,” he said, “that you do not find my interest in her unwarrantable. My visit to you is simply a matter of charity. If my aid is unneeded, so much the better. All the same, I should like to know where she is going and who her friends are.”
“I do not find myself at liberty to afford you any information,” was the curt reply.
Thereupon there was nothing left for Aynesworth to do but to put on his hat and walk out, which he did.
Wingrave met him in the hall on his return.
“Where have you been?” he asked a little sharply.
“On a private errand,” Aynesworth answered, irritated by his words and look.
“You are my secretary,” Wingrave said coldly. “I do not pay you to go about executing private errands.”
Aynesworth looked at him in surprise. Did he really wish to quarrel?
“I imagine, sir,” he said, “that my time is my own when I have no work of yours on hand. If you think otherwise—”
He paused and looked at his employer significantly. Wingrave turned on his heel.
“Be so kind,” he said, “as to settle the bill here tonight. We leave by the seven o’clock train in the morning.”
“Tomorrow!” Aynesworth exclaimed.
“Precisely!”
“Do you mind,” he asked, “if I follow by a later train?”
“I do,” Wingrave answered. “I need you in London directly we arrive.”
“I am afraid,” Aynesworth said, after a moment’s reflection, “that it is impossible for me to leave.”
“Why?”
“You will think it a small thing,” he said, “but I have given my promise. I must see that child again before I go!”
“You are referring,” he asked, “to the black-frocked little creature we saw about the place yesterday?”
“Yes!”
Wingrave regarded his secretary as one might look at a person who has suddenly taken leave of his senses.
“I am sorry,” he said, “to interfere with your engagements, but it is necessary that we should both leave by the seven o’clock train tomorrow morning.”
Aynesworth reflected for a moment.
“If I can see the child first,” he said, “I will come. If not, I will follow you at midday.”
“In the latter case,” Wingrave remarked, “pray do not trouble to follow me unless your own affairs take you to London. Our connection will have ended.”
“You mean this?” Aynesworth asked.
“It is my custom,” Wingrave answered, “to mean what I say.”
Aynesworth set his alarm that night for half-past five. It seemed to him that his future would largely depend upon how soundly the child slept.
The cottage, as Aynesworth neared it, showed no sign of life. The curtainless windows were blank and empty, no smoke ascended from the chimney. Its plastered front was innocent of any form of creeper, but in the few feet of garden in front a great, overgrown wild rose bush, starred with deep red blossoms, perfumed the air. As he drew near, the door suddenly opened, and with a little cry of welcome the child rushed out to him.
“How lovely of you!” she cried. “I saw you coming from my window!”
“You are up early,” he said, smiling down at her.
“The sun woke me,” she answered. “It always does. I was going down to the sands. Shall we go together? Or would you like to go into the gardens at Tredowen? The flowers are beautiful there while the dew is on them!”
“I am afraid,” Aynesworth answered, “that I cannot do either. I have come to say goodbye.”
The light died out of her face all of a sudden. The delicate beauty of her gleaming eyes and quivering mouth had vanished. She was once more the pale, wan little child he had seen coming slowly up the garden path at Tredowen.
“You are going—so soon!” she murmured.
He took her hand and led her away over the short green turf of the common.
“We only came for a few hours,” he told her. “But I have good news for you, Juliet, unless you know already. Mr. Saunders has found out some of your friends. They are going to look after you properly, and you will not be alone any more.”
“What time are you going?” she asked.
“Silly child,” he answered, giving her hand a shake. “Listen to what I am telling you. You are going to have friends to look after you always. Aren’t you glad?”
“No, I am not glad,” she answered passionately. “I don’t want to go away. I am—lonely.”
Her arms suddenly sought his neck, and her face was buried on his shoulder. He soothed her as well as he could.
“I must go, little girl,” he said, “for I am off to America almost at once. As soon as I can after I come back, I will come and see you.”
“You have only been here one day,” she sobbed.
“I would stay if I could, dear,” Aynesworth answered. “Come, dry those eyes and be a brave girl. Think how nice it will be to go and live with people who will take care of you properly, and be fond of you. Why, you may have a pony, and all sorts of nice things.”
“I don’t want a pony,” she answered, hanging on his arm. “I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here—and wait till you come back.”
He laughed.
