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

so glad that you have come to see me," she said softly. "You can help me, too, about this unfortunate young man who has been thrown upon my hands. I—"

Then she saw Ray, and the words seemed to die away upon her lips. I had to steel my heart against her to shut out the pity which I could scarcely help feeling. She was white to the lips. She stood as one turned to stone, with her distended eyes fixed upon him. It was like a trapped bird, watching its impending fate. She faltered a little on her feet, and—I could not help it—I hurried to her side with a chair. As she sank into it she thanked me with a very plaintive smile.

"Thank you," she said, simply. "I am not very strong, and I did not know that man was with you."

Ray broke in. His voice sounded harsh, his manner, I thought, was unnecessarily brutal.

"I can understand," he said, "that you find my presence a little unwelcome. I need scarcely say that this is not a visit of courtesy. You know very well that willingly I would never spend a moment under the same roof as you. I am here to speak a few plain words, to which you will do well to listen."

She raised her eyes to his. Her courage seemed to be returning at the note of battle in his tone. Her small, well-shaped head was thrown back. The hands which grasped the sides of her chair ceased to tremble.

"Go on," she said.

"We will not play at cheap diplomacy," he said, sneeringly. "I know you by a dozen names, which you alter and adopt to suit the occasion. You are a creature of the French police, one of those parasitical creatures who live by sucking the honesty out of simpler persons. You are here because the more private meetings of the English Council of Defence are being held at Rowchester. It is your object by bribery, or theft, or robbery, or the seductive use of those wonderful charms of yours, to gain possession of copies of any particulars whatever about the English autumn manoeuvres, which, curiously enough, have been arranged as a sort of addendum to those on your side of the Channel. You have an ally, I regret to say, in the Duke's son, you are seeking to gain for yourself a far more valuable one in the person of this boy. You say to yourself, no doubt, Like father, like son. You ruined and disgraced the one. You think, perhaps, the other will be as easy."

"Stop!" she cried.

He looked at her curiously. Her face was drawn with pain. In her eyes was the look of a being stricken to death.

"It is terrible!" she murmured, "that men so coarse and brutal as you should have the gift of speech. I do not wish to ask for any mercy from you, but if I am to stay here and listen, you will speak only of facts."

He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"You should be hardened by this time," he said, "but I forgot that we had an audience. It is always worth while to play a little to the gallery, isn't it? Well, facts, then. The boy is warned against you, and from to-day this house is watched by picked detectives. Blenavon can avail you nothing, for he knows nothing. Such clumsy schemes as last night's are foredoomed to failure, and will only get you into trouble. You will waste your time here. Take my advice, and go!"

She rose to her feet. Smaller and frailer than ever she seemed, as she stood before Ray, dark and massive.

"Your story is plausible," she said coldly. "It may even be true. But, apart from that, I had another and a greater reason for coming to England, for coming to Braster. I came to seek my husband—the father of this boy. I am even now in search of him."

I held my breath and gazed at Ray. For the moment it seemed as though the tables were turned. No signs of emotion were present in his face, but he seemed to have no words. He simply looked at her.

"He left me in January," she continued, "determined at least to have speech with his son. He heard then for the first time of the absconding trustee. He came to England, if not to implore his son's forgiveness, at least to place him above want. And in this country he has never been heard of. He has disappeared. I am here to find him. Perhaps," she added, leaning a little over towards Ray, and in a slightly altered tone, "perhaps you can help me?"

Again it seemed to me that Ray was troubled by a certain speechlessness. When at last he found words, they and his tone were alike harsh, almost violent.

"Do you think," he said, "that I would stretch out the little finger of my hand to help you or him? You know very well that I would not. The pair of you, in my opinion, were long since outside the pale of consideration from any living being. If he is lost, so much the better. If he is dead, so much the better still."

"It is because I know how you feel towards him," she said, slowly, "that I wondered—yes, I wondered!"

"Well?"

"Whether you could not, if you chose, solve for me the mystery of his disappearance."

