The Betrayal - E. Phillips Oppenheim (the snowy day read aloud txt) 📗

have asked you to come to us."

"It is quite sufficient," I told her. "If you want me for any reason I will come. I am two days ahead of my work."

We threaded our way amongst the creeks. All the time the salt wind blew upon us, and the smell of fresh seaweed seemed to fill the air with ozone. Just as we came in sight of the road we heard the thunder of hoofs behind. We turned around. It was Blenavon, riding side by side with a lady who was a stranger to me. Her figure was slim but elegant. I caught a glimpse of her face as they flashed by, and it puzzled me. Her hair was almost straw coloured, her complexion was negative, her features were certainly not good. Yet there was something about her attractive, something which set me guessing at once as to the colour of her eyes, the quality of her voice, if she should speak. Blenavon reined in his horse.

"So you have turned up, Angela," he remarked, looking at her a little nervously. "You remember Mrs. Smith-Lessing, don't you—down at Bordighera, you know?"

Angela shook her head, but she never glanced towards the woman who sat there with expectant smile.

"I am afraid that I do not," she said. "I remember a good many things about Bordighera, but—not Mrs. Smith-Lessing. I shall see you at dinner-time, Blenavon. I have some messages for you."

I saw the whip come down upon the woman's horse, but I did not dare to look into her face. Blenavon, with a smothered oath and a black look at his sister, galloped after her. I rejoined Lady Angela, who was already in the road.

"Dear me," she said, "what a magnificent nerve that woman must have! To dare to imagine that I should receive her! Why, she is known in every capital in Europe—a police spy, a creature whose brains and body and soul are to be bought by any one's gold."

"What on earth can such a woman want here?" I remarked.

"In hiding, very likely," Lady Angela remarked. "Or perhaps she may be an additional complication for you."

I laughed a little scornfully.

"You, too, are getting suspicious," I declared. "The Prince and Mrs.
Smith-Lessing are a strong combination."

"Be careful then that they are not too strong for you," she answered, smiling. "I have heard a famous boast of Mrs. Smith-Lessing's, that never a man nor a lock has yet resisted her."

I thought of her face as I had seen it in the half light—a faint impression of delicate colourlessness, and for the life of me I could not help a little shiver. Lady Angela looked at me in surprise.

"Are you cold?" she asked. "Let us walk more quickly."

"It is always cold at this time in the evening," I remarked. "It is the mist coming up from the marshes. One feels it at unexpected moments."

"I am not going to take you any farther," she declared, "especially as you are coming up to-night. Eight o'clock, remember. Go and salve your conscience with some work."

I protested, but she was firm. So I stood by the gate and watched her slim young figure disappear in the gathering shadows.

CHAPTER XVI LADY ANGELA'S ENGAGEMENT

I dined that night at Rowchester. Lord Blenavon was sulky, and Lady
Angela was only fitfully gay. It was not altogether a cheerful party.
Lady Angela left us the moment Blenavon produced his cigarette-case.

"Do not stay too long, Mr. Ducaine," she said, as I held the door open for her. "I want a lesson at billiards."

I bowed and returned to my seat. Blenavon was leaning back in his chair, smoking thoughtfully.

"My sister," he remarked, looking up at the ceiling and speaking as though to himself, "would make an admirable heroine for the psychological novelist. She is a bundle of fancies; one can never rely upon what she is going to do. What other girl in the world would get engaged on the Thursday, and come down here on the Friday to think it over—leaving, of course, her fiance in town? Doesn't that strike you as singular?"

"Is it," I asked calmly, "a genuine case?"

Lord Blenavon nodded.

"I do not think that it is a secret," he said, helping himself to wine and passing the decanter. "She has made up her mind at last to marry Mostyn Ray. The affair has been hanging about for more than a year. In fact, I think that there was something said about it before Ray went abroad. Personally, I think that he is too old. I don't mind saying so to you, because that has been my opinion all along. However, I suppose it is all settled now."

I kept my eyes fixed upon the wineglass in front of me, but the things which I saw, no four walls had ever enclosed. One moment the rush of the sea was in my ears, another I was lying upon the little horsehair couch in my sitting-room. I felt her soft white fingers upon my pulse and forehead. Again I saw her leaning down from the saddle of her great brown horse, and heard her voice, slow, emotionless, yet always with its strange power to play upon my heartstrings. And yet, while the grey seas of despair were closing over my head, I sat there with a stereotyped smile upon my lips, fingering carelessly the stem of my wineglass, unwilling guest of an unwilling host. I do not know how long we sat there in silence, but it seemed to me an eternity, for all the time I knew that Blenavon was watching me. I felt like a victim upon the rack, whilst he, the executioner, held the cords. I do not think, however, that he learnt anything from my face.

With a little shrug of the shoulders he abandoned the subject.

"By-the-bye, Ducaine," he said, "I hope you won't mind my asking you a rather personal question."

"If it is only personal," I answered quietly, "not at all. As you know,
I may not discuss any subject connected with my work."

