"I must be a fool," he said, "for I certainly can"t see it."
Harcutt lowered his tone.
"Look here, Wolfenden," he said, "I have no doubt that you are right, and that your father"s work is of no value; but you may be very sure of one thing--Mr. Sabin does not think so!"
"I don"t see what Mr. Sabin has got to do with it," Wolfenden said.
Harcutt laughed.
"Well, I will tell you one thing," he said; "it is the contents of your father"s study which has brought Mr. Sabin to Deringham!"
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM THE BEGINNING.
A woman stood, in the midst of a salt wilderness, gazing seaward. Around her was a long stretch of wet sand and of seaweed-stained rocks, rising from little pools of water left by the tide; and beyond, the flat, marshy country was broken only by that line of low cliffs, from which the little tufts of gra.s.s sprouted feebly. The waves which rolled almost to her feet were barely ripples, breaking with scarcely a visible effort upon the moist sand. Above, the sky was grey and threatening; only a few minutes before a cloud of white mist had drifted in from the sea and settled softly upon the land in the form of rain. The whole outlook was typical of intense desolation. The only sound breaking the silence, almost curiously devoid of all physical and animal noises, was the soft washing of the sand at her feet, and every now and then the jingling of silver harness, as the horses of her carriage, drawn up on the road above, tossed their heads and fidgeted. The carriage itself seemed grotesquely out of place. The coachman, with powdered hair and the dark blue Deringham livery, sat perfectly motionless, his head bent a little forward, and his eyes fixed upon his horses" ears. The footman, by their side, stood with folded arms, and expression as wooden as though he were waiting upon a Bond Street pavement. Both were weary, and both would have liked to vary the monotony by a little conversation; but only a few yards away the woman was standing whose curious taste had led her to visit such a spot.
Her arms were hanging listlessly by her side, her whole expression, although her face was upturned towards the sky, was one of intense dejection. Something about her att.i.tude bespoke a keen and intimate sympathy with the desolation of her surroundings. The woman was unhappy; the light in her dark eyes was inimitably sad. Her cheeks were pale and a little wan. Yet Lady Deringham was very handsome--as handsome as a woman approaching middle age could hope to be. Her figure was still slim and elegant, the streaks of grey in her raven black hair were few and far between. She might have lived hand in hand with sorrow, but it had done very little to age her. Only a few years ago, in the crowded ball-room of a palace, a prince had declared her to be the handsomest woman of her age, and the prince had the reputation of knowing. It was easy to believe it.
How long the woman might have lingered there it is hard to say, for evidently the spot possessed a peculiar fascination for her, and she had given herself up to a rare fit of abstraction. But some sound--was it the low wailing of that seagull, or the more distant cry of a hawk, motionless in mid-air and scarcely visible against the cloudy sky, which caused her to turn her head inland? And then she saw that the solitude was no longer unbroken. A dark object had rounded the sandy little headland, and was coming steadily towards her. She looked at it with a momentary interest, her skirt raised in her hand, already a few steps back on her return to the waiting carriage. Was it a man? It was something human, at any rate, although its progression was slow and ungraceful, and marked with a peculiar but uniform action. She stood perfectly still, a motionless figure against the background of wan, cloud-shadowed sea and gathering twilight, her eyes riveted upon this strange thing, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks as pale as death. Gradually it came nearer and nearer. Her skirt dropped from her nerveless fingers, her eyes, a moment before dull, with an infinite and pitiful emptiness, were lit now with a new light. She was not alone, nor was she unprotected, yet the woman was suffering from a spasm of terror--one could scarcely imagine any sight revolting enough to call up that expression of acute and trembling fear, which had suddenly transformed her appearance. It was as though the level sands had yielded up their dead--the shipwrecked mariners of generations, and they all, with white, sad faces and wailing voices, were closing in around her. Yet it was hard to account for a terror so abject. There was certainly nothing in the figure, now close at hand, which seemed capable of inspiring it.
It was a man with a club foot--nothing more nor less. In fact it was Mr. Sabin! There was nothing about his appearance, save that ungainly movement caused by his deformity, in any way singular or threatening. He came steadily nearer, and the woman who awaited him trembled. Perhaps his expression was a trifle sardonic, owing chiefly to the extreme pallor of his skin, and the black flannel clothes with invisible stripe, which he had been wearing for golf. Yet when he lifted his soft felt hat from his head and bowed with an ease and effect palpably acquired in other countries, his appearance was far from unpleasant. He stood there bare-headed in the twilight, a strangely winning smile upon his dark face, and his head courteously bent.
"The most delightful of unexpected meetings," he murmured. "I am afraid that I have come upon you like an apparition, dear Lady Deringham! I must have startled you! Yes, I can see by your face that I did; I am so sorry. Doubtless you did not know until yesterday that I was in England."
Lady Deringham was slowly recovering herself. She was white still, even to the lips, and there was a strange, sick pain at her heart. Yet she answered him with something of her usual deliberateness, conscious perhaps that her servants, although their heads were studiously averted, had yet witnessed with surprise this unexpected meeting.
