They were sitting together now, Jane Oglander and Richard Maule, on the afternoon of the day which had opened with the news of Bayworth Kaye"s death. It was warm and sunny, and the three others had gone out of doors after luncheon--for d.i.c.k Wantele, Athena was well aware of it, had fallen into the way of never leaving the other two alone together if he could possibly prevent it.
Wantele could not understand Jane"s att.i.tude. Did she suspect her friend"s treachery? He found it impossible to make up his mind one way or the other. In any case Jane and Lingard were not like normal lovers--but Wantele had lived long enough in the world to know that there is every variety of lover. Sometimes he thought Jane trusted Lingard so implicitly as to be still blind.
A letter addressed to Miss Oglander was brought in to her.
"It"s from Mrs. Kaye," she said quickly. "May I open it, Richard?"
She glanced through it:--
"Dear Miss Oglander" (it ran), "My husband and myself thank you sincerely for your kind words of sympathy. Had I known you were the bearer of your letter I would have seen you. I am writing to ask if you will do me a kindness. I know that General Lingard is staying at Rede Place, and I write to ask if it would be possible for me to see him on a matter of business connected with my son. I venture to ask if he will kindly come at eleven o"clock on Thursday. I cannot fix any time before that day. I should have written to Mr. Wantele, but as I had to answer your note, I thought I would ask you to arrange this for me."
She told herself with quivering lip that of course Hew should go and see poor Mrs. Kaye. Hew was always kind. He would be patient and understanding with the unhappy woman.
Jane got up. Perhaps she could go and settle the matter at once. She looked at Richard Maule. He was turning over the leaves of a book.
Richard would not miss her. There came over her a despairing feeling that no one now needed her, in any dear and intimate sense....
Once she had asked her small vicarious favour of Hew, she could write to Mrs. Kaye, and take the note to the rectory herself. It would give her something to do, and just now Jane Oglander was in desperate need of things to do.
Athena had said something of showing General Lingard the walled gardens which were all that remained of the old Tudor manor house from which Rede Place took its name, and which had been left by Theophilus Joy as a concession to English taste.
It was there, some way from the house, that Jane made her way, and there that she at last found those she sought.
Mrs. Maule had suddenly become alive to the many and varied outdoor beauties of her country home. All the nice women she knew were fond of gardening. It was the feminine fad of the moment, and one with which she had hitherto had very little sympathy.
Athena sincerely believed herself to be devoted to flowers, but she preferred those varieties that look best cut and in water. Still, to be interested in her garden, and in what grew there, belonged to the part which was, for the moment, so much herself that she was scarcely conscious of playing it.
Perhaps one reason why Mrs. Maule had never cared for gardening was because her husband"s cousin was so exceedingly fond of it. The old gardens of Rede Place were to Wantele an ever-recurring pleasure, and, what counted far more in the life he had to lead, an infinitely various, as well as a congenial occupation.
As Jane walked through an arch leading to the pear orchard, she saw that d.i.c.k was giving instructions to one of the gardeners; a small sack of bulbs lay at their feet.
Hew Lingard and Athena Maule stood a little back, and as Jane came down the path, Mrs. Maule, instead of coming forward, moved further away.
Instinct told her that Jane was seeking Hew Lingard with some definite purpose in her mind--and she determined to thwart the other woman. To allow Hew Lingard to continue his anxious deference to Jane were but cruel kindness to them both.
She put out her gloveless hand and laid a finger on Lingard"s arm--it was the merest touch, but it produced an instant, a magical effect. He turned, and in a moment gave her his entire, his ardently entire, attention.
Wantele welcomed Jane with an eager, "What would you think, Jane, of putting a ma.s.s of starch hyacinths over in that corner?"
She tried obediently to give her mind to the question, but it was of no use, and she shook her head. "I don"t know," she said. "I--I can"t remember what was there before----"
And then she called out, "Hew!"
But Lingard did not hear the call.
She moved a little nearer to where he and Athena were standing. Again she said her lover"s name; but this time she uttered it in so low, so faltering a tone that Lingard might indeed have been excused for not hearing it.
She waited a moment for the answer that did not come, and then she turned and walked slowly away, down to and through the arch in the wall.
To Wantele, witness of the little scene, what had just happened seemed full of a profound and sinister significance.
