The Way of These Women - E. Phillips Oppenheim - E-Book

The Way of These Women E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

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  • Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
  • Kategorie: Krimi
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Beschreibung

England has not been invited to attend a conference of European nations in the Hague. Some think war is about to break out. „The Vanished Messenger” presents the international intrigue and conspiracy of the Powers against England to separate her from her colonies. Mr. John P. Dunster, an American, is traveling to the Hague with an important document that may prevent the outbreak of war when he mysteriously disappears after a train wreck in England. Richard Hamel is asked by the British government to attempt to solve the mystery of Dunster’s disappearance and prevent the outbreak of war in Europe. Intriguing spy novel with a murder, espionage and dramatic denouement – nicely plotted and fully developed characters.

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Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER I

There were only three passengers who alighted at Wickombe Annerley station from the five-thirty train. Two of them were, however, in their way, people of consequence. From the first-class smoking carriage next the engine stepped Henry Aynesworth, Marquis of Lakenham, six foot two and a half, broad and burly, with features stained by the suns of tropical countries and coarsened by a career of excesses so regrettably flagrant that, notwithstanding the remains of his fortune and his ancient name, he was heard of more often in the circles of Bohemia than in the great world to which by birth he belonged. He wore a light flannel suit, and a straw hat adorned with the colors of a noted cricket club. He was smoking a large cigar, and he stood by while his servant collected his belongings, watching the proceedings with an air of prosperous arrogance wholly and objectionably British. He was forty-two years of age and he looked older. He had a ruddy brown complexion, a stiff, fair mustache and a heavy jaw. His eyes were a little watery but his carriage still retained traces of his soldier training. His voice was always raised a note or two louder than was actually necessary.

“Anything here from Annerley Court?” he asked the station-master.

A long-coated footman who was on his way to the other end of the platform paused and touched his hat.

“The motor is here, my lord,” he said. “Sir Jermyn did not expect you, I think, until the later train. We had orders to meet the half-past seven.”

“Changed my mind at the last moment,” Lord Lakenham declared. “Fact is, it was so hot in town I was glad to get away. Have you come to meet any one else?”

“A young lady, sir,” the footman replied, edging off.

“Well, there’ll be room for me, I dare say,” the Marquis remarked. “What’s Sir Jermyn doing today? Cricket, eh?”

“Sir Jermyn is playing against Yorkshire, my lord. The match should be over in good time.”

The Marquis nodded and strolled towards the exit. The footman hurried to the other end of the platform, where two young ladies were standing in front of a small pile of luggage, from which a maid was collecting their belongings. The younger one was only a child, with fair, freckled face, rather a large mouth, and a very earnest expression. Her elder sister–there was no mistaking their relationship–was exceedingly dainty and charming. Her eyes were a trifle dark for her complexion, her hair fair and wavy, her complexion pale but flawless. She was dressed in the smartest of white linen traveling gowns, with white silk stockings and black shoes. Her voice when she addressed the footman, to whom her sister had called her attention, was singularly soft.

“Are you from Annerley Court?” she inquired.

The footman touched his hat.

“Yes, miss,” he answered. “Sir Jermyn desired me to present his compliments and to say that he was exceedingly sorry he was not able to come to the station. He said that he would explain immediately upon your arrival. He hopes to be at the Court as soon as we are. There is a cart waiting for the luggage and for your maid, and a motor for you and the gentleman, miss.”

For the first time she glanced down the platform and noticed the disappearing form of her fellow passenger.

“There is some one else going to Annerley Court, then?”

The footman, who was assisting with the baggage, turned around for a moment.

“Yes, miss,” he replied. “Lord Lakenham has arrived by the same train.”

The footman was now entirely intent upon superintending the removal of the luggage, and incidentally ingratiating himself with the young lady’s maid, of whose appearance he approved. The station-master had escorted his distinguished arrival to the motorcar, the solitary porter was busy hoisting luggage to the top of the luggage cart, and the child had wandered off to admire the roses in the station-master’s garden. It was a little country station on a branch line, with a row of white palings, a single seat, a tiny shed, and on the other side of the single line of metals, a thick wood. There was no one there to witness what, in its way, was almost a tragedy. The girl, whom an entire press and a not ungenerous profession had done their best to spoil, had forgotten to act. She stood quite still, gazing at the faint line of smoke which marked the track of the departing train as though it were carrying away her last hope. All the soft, delicate girlishness of her features seemed to have vanished. Her mouth was set, her eyes distended with fear. There was no one of her admirers who would have recognized her at that moment. All the little color which she possessed seemed to have been drawn from her face, all the life and lissome grace to have passed from her limbs. As the departing train vanished around the distant curve, she gazed about her wildly, as though seeking for some way of escape. She shrank as though instinctively away from the little shed outside which the motor-car was waiting.