"Quite so! I only want to know whether your secretarial duties begin and end with your work on the Council of Defence, or are you at all in my father's confidence as regards his private affairs?"

"I am temporary secretary to the Council of Defence only, Lord Blenavon," I answered. "I know nothing whatever of your father's private affairs. He has his own man of business."

I am not sure whether he believed me. He cracked some walnuts and commenced peeling them.

"My father will never listen to me," he said, "but I feel sure that he makes a mistake in becoming a director of all these companies. Politics should be quite sufficient to engross his time, and the money cannot be so much of an object to him. I don't suppose his holdings are large, but I am quite sure that one or two of those Australian gold mines are dicky, and you know he was an enormous holder of Chartereds, and wouldn't sell, worse luck! Of course I'm not afraid of his losing in the long run, but it isn't exactly a dignified thing to be associated with these concerns that aren't exactly A1. His name might lead people into speculations who couldn't altogether afford it."

"I know nothing whatever of these matters," I answered, "but from what I have seen of your father I should imagine that he is remarkably able to guard his own interests."

Blenavon nodded.

"I suppose that is true," he admitted. "But when he is already a rich man, with very simple tastes, I am rather surprised that he should care to meddle with such things."

"Playing at commerce," I remarked, "has become rather a hobby with men of leisure lately."

"And women, too," Blenavon assented. "Rather an ugly hobby, I call it."

A servant entered and addressed Blenavon. "The carriage is at the door, your Lordship," he announced.

Blenavon glanced at his watch and rose.

"I shall have to ask you to excuse me, Ducaine," he said. "I was to have dined out to-night, and I must go and make my peace. Another glass of wine?"

I rose at once.

"Nothing more, thank you," I said. "I will just say good-night to your sister."

"She's probably in the drawing-room," he remarked. "If not, I will make your excuses when I see her."

Blenavon hurried out. A few moments later I heard the wheels of his carriage pass the long front of the house and turn down the avenue. I lingered for a moment where I was. The small oak table at which we had dined seemed like an oasis of colour in the midst of an atmosphere of gloom. The room was large and lofty, and the lighting was altogether inadequate. From the walls there frowned through the shadows the warlike faces of generations of Rowchesters. At the farther end of the apartment four armed giants stood grim and ghostlike in the twilight, which seemed to supply their empty frames with the presentment of actual warriors. I looked down upon the table, all agleam with flowers, and fruit, and silver, over which shone the red glow of the shaded lamps. Exactly opposite to me, in that chair now pushed carelessly back, she had sat, so close that my hand could have touched hers at any moment, so close that I had been able to wonder more than ever before at the marvellous whiteness of her skin, the perfection of her small, finely-shaped features, the strange sphinxlike expression of her face, always suggestive of some great self-restraint, mysterious, and subtly stimulating. And as I stood there she seemed again to be occupying the chair, at first a faint shadowy presence, but gaining with every second shape and outline, until I could scarcely persuade myself that it was not she who sat there, she whose eyes more than once during dinner-time had looked into mine with that curious and instinctive demand for sympathy, even as regards the things of the moment, the passing jest, the most transitory of emotions. A few minutes ago I had felt that I knew her better than ever before in my life, and now the chair was empty. My heart was beating at the imaginary presence of the vainest of shadows. She was going to marry Colonel Mostyn Ray.

And then I stood as though suddenly turned to stone. Before me were the great front windows of the castle. Beyond, eastwards, stretched the salt marshes, the salt marshes riven with creeks. Once more my unwilling hands touched that huddled-up heap of extinct humanity. I saw the dead white face, which the sun could never warm again, and I felt the hands, cold, clammy, horrible. Ray was a soldier, and life and death had become phrases to him; but I—it was the first dead man I had ever seen, and the horror of it was cold in my blood. Ray had murdered him, fought with him, perhaps, but killed him. What would she say if she knew? Would his hands be clean to her, or would the horror rise up like a red wall between them?

"Will you take coffee, sir?"

I set my teeth and turned slowly round. I even took the cup from the tray without spilling it.

"What liqueur may I bring you, sir?" the man asked.

"Brandy," I answered.

In a few minutes I was laughing at myself, not quite naturally, perhaps, but only I could know that. I was getting to be a morbid, nervous person. It was the solitude! I must get away from it all before long. Fate had been playing strange tricks with me. Life, which a few months ago had been a cold and barren thing, was suddenly pressed to my lips, a fantastic, intoxicating mixture. I had drawn enough poison into my veins. I would have no more. I swore it.

* * * * *

I tried to leave the castle unnoticed, but the place was alive with servants. One of them hurried up to me as I tried to reach my hat and coat.

"Her ladyship desired me to say that she was in the billiard-room, sir," he announced.

"Will you tell Lady Angela—" and then I stopped. The door of the billiard-room was open, and Lady Angela stood there, the outline of her figure sharply defined against a flood of light. She had a cue in her hand, and