“Why, when I come back, little woman,” he answered, “you will be almost grown up. Come, dry your eyes now, and I tell you what we will do. You shall come back with me to breakfast, and then drive up to the station and see us off.”
“I should like to come,” she whispered, “but I am afraid of the other gentleman.”
“Very likely we sha’n’t see him,” Aynesworth answered. “If we do, he won’t hurt you.”
“I don’t like his face!” she persisted.
“Well, we won’t look at it,” Aynesworth answered. “But breakfast we must have!”
They were half way through the meal, and Juliet had quite recovered her spirits when Wingrave entered. He looked at the two with impassive face, and took his place at the table. He wished the child “Good morning” carelessly, but made no remark as to her presence there.
“I have just been telling Juliet some good news,” Aynesworth remarked. “I went to see Mr. Saunders, the Vicar here, last night, and he has found out some of her father’s friends. They are going to look after her.”
Wingrave showed no interest in the information. But a moment later he addressed Juliet for the first time.
“Are you glad that you are going away from Tredowen?” he asked.
“I am very, very sorry,” she answered, the tears gathering once more in her eyes.
“But you want to go to school, don’t you, and see other girls?” he asked.
She shook her head decidedly.
“It will break my heart,” she said quietly, “to leave Tredowen. I think that if I have to go away from the pictures and the garden, and the sea, I shall never be happy any more.”
“You are a child,” he remarked contemptuously; “you do not understand. If you go away, you can learn to paint pictures yourself like those at Tredowen. You will find that the world is full of other beautiful places!”
The sympathetic aspect of his words was altogether destroyed by the thin note of careless irony, which even the child understood. She felt that he was mocking her.
“I could never be happy,” she said simply, “away from Tredowen. You understand, don’t you?” she added, turning confidentially to Aynesworth.
“You think so now, dear,” he said, “but remember that you are very young. There are many things for you to learn before you grow up.”
“I am not a dunce,” she replied. “I can talk French and German, and do arithmetic, and play the organ. Father used to teach me these things. I can learn at Tredowen very well. I hope that my friends will let me stay here.”
Wingrave took no more notice of her. She and Aynesworth walked together to the station. As they passed the little whitewashed cottage, she suddenly let go his hand, and darted inside.
“Wait one moment,” she cried breathlessly.
She reappeared almost at once, holding something tightly clenched in her right hand. She showed it to him shyly.
“It is for you, please,” she said.
It was a silver locket, and inside was a little picture of herself. Aynesworth stooped down and kissed her. He had had as many presents in his life as most men, but never an offering which came to him quite like that! They stood still for a moment, and he held out her hands. Already the morning was astir. The seagulls were wheeling, white-winged and noiseless, above their heads; the air was fragrant with the scent of cottage flowers. Like a low, sweet undernote, the sea came rolling in upon the firm sands—out to the west it stretched like a sheet of softly swaying inland water. For those few moments there seemed no note of discord—and then the harsh whistle of an approaching train! They took hold of hands and ran.
It was, perhaps, as well that their farewells were cut short. There was scarcely time for more than a few hurried words before the train moved out from the queer little station, and with his head out of the window, Aynesworth waved his hand to the black-frocked child with her pale, eager face already stained with tears—a lone, strange little figure, full of a sort of plaintive grace as she stood there, against a background of milk cans, waving a crumpled handkerchief!
Wingrave, who had been buried in a morning paper, looked up presently.
“If our journeyings,” he remarked drily, “are to contain everywhere incidents such as these, they will become a sort of sentimental pilgrimage.”
Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.
“I am sorry,” he said, “that my interest in the child has annoyed you. At any rate, it is over now. The parson was mysterious, but he assured me that she was provided for.”
Wingrave looked across the carriage with cold, reflective curiosity.
“Your point of view,” he remarked, “is a mystery to me! I cannot see how the future of an unfledged brat like that can possibly concern you!”
“Perhaps not,” Aynesworth answered, “but you must remember that you are a little out of touch with your fellows just now. I daresay when you were my age, you would have felt as I feel. I daresay that as the years go on, you will feel like it again.”
Wingrave was thoughtful for a moment.
“So you think,” he remarked, “that I may yet have in me the making of a sentimentalist.”
Aynesworth returned his gaze as steadfastly.