“The luggage is quite all right, madame,” the footman announced, turning round. “If you and the young lady will be so good as to follow me?”

The child, who had clambered up the white palings, sprang lightly down.

“Aren’t you glad it’s a car, Sybil?” she exclaimed. “It will be just lovely riding in the open air after that stuffy train. Come along.”

The young lady to whom she appealed nerved herself for an effort. She let fall her traveling veil of white gauze and with her hand in her sister’s followed the footman down the platform, through the wooden shed and out into the little circular space where a very handsome motor-car was waiting for them. Lord Lakenham, who was standing by its side, raised his hat. He was in one of his very best moods, for he threw away his cigar.

“We are to be fellow passengers to Annerley Court, I hear,” he said. “May I introduce myself? My name is Lakenham. Will you allow me?”

She stepped into the car with a slight inclination of the head. For a moment or two Lord Lakenham seemed to forget his manners. The child passed by him unaided. He stood as though turned to stone, staring at the half-concealed countenance of the young lady, who was already ensconced in a corner of the car.

“Are you not coming?” she asked calmly. “There is plenty of room.”

Lord Lakenham recovered himself with a little effort.

“Of course I am,” he answered. “I–well, I forgot where I was for a moment. Now we’re all right.”

He took the seat opposite the two girls and the car glided off. His eyes still seemed to be seeking to penetrate that closely drawn veil.

“Delicious, this is, after the train, isn’t it?” he remarked. “May I not have the privilege of knowing your name? We are to be fellow-guests at Annerley, I believe, so I shall only be anticipating a few minutes.”

“My name is Cluley,” she told him, “and this is my little sister–Mary Cluley. We are only making a very brief visit to Annerley.”

“Cluley,” he repeated, thoughtfully. “Seems a familiar name to me, somehow. I wonder why?…Ah! of course, there’s Sybil Cluley, the girl at the Imperial Theatre, who seems to have turned the heads of half the men in London.”

“My name is Sybil Cluley,” she said quietly.

Lord Lakenham slapped his knee and chuckled.

“By Jove, then, that accounts for it!” he exclaimed. “I knew I’d seen you before. Came over me for a certainty directly you got into the motor, only I couldn’t imagine where. You were mixed up with something in my mind and I couldn’t work it out. I am delighted to know you, Miss Cluley. Had the pleasure of seeing you act, of course.”

The girl inclined her head. Her sister leaned forward from her seat.

“Nearly every one, wherever we go, knows Sybil by sight,” she told Lord Lakenham confidentially. “It’s so funny sometimes when we are out in the streets together. People stop and turn round, and in the shops I can often hear them whispering and telling one another who Sybil is. Have you seen ‘The Tangled Web’?”

“Several times,” Lord Lakenham assured her. “Parts of it are a trifle too clever for me but it’s a jolly good show, all the same. Your sister’s the making of it, to my mind.”

“Sybil is ripping!” Mary declared. “Everybody says so. It’s quite her best part. The manager told me himself the other day that he didn’t think there was any one else in London who could have created it as she has done.”

Lord Lakenham smiled tolerantly.

“I should imagine he was quite right,” he agreed. “I expect you’re keen to grow up and go on the stage yourself, eh?”

The child looked across at her sister doubtfully. Sybil Cluley was lying back in her corner seat with half-closed eyes, as though anxious to escape as much as possible from the conversation. She opened them now, however, wide enough.

“Mary will never go upon the stage,” she said firmly. “I have made other plans for her.”

The child laughed gayly enough, yet with a note of regret.

“Sybil’s saving all her money,” she explained to her companion, “so that soon after I leave school we can travel together for a time and then live somewhere down in the country. I don’t believe she’s a bit fond of acting, really. Isn’t it stupid!”

Lord Lakenham stroked his stubbly moustache and gazed a little curiously at the eager-faced child who sat opposite to him.

“I have heard a good many young ladies of your sister’s age talk like that,” he declared, “especially after the first excitement of their success has worn off. It doesn’t last, though. There’s no profession in the world, they say, like the stage for holding one.”

Mary seemed doubtful.

“Sybil doesn’t often change her mind,” she told him. “In fact she’s what I should call stubborn about most things.”

“Nice character your young sister’s giving you,” Lord Lakenham said, turning to his elder companion with a smile.

Sybil shrugged her shoulders slightly. She seemed curiously anxious to remain in the background.

