The Knave of Diamonds - Ethel May Dell (best novels for students txt) 📗

you won't regret it."
The thin lips began to smile. "Delighted to listen to your advice, Doctor. I suspect I'm not obliged to follow it."
"You will please yourself, no doubt," Capper rejoined drily. "But my advice is, don't stay away too long. Your place is here."
"You think so?" said Nap.
"I am quite sure," Capper said, with emphasis.
"And you think I shall please myself by going?"
"Who else?" said Capper almost sternly.
Nap did not instantly reply. He was lying back with his face in shadow. When he spoke at length it was with extreme deliberation. Capper divined that it was an effort to him to speak at all.
"You're a family friend," he said. "I guess you've a right to know. It isn't for my own sake I'm going at all. It's for--hers, and because of a promise I made to Luke. If I were to stop, I'd be a cur--and worse. She'd take me without counting the cost. She is a woman who never thinks of herself. I've got to think for her. I've sworn to play the straight game, and I'll play it. That's why I won't so much as look into her face again till I know that I can be to her what Luke would have been--what Bertie is to Dot--what every man who is a man ought to be to the woman he has made his wife."
He flung his arms up above his head and remained tense for several seconds. Then abruptly he relaxed.
"I'll be a friend to her," he said, "a friend that she can trust--or nothing!"
There came a very kindly look into Capper's green eyes, but he made no comment of any sort. He only turned aside to take up the glass he had set down on entering. And as he did so, he smiled as a man well pleased.
Once during the night he looked in upon Nap and found him sleeping, wrapt in a deep and silent slumber, motionless as death. He stood awhile watching the harsh face with its grim mouth and iron jaw, and slowly a certain pity dawned in his own. The man had suffered infernally before he had found his manhood. He had passed through raging fires that had left their mark upon him for the rest of his life.
"It's been an almighty big struggle, poor devil," said Capper, "but it's made a man of you."
He left early on the following day, accompanied by Tawny Hudson, whose docility was only out-matched by his very obvious desire to be gone.
True to her promise, Anne was down in time to take leave of Capper. They stood together for a moment on the steps before parting. Her hand in his, he looked straight into her quiet eyes.
"You're not grieving any, Lady Carfax?"
"No," she said.
"I guess you're right," said Maurice Capper gravely. "We make our little bids for happiness, but it helps one to remember that the issue lies with God."
She gave him a smile of understanding. "'He knows about it all--He knows--He knows,'" she quoted softly. And Capper went his way, taking with him the memory of a woman who still ploughed her endless furrow, but with a heart at peace.


