Next day I set out in the early afternoon to pay my call. The fine weather still held, bright sunshine with a nip in the air and the road underfoot firm with frost, and I strode along in a wonderfully confident mood, all things considered. For to tell the truth, I had been funking this visit. Instinctively I did not trust myself with Miss Jean Rendall.
If she had any suspicions and if she turned on to me the art of her s.e.x and the charms of her particular self, I was well aware that Thomas Sylvester would have a bad time of it. In fact I really dared not answer for the fellow"s nerve. He being both critical and susceptible, a girl with Jean"s distinctive aroma was dangerous company with a job of this kind on hand. And playing the whisky-enfeebled fool in a dirty black beard ceased entirely to amuse me when the other party was Miss Rendall.
However, this morning Mr. Hobhouse felt braver, and stepped out briskly, resolved to do his bit.
As he approached the house, the front door opened and the very lady herself appeared. She carried a stick and was evidently setting forth on a walk.
"This is very nice of you to come so soon, Mr. Hobhouse," she said. "I am glad I hadn"t gone further before you appeared."
"Oh, but don"t let me stop you, Miss Rendall," said Mr. Hobhouse anxiously. "Really, I can"t allow it; no, no, really not. You mustn"t turn back, indeed you mustn"t! Perhaps I shall find Mr. Rendall at home."
"I was only going for a walk to nowhere in particular." She looked at him with an irresistible mixture of coyness and frankness and suggested, "Would you care to come for a little walk too? It"s far too early for tea."
What could the poor gentleman do? He gushed over the suggestion of course, and accepted it.
"I was going to walk down to the sh.o.r.e," she said. "Will that suit you?"
Mr. Hobhouse a.s.sured her that anywhere would suit him; he had no choice at all: anywhere, everywhere, nowhere would be all the same to him.
As they walked side by side down towards the sea, he was suddenly struck with the sense of being in a familiar situation, of a repet.i.tion of something that had happened before. And then he realised that this was actually the walk that the same girl and a young man Merton had taken on a memorable August night. He noted through his gla.s.ses the very wall behind which he had lit his pipe when the flare of his match revealed the b.u.t.t end of a pistol, and presently they were following the same winding way above the beach.
This did not serve to make the playing of his part any the easier. It filled him in fact with a continual fear of giving himself away by doing something he had done before. It was really a most irrational fear; but there it was. Under the circ.u.mstances his sustained babble and blink were distinctly creditable.
But what gave him a more excusable cause for apprehension was Miss Rendall"s own att.i.tude. That there was something on her mind, something behind her words, he felt morally certain. She spoke in the most natural way and on the most commonplace topics, but there were frequent silences and it was during those he felt that without looking directly at him, she was watching him. And once or twice he got it into his head that she was a little puzzled and uncertain, though whether it was about what to think or what to do, he had no conception. He told himself that all this was only his own morbid imagination. Still, it made that walk an uncomfortable ordeal and seldom did actor have to work harder to keep his end up.
Luckily however the man had the virtue of impudence and not only did he manage to entertain the lady with a garrulous account of his antiquarian researches (reasoning acutely that women are seldom experts in such matters), but he even ventured to broach a delicate subject for his own ends.
"The gentleman who--er--resided with Dr. Rendall last summer was not, I believe, very interested in antiquities," he observed. "Did you know him, Miss Rendall? Mr. O"Brien was his name, I believe."
"Yes," she said, "I knew Mr. O"Brien."
There was certainly no trace of any feeling, whether of like or dislike, in her voice.
"Not a very pleasant fellow, I believe," Mr. Hobhouse went on. "At least I should judge not; I should gather not. But I trust he wasn"t a friend of yours, Miss Rendall?"
"Not a particular friend. But why do you think he was unpleasant?"
"Oh, only from Dr. Rendall"s references to him--only from that, I a.s.sure you," said Mr. Hobhouse with propitiating eagerness.
"Really?" said she, her eyes opening.
There was no doubt that this information genuinely surprised her.
"I thought they seemed great friends," she added.
"Oh, they may have been--they may have been. I may be doing Mr. O"Brien an injustice. Possibly I misunderstood your relative--quite possibly."