“Mary doesn’t know everything,” she murmured, “nor does she always mean exactly what she says.”

“The natural proclivity of her sex asserting itself in youth!” Lord Lakenham remarked, didactically. “What?”

Sybil only smiled very faintly and looked away with the air of one whom the conversation had ceased to interest. The car had climbed a hill and was rushing down now into the valley. Mary was leaning back in her seat with a keen air of enjoyment.

“Isn’t it lovely to be in the country again!” she cried. “Look at those glorious woods, Sybil! Are we anywhere near Sir Jermyn’s house, Lord Lakenham?”

“We shall turn in at the gates in a few moments,” the Marquis replied. “You can see them straight ahead there. Nice little place of its sort, Annerley Court. Have you ever been down before, Miss Cluley?” he added, turning to the girl by his side.

She shook her head.

“Never,” she answered. “Sir Jermyn has asked me once or twice but I have not been able to leave the theatre. Now I have a short vacation and we are going to read his new play together. Mine is really a business visit, you see.”

Lord Lakenham nodded with a sudden understanding. The coming of Miss Sybil Cluley to Annerley Court had been puzzling him immensely.

“Why, of course!” he exclaimed. “I read in one of the papers only this morning that Jermyn had a new play almost finished, and that you were to take the leading part. Clever chap, Jermyn, in his way. Have you known him long, Miss Cluley?”

“I have known Sir Jermyn for about a year,” she answered quietly. “He is certainly very clever, indeed. I have played in a short sketch he wrote some time ago, at the Haymarket.”

“I remember it quite well,” Lord Lakenham declared. “Dismal sort of affair it was, too! I can’t make out why Jermyn never ends up anything he writes, happily. It may be artistic, and all that, but I’m hanged if I like it!”

She raised her eyebrows very slightly.

“Do you believe, then,” she asked, “that everything in life should end happily?”

“I am afraid I am one of those obvious sort of persons who want it to in the books I read and the plays I go to see,” he admitted. “What do you say, Miss Mary? Don’t you want the fairy prince to marry the right girl, and all that sort of thing, at the end of the story, eh?”

“Of course I do,” the child answered, confidently. “So does every one.”

“Not always,” Lord Lakenham objected. “Our host doesn’t, for one.”

“Sir Jermyn is an artist,” Sybil murmured.

“Daresay he is,” Lord Lakenham assented. “All the same, I’d like to see him a little more cheerful sometimes. I don’t see the use of writing about problems that never solve themselves, or marriages that always go wrong, or lovers who never come together. Waste of time, I call it. Sort of cousin of mine, Jermyn, you know, Miss Cluley.”

She accepted the information without any great sign of interest. They had turned off the main road now, through some plain iron gates, and were crossing a park dotted here and there with dwarfed oak trees. Mary clapped her hands.

“Deer!” she cried, with enthusiasm. “Do you see, Sybil, there are actually deer! I wonder if they are very wild?”

“Not a bit of it,” Lord Lakenham assured her. “They’d be all right, anyhow, at this time of the year. Eat biscuits out of your hand, I daresay. We’ll try them to-morrow. I haven’t been here for ages,” he went on, looking around him. “Ripping little golf course one could make here. Do you play golf, Miss Cluley?”

She shook her head.

“I haven’t time for that sort of thing,” she told him. “Mary plays games for us both. I am quite contented if I can get an hour’s walk every morning.”

Some note in her tone–or was it the curve of her head as she leaned sideways to look up into the woods?–stirred in him once more that curious sense of a half-awakened memory. It was more than curiosity which he felt–it was an interest which had almost an emotional side.

“It’s a rum thing!” he exclaimed, meditatively, with his eyes fixed upon her. “Every now and then, Miss Cluley, I get a sort of an idea that I’ve seen you before, not on the stage at all.”

She did not answer him for a moment. Unseen, her right hand was gripping the leather strap by her side. She kept her eyes fixed upon the house, which had just come into sight. If only she could control her voice! If only she could check his efforts at recollection!

“I think it most unlikely, Lord Lakenham,” she said coldly. “I go out very little and I have few friends.”

“And I am quite sure that we never knew anybody who was a marquis before, did we?” Mary chimed in, with a triumphant sense of administering a coup de grbce to the subject. “Is this really the house? Oh, Sybil, isn’t it lovely!”

“Beautiful, dear,” Sybil assented.

Lord Lakenham eyed the structure disparagingly.

“Not much of a place,” he said. “I don’t care about these plain Georgian mansions. Never seen Lakenham, by the bye, have you, Miss Cluley?”

