CHAPTER XXVII.
‘Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun.’
‘Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun.’
‘Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun.’
‘Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun.’
His greeting to Wyndham is of the coldest. He does not speak to him, but turns at once to Susan.
‘Your aunt wants you,’ says he severely. And the girl, a little chilled, a little apprehensive, disappears within the Rectory gate, carrying Carew, a most unwilling captive, with her.
When she is gone, the Rector faces Wyndham.
‘How is this, Wyndham?’ asks he quietly, yet with unmistakable indignation.
‘How is what?’ asks the young man a little haughtily.
‘Was it you who took Susan into that cottage?’
‘No; but even if it had been, I see no cause for the tone you have assumed towards me.’
‘That is what I suppose you call “carrying it off,”’ says the Rector, his pale face betraying a fine disgust.
‘Mr. Barry!’ says Wyndham, as if the other had struck him.
He has flushed a dark red, and now turns as if to walk straight away up the road and out of the Rector’s ken for ever. But suddenly he halts and looks back, and Mr. Barry, who has seen many phases of life and is quick to discern the truth, however deep in the well it lies, beckons to him to return. If this young man cannot clear himself, he may still plead circumstances.
‘If you could explain, Wyndham.’
‘That’s what offends me,’ says Wyndham, with some passion. He has refused to return an inch, so the Rector has had to go to him. It wouldn’t do to shout his conversation, consideringall the young people who live on one side of the road behind the right-hand wall, and the one ‘young person’ (the Rector has the gravest suspicions) who lives on the other side of it. What if they should all chance to hear?
Wyndham is still talking.
‘Why should I have to explain? You have known me many years, Mr. Barry. Of what’—looking him fair in the face—‘do you accuse me?’
‘That hardly requires an answer,’ says Mr. Barry calmly. And all at once Wyndham knows that the trouble he had dreamed of is already on him. There is gossip rife in the neighbourhood about him and this mysterious tenant of his cottage. People are talking—soon it will come to the old man’s ears, and to his aunt’s, and to Josephine’s. The last idea is the least troublesome. ‘You must surely have heard some rumours yourself. I am willing, I am most anxious,’ says the Rector, with growing earnestness, ‘to hear the truth of a story that seems, as it nowstands, to be disastrous to two people. You, Wyndham, are one of them. No, not a word. Hear me first. I want to say just this: that if I was a little harsh to you a moment ago, it was because of Susan. One’s daughter has the first claim. And she—that child—to be—You tell me you did not take her to see—’
‘I told you that,’ says Wyndham, ‘and I told you, too’—very straightly—‘that if I had done so I should see no reason why I should be ashamed of it. However, I had nothing to do with your daughter’s visit to Miss Moore. It appears Miss Moore asked her to come into my—her—’
The Rector stops him with an impatient gesture.
‘Whose is it, yours or hers?’ asks he.
‘Mine, yet hers in a sense, too,’ begins and ends the fluent lawyer, whose fluency has now, at his need, deserted him.
‘I do not understand your evasions.’
‘If you will let me—’
‘I want no explanations,’ says the Rectorcoldly. ‘I want only one answer to one plain question: Who is this Miss Moore?’
He looks straight at Wyndham. The extenuating circumstances he had believed in grow smaller and smaller.
Wyndham hesitates. Who is she, indeed? Who is this tenant of his?
‘You hesitate, I see,’ says Mr. Barry. ‘You have the grace to do even so much. But at all events you cannot deny that you permitted the presence of my young daughter in that place beyond.’
‘I—’
‘A truce to subterfuges, sir!’ cries the Rector. ‘A plain answer I will and must get. Who is this girl who lives in your house and refuses to see or know anyone in her neighbourhood?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Wyndham sullenly, angered beyond control.
‘I do,’ says the Rector, ‘and may God forgive you for your sin! She is—’
‘Be silent!’ cries Wyndham, interrupting him so imperiously that the older man stopsshort. ‘She is my tenant—my tenant, I repeat, and’—haughtily—‘no more.’
Silence follows upon this. The Rector, lost in thought, stands with clasped hands behind his back and his eyes upon the ground. His silence incenses Wyndham.
‘You can believe me or not, as you like,’ says he, turning on his heel.
He moves away.
‘Stay, stay,’ cries Mr. Barry suddenly. ‘We must get to the end of this. If I have wronged you, Wyndham, I regret it with all my heart; but there has been some talk here, and Susan—she is very young, a mere child. I could not stand that. You tell me there is nothing to be condemned in all this business—that she, this girl in there, is only your tenant. But landlords do not visit their tenants except on compulsion, so far as I know; and you—what has brought you here to-day?’
‘Just that,’ says Wyndham, who is still at white heat—‘compulsion. If you would condescend’—angrily—‘to listen to my explanation,I might, perhaps, make you understand.’
‘I shall be only too glad to listen,’ says Mr. Barry, with dignity.
‘But here—how can I explain here?’ says Wyndham, glancing round at the open road and the walls. ‘Walls have ears.’
But Mr. Barry does not budge, and Wyndham gives way to rather sardonic laughter.
‘I suppose,’ says he, ‘you would not let me under your roof until this is perfectly clear?’
The Rector still remains immovable.
‘The roof of heaven is above us always,’ returns he. Whereupon Wyndham, who has sympathy with determination, laughs again, but more naturally this time, and forthwith tells him the whole story of his acquaintance with Ella from that first strange night until to-day.
