After he had closed the door behind his cousin, d.i.c.k Wantele did not go back to the little round table, its fruit and wine. Instead he began walking up and down the dining-room, his hands clasped behind his back.
The reading of Jane Oglander"s letter had brought with it sharp and instant punishment.
Even to her dearest woman friend Jane had said little of her inmost feelings, but the man who knew her with a far more intimate knowledge than any other human being would ever know her, understood. Jane loved Lingard. Loved him in a way he, Wantele, had not thought her capable of loving, and the revelation hurt him horribly. Why had he failed where another had succeeded with such apparent ease?
He felt a sudden hatred of the house he was in and of everything and everybody in it. Feeling pursued, accompanied by mocking demons, he hurried out of the dining-room and made his way into the square hall or atrium, as old Theophilus Joy had called it. Each of the marble figures there seemed alive to his humiliation and defeat.
Pa.s.sing into a vestibule which led directly out of doors he put on a light coat, for he was delicate, Mrs. Maule would have said over-careful of himself--then he jammed a wide-brimmed soft hat on his head, and quietly let himself out of the house.
It was a still, warm night, but the moist fragrant air was heavy with the premonition of coming winter. Wantele walked a certain distance down the broad carriage way, then he cut sharply to the left, among the brambles and underwood, under high beech trees. Once there, he began to walk more slowly, keeping to the narrow path by a kind of instinct.
He welcomed the tangible fact of solitude. Even were he urgently sought for, it would be a long time before they could find him unless he himself raised his voice and gave a hulloo. Richard, for once, must spend his evening solitary.
Could she have seen Wantele"s long thin face as it was now, serious with the seriousness born of distress, Athena Maule would have been satisfied that the news she had been at the pains to tell in so dramatic a fashion had struck at the heart of at least one of her hearers.
d.i.c.k Wantele belonged to the type of man who achieves what he desires to achieve because his desire is generally well within the measure of his powers.
He had been confident that in time he would wear down Jane Oglander"s gentle resistance, and lately--all the very time she had been corresponding with General Lingard, certainly receiving and perhaps even writing love-letters--he had believed that she was making up her mind to reward him for what had become his long fidelity. He had even gone so far as to think that only Athena Maule"s watchful antagonism stood between Jane Oglander and himself.
To Wantele, the knowledge that he had been a fool stung intolerably. He had one poor consolation, the consolation of knowing that he had hidden successfully the various feelings provoked in him by the announcement, both from the cruel eyes and from the kind eyes which had watched to see how he took news which meant so much to him. But that, after all, was but an ign.o.ble consolation in his great bereavement.
Walking there in the darkness, with memory as his only companion, he realised all too shrewdly what the disappearance of Jane Oglander from his life would mean. Till to-night, Wantele had been wont to tell himself bitterly that the existence he was forced to lead was one by no means to be envied by other men of his age and standing. But he now looked back to yesterday with longing, for yesterday still held a future of which the major possibility was the fact that Jane might become his wife.
He had first met Miss Oglander at a moment when he had just come through a terrible secret crisis, one which had left him free of all the familiar moorings of his early life.
He had touched pitch, and to his own conscience and imagination he had been most vilely defiled. And yet circ.u.mstances had made it imperative that he should not only pretend to be clean, but also that he should affect complete ignorance of the pitch he had touched. Jane Oglander, then a young, clear-eyed girl, with a certain tender gaiety, a straightforward simplicity of nature which had strongly appealed to his own more complex character, had helped him and indeed made it possible for him to do this.
Then had come Jack Oglander"s mad act and its awful consequences, and even this had helped d.i.c.k Wantele further to obliterate the memory of his own ignominious secret. He had thrown himself, with his cousin, Richard Maule"s, full a.s.sent, into the whole terrible business, and Jane Oglander had found his dry sense and quiet, efficient help an untold comfort. No wonder the ties of confidence and friendship between them had grown ever closer and closer, seeming to justify the young man in the hope that the time must come when Jane would become his wife.
To-night the news flung at him by Athena Maule wiped out the immediate peaceful past, and phantoms which he believed himself to have banished for ever sprang into being--dread reminders that no man can ever hope to escape wholly from his past.