She shook her head.

“I do not even know where it is.”

He laughed boisterously.

“That’s a nasty one for me,” he declared. “Rather a show place, you know, Miss Cluley. Never mind, I hope you’ll see it some day. There’s old Jermyn got here first, after all. I wonder who the dickens he’s got to play hostess? I’m hanged if I don’t believe–why, it’s Lucille!”

CHAPTER II

Jermyn Annerley was, in the parlance of the gossiping journalists of the day, a very interesting figure in Society. He was tall, and he had the good looks which go with clean-cut features a little on the large side, a very sensitive mouth, and deep-set, keen, but rather introspective gray eyes. He had done exceedingly well at college but had distinguished himself chiefly in athletics. Nothing, the sporting critics declared, but a certain lack of enthusiasm had prevented him from becoming one of the most brilliant amateur batsmen of the day. He had actually, however, had the astounding strength of will to give up cricket altogether for two years which he spent in traveling, and a curious inclination to regard the game as a recreation rather than as an all-engrossing pursuit had more than once mystified the little body of gentlemen who from the neighborhood of St. John’s Wood controlled the cricket destinies of their country. He had never entered a profession, and although he had gone out to South Africa as a matter of course, the army as a career presented no attractions to him. He had written a novel which was too clever to be successful, a few articles in the reviews which had attracted a great deal of attention, and the most popular Society comedy of the day. He was known to be rich; he was unmarried, charming to all women but obviously unimpressionable. The worst thing that had been said about him was that he was a prig.

He stood now at the open door, waiting to receive his guests, composed and yet a little eager as his eyes followed the approach of the car. The woman who stood by his side watched him curiously from underneath the lace of the parasol which she held over her head. From the first she had been suspicious of the coming of this girl.

“Who is Lucille?” Sybil Cluley asked, as the automobile glided around the last bend of the avenue.

“Duchesse de Sayers,” Lord Lakenham replied. “She is a sort of cousin of ours–was an Aynesworth, you know. She married a Frenchman who turned out a regular rotter, and divorced him. She hates her name and hates her title, so nearly every one calls her Lucille. Great pal of Jermyn’s.”

The car drew up in front of the house. Jermyn held out both his hands to Sybil as he assisted her to alight.

“This is delightful!” he exclaimed. “I shall never be able to make sufficient apologies for not having been at the station to receive you, but if there is a greater autocrat in this world than your enemy the call-boy, it is the captain of a county cricket team. Mary, you’ve grown since last week, but you’ve got to kiss me all the same because I’m your host. Glad to see you, Lakenham. We didn’t expect you till the later train. Miss Cluley,” he went on, “I want to present you to my far-away cousin, who is good enough to be hostess for me sometimes the–Duchesse de Sayers.”

“I am very glad to welcome you to Annerley,” Lucille said slowly, as she held out her hand. “I have been anxious to meet you ever since I saw your wonderful performance in Jermyn’s play.”

“Miss Cluley and I are much too modest for that sort of thing,” Jermyn laughed. “There is some tea on the other side of the house, in the gardens. I hope that you want yours, Mary, as badly as I do. Come along.”

There was some further interchange of conventional speeches and they all moved slowly together into the great hall. Jermyn led the way across the white stone flags, smooth with age and shining like marble, past the broad staircase, to where at the end of a corridor, through an open door, was a vista of terraced gardens, cool and brilliant.

“I do hope that you will like it here,” he whispered in Sybil’s ear. “I have been looking forward so much to your visit.”

She raised her eyes to his and he was suddenly struck with the new thing which he saw there. It was the look of a frightened animal, the weak craving protection from the strong.

“It will be lovely,” she answered. “I am sure that it will be lovely.”

“You have felt the heat, I am afraid? It must have been a terribly trying journey.”

She shook her head.

“It was nothing,” she replied. “I had a good many things to see to before I could get away, and traveling generally gives me a headache. Directly I sit down in your garden it will have passed.”

“My garden,” he smiled, “shall be like the garden of the Eastern sage. When you open the gate and step inside, all manner of evil things shall pass away.”

The corridor was hung with portraits. Right over the door through which they were to pass, the face of a man in scarlet uniform frowned down upon them.

“Who is that?” she asked, a little sharply.

He glanced up carelessly.

“A great-uncle–the third Marquis of Lakenham–Lakenham’s grandfather, by the bye.”

She shivered distinctly. Once more he caught the look in her eyes which had puzzled him.

“I am afraid,” he remarked, smiling, “that you don’t like the look of my ancestors!”