“One can never tell,” he answered. “You may change, of course. I hope that you will.”
“You are candid, at any rate!”
“I do not think,” Aynesworth answered, “that there is any happiness in life for the man who lives entirely apart from his fellow creatures. Not to feel is not to live. I think that the first real act of kindness which you feel prompted to perform will mark the opening of a different life for you.”
Wingrave spread out the newspaper.
“I think,” he said, with a faint sneer, “that it is quite time you took this sea voyage.”
Mr. Lumley Barrington, K.C. and M.P., was in the act of stepping into his carriage to drive down to the House, when he was intercepted by a message. It was his wife’s maid, who came hurrying out after him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, “but her ladyship particularly wished to see you as soon as you came in.”
“Is your mistress in?” Barrington asked in some surprise.
“Yes, sir!” the maid answered. “Her ladyship is resting, before she goes to the ball at Caleram House. She is in her room now.”
“I will come up at once,” Barrington said.
He kept the carriage waiting while he ascended to his wife’s room. There was no answer to his knock. He opened the door softly. She was asleep on a couch drawn up before the fire.
He crossed the room noiselessly, and stood looking down upon her. Her lithe, soft figure had fallen into a posture of graceful, almost voluptuous ease; the ribbons and laces of her muslin dressing gown quivered gently with her deep regular breathing. She had thrown off her slippers, and one long, slender foot was exposed; the other was doubled up underneath her body. Her face was almost like the face of a child, smooth and unwrinkled, save for one line by the eyes where she laughed. He looked at her steadfastly. Could the closing of the eyes, indeed, make all the difference? Life and the knowledge of life seemed things far from her consciousness. Could one look like that—even in sleep—and underneath—! Barrington broke away from his train of thought, and woke her quickly.
She sat up and yawned.
“Parsons managed to catch you, then,” she remarked.
“Yes!” he answered. “I was just off. I got away from Wills’ dinner party early, and called here for some notes. I must be at the House”—he glanced at the clock—“in three-quarters of an hour!”
She nodded. “I won’t keep you as long as that.”
Her eyes met his, a little furtively, full of inquiry. “I have done what you wished,” he said quietly. “I called at the Clarence Hotel!”
“You saw him!”
“No! He sent back my card. He declined to see me.”
She showed no sign of disappointment. She sat up and looked into the fire, smoothing her hair mechanically with her hands.
“Personally,” Barrington continued, “I could see no object whatever in my visit. I have nothing to say to him, nor, I should think, he to me. I am sorry for him, of course, but he’d never believe me if I told him so. What happened to him was partly my fault, and unless he’s changed, he’s not likely to forget it.”
She swayed a little towards him.
“It was partly—also—mine,” she murmured.
“I don’t see that at all,” he objected. “You at any rate were blameless!”
She looked up at him, and he was astonished to find how pale she was.
“I was not!” she said calmly.
There was a short silence. Barrington had the air of a man who has received a shock.
“Ruth!” he exclaimed, glancing towards the door, and speaking almost in a whisper. “Do you mean—that there are things which I have never known?”
“Yes!” she answered. “I mean that he might, if he chose, do us now—both of us—an immense amount of harm.”
Barrington sat down at the end of the sofa. He knew his wife well enough to understand that this was serious.
“Let us understand one another, Ruth,” he said quietly. “I always thought that you were a little severe on Wingrave at the trial! He may bear you a grudge for that; it is very possible that he does. But what can he do now? He had his chance to cross examine you, and he let it go by.”
“He has some letters of mine,” Lady Ruth said slowly.
“Letters! Written before the trial?”
“Yes!”
“Why did he not make use of them there?”
“If he had,” Lady Ruth said, with her eyes fixed upon the carpet, “the sympathy would have been the other way. He would have got off with a much lighter sentence, and you—would not have married me!”
“Good God!” Barrington muttered.
“You see,” Lady Ruth continued, resting her hand upon her husband’s coat sleeve, “the thing happened all in a second. I had the check in my hand when you and Sir William came crashing through that window, and Sir William’s eyes were upon me. The only way to save myself was to repudiate it, and let Wingrave get out of the affair as well as he could. Of course, I never guessed what was going to happen.”
“Then it was Wingrave,” Barrington muttered, “who played the game?”
