"Perhaps you would like to see your room, Mr. Thresk," he said. "Your bag has been taken up, no doubt. We will look at my miniatures after tea."
"I shall be delighted," said Thresk as he followed Hazlewood to the door.
"But you must not expect too much knowledge from me."
"Oh!" cried his host with a laugh. "Pettifer tells me that you are a great authority."
"Then Pettifer"s wrong," said Thresk and so stopped. "Pettifer? Pettifer?
Isn"t he a solicitor?"
"Yes, he told me that he knew you. He married my sister. They are both coming to tea."
With that he led Thresk to his room and left him there. The room was over the porch of the house and looked down the short level drive to the iron gates and the lane. It was all familiar ground to Thresk or rather to that other man with whom Thresk"s only connection was a dull throb at his heart, a queer uneasiness and discomfort. He leaned out of the window. He could hear the river singing between the gra.s.s banks at the bottom of the garden behind him. He would hear it through the night. Then came a knocking upon his door, and he did not notice it at once. It was repeated and he turned and said:
"Come in!"
Hubbard advanced with a note upon a salver.
"Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to give you this at once, sir."
Thresk stared at the butler. The name was so apposite to his thoughts that he could not believe it had been uttered. But the salver was held out to him and the handwriting upon the envelope removed his doubts. He took it up, said "Thank you" in an absent voice and waited until the door was closed again and he was alone. The last time he had seen that writing was eighteen months ago. A little note of thanks, blurred with tears and scribbled hastily and marked with no address, had been handed to him in Bombay. Stella Ballantyne had disappeared then. She was here now at Little Beeding and his relationship with the young struggling barrister of ten years back suddenly became actual and near. He tore open the envelope and read.
"Be prepared to see me. Be prepared to hear news of me. I will have a talk with you afterwards if you like. This is a trap. Be kind."
He stood for a while with the letter in his hand, speculating upon its meaning, until the wheels of a car grated on the gravel beneath his window. The Pettifers had come. But Thresk was in no hurry to descend. He read the note through many times before he hid it away in his letter-case and went down the stairs.
CHAPTER XXIII
METHODS FROM FRANCE
Meanwhile Stella Ballantyne waited below. She heard Mr. Hazlewood in the hall greeting the Pettifers with the false joviality which sat so ill upon him; she imagined the shy nods and glances which told them that the trap was properly set. Mr. Hazlewood led them into the room.
"Is tea ready, Stella? We won"t wait for d.i.c.k," he said, and Stella took her place at the table. She had her back to the door by which Thresk would enter. She had not a doubt that thus her chair had been deliberately placed. He would be in the room and near to the table before he saw her. He would not have a moment to prepare himself against the surprise of her presence. Stella listened for the sound of his footsteps in the hall; she could not think of a single topic to talk about except the presence of that extra sixth cup; and that she must not mention if the tables were really to be turned upon her antagonists. Surprise must be visible upon her side when Thresk did come in. But she was not alone in finding conversation difficult. Embarra.s.sment and expectancy weighed down the whole party, so that they began suddenly to speak at once and simultaneously to stop. Robert Pettifer however asked if d.i.c.k was playing cricket, and so gave Harold Hazlewood an opportunity.
"No, the match was over early," said the old man, and he settled himself in his arm-chair. "I have given some study to the subject of cricket," he said.
"You?" asked Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he usually embarked upon his disquisitions.
"Yes. I do not consider our national pastime beneath a philosopher"s attention. I have formed two theories about the game."
"I am sure you have," Robert Pettifer interposed.
"And I have invented two improvements, though I admit at once that they will have to wait until a more enlightened age than ours adopts them. In the first place"--and Mr. Hazlewood flourished a forefinger in the air--"the game ought to be played with a soft ball. There is at present a suggestion of violence about it which the use of a soft ball would entirely remove."
"Entirely," Mr. Pettifer agreed and his wife exclaimed impatiently:
"Rubbish, Harold, rubbish!"
Stella broke nervously into the conversation.
"Violence? Why even women play cricket, Mr. Hazlewood."
"I cannot, Stella," he returned, "accept the view that whatever women do must necessarily be right. There are instances to the contrary."
"Yes. I come across a few of them in my office," Robert Pettifer said grimly; and once more embarra.s.sment threatened to descend upon the party.
But Mr. Hazlewood was off upon a favourite theme. His eyes glistened and the object of the gathering vanished for the moment from his thoughts.
"And in the second place," he resumed, "the losers should be accounted to have won the game."
"Yes, that must be right," said Pettifer. "Upon my word you are in form, Hazlewood."
"But why?" asked Mrs. Pettifer.
Harold Hazlewood smiled upon her as upon a child and explained:
"Because by adopting that system you would do something to eradicate the spirit of rivalry, the desire to win, the ambition to beat somebody else which is at the bottom of half our national troubles."
"And all our national success," said Pettifer.
Hazlewood patted his brother-in-law upon the shoulder. He looked at him indulgently. "You are a Tory, Robert," he said, and implied that argument with such an one was mere futility.
He had still his hand upon Pettifer"s shoulder when the door opened.
Stella saw by the change in his face that it was Thresk who was entering.
But she did not move.
"Ah," said Mr. Hazlewood. "Come over here and take a cup of tea."
Thresk came forward to the table. He seemed altogether unconscious that the eyes of the two men were upon him.
"Thank you. I should like one," he said, and at the sound of his voice Stella Ballantyne turned around in her chair.
"You!" she cried and the cry was pitched in a tone of pleasure and welcome.
"Of course you know Mrs. Ballantyne," said Hazlewood. He saw Stella rise from her chair and hold out her hand to Thresk with the colour aflame in her cheeks.
"You are surprised to see me again," she said.
Thresk took her hand cordially. "I am delighted to see you again,"
he replied.
"And I to see you," said Stella, "for I have never yet had a chance of thanking you"; and she spoke with so much frankness that even Pettifer was shaken in his suspicions. She turned upon Mr. Hazlewood with a mimicry of indignation. "Do you know, Mr. Hazlewood, that you have done a very cruel thing?"
Mr. Hazlewood was utterly discomfited by the failure of his plot, and when Stella attacked him so directly he had not a doubt but that she had divined his treachery.
"I?" he gasped. "Cruel? How?"