She glanced cautiously around. The others had paused for a moment while Mary made friends with some dogs.

“I do not like Lord Lakenham,” she whispered. “No, don’t look so horrified, please. Of course he hasn’t been rude to me, or anything of that sort, but I heard of him once I didn’t like what I heard. He–somehow he frightens me.”

Jermyn looked genuinely distressed.

“My dear Sybil,” he exclaimed, “I am so sorry! It is quite a fluke his being here. I had no idea, even, that he was coming until yesterday. He is on his way to Scotland. To-morrow I will give him a hint.”

She shook her head.

“You mustn’t,” she begged. “He would guess at once. Don’t say anything. This is really quite foolish, you know, and I am very, very sorry,” she added, a little wistfully.

He drew her arm through his.

“Come,” he insisted, “let us forget it. I am longing to show you my gardens. Those cedar trees are over five hundred years old. The critics, you among them sometimes, tell me often that I am too imaginative. Tell me, if you had been brought up in their shadow, in these gardens, wouldn’t you, too, open your heart to fancies?”

They had passed now through the doorway and she looked around her in mingled amazement and delight. This was really the front of the house, surrounded by a long, stone-flagged walk, bordered on the garden side by a low stone terrace. Before them were steps leading on to the lawn, and below, shelving gardens, brilliant with color, dropped to the lake; and beyond the lake, the woods. The lawn upon which they stood was as smooth as velvet, green with the eternal green of age. Beneath the cedar trees were many cushioned chairs and a glittering tea equipage; upon another table, jugs of cool drinks and bowls of fruit.

“It is wonderful,” she murmured. “It is a little Paradise, this, in which you live.”

For one marvelous moment she forgot. The change from her little flat in Kensington, which she had scarcely left through many months of unceasing work and anxiety, was too complete. It was indeed like fairyland to her. Then Lakenham’s voice behind–a loud, strident voice–struck fear once more into her heart.

“Let’s go and find your sister, Miss Mary. Just like Jermyn to make off with her like this. Come and see fair play. And, Parkes, before you do another thing mix me a large whisky and soda with a chunk of ice, please.”

Sybil half closed her eyes. Her fairyland seemed to be crumbling up. Jermyn watched her with a shade of real anxiety upon his face.

“He isn’t really so bad, dear,” he whispered, “and we’ll escape nearly all the time.”

Once more she looked up at him with that selfsame air, the air of the child who seeks protection.

“Escape!” she faltered. “Yes, we must escape!”

CHAPTER III

“I call this a most interesting situation,” Lucille remarked, making a little poke with her parasol at an intrusive bee. “Our one dramatist of the younger school who can lay claim to any measure of inspiration–forgive me, Jermyn, but I love to quote the Daily Mail–is studying in these romantic surroundings the woman who is the chief interpreter of his genius. How do you like that, all of you? If you would eat bread and butter a little less vigorously, my dear Jermyn, and keep your eyes fixed upon Miss Cluley, you might help the illusion.”

“Much too hungry,” Jermyn replied, lifting up a silver cover and helping himself to a scone. “I had scarcely any lunch. They would put me in first wicket down.”

“Make any?” Lord Lakenham inquired.

“Forty-two,” Jermyn answered, holding out his cup for more tea. “Rather a sound innings, too. Mary, if you don’t eat another scone, our single wicket cricket match to-morrow is off.”

Mary helped herself without hesitation.

“I wonder if you can bowl googlies?” she asked. “A girl at school can.”

“My dear child,” Jermyn assured her impressively, “I can bowl anything. There are times after the ball has left my hands when a very demon seems to possess it. I can make it swerve in the air like an American baseball pitcher, or do a double break all round the bat.”

“Don’t believe a word of it,” Mary declared, derisively. “I don’t believe there is such a thing as a double break.”

“Pity they never tried you for the county,” Lord Lakenham remarked. “I never remember seeing you bowl an over in a match in my life.”

Jermyn sighed gently as he stirred his tea.

“There is so much jealousy in county cricket,” he explained. “If you are played for your batting, you are expected to bat and to make runs. To bowl as well is not good form.”

“Ever been put on?” Lakenham persisted.

“Never,” Jermyn confessed. “That, however, is entirely due to my modesty. I have never mentioned my peculiar acquirements. Wait until you see me bowl, Mary, at the nets to-morrow! Lucille, Miss Cluley will have a little more tea.”

“Miss Cluley is finding you all much too frivolous,” Lucille pronounced. “She sides with me, I am sure. Jermyn ought to be lying on the grass, studying every trick of your features, every change of your expression, oughtn’t he, Miss Cluley? This is his great opportunity.”