“Yes!” Lady Ruth answered quietly. “But I am not so sure about him now. You and I, Lumley, know one another a little better today than we did twelve years ago. We have had a few of the corners knocked off, I suppose. I can tell you things now I didn’t care to then. Wingrave had lent me money before! He has letters from me today, thanking him for it.”
Barrington was a large, florid man, well built and well set up. In court he presented rather a formidable appearance with his truculent chin, his straight, firm mouth, and his commanding presence. Yet there was nothing about him now which would have inspired fear in the most nervous of witnesses. He looked like a man all broken up by some unexpected shock.
“If he had produced those letters—at the trial—”
Lady Ruth shrugged her shoulders.
“I risked it, anyhow,” she said. “I had to. My story was the only one which gave me a dog’s chance, and I didn’t mean to go under—then. Wingrave never gave me away, but I fancy he’s feeling differently about it now!”
“How do you know, Ruth?”
“I have seen him! He sent for me!” she answered. “Lumley, don’t look at me like that! We’re not in the nursery, you and I. I went because I had to. He’s going to America for a time, and then he’s coming back here. I think that when he comes back—he means mischief!”
“He is not the sort of man to forget,” Barrington said, half to himself.
She shuddered ever so slightly. Then she stretched out a long white arm, and drawing his head suddenly down to her, kissed him on the lips.
“If only,” she murmured, “he would give up the letters! Without them, he might say—anything. No one would believe!”
Barrington raised his eyes to hers. There was something almost pathetic in the worshiping light which shone there. He was, as he had always been, her abject slave.
“Can you think of any way?” he asked. “Shall I go to him again?”
“Useless!” she answered. “You have nothing to offer in exchange. He would not give them to me. He surely would not give them to you. Shall I tell you what is in his mind? Listen, then! He is rich now; he means to make more money there. Then he will return, calling himself Mr. Wingrave—an American—with imaginary letters of introduction to us. He has ambitions—I don’t know what they are, but they seem to entail his holding some sort of a place in society. We are to be his sponsors.”
“Is it practicable?” he asked.
“Quite,” she answered. “He is absolutely unrecognizable now. He has changed cruelly. Can’t you imagine the horror of it? He will be always in evidence; always with those letters in the background. He means to make life a sort of torture chamber for us!”
“Better defy him at once, and get over,” Barrington said. “After all, don’t you think that the harm he could do is a little imaginary?”
She brushed the suggestion aside with a little shiver.
“Shall I tell you what he would do, Lumley?” she said, leaning towards him. “He would have my letters, and a copy of my evidence, printed in an elegant little volume and distributed amongst my friends. It would come one day like a bomb, and nothing that you or I could do would alter it in the least. Your career and my social position would be ruined. Success brings enemies, you know, Lumley, and I have rather more than my share.”
“Then we are helpless,” he said.
“Unless we can get the letters—or unless he should never return from America,” she answered.
Barrington moved uneasily in his seat. He knew very well that some scheme was already forming in his wife’s brain.
“If there is anything that I can do,” he said in a low tone, “don’t be afraid to tell me.”
“There is one chance,” she answered, “a sort of forlorn hope, but you might try it. He has a secretary, a young man named Aynesworth. If he were on our side—”
“Don’t you think,” Barrington interrupted, “that you would have more chance with him than I?”
She laughed softly.
“You foolish man,” she said, touching his fingers lightly. “I believe you think that I am irresistible!”
“I have seen a good many lions tamed,” he reminded her.
“Nonsense! Anyhow, there is one here who seems quite insensible. I have talked already with Mr. Aynesworth. He would not listen to me!”
“Ah!”
“Nevertheless,” she continued softy, “of one thing I am very sure. Every man is like every woman; he is vulnerable if you can discover the right spot and the right weapons. Mr. Aynesworth is not a woman’s man, but I fancy that he is ambitious. I thought that you might go and see him. He has rooms somewhere in Dorset Street.”
He rose to his feet. A glance at the clock reminded him of the hour.
“I will go,” he said. “I will do what I can. I think, dear,” he added, bending over her to say farewell, “that you should have been the man!”
She laughed softly.
“Am I such a failure as a woman, then?” she asked with a swift upward glance. “Don’t be foolish, Lumley. My woman will be here to dress me directly. You must really go away.”