She was silent for a little while after this, and Mr. Hobhouse too ceased chatting. He was eyeing the sh.o.r.e line very curiously and trying to piece together his recollections of it.
"I think perhaps we have gone far enough now," said she, and for a minute or two they stood still; and a very distinct sense of being in a familiar situation was borne in upon her companion.
And then all at once she exclaimed,
"Do you hear anything?"
I started and stared at her. For the moment I had ceased to be Mr.
Hobhouse, so straight had I been carried back to that night six months ago. Those were her very words, and if I were not much mistaken this was the very place. I nearly answered as I had answered before, but was just able to check myself. And then she broke the spell by laughing.
"It"s only the sea! But it sounded so funny and hollow."
There was indeed a low gurgle just audible, as if the waves were breaking into some cave. It struck me that she must have singularly sharp ears to have noticed it. We stood there for a minute or two longer, and then she asked,
"Do you see any ancient remains, Mr. Hobhouse?"
It was not in fact ancient remains that the eye gla.s.ses were looking at, but I jumped at the chance of making sure of my bearings, and with an appearance of great eagerness told her that there seemed to be something decidedly interesting in the appearance of the rocks at that place.
"I can wait for a moment if you"d like to look at them nearer," she said.
"This is luck!" I said to myself as I scrambled down. "I believe I"ve found the actual place."
A few minutes exploration left no doubt in my mind. I found the very cliff face under which I had been decoyed and was able to clear up one point. A man above could easily have struck at me with some implement, say, six feet long. I shut my eyes and pictured that curved mystery, and then in a flash I had it: a scythe blade tied to a pole! If I could find a scythe blade fastened to a pole, or a blade and pole separate, I should not be far off the end of my quest. The next moment I smiled at my own optimism when I realised what a house to house hunt that would imply. Still, I saw a fresh possibility and came back silently thanking my guide.
Conversation was rather easier coming back, perhaps because I felt in higher spirits and could play my absurd part with more gusto. Still, the girl remained a little disquieting. She was now in a very smiling and friendly mood, and a man who blinked through gold rimmed gla.s.ses and giggled through a dyed beard ought to have felt exceedingly flattered.
But now I was saying to myself that for a girl of fastidious taste she was really too nice to such a fellow. And then I remembered that O"Brien had a black beard too, and the thought struck me,
"Can she have such pleasant recollections of black beards that I am providing her with reminiscent romance?"
I think it was just as this idea occurred to me that she roused me very sharply from my meditations.
"I suppose you have heard of the mysterious man who appeared here last summer?" she enquired.
It took Mr. Hobhouse all this time to adjust himself to this question, but I think he managed it not unsuccessfully.
"The--ah? Oh, yes, oh, yes. The doctor told me the story. Most mysterious--most mysterious! What do you make of it yourself, Miss Rendall?"
"Did the doctor tell you that I once walked with him along this very sh.o.r.e? It was at night too, and he was armed with a pistol!"
A single stare of astonishment was fortunately able to cover two emotions. My own was expressed in the thought, "What the devil is she driving at now?" Mr. Hobhouse"s was expressed otherwise.
"You don"t say so! G.o.d bless me; what a risk to run! He didn"t--er--shoot at you, I hope?"
"No," she said, "he seemed pretty harmless."
"Ah, but you shouldn"t run such risks, my dear young lady; you really shouldn"t! Now I remember a young lady whom I used to know--" And thereupon Mr. Hobhouse launched into an improbable anecdote which tried his inventive powers considerably. However, he was able to make it, and the comments thereupon lasted till they were back at the house.
The fact was that my hardihood was not quite sufficient to stand a conversation about my own self behind my own back. It might have been amusing, and it might have been instructive, but it would certainly have been embarra.s.sing. However the incident served to rea.s.sure me that whatever she suspected me of (and I could not get that sense of being watched out of my head), it was not the correct suspicion. Had she guessed the truth I could see no point at all in her reminiscence of the mysterious stranger, unless it were sheer pointless mischief, and she did not seem a pointless lady. Besides, when I glanced at myself in the drawing room mirror, I said to myself, "Who could possibly guess!"
After that walk, tea and a talk with her father were unexciting episodes. She kept very much in the background, but when we parted I seemed to note again that flicker of a very alluring smile.