“I am not sure,” Sybil replied, “that a tea-party is calculated to call up any emotions worth studying.”

“My dear,” Lucille declared, “a tea-party is sometimes an epitome of all the passions. I have known tragedies lived and acted during the progress of this apparently harmless meal. I have seen women share a plate of muffins who I knew were thirsting for one another’s blood. In Hungary I remember two deputies who were absolutely the most polite men there, who went out and fought a most savage duel ten minutes after taking chocolate and sweetmeats with me. There is no telling what feelings may be concealed between the lightest and idlest of chatter. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Cluley?”

Sybil looked up and met Lucille’s gaze, half lazy, half insolent. Quick of comprehension, she was suddenly conscious of an enemy. Her heart sank but she answered coolly enough.

“Repression is rather the fashion, nowadays, isn’t it? It makes acting very difficult. After all, you know, a little noise does help.”

“I am afraid you won’t get much out of Jermyn,” Lucille said. “His methods are almost crawly, they are so quiet.”

“Give me a good honest melodrama,” Lakenham declared. “I like to see my hero and my villain on the stage and have them fight it out. Plenty of blood- letting, I say. It’s the old-fashioned method but it’s the surest and safest. Drury Lane for me all the time! Now why are you looking at me so intently, Miss Cluley? Of course, you think I’m talking rubbish.”

Sybil withdrew her eyes with a little start.

“As a matter of fact,” she replied, “I think that I was agreeing with you. Craft goes a long way round but it sometimes loses its way. Simple force speaks first and speaks, perhaps, more surely.”

There was a brief pause. Sybil’s words were spoken lightly enough yet Jermyn turned round to glance at her. There was a strain of earnestness in the conversation which he did not quite appreciate.

“In these days, unfortunately,” Lucille said, “the subtler methods of requital are safer. To poison your dearest enemy might lead to most unpleasant reprisals, but you can at least tell everybody where she buys her hats, and the secret of her complexion.”

Jermyn shivered palpably.

“You women are crueller by nature than we are,” he declared. “A simple shot through the heart would satisfy us. Now,” he added, rising to his feet, “I want to warn you all that I am going to be a monopolist. I am going to take Miss Cluley away by myself into the most secluded spot I can think of, and I shan’t even tell you where it is. The rest of you can do exactly as you like. Lakenham, you can flirt with Lucille–she is just from Paris and in splendid practice–or you can play games with Mary. Please!”

He held out his hands to Sybil. She sprang lightly to her feet. Her eyes thanked him.

“Nice sort of host you are,” Lakenham complained. “I’ve got to go to- morrow or the next day. When am I going to see anything of Miss Cluley?”

“My dear fellow,” Jermyn replied, “I simply do not care. In this matter you are a Philistine. You are outside the gates of the garden in which Miss Cluley and I are privileged to wander. We belong, you see, to the sacred coterie. We are artists, and the work of each one of us depends upon the other. I have an invincible claim to monopolize Miss Cluley altogether.”

“Miserable selfishness!” Lakenham grumbled. “You don’t suppose Miss Cluley wants to be talking shop all the time?”

“A remark,” Jermyn retorted, “which proves to me, my dear cousin, that you have never had the privilege of knowing intimately any one who belongs to the Profession. It’s absolutely all-engrossing, isn’t it, Miss Cluley?”

“Absolutely,” she admitted.

“That’s why you chucked novels and took to plays, I suppose?” Lakenham asked.

“It was perhaps a mistake,” Jermyn acknowledged, with a sigh. “Before, I was at least a man and a novelist. Now I have sold myself into slavery–I am a dramatist. Come along, Miss Cluley. Don’t mind him, really.”

Lakenham watched them cross the lawn and disappear in one of the walks. His eyes never left the girl’s figure. Lucille also turned her head. She watched Sybil with the thoughtful yet grudging appraisement of a rival.

“The girl has the trick of walking as though she trod on air,” she remarked. “She is really amazingly graceful.”

Lakenham grunted. He was still looking at the entrance to the laurel walk down which the two figures had disappeared.

“If only I could–remember!” he exclaimed, moodily.

Lucille looked at him with dawning curiosity.

“Remember what?”

He turned around to be sure that Mary was out of hearing. She had taken some biscuits and was throwing them to the swans in the lake a little distance away.

“Something about this girl. What does Jermyn have her down here for and take the trouble to provide a chaperon? What’s it mean, I wonder? Who is she?”

“Who is she?” Lucille repeated. “Now surely that is an unnecessary question. Everybody knows who Sybil Cluley is.”