At last, with a feeling of la.s.situde and relief he came to a broad low gate. The gate was locked, but he climbed over it, as he had often done before. The path went on still under trees and among underwood till it widened and became merged in a clearing, in the middle of which stood a long low building still called by its old name of the Small Farm, and now the home of one to whom Wantele often made his way in moments of depression and revolt.
When d.i.c.k Wantele had first made Mabel Digby"s acquaintance, she had been a plain, observant, self-reliant little girl of nine, whose most striking features were bright brown eyes set in a fair freckled face, and ma.s.ses of light yellow hair worn by her in two long pigtails. The only child of a certain Colonel Digby, whose death had taken place when she was sixteen, Mabel Digby had elected to go on living in the place where her father had brought her motherless, seven years before, and d.i.c.k Wantele had been largely instrumental in her settlement in the old farmhouse which was on the edge of the Rede Place estate.
At first the governess who had brought her up, and who had educated her in the old-fashioned, thorough, and perhaps rather limited way more usual forty years ago than now, had lived with her; but when Mabel was nineteen this lady had had to go back to her own people, and she had had no successor.
To the scandal rather than to the surprise of the neighbourhood, Miss Digby decided that henceforth she would live alone. She was well aware, though those about her were not, that her father"s old soldier servant and his wife were really more efficient and vigilant chaperons than the kind, gentle governess had been.
With Wantele the relations of Mabel Digby had always been of a singularly close and s.e.xless nature. She had naturally begun by looking at him with her father"s, the old Indian Mutiny veteran"s eyes; that is, she had been gently tolerant of his fads, while neither understanding nor sharing them.
Then, as she grew older, as she read the books that he lent her and talked over with her, she had moved some way from her father"s--the simple-minded soldier"s--position, and she judged d.i.c.k Wantele rather hardly, half despising him for having so contentedly, or so she thought, sunk into the position of adopted son to his wealthy cousin. When she had become aware that he desired to marry Jane Oglander, a fact of which she had possessed herself by asking him the direct question, and receiving an equally direct answer, she had at once decided that he was not nearly good enough for the lady on whom he had fixed his affection, and time had in no sense modified her first view.
Still, without her knowing it, d.i.c.k Wantele counted for much in Mabel Digby"s life. She was proud of his friendship and believed herself to be the recipient of all his secrets. When he was attacked, as he often was in her presence--for she was on the whole liked, and he was regarded by the neighbourhood as "superior" and "supercilious"--she always took his part.
Intimate as they were with one another, and with that comfortable intimacy which knows nothing of the doubts or recriminations which lead to what are significantly called "lovers" quarrels," there were subjects on which neither ever touched to the other. Never since the day on which Mabel Digby, at the time only fifteen, had asked him the indiscreet question which she was now ashamed to remember, had either made any allusion to Wantele"s feeling for Jane Oglander. The other subject which was taboo between them was Mabel Digby"s relation to young Kaye.
Wantele was no schemer, but there was something in him which made him aware of the schemes of others, even against his own will and desire. He had become aware that Mrs. Kaye regarded Mabel Digby as a suitable daughter-in-law elect, almost on the day that the thought had first presented itself to the clergyman"s wife and on Mabel"s behalf he had at once said to himself, "Why not?" But during the last year he had been glad to believe that Mabel had so little suspected or a.s.sented to Mrs.
Kaye"s wishes as to ignore her one-time playfellow"s infatuation for Athena.
His eyes had become accustomed to the star-lit darkness, and he could see the straight stone-flagged path which led to the porch of the Small Farm. As he walked up it a dog rushed out from its kennel and began barking. "Be quiet," said Wantele harshly. "Be quiet, old dog! Keep that sort of thing for your enemies and the enemies of your mistress--not for me."
Then he walked on, the dog at his heels, till he got to the porch. There he waited for a moment, for it had suddenly occurred to him that Mabel Digby might not be alone; one of the tiresome people who lived in Redyford--the village which had now grown into a town--might be spending the evening with her. Before knocking at her door he must a.s.sure himself that she was alone. Old friends as he and she were, he had never come there before so late as this.