He strode down the stairs with tingling pulses, and drove to the House, where his speech, a little florid in its rhetoric, and verbose as became the man, was nevertheless a great success.
“Quite a clever fellow, Barrington,” one of his acquaintances remarked, “when you get him away from his wife.”
Aynesworth ceased tugging at the strap of his portmanteau, and rose slowly to his feet. A visitor had entered his rooms—apparently unannounced.
“I must apologize,” the newcomer said, “for my intrusion. Your housekeeper, I presume it was, whom I saw below, told me to come up.”
Aynesworth pushed forward a chair.
“Won’t you sit down?” he said. “I believe that I am addressing Mr. Lumley Barrington.”
Not altogether without embarrassment, Barrington seated himself. Something of his ordinary confidence of bearing and demeanor had certainly deserted him. His manner, too, was nervous. He had the air of being altogether ill at ease.
“I must apologize further, Mr. Aynesworth,” he continued, “for an apparently ill-timed visit. You are, I see, on the eve of a journey.”
“I am leaving for America tomorrow,” Aynesworth answered.
“With Sir Wingrave Seton, I presume?” Barrington remarked.
“Precisely,” Aynesworth answered.
Barrington hesitated for a moment. Aynesworth was civil, but inquiring. He felt himself very awkwardly placed.
“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “I must throw myself upon your consideration. You can possibly surmise the reason of my visit.”
Aynesworth shook his head.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I must plead guilty to denseness—in this particular instance, at any rate. I am altogether at a loss to account for it.”
“You have had some conversation with my wife, I believe?”
“Yes. But—”
“Before you proceed, Mr. Aynesworth,” Barrington interrupted, “one word. You are aware that Sir Wingrave Seton is in possession of certain documents in which my wife is interested, which he refuses to give up?”
“I have understood that such is the case,” Aynesworth admitted. “Will you pardon me if I add that it is a matter which I can scarcely discuss?”
Barrington shrugged his shoulders.
“Let it go, for the moment,” he said. “There is something else which I want to say to you.”
Aynesworth nodded a little curtly. He was not very favorably impressed with his visitor.
“Well!”
Barrington leaned forward in his chair.
“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “you have made for yourself some reputation as a writer. Your name has been familiar to me for some time. I was at college, I believe, with your uncle, Stanley Aynesworth.”
He paused. Aynesworth said nothing.
“I want to know,” Barrington continued impressively, “what has induced you to accept a position with such a man as Seton?”
“That,” Aynesworth declared, “is easily answered. I was not looking for a secretaryship at all, or anything of the sort, but I chanced to hear his history one night, and I was curious to analyze, so far as possible, his attitude towards life and his fellows, on his reappearance in it. That is the whole secret.”
Barrington leaned back in his chair, and glanced thoughtfully at his companion.
“You know the story of his misadventures, then?” he remarked.
“I know all about his imprisonment, and the cause of it,” Aynesworth said quietly.
Barrington was silent for several moments. He felt that he was receiving but scanty encouragement.
“Is it worth while, Mr. Aynesworth?” he asked at length. “There is better work for you in the world than this.”
Again Aynesworth preferred to reply by a gesture only. Barrington was watching him steadily.
“A political secretaryship, Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “might lead you anywhere. If you are ambitious, it is the surest of all stepping stones into the House. After that, your career is in your own hands. I offer you such a post.”
“I am exceedingly obliged to you,” Aynesworth replied, “but I scarcely understand.”
“I have influence,” Barrington said, “which I have never cared to use on my own account. I am willing to use it on yours. You have only to say the word, and the matter is arranged.”
“I can only repeat,” Aynesworth said, “that I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Barrington, but I cannot understand why you should interest yourself so much on my behalf.”
“If you wish me to speak in plain words,” Barrington said, “I will do so. I ask you to aid me as a man of honor in the restoration of those letters to my wife.”
“I cannot do it,” Aynesworth said firmly. “I am sorry that you should have come to me with such an offer. It is quite out of the question!”
Barrington held out his hand.
“Do not decide too hastily,” he said. “Remember this. Sir Wingrave Seton had once an opportunity of putting those letters to any use he may have thought fit. He ignored it. At that time, their tenor and contents might easily have been explained. After all these years, that task would be far more difficult. I say that no man has a right to keep a woman’s letters back from her years after any friendship there may have been between them is over. It is not the action of an honorable man. Sir Wingrave Seton has placed himself outside the pale of honorable men.”
