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

will weigh and measure my words, you will say to yourself, 'Lies, lies, lies!' You will not believe in me or anything I say. And, again, if you do not know, the story is too painful a one for me to tell."

"Then let us both avoid it," I said, reaching again for my paper. "We shall stop at Ipswich in an hour. I will change carriages there."

She turned round in her seat towards the window, as though to hide her face. My own attempt at reading was a farce. I watched her over the top of my paper. She was looking out into the darkness, and she seemed to me to be crying. Every now and then her shoulders heaved convulsively. Suddenly she faced me once more. There were traces of tears on her face; a small lace handkerchief was knotted up in her nervous fingers.

"Oh, I cannot," she exclaimed plaintively. "I cannot sit here alone with you and say nothing. I know that I am judged already. It does not matter. I am your father's wife, Guy. You owe me at least some recognition of that fact."

"I never knew my father," I said, "except as the cause of my own miserable upbringing and friendless life."

"You never knew him," she answered, "and therefore you believe the worst. He was weak, perhaps, and, exposed to a terrible temptation, he fell! But he was not a bad man. He was never that."

"Do you think, Mrs. Smith-Lessing," I said, struggling to keep my voice firm, though I felt myself trembling, "that this is a profitable discussion for either of us?"

"Why not?" she exclaimed almost fiercely. "You have heard his story from enemies. You have judged him from the report of those who were never his friends. He sinned and he repented. Better and worse men than he have done that. If he were wholly bad, do you believe that after all these years I should care for him still?"

I held my peace. The woman was leaning over towards me now. She seemed to have lost the desire to attract. Her voice had grown sharper and less pleasant, her carefully arranged hair was in some disorder, and the telltale blue veins by her temples and the crow's feet under her eyes were plainly visible. Her face seemed suddenly to have become pinched and wan, the flaming light in her strangely coloured eyes was a convincing assertion of her earnestness. She was not acting now, though what lay behind the storm I could not tell.

"You seem afraid to talk to me," she exclaimed. "Why? I have done you no harm!"

"Perhaps not," I answered, "yet I cannot see what we gain by raking up this miserable history. It is both painful and profitless."

"I will say no more," she declared, with a sudden note of dignity in her tone. "I can see that I am judged already in your mind. After all, it does not really matter. No one likes to be thought worse of than they deserve, and women are all—a little foolish. But at least you must answer me one question. I have the right to ask it. You must tell me where he is."

"Where who is?" I asked.

Again her eyes flamed upon inc. Her lips parted a little, and I could see the white glimmer of her teeth.

"Oh, you shall not fence with me like a baby!" she exclaimed. "Tell me, or lie to me, or refuse to tell me! Which is it?"

"Upon my honour," I said, looking at her curiously, "I have no idea whom you mean!"

She looked at inc steadily for several moments, her lips parted, her breath seeming to come sharply between her teeth.

"I mean your father," she said. "Whom else should I mean?"

CHAPTER XX TWO TO ONE

I looked across at the woman, who was waiting my answer with every appearance of feverish interest.

"What should I know about him?" I said slowly. "I have been told that he is dead. I know no more than that."

She started as though my words had stung her.

"It is not possible!" she exclaimed. "I must have heard of it. When he left me—it was less than three months ago—he seemed better than I had known him for years."

"All my life," I said, "I have understood that my father died by his own hand after his disgrace. To-night for the first time I was told that this was not the fact. I understood, from what my informant said, that he had died recently."

She drew a sharp breath between her teeth, and suddenly struck the cushioned arm of the carriage by her side with her clenched hand.

"It is a lie!" she declared. "Whoever told you so, it is a lie!"

"Do you mean that he is not dead?" I exclaimed. "Do you mean that you have not seen him yourself—within the last few months?" she demanded fiercely. "He left me to come to you on the first day of the New Year."

"I have never seen him to my knowledge in my life," I answered.

She leaned back in her seat, murmuring something to herself which I could not catch. Past-mistress of deceit though she may have been, I was convinced that her consternation at my statement was honest. She did not speak or look at me again for some time. As for me, I sat silent with the horror of a thought. Underneath the rug my limbs were cold and lifeless. I sat looking out of the rain-splashed window into the darkness, with fixed staring eyes, and a hideous fancy in my brain. Every now and then I thought that I could see it—a white evil face pressed close to the blurred glass, grinning in upon me. Every shriek of the engine—and there were many just then, for we were passing through a network of tunnels—brought beads of moisture on to my forehead, made me start and shake like a criminal. Surely that was a cry! I started in my seat, only to see that my companion, now her old self again, was watching me intently.

"I am afraid," she said softly, "that you are not very strong. The excitement of talking of these things has been too much for you."

