The Rocks of Valpre - Ethel May Dell (interesting novels to read .TXT) 📗

from the balcony."
She sprang to the window, and Mordaunt followed with an indulgent smile.
Rupert scoffed openly. "Chris is mad on charms of every description. If she hears a dog howl in the night she thinks there is going to be an earthquake. You had better not encourage her, or there will be no end to it."
But Chris, with her _fiance's_ hand fast in hers, was already at the window.
"If you don't believe in it, don't come!" she threw back over her shoulder. "Now, Trevor, you've got to turn your money, bow three times, and wish. Do wish for something really good to make up for my bad luck!"
Mordaunt complied deliberately with her instructions, her hand still in his.
"I have wished," he announced at length.
"Have you? What was it? Yes, you may tell me as I'm not doing any. Quick, before Rupert comes!"
Her eager face was close to his. He looked into the clear eyes and paused. "I don't think I will tell you," he said finally.
"Oh, how mean! And you would have missed the opportunity but for me!"
He laughed quietly. "So I should. Then I shall owe it to you if it comes true. I will let you know if it does."
"You are sure to forget," she protested.
"No. I am sure to remember."
She regarded him speculatively. "I don't like secrets," she said.
"Haven't you any of your own?" he asked.
"No. At least--" she suddenly coloured vividly under his eyes--"none that matter."
He sat down upon the balustrade of the balcony, bringing his eyes on a level with hers. "None that you wouldn't tell me," he suggested, still faintly smiling.
She recovered from her confusion with a quick laugh. "I shouldn't dream of telling you--some things," she said.
Her hand moved a little in his as though it wanted to be free, but he held it still. He bent towards her, his grey eyes no longer searching, only very soft and tender.
"You will when we are married, dear," he said.
But Chris shook her head with much decision. "Oh, no! I couldn't possibly. You would disapprove far too much. As Aunt Philippa says, you would be 'pained beyond expression.'"
But Mordaunt only drew her nearer. "You--child!" he said.
She yielded, half-protesting. "Yes, but I'm not quite a baby. I think you ought to remember that. Shall we go back? I know Rupert is sniggering behind the curtain."
"I'll break his head if he is," said Mordaunt; but he let her go, as she evidently desired, and prepared to follow her in.
They met Rupert sauntering out "to pay his respects," as he termed it, though, if there were any luck going, he supposed that his future brother-in-law had secured it all.
"Thought you didn't believe in luck," observed Mordaunt.
"I believe in bad luck," returned Rupert pessimistically. "I only know the other sort by hearsay."
"Isn't he absurd?" laughed Chris. "He always talks like that. And there are crowds of people worse off than he is."
"Query," remarked her brother, with a shrug of the shoulders; but an instant later, aware of Mordaunt's look, he changed the subject.
They were a small party at dinner, for there remained but Hilda Forest to complete the number. She had only that afternoon returned to town. Mrs. Forest was dining out, to Chris's unfeigned relief. For Chris was in high spirits that night, and only in her aunt's absence could she give them full vent.
But, if gay, she was also provokingly elusive. Mordaunt had never seen her so effervescent, so sublimely inconsequent, or so naively bewitching as she was throughout the meal. Rupert, reckless and _debonnaire_, encouraged her wild mood. As his youngest brother expressed it, he and Chris 'generally ran amok' when they got together. And Hilda, the sedate, rather pensive daughter of the house, was far too gentle to restrain them.
It was impossible to hold aloof from such light-hearted merry-making, and Mordaunt went with the tide. Perhaps instinct warned him that it was the surest way to overcome that barrier of shyness, unacknowledged but none the less existent, that kept him still a stranger to his little _fiancee's_ confidence. Her dainty daring notwithstanding, he was aware of the fact that she was yet half afraid of him, though when he came to seek the cause of this he was utterly at a loss.
When he and Rupert were left alone together after dinner, they were already far advanced upon the road to intimacy. It was the result of his deliberate intention; for though a girl might keep him outside her inner sanctuary, it seldom happened in the world of men that Trevor Mordaunt could not obtain a free pass whithersoever he cared to go.
Rupert tossed aside his gaiety with characteristic suddenness almost as soon as the door had closed upon his sister and cousin.
"I suppose you want to get to business," he said abruptly. "I'm ready when you are."
Mordaunt moved into an easy-chair. "Yes, I want to make a suggestion," he said deliberately. "But it is not a matter that you and I can carry through single-handed. I want to talk about it, that's all."
Rupert, his elbows on the table, nodded and stared rather gloomily into his coffee-cup. "I suppose it'll take about a year to fix it up. Anything with a lawyer in it does."
Mordaunt watched him through his cigarette smoke for a few seconds in silence, until in fact with a slight movement of impatience Rupert turned.
"I'm no good at fencing," he said, rather irritably. "You want Kellerton Old Park, Chris tells me. Have you seen it?"
"No."