‘Bless me!’ says the Rector, when the recital is at an end. He strokes his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully. ‘What an extraordinary tale!’
‘Not too extraordinary to be believed, I hope?’—stiffly.
‘No, no. I believe you, Wyndham—I believe you thoroughly,’ says the Rector gently. ‘I am indeed sorry for my late distrust of you; but you will admit that there was cause. That poor girl! You have utterly failed, then, to discover those people with whom she had been living before that—that dreadful night?’
‘So far, yes. But the fact that they once did live there goes far to establish the truth of her—’ He stammers a little, but Mr. Barry takes him up:
‘Her story? It entirely, in my opinion, establishes the truth of her story.’ Wyndham’s stammer has added to the truth of his declaration so far as the Rector is concerned.
‘You have a more liberal mind than mine,’ says Wyndham. ‘I have told you so much that I may as well make you my father confessorin toto.’ The smile that accompanies this is rather strained. ‘As a fact, there was a time when I did not believe inher story myself; and now, when I have to—well, it makes me feel rather poor, you know.’
‘You have no occasion to feel anything,’ says the Rector, ‘except that you have been a kind friend to her. Do you think you will be able to trace that fellow Moore?’
‘I hope so. I have engaged a detective—one of the smartest fellows in Dublin—and I depend upon him to run down that scoundrel in a month or so.’
‘In the meantime I shall make it my business to explain to everybody how matters really are,’ says the Rector. ‘To tell the people we know round here that—’
‘I beg you won’t,’ says Wyndham hurriedly. ‘Have I not told you how she desires privacy above all things, how she dreads her discovery by that man? I know it all sounds mysterious, Mr. Barry—that it is asking a great deal of your credulity to expect you to believe it all—but I still hope you will believe me, and at all events I know her secret is safe in your hands. I myself have thoughtof suggesting to her to face matters bravely, and if Moore should prove troublesome, why, to fight it out with him. I cannot believe he has any actual claim on her; but she has such an almost obstinate determination not to risk the chance of meeting him that I fear she will not be moved by what I say. This shutting of herself up in that cottage seems a mania with her—such a mania that I cannot but think her story true, and that she suffered considerably at that fellow’s hands.’
‘It looks like it,’ says the Rector.
‘Perhaps you will be able to combat her fears,’ says Wyndham rather awkwardly. ‘I should be very glad if you could, as this mystery surrounding her is—er—decidedly uncomfortable for me. You have seen that.’
‘I wonder you ever consented to the arrangement.’
‘I never meant to, but she seemed so utterly friendless, and she seemed to cling so to this place (a harbour of refuge it was to her, evidently), that I found it would be almost brutal to refuse.’
‘It was a charitable deed,’ says the Rector.
‘Not done in a spirit of charity, however. I assure you I regret it more and more every day of my life,’ says Wyndham, with a short laugh. ‘However, in for a penny, in for a pound, you know, and I had promised the Professor to look after her. I have now engaged a companion for her. I think you may remember Miss Manning. She was a governess of the Blakes’ some years ago. You used to know them.’
‘Manning? Oh, of course, of course,’ says the Rector—‘a most worthy creature. I never knew what became of her after Mary Blake went to India.’
‘Got another situation, and a most miserable one. Left it, and was found in direst poverty by the person I got to hunt her up. Her delight at my proposal to her to live with Miss Moore was unbounded. It will, at all events, be a blessing to get her out of that stuffy room I found her in. She looked so out of place in it. You know whata nice-looking woman she was, and so well got up always. But yesterday ... I advanced her a little of her salary at once—to—to get anything she might want, you know; and I expect that next week she will come to the Cottage.’
The Rector has heard this rather halting recital straight through without comment. Now he lifts his eyes.
‘You are a good fellow, Wyndham,’ says he slowly.
‘For heaven’s sake, Mr. Barry, not that,’ says Wyndham impatiently. ‘I expect I’m about the most grudging devil on earth. And if you think I enjoy helping this girl, or Miss Manning, or anyone else, you make a mistake. What I really want is to be left alone, to run my life on my own rails without the worry of being crossed or stopped by passengers, or goods, or extras.’
‘Ah, we can none of us hope for that,’ says the Rector. ‘The most selfish of us have to live, not only for ourselves, but for others. You spoke of having seen MissManning yesterday. Have you—told the young lady in there of her coming?’
‘Not yet. I had no time, indeed. When I found your daughter there, I felt I ought to take her away as soon as possible, simply because you did not know how matters were, and I had a hint—as to gossip. I must go back now, however, and tell her before my train leaves.’
‘You have little time,’ says the Rector, glancing at his watch. ‘Go. Make haste.’
‘There is one thing more,’ says Wyndham quickly, ‘and I think you should hear it. She—I don’t know anything for certain—but I feel almost sure that the poor girl is illegitimate. And, of course, you—’
‘I?’
‘You would not like an acquaintance between her and your daughters?’
‘You mistake me there,’ says the Rector; ‘a misfortune is not a fault. And the fact that this poor girl has been the victim of others’ vices should not be allowed to militate against her.’
‘Hardly a fact,’ says Wyndham quickly. ‘I speak only from very uncertain data, and yet—’
‘I know. It seems, unhappily, only too likely, however. There, go; you have little time.’