"You certainly startled me," she said; "I had imagined that this was the most desolate part of all unfrequented spots! It is here I come when I want to feel absolutely alone. I did not dream of meeting another fellow creature--least of all people in the world, perhaps, you!"
"I," he answered, smiling gently, "was perhaps the better prepared. A few minutes ago, from the cliffs yonder, I saw your carriage drawn up here, and I saw you alight. I wanted to speak with you, so I lost no time in scrambling down on to the sands. You have changed marvellously little, Lady Deringham!"
"And you," she said, "only in name. You are the Mr. Sabin with whom my son was playing golf yesterday morning?"
"I am Mr. Sabin," he answered. "Your son did me a good service a week or two back. He is a very fine young fellow; I congratulate you."
"And your niece," Lady Deringham asked; "who is she? My son spoke to me of her last night."
Mr. Sabin smiled faintly.
"Ah! Madame," he said, "there have been so many people lately who have been asking me that question, yet to you as to them I must return the same answer. She is my niece!"
"You call her?"
"She shares my name at present."
"Is she your daughter?"
He shook his head sadly.
"I have never been married," he said, with an indefinable mournfulness in his flexible tones. "I have had neither wife, nor child, nor friend. It is well for me that I have not!"
She looked down at his deformity, and woman-like she shivered.
"It is no better, then?" she murmured, with eyes turned seaward.
"It is absolutely incurable," he declared.
She changed the subject abruptly.
"The last I heard of you," she said, "was that you were in China. You were planning great things there. In ten years, I was told, Europe was to be at your mercy!"
"I left Pekin five years ago," he said. "China is a land of Cabals. She may yet be the greatest country in the world. I, for one, believe in her destiny, but it will be in the generations to come. I have no patience to labour for another to reap the harvest. Then, too, a craving for just one draught of civilisation brought me westward again. Mongolian habits are interesting but a little trying."
"And what," she asked, looking at him steadily, "has brought you to Deringham, of all places upon this earth?"
He smiled, and with his stick traced a quaint pattern in the sand.
"I have never told you anything that was not the truth," he said; "I will not begin now. I might have told you that I was here by chance, for change of air, or for the golf. Neither of these things would have been true. I am here because Deringham village is only a mile or two from Deringham Hall."
She drew a little closer to him. The jingling of harness, as her horses tossed their heads impatiently, reminded her of the close proximity of the servants.
"What do you want of me?" she asked hoa.r.s.ely.
He looked at her in mild reproach, a good-humoured smile at the corner of his lips; yet after all was it good humour or some curious outward reflection of the working of his secret thoughts? When he spoke the reproach, at any rate, was manifest.
"Want of you! You talk as though I were a blackmailer, or something equally obnoxious. Is that quite fair, Constance?"
She evaded the reproach; perhaps she was not conscious of it. It was the truth she wanted.
"You had some end in coming here," she persisted. "What is it? I cannot conceive anything in the world you have to gain by coming to see me. We have left the world and society; we live buried. Whatever fresh schemes you may be planning, there is no way in which we could help you. You are richer, stronger, more powerful than we. I can think," she added, "of only one thing which may have brought you."
"And that?" he asked deliberately.
She looked at him with a certain tremulous wistfulness in her eyes, and with softening face.
"It may be," she said, "that as you grow older you have grown kinder; you may have thought of my great desire, and you were always generous, Victor, you may have come to grant it!"
The slightest possible change pa.s.sed over his face as his Christian name slipped from her lips. The firm lines about his mouth certainly relaxed, his dark eyes gleamed for a moment with a kindlier light. Perhaps at that minute for both of them came a sudden lifting of the curtain, a lingering backward glance into the world of their youth, pa.s.sionate, beautiful, seductive. There were memories there which still seemed set to music--memories which pierced even the armour of his equanimity. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. With a quick gesture she laid her hand upon his.
"Believe me, Victor," she said, "I have always thought of you kindly; you have suffered terribly for my sake, and your silence was magnificent. I have never forgotten it."
His face clouded over, her impulsive words had been after all ill chosen, she had touched a sore point! There was something in these memories distasteful to him. They recalled the one time in his life when he had been worsted by another man. His cynicism returned.
"I am afraid," he said, "that the years, which have made so little change in your appearance, have made you a sentimentalist. I can a.s.sure you that these old memories seldom trouble me."
Then with a lightning-like intuition, almost akin to inspiration, he saw that he had made a mistake. His best hold upon the woman had been through that mixture of sentiment and pity, which something in their conversation had reawakened in her. He was destroying it ruthlessly and of his own accord. What folly!
"Bah! I am lying," he said softly; "why should I? Between you and me, Constance, there should be nothing but truth. We at least should be sincere one to the other. You are right, I have brought you something which should have been yours long ago."
She looked at him with wondering eyes.
"You are going to give me the letters?"
"I am going to give them to you," he said. "With the destruction of this little packet falls away the last link which held us together."
