Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, ill.u.s.trating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner"s unbounded grat.i.tude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.
"I can"t make the man out," said Sherlaw to Escott. "I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him."
"No more there is," replied Escott. "His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment.
The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him."
A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that nothing in particular had happened.
"What do you make of this, Escott?" asked Dr Congleton, laying her note before his a.s.sistant.
"Merely that a woman wrote it."
"Hum! I suppose that _is_ the explanation."
Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.
CHAPTER VI.
"Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in silver," said Mr Beveridge to himself. "Ah, and a card."
On the card was written, "From a friend, if you will accept it. A."
He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little lady"s purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.
"Wot"s he bin up to now, I wonder," Moggridge panted to himself-for the second pair of feet belonged to him. "Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an "andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by "isself!"
"What a time you"ve been," said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket. "I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?"
In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.
"Now for a balloon," Mr Beveridge reflected.
Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine.
By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced "vines" and "Q"s," and performed wonderful feats on one leg all morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.
When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand.
"I knew you would come to-day," he remarked.
"How _could_ you have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come."
"It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come."
"Who have ever come?" she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.
"Many things," he smiled, "including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor."
She blushed and said, "I hope you didn"t mind."
"Not much," he answered, candidly. "In my present circ.u.mstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress."
The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject.
"What beautiful ice!" she said.
"The question now is," he continued, paying no heed to this diversion, "what am I to do next?"
"What do you mean?" she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.
"The wall is high, there is bottle-gla.s.s on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don"t. The gates are always kept closed, and it isn"t worth any one"s while to open them for 10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-cla.s.s ticket up to town. What are we to do?"
"We?" she gasped.
"You and I," he explained.
"But-but I can"t _possibly_ do anything."
" "Can"t possibly" is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand."
"Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn"t do anything."
"Mustn"t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it"s a temptation in itself."
"It wouldn"t be right," she said, with quite a show of firmness.
He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly, "Why not?"
And in a half-audible aside he added, "That"s the correct move, I think."
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I said, "Why not?" " he answered, with increasing tenderness.
"But you said something else."
"I added a brief prayer for pity."
Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly. "It wouldn"t be right of me, Mr Beveridge."
"But what would be wrong?"
This was said with even more fervour.
"My conscience-we are very particular, you know."