As he had heard Jane Oglander utter Lingard"s name, he had told himself that he would have heard her voice--had it been calling "d.i.c.k"--across the world. But Lingard was deaf to everything, to everybody, but Athena.
He had become her thrall.
With a last muttered word of instruction to the gardener, Wantele turned and hurried out of the orchard. He glanced anxiously down each of the straight walks, and peered through the leafless fruit-trees. It was clear that Jane had already pa.s.sed out of the walled gardens, and that she had taken the shortest way of escape.
He started in pursuit, his one desire being--in some ways Wantele was very like a woman in his dealings with his beloved--to a.s.suage her pain, to lighten her humiliation....
Suddenly he saw her. She was standing on a little pier which jutted rather far out into the lake. Her slight figure was reflected into the water, now dotted with yellow leaves, and she was staring down into the blue, golden-flecked depths. Wantele felt afraid to call out, so perilously near was she to the unguarded edge.
He began walking quickly along the path which, circling round the oval piece of water, led to the pier, and Jane, looking up, became aware that he was there.
Without speaking, she turned and made her way along the rough boards.
Nothing was changed since yesterday, since this morning, and yet in a sense Wantele felt that everything was changed. Till now he had been doubtful as to what she knew--almost of what there was to know. He distrusted, with reason, his sharp, intolerable jealousy of Lingard.
He had spent a miserable hour after he had himself speeded the two to the Oakhanger. There are no relations so difficult to probe as the relations of lovers--even of those who have been and are no longer lovers.
Jane put out her hand as if they had not met before that day, and d.i.c.k took the poor cold hand in his and held it tightly for a moment before he dropped it.
"D"you know what to-day is?" she asked abruptly. "I hadn"t meant to remind you of it, d.i.c.k--dear, kind d.i.c.k. To-day is the twenty-fifth of October, the day my brother died."
He uttered an exclamation of dismay, self-rebuke. How could he have forgotten? So well had he remembered the date last year that he had written and urged Jane to come to Rede Place, and on her refusal to do so he had gone up to London for two or three days; together they had made the long, the interminable, journey to the suburban churchyard where Jack Oglander had been buried.
Wantele"s mind went back six years to that melancholy, that sordid, scene in the prison infirmary. They had sent the sister away, rea.s.sured her, told her there was a change for the better. And then suddenly young Oglander had sunk--but he, Wantele, had been there, with him....
She was speaking again, in a low musing tone:--
"It"s so strange----" she said, and then amended her words--"Isn"t it strange that death is so material, so horribly real a thing? It seems so hard that there has to be so much fuss. If only one could slip away into nothingness how much better it would be, d.i.c.k--wouldn"t it?"
Her mind swung back to her brother. There came a gentler, a softer tone in her sad voice.
"I wonder if you remember that you were the only one who did not bid me rejoice that Jack was dead. I have never forgotten that. And you were right, d.i.c.k. It was a great misfortune for me that he died. He would have been out of prison by now--and we should have been together, abroad----He was so clever, I think we should have been able to make some kind of life--and you would have come and stayed with us sometimes----But it"s no use talking like that, is it? I know I"m foolish, unreasonable, to-day, and you are the only person to whom I ever talk of Jack."
She was putting up her dead brother as a shield between herself and her distress, and Wantele respected the poor subterfuge.
"I know, I know," he said feelingly.
They walked on in silence for a while, then. "I think, d.i.c.k, that I had better go away."
"No, no!" he cried. "Don"t do that, Jane! Believe me, that would be a very unwise thing to do. I take it that you and General Lingard"--he brought out the name of her betrothed with an effort--"have other joint visits to pay?"
She shook her head. "I haven"t told anybody. Only the Paches know. He thought he ought to tell them."
"If you go away, Jane, he will almost certainly stay on here. It would be a pity for him to do that," Wantele spoke with studied calmness.
"Yes, I suppose it would," the colour rushed into her face. "I want to tell you something, d.i.c.k. Hew was very n.o.ble about my brother. I told him about it very soon after we first met one another. You see we became friends so soon----" She sighed. "Just friends, you know."
Wantele turned and looked into her face with an indefinable expression of shamed curiosity--an expression that seemed to ask a thousand questions he had no right to ask.