“Your judgment,” Aynesworth answered quietly, “seems to me severe. Sir Wingrave Seton has been the victim of peculiar circumstances.”
Barrington looked at his companion thoughtfully. He was wondering exactly how much he knew.
“You defend him,” he remarked. “That is because you have not yet found out what manner of man he is.”
“In any case,” Aynesworth answered, “I am not his judge. Mr. Barrington,” he added, “You must forgive me if I remind you that this is a somewhat unprofitable discussion.”
A short silence followed. With Barrington it did not appear to be a silence of irresolution. He was leaning a little forward in his chair, and his head was resting upon his hand. Of his companion he seemed for the moment to have become oblivious. Aynesworth watched him curiously. Was he looking back through the years, he wondered, to that one brief but lurid chapter of history; or was it his own future of which he was thinking,—a future which, to the world, must seem so full of brilliant possibilities, and yet which he himself must feel to be so fatally and miserably insecure?
“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said at last, “I suppose from a crude point of view I am here to bribe you.”
Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.
“Is it worth while?” he asked a little wearily. “I have tried to be civil—but I have also tried to make you understand. Your task is absolutely hopeless!”
“It should not be,” Barrington persisted. “This is one of those rare cases, in which anything is justifiable. Seton had his chance at the trial. He chose to keep silence. I do not praise him or blame him for that. It was the only course open to a man of honor. I maintain that his silence then binds him to silence for ever. He has no right to ruin my life and the happiness of my wife by subtle threats, to hold those foolish letters over our heads, like a thunderbolt held ever in suspense. You are ambitious, I believe, Mr. Aynesworth! Get me those letters, and I will make you my secretary, find you a seat in Parliament, and anything else in reason that you will!”
Aynesworth rose to his feet. He wished to intimate that, so far as he was concerned, the interview was at an end.
“Your proposition, Mr. Barrington,” he said, “is absolutely impossible. In the first place, I have no idea where the letters in question are, and Sir Wingrave is never likely to suffer them to pass into my charge.”
“You have opportunities of finding out,” Barrington suggested.
“And secondly,” Aynesworth continued, ignoring the interruption, “whatever the right or the wrong of this matter may be, I am in receipt of a salary from Sir Wingrave Seton, and I cannot betray his confidence.”
Barrington also rose to his feet. He was beginning to recognize the hopelessness of his task.
“This is final, Mr. Aynesworth?” he asked.
“Absolutely!” was the firm reply.
Barrington bowed stiffly, and moved towards the door. On the threshold he paused.
“I trust, Mr. Aynesworth,” he said hesitatingly, “that you will not regard this as an ordinary attempt at bribery and corruption. I have simply asked you to aid me in setting right a great injustice.”
“It is a subtle distinction, Mr. Barrington,” Aynesworth answered, “but I will endeavor to keep in mind your point of view.”
Barrington drove straight home, and made his way directly to his study. Now that he was free from his wife’s influence, and looked back upon his recent interview, he realized for the first time the folly and indignity of the whole proceedings. He was angry that, a man of common sense, keen witted and farseeing in the ordinary affairs of life, should have placed himself so completely in a false, not to say a humiliating position. And then, just as suddenly, he forgot all about himself, and remembered only her. With a breath of violets, and the delicate rustling of half-lifted skirts, she had come softly into the room, and stood looking at him inquiringly. Her manner seemed to indicate more a good-natured curiosity than real anxiety. She made a little grimace as he shook his head.
“I have failed,” he said shortly. “That young man is a prig!”
“I was afraid,” she said, “that he would be obstinate. Men with eyes of that color always are!”
“What are we to do, Ruth?”
“What can we?” she answered calmly. “Nothing but wait. He is going to America. It is a terrible country for accidents. Something may happen to him there! Do go and change your things, there’s a dear, and look in at the Westinghams’ for me for an hour. We’ll just get some supper and come away.”
“I will be ready in ten minutes,” Barrington answered. He understood that he was to ask no questions, nor did he. But all the time his man was hurrying him into his clothes, his brain was busy weaving fancies.