“Yes, yes!” he agreed, impatiently. “One gets tired of reading that she is the prettiest, and most charming, and sweetest, and most virtuous young actress on the stage. We know all about that. What I can’t get out of my head is that I knew something of her before all these wonderful things happened.”

His companion was looking at him steadfastly. Her fine eyes were fixed upon his face, her head was resting upon the slim fingers of her right hand.

“How interesting!” she murmured. “You are not going to tell me that she was one of that innumerable army of your victims?”

“I tell you I can’t remember,” he declared, irritably. “A thing like that always bothers me.”

Lucille’s fingers trifled with her parasol. From underneath it, however, she was studying her companion’s discontented expression with real interest.

“It is curious that your memory should have served you such a trick,” she remarked, after a moment’s pause. “I wonder whether it has occurred to you that Miss Cluley might be troubled in the same manner?”

Lakenham selected a cigar from his case and bit off the end savagely.

“What do you mean?”

Lucille laughed softly.

“My dear man,” she went on, “couldn’t you see how she kept her back to you all the time, whenever she could? I am afraid that she must dislike you very much indeed. I am rather a keen observer of these little things and I couldn’t help noticing that she never even glanced towards you if she could help it.”

“Just the same in the motor,” Lakenham admitted, reluctantly. “Can’t think what she means by it. She’s the prettiest little thing I ever saw in my life, too!” he added, enthusiastically. “I’ve got past the impressionable age, you know, but that girl could make a fool of me whenever she chose.”

“At present,” Lucille continued, smoothly, “she seems to have no inclination in that direction. I agree with you, of ‘course, that she is very sweet and very beautiful, but all the same–”

“What?”

Lucille smoothed her muslin gown over her knees.

“I don’t want Jermyn to marry her,” she said quietly.

“Is he thinking of it?”

“It is just the sort of idiotic thing,” Lucille declared, “that one might expect of him. The more I think of it, the more frightened I become. Jermyn lives all the time with his head in the clouds. He is straining always to find something better than the things which actually exist. He worships beauty and he wants to believe that everything which he sees is beautiful. It is a very dangerous state. He won’t condescend to look down and see the way ordinary human beings really live. If the girl has her wits about her, I am afraid it’s all up with Jermyn, unless–”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you can remember!”

Lakenham grinned, amiably yet not pleasantly.

“Devilish amusing, this!” he exclaimed. “We were talking of Drury Lane just now. Here we are, you and I, villain and adventuress in the latest melodrama. Can we pick a hole in the spotless heroine’s past?”

“It is at any rate a melodrama of real life,” Lucille declared. “You see, the whole affair is really most annoying for me. I have always intended to marry Jermyn myself.”

“Quite a natural arrangement,” Lakenham agreed, “if you really do intend to take up matrimony again. I am a much better match, you know.”

She looked at him with a faint smile. In her way she was more beautiful than Sybil, but she was certainly not the type which appealed to Lakenham.

“I don’t think you’re quite my style, Aynesworth,” she remarked. “You have lived too long and too rapidly. You should marry an inginue–that will probably be your fate in a few years’ time. Why not make a Marchioness of your long-legged friend down by the pond? She’ll be as pretty as her sister, no doubt, when she grows up.”

“Thank you,” Lakenham grunted, “I’m not taking that sort into St. George’s, Hanover Square.”

“You ought to be thankful to take anything you can get,” Lucille said, severely. “I don’t think any nice girl who knew what she was doing, would look at you.”

“If you slang me much longer,” he grumbled, “I’ll leave off trying to remember.”

She smiled at him.

“I am not afraid of that, Aynesworth. You know, you are rather a vain man and you are a little piqued. You are just in the frame of mind to be dogged. Besides, you admire Miss Cluley yourself. Every man does, of course. Nothing would please you more than suddenly to remember the sort of thing you would like to remember about her, and to take her into a quiet corner and remind her of it. She’d have to be nice to you then, wouldn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t be your husband for anything!” Lakenham declared. “You’re too clever to live with in comfort. Here’s the child coming back.”

Lucille rose to her feet.

“I shall take her to see the peacocks,” she decided. “She might be worth cultivating. You had better come, too.”

Lakenham shook his head and threw himself into a comfortable chair.

“Not I,” he answered. “I believe her sister’s told her not to talk to me if she can help it. She avoids me all the time, and I’m sure I don’t want to play around with a long-legged brat. I am going to sit here–and stir up the ashes of my sinful past. Perhaps in that way I may remember!”