He had taken a little bundle of letters, tied with a faded ribbon, from his pocket and held them out to her. Even in that salt-odorous air the perfume of strange scents seemed to creep out from those closely written sheets as they fluttered in the breeze. Lady Deringham clasped the packet with both hands, and her eyes were very bright and very soft.
"It is not so, Victor," she murmured. "There is a new and a stronger link between us now, the link of my everlasting grat.i.tude. Ah! you were always generous, always quixotic! Someday I felt sure that you would do this."
"When I left Europe," he said, "you would have had them, but there was no trusted messenger whom I could spare. Yet if I had never returned they were so bestowed that they would have come into your hands with perfect safety. Even now, Constance, will you think me very weak when I say that I part with them with regret? They have been with me through many dangers and many strange happenings."
"You are," she whispered, "the old Victor again! Thank G.o.d that I have had this one glimpse of you! I am ashamed to think how terrified I have been."
She held out her hand impulsively. He took it in his and, with a glance at her servants, let it fall almost immediately.
"Constance," he said, "I am going away now. I have accomplished what I came for. But first, would you care to do me a small service? It is only a trifle."
A thrill of the old mistrustful fear shook her heart. Half ashamed of herself she stifled it at once, and strove to answer him calmly.
"If there is anything within my power which I can do for you, Victor," she said, "it will make me very happy. You would not ask me, I know, unless--unless----"
"You need have no fear," he interrupted calmly; "it is a very little thing. Do you think that Lord Deringham would know me again after so many years?"
"My husband?"
"Yes!"
She looked at him in something like amazement. Before she could ask the question which was framing itself upon her lips, however, they were both aware of a distant sound, rapidly drawing nearer--the thunder of a horse"s hoofs upon the soft sand. Looking up they both recognised the rider at the same instant.
"It is your son," Mr. Sabin said quickly; "you need not mind. Leave me to explain. Tell me when I can find you at home alone?"
"I am always alone," she answered. "But come to-morrow."
CHAPTER XXIII.
MR. SABIN EXPLAINS.
Mr. Sabin and his niece had finished their dinner, and were lingering a little over an unusually luxurious dessert. Wolfenden had sent some muscatel grapes and peaches from the forcing houses at Deringham Hall--such peaches as Covent Garden could scarcely match, and certainly not excel. Mr. Sabin looked across at Helene as they were placed upon the table, with a significant smile.
"An Englishman," he remarked, pouring himself out a gla.s.s of burgundy and drawing the cigarettes towards him, "never knows when he is beaten. As a national trait it is magnificent, in private life it is a little awkward."
Helene had been sitting through the meal, still and statuesque in her black dinner gown, a little more pale than usual, and very silent. At Mr. Sabin"s remark she looked up quickly.
"Are you alluding to Lord Wolfenden?" she asked.
Mr. Sabin lit his cigarette, and nodded through the mist of blue smoke.
"To no less a person," he answered, with a shade of mockery in his tone. "I am beginning to find my guardianship no sinecure after all! Do you know, it never occurred to me, when we concluded our little arrangement, that I might have to exercise my authority against so ardent a suitor. You would have found his lordship hard to get rid of this morning, I am afraid, but for my opportune arrival."
"By no means," she answered. "Lord Wolfenden is a gentleman, and he was not more persistent than he had a right to be."
"Perhaps," Mr. Sabin remarked, "you would have been better pleased if I had not come?"
"I am quite sure of it," she admitted; "but then it is so like you to arrive just at a crisis! Do you know, I can"t help fancying that there is something theatrical about your comings and goings! You appear--and one looks for a curtain and a tableau. Where could you have dropped from this morning?"
"From Cromer, in a donkey-cart," he answered smiling. "I got as far as Peterborough last night, and came on here by the first train. There was nothing very melodramatic about that, surely!"
"It does not sound so, certainly. Your playing golf with Lord Wolfenden afterwards was commonplace enough!"
"I found Lord Wolfenden very interesting," Mr. Sabin said thoughtfully. "He told me a good deal which was important for me to know. I am hoping that to-night he will tell me more."
"To-night! Is he coming here?"
Mr. Sabin a.s.sented calmly.
"Yes. I thought you would be surprised. But then you need not see him, you know. I met him riding upon the sands this afternoon--at rather an awkward moment, by the bye--and asked him to dine with us."
"He refused, of course?"
"Only the dinner; presumably he doubted our cook, for he asked to be allowed to come down afterwards. He will be here soon."
"Why did you ask him?"
Mr. Sabin looked keenly across the table. There was something in the girl"s face which he scarcely understood.
"Well, not altogether for the sake of his company, I must confess," he replied. "He has been useful to me, and he is in the position to be a great deal more so."
The girl rose up. She came over and stood before him. Mr. Sabin knew at once that something unusual was going to happen.
"You want to make of him," she said, in a low, intense tone, "what you make of every one--a tool! Understand that I will not have it!"
"Helene!"