"I have never had a day's illness in my life," I answered. "I am perfectly well."

"I am glad," she said simply. "I must finish what I was telling you. Your father was continually talking and thinking of you. He knew all about you at college. He knew about your degree, of your cricket and rowing. Lately he began to get restless. He lost sight of you after you left Oxford, and it worried him. There were reasons, as you know, why it was not well for him to come to England, but nevertheless he determined to brave it out. It was to find you that he risked so much. He left me on New Year's Day, and I have never heard a word from him since. That is why I came to England."

"The whole reason?" I asked, like a fool.

"The whole reason," she affirmed simply.

"I do not wish to see my father," I said. "If he comes to me I shall tell him so."

"He wants to tell you his story himself," she murmured.

"I would never listen to it," I answered. She sighed.

"You are very young," she said. "You do not know what temptation is. You do not know how badly he was treated. You have heard his history, perhaps, from his enemies. He is getting old now, Guy. I think that if you saw him now you would pity him."

"My pity," I answered, "would never be strong enough to suffer me to open the door to him—if he should come. He has left me alone all these years. The only favour I would ever ask of him would be that he continues to do so."

"You will believe the story of strangers?"

"No one in the world could be a greater stranger to me than he." She sighed.

"You will not even let me be your friend," she pleaded. "You are young, you are perhaps ambitious. There may be many ways in which I could help you."

"As you helped my father, perhaps," I answered bitterly. "Thank you, I have no need of friends—that sort of friends."

Her eyes seemed to narrow a little, and the smile upon her lips was forced.

"Is that kind of you?" she exclaimed. "Your father was in a position of great trust. It is different with you. You are idle, and you need a career. England has so little to offer her young men, but there are other countries—"

I interrupted her brusquely.

"Thank you," I said, "but I have employment, and such ambitions as I have admit of nothing but an honest career."

Again I saw that contraction of her eyes, but she never winced or changed her tone.

"You have employment?" she asked, as though surprised.

"Yes. As you doubtless know, I am in the service of the Duke of
Rowchester," I told her.

"It is news to me," she replied. "You will forgive me at least for being interested, Guy. But when you say in the service of the Duke of Rowchester you puzzle me. In England what does that, mean?"

"I am one of the Duke's secretaries," I answered.

"Is the Duke, then, a politician?" she asked, "that he needs secretaries?"

"Not at all," I answered drily. "His Grace is President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or Children, whichever you like. We have a large correspondence."

She picked up her book.

"I am afraid that I understand you," she said. "You have a good deal of the brutality of youth, Guy, and, I might add, of its credulity also. Whose word is it, I wonder, that you have taken so abjectly—with such an open mouth? If I have enemies I have not deserved them. But, after all, it matters little."

We did not speak again until we neared the junction. Then she began to gather up her things.

"How are you getting home?" she asked. "It is two o'clock, and raining."

"I am going to walk," I answered.

"But that is absurd," she protested. "I have a closed carriage here. I insist that you let me drive you. It is only common humanity; and you have that great box too."

I buttoned up my coat.

"Mrs. Smith-Lessing," I said, "you perhaps wish to force me into seeming ungracious. You have even called me brutal. It is your own fault. You give me no chance of escape. You even force me now to tell you that I do not desire—that I will not accept—any hospitality at your hands."

She fastened her jacket with trembling fingers. Her face she kept averted from me.

"Very well," she said softly, "I shall not trouble you any more."

At the junction I fetched the sleepy-looking porter to see to her luggage, and then left her. My rug I left in the station-master's office, and with the dispatch-box in my hand I climbed the steps from the station, and turned into the long straight road which led to Braster. I had barely gone a hundred yards when a small motor brougham, with blazing lights and insistent horn, came flying past me and on into the darkness. I caught a momentary glimpse of Mrs. Smith-Lessing's pale face as the car flashed by, a weird little silhouette, come and gone in a second. Away ahead I saw the mud and rain from the pools fly up into the air in a constant stream caught in the broad white glare of the brilliant search-lamps. Then the car turned a corner and vanished.

I was tired, yet I found the change from the close railway carriage, and the tension of the last few hours, delightful. The road along which I trudged ran straight to the sea, the distant roar of which was already in my ears, and the wet wind which blew in my face was salt and refreshing. It was a little after two in the morning, and the darkness would have been absolute, but for a watery moon, which every now and then gave a fitful light. For a mile or more I walked with steady, unflagging footsteps. Then suddenly I found myself slackening my pace. I walked slower and slower. At last I stopped.

About fifty yards farther on my left was Braster Grange. It stood a little way back from the road. Its gardens were enclosed by a thin storm-bent