"Then"--he sat back with a laugh that sounded rather forced--"that ends it," he declared. "The place has gone to rack and ruin. You can't walk up the avenue for the thistles. They are shoulder high. And as for the house, it's not much more than a rubbish-heap. It would cost more than it's worth to make it habitable. We have been trying to get rid of the place ever since my father's death, but it's no manner of use. People get let in by the agent's description and go and see it, but they all come away shuddering. You'll do the same."
"I shall certainly go and see it," Mordaunt said. "Perhaps I shall persuade Chris to motor down with me some day. But in any case, if you are selling--I'm buying."
Rupert jumped up suddenly. "I won't take you seriously till you've seen it," he declared.
"Oh yes, you will," Mordaunt returned imperturbably. "Because, you see, I am serious. But we haven't come to business yet. I want to know what price you are asking for this ancestral dwelling of yours."
"We would take almost anything," Rupert said.
He had begun to fidget about the room with a restlessness that was feverish. Mordaunt remained in his easy-chair, calmly smoking, obviously awaiting the information for which he had asked.
"Almost anything," Rupert repeated, halting at the table to drink some coffee.
The hand that held the cup was not over-steady. Mordaunt's eyes rested upon it thoughtfully.
"I should like to know," he said, after a moment.
Rupert gulped his coffee and looked down at him. "Murchison said ten thousand when my father died," he said. "He would probably begin by saying ten now, but he would end by taking five."
"Murchison is your solicitor?"
"And trustee up to a year ago."
"I see." Mordaunt reached for his own coffee. "And you? You think ten thousand would be a fair price?"
Rupert broke again into his uneasy laugh. "I think it would be an infernal swindle," he said.
"I will talk it over with Mr. Murchison," Mordaunt said quietly. "I only wanted to be sure that you were quite willing to sell before doing so."
Rupert took a turn up the room. He looked thoroughly ill-at-ease. Coming back, he halted by the mantelpiece and began to drum a difficult tattoo upon the marble.
"I don't want you to be let in by Murchison," he said suddenly. "You will find him damnably plausible. If he thinks you really want the place he will squeeze you like a sponge."
"Thanks for the warning!" There was a note of amusement in Mordaunt's voice. He finished his coffee and rose. "You have done your best to handicap your man of business, but I think he will get his price in spite of it. You see, I really do want the place."
"Without seeing it!"
"Yes."
Rupert whizzed round on his heels, and faced him. "Sounds rather--eccentric," he suggested.
Mordaunt smiled in his quiet, detached way. "I can afford to be eccentric," he said. "And now look here, Wyndham. You said something just now about having to wait a year to fix things up. I don't see the necessity for that, situated as we are. Since you are willing that I should buy Kellerton Old Park, and since we are agreed upon the price, I see no reason to delay payment. I will write you a cheque for your share to-night."
"What?" said Rupert.
He stood up very straight, staring at the man before him as if he were an entirely novel specimen of the human race.
"Is it a joke?" he asked at length.
Mordaunt flicked the ash from his cigarette without looking at him. Perhaps he felt that he had studied him long enough.
"No," he said. "I don't see any point in jokes of that sort. Of course, I know it's not business, but the arrangement is entirely between ourselves. I don't see why even Murchison should be let into it. We can settle it later without taking him into our confidence."
"It's a loan, then?" said Rupert quickly.
"If you like to call it so."
"May as well call it by its name," the boy returned bluntly. "You're deuced generous, Mr. Mordaunt."
"I know what it is to be hard up," Mordaunt answered. "And since we are to be brothers we may as well behave as such, eh--Rupert?"
Rupert's hand came out and gripped his impulsively. For a second he seemed to be at a loss for words, then burst into headlong speech.
"Look here! I think I ought to tell you, before you take us in hand to that extent, that we're a family of rotters. We're not one of us sound. Oh, I'm not talking about Chris. She's a girl. But the rest of us are below par, slackers. Our father was the same. There's bad blood somewhere. You are bound to find it out sooner or later, so you may as well know it now."
Mordaunt's grey eyes looked his full in the face. "Is that intended as a warning not to expect too much?" he asked.
Rupert's eyelids twitched a little under that direct look. "Yes," he said briefly.
"And if I don't listen to warnings of that description?"
"You will probably get let down."
Rupert spoke recklessly, yet almost as if he could not help it. Undoubtedly there was something magnetic about Trevor Mordaunt at times, something that compelled. He was conscious of relief when the steady eyes ceased to scrutinize him.
"Not by you, I think," Mordaunt said, with his quiet smile. "You may be a rotter, my boy, but you are not one of the crooked sort."
"I've never robbed anyone, if that's what you mean." Rupert's laugh had in it a note of bitterness that was unconsciously pathetic. "But I'm up to the eyes in debt and pretty desperate. If I could have persuaded Murchison to raise money on the estate, I'd have done it long ago. That's why this offer of yours seemed too good to be true."
Mordaunt nodded. "I thought so. It's foul work floundering in that sort of quagmire. I wonder now if you will allow me to have a look into your affairs, or if you prefer to