"Yes, it begins to look black, Jenny, but I am not at the end," Millie Splay continued implacably. Jenny was not the only woman in that house who could fight if her darling was attacked. "You proceed to direct suspicion at a young girl with the statement that you never saw your mistress after half past nine that night or helped her to undress; and to complete your treachery, you take the key of Mrs. Croyle"s door which you found inside her room this morning, and threw it where it may avert inquiry from you and point it against another."
Jenny Prask flinched. The conviction with which Lady Splay announced as a fact the opinion of the small conclave about the table quite deceived her.
"So you know about the key?" she said sullenly. And about the table ran a little quiver of relief. With that question, Jenny Prask had delivered herself into their hands.
"Yes."
Jenny stood with a mutinous face and silent lips. Lady Splay had marshalled in their order the items of the case which would be made against her, if she persisted in her lie. How would she receive them?
Persist, reckless of her own overthrow, so long as she overthrew Joan Whitworth too? Or surrender angrily? The four people watched for her answer with anxiety; and it was given in a way which they least expected. For Jenny covered her face with her hands, her shoulders began to heave and great tears burst out between her fingers and trickled down the backs of her hands.
"It"s unbearable," she sobbed. "I would have given my life for her--that"s the truth. Oh, I know that most maids serve their mistresses for what they can get out of them. But she was so kind to me--wherever she went she was thoughtful of my comfort. Oh, if I had guessed what she meant to do! And I might have!"
The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given the letter to Jenny, and Jenny herself had taken it to the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon his journey. She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella was in the habit of inhaling chloroform; she carried a bottle of it in her dressing-case--a bottle which Jenny had taken secretly from the room and smashed into atoms after Doctor McKerrel"s departure. She had already conceived her plan to involve Joan in so much suspicion that she must needs openly confess that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in the empty house.
"Mario Escobar!" Millie Splay exclaimed. "It was he." She turned pale.
Sir Charles Hardiman had spoken frankly to her of Escobar. A creature of the shadows--it was rumored that he lived on the blackmailing of women.
Joan was not out of the wood then! Martin Hillyard was quick to appease her fears.
"He will not trouble you," and when Jenny had gone from the room he added, "Mario Escobar was arrested this morning. He will be interned till the end of the war and deported afterwards."
Lady Splay rose, her face bright with relief.
"Thank you," she said warmly to Hillyard. "I am going up to Joan." At the door she stopped to add, "Now that it"s over, I don"t mind telling you that I admire Jenny Prask. Out-and-out loyalty like hers is not so common that we can think lightly of it."
Martin Hillyard turned to Sir Chichester.
"And now, if you will allow me, I will open my box of cigarettes."
Harry Luttrell went back to his depot the next morning, without seeing Joan again. Millicent Splay wrote to him during the next week. The inquest had been confined within its proper limits. Jenny Prask had spoken the truth in the witness box, and from beginning to end there had been no mention of Joan or Mario Escobar. A verdict of temporary insanity had been returned, and Stella now lay in the village churchyard. Harry Luttrell drew a breath of relief and turned to his work. For six weeks his days and nights were full; and then came twenty-four hours" leave and a swift journey into Suss.e.x. He arrived at Rackham Park in the dusk of the evening. By a good chance he found Joan with Millie Splay and Sir Chichester alone.
Sir Chichester welcomed him with cordiality.
"My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you. You will stay the night, of course."
"No," Harry answered. "I must get back to London this evening."
He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances of his wife, plunged into an account of the events which had followed his departure.
"I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been more concise, the coroner said. What"s the matter, Millie? Why don"t you leave me alone?
Oh--ah--yes," and he hummed a little and spluttered a little, and then with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked, "There are those plans for the new pig-sties, Millie, which I am anxious to show you."
He was manoeuvred at last from the room. Harry Luttrell and Joan Whitworth were left standing opposite to one another in the room.
"Joan," Harry Luttrell said, "in ten days I go back to France."
With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering out she went towards him blinded by a rush of tears.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
"BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"
Between the North and South Downs in the east of Suss.e.x lies a wide tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an enormous m.u.f.fled drum beaten at a giant"s funeral leagues and leagues away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the British guns at Ypres.
Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not with the high antic.i.p.ation of old days. In what spirit would he find his friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.
Martin had arrived before luncheon.
"Joan is hunting to-day," said Millie, "on the other side of the county.
She will catch a train back."
"I can fetch her," Hillyard returned. "She is well?"
"Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a fortnight and is better. She was very grateful for your letters. She sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write."
Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two years--a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was born.
"Joan"s distress was terrible," said Millie. "At first she refused to believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as "missing" for weeks; and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face--whatever failings of the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew--daily sought for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these rumours. Finally proof came--proof irrefutable.
"Joan collapsed then," said Millie Splay. "We brought her down here and put her to bed. She cried--oh, day and night!--she who never cried! We were afraid for her--afraid for the child that was coming."
Millie Splay smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They were married before he left for France in "sixteen, and then had another week together in the January of "seventeen at his house in the Clayford country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then she resumed cheerfully:
"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"--Millie"s face became radiant--"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."
Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a prodigy.
"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers," said Millie with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."
"Good. Then he won"t object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.
He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of Suss.e.x where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin stopped the car and looked about him.
"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come home to it."
"Yes, but I wish _that_ would stop."
_That_ was the dull and m.u.f.fled boom of the great guns across the sea.
They sat and listened to it in silence.
"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."
As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of wistfulness heard in all the words.
"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into the market.... It had a bra.s.s front door. There we should be. We could go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our own bra.s.s door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added to it a most appealing tenderness.