CHAPTER IV

Jermyn led his companion down the narrow path which threaded the shrubberies, towards the flower gardens.

“Sometimes,” he remarked, as he opened the little iron gate which led into the open spaces, “I am inclined to believe that Hazlitt was an idiot, and that your art must be, in reality, of a higher order than any other. You are face to face with a continual struggle to escape from flagrantly artificial surroundings. You have all the time to project yourself into an atmosphere of your own creation. Now down here, for instance, in my study, which looks over these gardens and across the valley, work seems almost spontaneous, the thoughts come unbidden.”

Her eyes were traveling over the glowing carpet of color, across the tree tops of the park to the dim blue of the hills.

“You never told me that your home was so beautiful,” she murmured.

“I wanted you to come and see it for yourself,” he replied. “You see, one is never sure what the place one cares for most in the world will seem like to anybody else. I do hope that you and your sister, too, will enjoy this little holiday.”

“Do you think there could be any doubt about it?” she asked him, smiling. “It was so nice of you to invite Mary. I love to see her in the country. I want to have her grow up fond of the country and country ways.”

He nodded.

“There is no place quite so dear to me as Annerley,” he said. “At the same time, one has to remember that life is a leaven of many things. We mustn’t be too bucolic. What should we do without the inspiration of the great cities?”

“Oh, I realize that!” she answered softly. “I know it. I feel that little thrill of excitement every time I enter London. In a lesser degree I feel it every time I enter the theatre. It’s all wonderful, of course, and while it lasts it’s engrossing enough. Yet there is always the reverse side and the reverse side is horrible.”

“Is it my fancy,” he asked, “or have you come down to-day a little depressed?”

She hesitated.

“I started all right,” she assured him, “in fact, I think I felt like a child who has a wonderful holiday before it. Of the two, I think I was more excited even than Mary.”

He looked down into her face, frowning slightly for a moment.

“I can’t help fearing,” he said, “that something has annoyed you. Forgive me, Miss Cluley–forgive me, Sybil, won’t you, if I ask you a rather impertinent question? Lakenham is my cousin, of course, and, I believe, a decent fellow in a general sort of way, but I know also that he can be an unmannerly brute on occasions. He didn’t annoy you, by any chance, on the way here?”

“Not in the least,” she answered. “He talked to Mary most of the time.”

“You don’t happen to have any prejudice against him, to have met him or heard of him before to have met him yourself, I mean?”

Sybil stooped down and picked a spray of lavender, which she arranged in the bosom of her gown.

“I have never met so exalted a personage as a marquis before in my life,” she declared. “As I told you, I have heard something which has perhaps prejudiced me, but apart from that I do not like him. It is a sort of instinct, I suppose. I am afraid of him. He reminds me of a certain type of man, and that type of man recalls a short part of my life which makes me hysterical when I even think of it. That is all. It is very foolish of me. Let us for these few minutes, at any rate, sweep him away, up into the clouds or down under the earth. It isn’t worth while letting the thought of him poison this perfect afternoon. I think that your gardens are the loveliest I have ever seen. And are those really peaches on the walls?”

He picked one and gave it to her. She ate it with a little murmur of delight.

“Fancy having all these things growing instead of seeing them only in the restaurants!” she exclaimed. “How Mary will enjoy this!”

“We’ll have a regular tour of inspection in the morning,” he promised, “but this first half-hour I wanted to spend with you alone. Come a little further still, Sybil.”

He opened a green postern gate, studded with nails and set into the ancient wall, and they passed through it into a corner of the park. A little further on was a thickly growing plantation, an arm stretched out from the belt of forest behind the house. He opened the gate and they passed inside. The rabbits scurried away at their feet, the trees overhead grew so thickly that only little streaks of sunshine lay like a gilded skein upon the brambles and undergrowth.

“Sybil,” Jermyn said quietly, “can’t you imagine why it makes me so happy to have you down here–why I have been looking forward to it so much?”

She looked at him for a moment, genuinely startled. One of the hardest parts of her lonely life during the last few years had been to keep men from making love to her. She flattered herself that she knew the exact symptoms, the exact type of man from whom they might be expected. She was always on her guard. And yet now she had a sudden feeling that something wonderful was going to happen, something wholly unexpected, something against which no measure of preparation nor any possible resistance could avail her. Their meetings in London, every one of which she remembered, had been almost formal. Compared with the men whom she was in the habit of meeting day by day, he had always seemed to her almost unnaturally serious, a writer devoted to his art, with a touch of the monk in his disposition. This change in his voice, a look which she had surprised in his eyes, amazed her. She felt suddenly weak. He went on.



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