He walked on past the porch, till he stood opposite the uncurtained window of the curious hall dining-room of the person he had come to see.
He remembered that Colonel Digby had hated curtains, and that his daughter shared the prejudice.
Mabel Digby was dressed in the rather old-fashioned looking high white muslin dress she generally wore in the evening when at home by herself.
Her fair hair was drawn back very plainly from her forehead, and coiled in innumerable plaits. Colonel Digby had desired his girl to do her hair in that way when she had first turned it up, and by a queer little bit of sentiment in a nature which prided itself on its lack of sentiment, Mabel had always remained faithful to her father"s fancy.
Sitting on a low chair between the deep fireplace and the long narrow oak table which ran down the middle of the room, Mabel Digby was now engaged in burning packets of letters, and she was going through the disagreeable task in the rather precise way which made her do well whatever she took in hand. Her long and not very easy task was nearly at an end, and Wantele saw clearly the few letters that remained scattered on the table. He recognised the bold black handwriting, the large square envelopes, the blue Indian stamps.
"How odd," he told himself, "that the child should have waited till to-night to burn these old letters of Bayworth Kaye!"
Mabel had never made any secret of her correspondence with the young soldier. Still, when one came to think of it, it was odd that she had troubled to keep Bayworth"s letters--odder still that now to-night, the day of Bayworth Kaye"s departure, she should be burning them....
After all, why should he go in and see her now? People have to bear certain troubles alone. Mabel Digby had set him, in this matter, a good example.
Wantele turned on his heel. He walked on to the gra.s.s and plunged into the herbaceous border which still formed a fragrant autumn hedge to the little lawn. His object was to get away without being seen or heard, by the gate which gave on to the country road and which formed the proper, orthodox entrance to the Small Farm. But as he was making his way to the gate the front door opened, and Mabel Digby came out into the darkness.
"Aren"t you coming in, d.i.c.k?" she called out. "I couldn"t think what had happened to you! I saw you at the window, and then you disappeared suddenly. Why didn"t you let yourself in? The door isn"t locked, but the gate is." Mabel Digby had a loud, rather childish voice, but now Wantele was glad enough to turn and follow her into the low-pitched living room of the old farmhouse.
As he walked through into the curious and charming room, at once so like and so unlike the living-rooms of the smaller farms on his cousin"s estate, he saw that Mabel Digby had thrown a large, brightly-coloured Italian handkerchief over those of the letters which still remained on the table.
"The women in the cottages do that," she said, following the direction of his eyes. "When they hear the step of a visitor at the door, they throw a dishcloth over whatever it is they want to hide, the little drop of comfort or what not, but it doesn"t deceive the visitor--at least it never deceives me! I always know what there is under the dishcloth. And you know--I mean you saw, d.i.c.k, what there is under my dishcloth."
She spoke quickly, a little defiantly. Her cheeks were burning, her brown eyes very bright. She also felt unhappy, moved out of her usual self to-night.
Wantele walked over to the fireplace. He sat down in the ingle nook and held out his hands. He was a chilly creature, and though he had been walking fast he felt curiously cold.
Poor little Mabel! This was interesting and--and rather sad. He wondered uncomfortably how much she had seen, guessed, of Bayworth"s infatuation for Athena Maule. She must have seen something....
"Yes," he said at last. "It"s never much use trying to prevent one"s neighbours knowing what one"s got under one"s dishcloth. But there have never been any letters under mine. As a matter of principle I always burn any letters I receive, however temporarily precious they may be."
"There"s a great deal to be said for your plan," she said. Then she began tearing up each of the few letters which remained on the long oak table, and threw the pieces, one by one, into the heart of the fire.
He watched her in uncomfortable silence. At last she came and sat down opposite Wantele.
"I suppose you have heard the great news," he said abruptly. "I mean, the piece of good fortune which has befallen the Paches?"
The girl looked up. Wantele was still staring into the fire, but his expression told her nothing.
"No," she said indifferently, "what is it?"
"They"ve got General Lingard staying with them, and they"re bringing him over to dinner on Tuesday. Athena is going to ask you to meet him."
"Lingard?" cried the girl. "Not Lingard of the Amadawa Expedition! D"you really mean that I"m going to meet him?"