CHAPTER XX
THE PROMOTION OF THE QUEEN'S JESTER

"My!" said Mrs. Errol. "Isn't he just dear?"
There was a cooing note in her deep voice. She sat in the Dower House garden with her grandson bolt upright upon her knees, and all the birds of June singing around her.
"Isn't he dear, Anne?" she said.
Anne, who was dangling a bunch of charms for the baby's amusement, stooped and kissed the sunny curls.
"He's a lord of creation," she said. "And he knows it already. I never saw such an upright morsel in my life."
"Lucas was like that," said Mrs. Errol softly. "He was just the loveliest baby in the U.S.A. Everyone said so. Dot dearie, I'm sort of glad you called him Luke."
"So am I, mater dearest. And he's got Luke's eyes, hasn't he now? Bertie said so from the very beginning." Eagerly Dot leaned from her chair to turn her small son's head to meet his grandmother's scrutiny. "I'd rather he were like Luke than anyone else in the world," she said. "It isn't treason to Bertie to say so, for he wants it too. Where is Bertie, I wonder? He had to go to town, but he promised to be back early for his boy's first birthday-party. It's such an immense occasion, isn't it?"
Her round face dimpled in the way Bertie most loved. She rose and slipped a hand through Anne's arm.
"Let's go and look for him. I know he can't be long now. The son of the house likes having his granny to himself. He never cries with her."
They moved away together through the sunlit garden, Dot chattering gaily as her fashion was about nothing in particular while Anne walked beside her in sympathetic silence. Anne was never inattentive though there were some who deemed her unresponsive.
But as they neared the gate Dot's volubility quite suddenly died down. She plucked a white rose, to fill in the pause and fastened it in her friend's dress. Her fingers trembled unmistakably as she did it, and Anne looked at her inquiringly. "Is anything the matter?"
"No. Why?" said Dot, turning very red.
Anne smiled a little. "I feel as if a bird had left off singing," she said.
Dot laughed, still with hot cheeks. "What a pretty way of putting it! Bertie isn't nearly so complimentary. He calls me the magpie, which is really very unfair, for he talks much more than I do. Dear old Bertie!"
The dimples lingered, and Anne bent suddenly and kissed them. "Dear little Dot!" she said.
Instantly Dot's arms were very tightly round her. "Anne darling, I've got something to tell you--something you very possibly won't quite like. You won't be vexed any, will you?"
"Not any," smiled Anne.
"No, but it isn't a small thing. It--it's rather immense. But Bertie said I was to tell you, because you are not to be taken by surprise again. He doesn't think it fair, and of course he's right."
"What is it, dear?" said Anne. The smile had gone from her face, but her eyes were steadfast and very still--the eyes of a woman who had waited all her life.
"My dear," said Dot, holding her closely, "it's only that Bertie didn't go up to town on business. It was to meet someone, and--and that someone will be with him when he comes back. I promised Bertie to tell you, but you were so late getting here I was afraid I shouldn't have time. Oh, Anne dear, I do hope you don't mind."
Dot's face, a guilty scarlet, was hidden in Anne's shoulder. Anne's hand, very quiet and steady, came up and began to stroke the fluffy hair that blew against her neck. But she said nothing.
It was Dot who remorsefully broke the silence. "I feel such a beast, Anne, but really I had no hand in it this time. He wrote to Bertie yesterday from town. He hasn't been in England for over a year, and he wanted to know if he could come to us. Bertie went up this morning to see him and bring him back. I thought of coming round to you, but Bertie seemed to think I had better wait and tell you when you came. I hoped you would have come earlier, so that I would have had more time to tell you about it. Dear, do tell me it's all right."
"It is all right," Anne said, and with the words she smiled again though her face was pale. "It is quite all right, Dot dear. Don't be anxious."
Dot looked up with a start. "That's the motor coming now. Oh, Anne, I've only told you just in time!"
She was quivering with excitement. It seemed as if she were far the more agitated of the two. For Anne was calm to all outward appearance, quiet and stately and unafraid. Only the hand that grasped Dot's was cold--cold as ice. The motor was rapidly approaching. They stood by the gate and heard the buzzing of the engine, the rush of the wheels, and then the quick, gay blasts of the horn by which Bertie always announced his coming to his wife. A moment more and the car whizzed into the drive. There came a yell of welcome from Bertie at the wheel and the instant checking of the motor.
And the man beside Bertie leaned swiftly forward, bareheaded, and looked straight into Anne's white face.
She did not know how she met his look. It seemed to pierce her. But she was nerved for the ordeal, and she moved towards him with outstretched hand.
His fingers closed upon it as he stepped from the car, gripped and closely held it. But he spoke not a word to her; only to Dot, whom he kissed immediately afterwards, to her confusion and Bertie's amusement.
"I seem to have stumbled into a family gathering," he said later, when they gave him the place of honour between Mrs. Errol and his hostess.
"Being one of the family, I guess it's a happy accident," said Mrs. Errol.
He bowed to her elaborately. "Many thanks, alma mater! Considering the short time you have had for preparing a pretty speech of welcome it does you undoubted credit."
"Oh, my, Nap!" she said. "I'm past making pretty speeches at my age. I just say what I mean."
A gleam of surprise crossed his dark face. "That so, alma mater?" he said. "Then--considering all things--again thanks!" He turned from her to the baby sprawling on the rug at his feet, and lifted the youngster to his knee. "So this is the pride of the Errols now," he said.
The baby stared up at him with serious eyes, and very deliberately and intently Nap stared back.
"What is his name, Dot?" he asked at length.
"Lucas Napoleon," she said.
"Good heavens!" he ejaculated. "What an unholy combination! What in thunder possessed you to call him that?"
"Oh, it wasn't my doing," Dot hastened to explain, with her usual honesty, "though of course I was delighted with the idea. Bertie and I called him Lucas almost before he was born."
"Then who in wonder chose my name for him?" demanded Nap.
"See the Church Catechism!" suggested Bertie.
"Ah! Quite so." Nap turned upon him keenly. "Who were his god-parents?"
"My dear Nap, what does it matter?" broke in Dot. "Be quiet, Bertie! For goodness' sake make him put the child down and have some tea."
"Let me take him," Anne said.
She stooped to lift the boy, who held out his arms to her with a crow of pleasure. Nap looked up at her, and for an instant only their eyes met; but in that instant understanding dawned upon Nap's face, and with it a strangely tender smile that made it almost gentle.
Dot declared afterwards that the birthday-party had been all she could have desired. Everyone had been nice to everyone, and the baby hadn't been rude to his uncle, a calamity she had greatly feared. Also Nap was improved, hugely improved. Didn't Bertie think so? He seemed to have got so much more human. She couldn't realise there had ever been a time when she had actually disliked him.
"P'r'aps we're more human ourselves," suggested Bertie; a notion which hadn't occurred to Dot but which she admitted might have something in it.
Anyway, she was sure Nap had improved, and she longed to know if Anne thought so too.
Anne's thoughts upon that subject, however, were known to none, perhaps not even to herself. All she knew was an overwhelming desire for solitude, but when this was hers at last it