Grange had gone straight to the fire, and he did not see him slip something into his pocket as he came forward.
But he did after several minutes of abstraction discover something not quite normal in Nick"s silence, and glanced down at him to ascertain what it was.
Nick had flung himself into a deep easy-chair, and was lying quite motionless with his head back upon the cushion. His eyes were closed.
He had been smoking when he entered, but he had dropped his cigar half consumed into an ash-tray.
Grange looked at him with renewed uneasiness, and looked away again.
He could not help feeling that there was some moral tension somewhere; but he had never possessed a keen perception, he could not have said wherein it lay.
He retired into his sh.e.l.l once more and sat down facing his host in silence that had become dogged.
Suddenly, without moving, Nick spoke.
His words were slightly more deliberate than usual, very even, very distinct. "To come to the point," he said. "I saw you on the sh.o.r.e this afternoon--you and Mrs. Musgrave."
"What?" Grange gave a great start and stared across at him, gripping the arms of his chair.
Nick"s face, however, remained quite expressionless. "I saw you," he repeated.
With an effort Grange recovered himself. "Did you though? I wondered how you knew I was down here. Where were you?"
There was an abrupt tremor behind Nick"s eyelids, but they remained closed. "I was on the top of the cliff, on my own ground, watching you."
Dead silence followed his answer--a silence through which the sound of the sea half a mile away swelled terribly, like the roar of a monster in torment.
Then at last Nick"s eyes opened. He looked Grange straight in the face. "What are you going to do?" he said.
Grange"s hands dropped heavily from the chair-arms, and his whole great frame drooped slowly forward. He made no further attempt at evasion, realising the utter futility of such a course.
"Do!" he said wearily. "Nothing."
"Nothing?" said Nick swiftly.
"No, nothing," he repeated, staring with a dull intentness at the ground between his feet. "It"s an old story, and the less said about it the better. I can"t discuss it with you or any one. I think it was a pity you took the trouble to watch me this afternoon."
He spoke with a certain dignity, albeit he refused to meet Nick"s eyes. He looked unutterably tired.
Nick lay quite motionless in his chair, inscrutably still, save for the restless glitter behind his colourless eyelashes. At length, "Do you remember a conversation we had in this room a few months ago?" he asked.
Grange shook his head slightly, too engrossed with his miserable thoughts to pay much attention.
"Well, think!" Nick said insistently. "It had to do with your engagement to Muriel Roscoe. Perhaps you have forgotten that too?"
Grange looked up then, shaking off his lethargy with a visible effort.
He got slowly to his feet, and drew himself up to his full giant height.
"No," he said, "I have not forgotten it."
"Then," said Nick, "once more--what are you going to do?"
Grange"s face darkened. He seemed to hesitate upon the verge of vehement speech. But he restrained himself though the hot blood mounted to his temples.
"I have never yet broken my word to a woman," he said. "I am not going to begin now."
"Why not?" said Nick, with a grin that was somehow fiendish.
Grange ignored the gibe. "There is no reason why I should not marry her," he said.
"No reason!" Nick"s eyes flashed upwards for an instant, and a curious sense of insecurity stabbed Grange.
Nevertheless he made unfaltering reply. "No reason whatever."
Nick sat up slowly and regarded him with minute attention. "Are you serious?" he asked finally.
"I am absolutely serious," Grange told him sternly. "And I warn you, Ratcliffe, this is not a subject upon which I will bear interference."
"Man alive!" jeered Nick. "You must think I"m d.a.m.ned easily scared."
He got up with the words, jerking his meagre body upright with a slight, fierce movement, and stood in front of Grange, arrogantly daring.
"Now just listen to this," he said. "I don"t care a d.a.m.n how you take it, so you may as well take it quietly. It"s no concern of mine to know how you have whitewashed this thing over and made it look clean and decent--and honourable--to your fastidious eye. What I am concerned in is to prevent Muriel Roscoe making an unworthy marriage.
And that I mean to do. I told you in the summer that she should be no man"s second best, and, by Heaven, she never shall. I had my doubts of you then. I know you now. And--I swear by all things sacred that I will see you dead sooner than married to her."
He broke off for a moment as though to get a firmer grip upon himself. His face was terrible, his body tense as though controlled by tight-strung wires.
Before Grange could speak, he went on rapidly, with a resolution more deadly if less pa.s.sionate than before.
"If either of you had ever cared, it might have been a different matter. But you never did. I knew that you never did. I never troubled to find out your reason for proposing to her. No doubt it was strictly honourable. But I always knew why she accepted you. Did you know that, I wonder?"
"Yes, I did." Grange"s voice was deep and savage. He glowered down upon him in rising fury. "It was to escape you."
Nick"s eyes flamed back like the eyes of a crouching beast. He uttered a sudden, dreadful laugh. "Yes--to escape me," he said, "to escape me!
And it has fallen to me to deliver her from her chivalrous protector.
If you look all round that, you may see something funny in it."
"Funny!" burst forth Grange, letting himself go at last. "It"s what you have been playing for all along, you infernal mountebank! But you have overreached yourself this time. For that very reason I will never give her up."
He swung past Nick with the words, goaded past endurance, desperately aware that he could not trust himself within arm"s length of that gibing, devilish countenance.
He reached the door and seized the handle, wrenched furiously for a few seconds, then flung violently round.
"Ratcliffe," he exclaimed, "for your own sake I advise you not to keep me here!"
But Nick had remained with his face to the fire. He did not so much as glance over his shoulder. He had suddenly grown intensely quiet. "I haven"t quite done with you," he said. "There is just one thing more I have to say."
Grange was already striding back like an enraged bull, but something in the voice or att.i.tude of the man who leaned against the mantelpiece without troubling to face him, brought him up short.
Against his will he halted. "Well?" he demanded.