There was as much as a dozen seconds or so of tense silence between them. She never once flinched. The cold question of her eyes seemed to burn its way into the man's composure. A fierce exclamation broke from his lips.

"If he were dead," he said, "and if it were my hand which had removed him, I should count it amongst the best actions of my life."

She looked at him curiously—as one might regard a wild beast.

"You can speak like this before his son?"

"I veil my words at no time and for no man," he answered. "The truth is always best."

Then the door opened, and Blenavon entered. His arm and head were bandaged, and he walked with a limp. He was deathly pale, and apparently very nervous. He attempted a casual greeting with Ray, but it was a poor pretence. Ray, for his part, had evidently no mind to beat about the bush.

"Lord Blenavon," he said, "this house is no fit place for your father's son. I have warned you before, but the time for advice is past. Your hostess here is a creature of the French police, and her business here is to suborn you and others whom she can buy or cajole into a treasonable breach of confidence. It is very possible that you know all this, and more. But I appeal to you as an Englishman and the representative of a great English family. Are you willing to leave at once with us and to depart altogether from this part of the country, or will you face the consequences?"

Blenavon was a coward. He shook and stammered. He was not even master of his voice.

"I do not understand you," he faltered. "You have no right to speak to me like this."

"Right or no right, I do," Ray answered. "If you refuse I shall not spare you. Last night was only one incident of many. I break my faith as a soldier by giving you this opportunity. Will you come?"

"I am waiting now for a carriage," Blenavon answered. "I have sent to the house for one."

"You will not return to the house," Ray said shortly. "You will leave
here for the station, the station for London, and London for the
Continent. You do this, and I hold my peace. You refuse, and I see
Lord Chelsford and your father to-night."

From the first I knew that he would yield, but he did it with an ill grace.

"I don't see why I should go," he said, sulkily.

"Either you and I together, or I alone, are going to catch the six o'clock train to London," Ray said. "If I go alone you will be an exile from England for the rest of your life, your name will be removed from every club to which you belong, and you will have brought irreparable disgrace upon your family. The choice is yours."

Blenavon turned towards the woman as though for aid. But she stood with her back to him, pale and with a thin scornful smile upon her lips.

"The choice," Ray repeated, glancing at his watch, "is yours, but the time is short."

"I will go," Blenavon said. "I was off in a day or two, anyway. Of what you suspect me I don't know, and I don't care. But I will go."

Ray put his watch into his pocket. He turned to Mrs. Smith-Lessing.

"Better come too," he said quietly. "You have no more chance here.
Every one knows now who and what you are."

She looked at him with white expressionless face.

"It does not suit me to leave the neighbourhood at present," she said calmly.

If she had been a man Ray would have struck her. I could see his white teeth clenched fiercely together.

"It does not suit me," he said, in a low tone vibrate with suppressed passion, "to have you here. You are a plague spot upon the place. You have been a plague spot all your life. Whatever you touch you corrupt."

She shrank away for a moment. After all, she was a woman, and I hated
Ray for his brutality.

"What a butcher you are!" she said, looking at him curiously. "If ever you should marry—God help the woman."

"There are women and women," he answered roughly. "As for you, you do not count in the sex at all."

She turned away from him with a little shudder, and for the first time during the interview she hid her face in her hands. It was all I could do to avoid speech.

"Come," he said, "do you agree? Will you leave this place? I promise you that your schemes here at any rate are at an end."

She turned to me. Perhaps something in my face had spoken the sympathy which I could not wholly suppress.

"Guy," she said, "I want to be rid of this man, because every word he speaks—hurts. But I cannot even look at him any more. At this war of words he has won. I am beaten. I admit it. I am crushed. I am not going away. I spoke truthfully when I said that I came to England in search of your father. We may both of us be the creatures that man would have you believe, but we have been husband and wife for eighteen years, and it is my duty to find out what has become of him. Therefore I stay."

I could see Ray's black eyes flashing. He almost gripped my arm as he drew me away. We three left the house together. At the bottom of the drive we met a carriage sent down from Rowchester. Ray stopped it.

"Blenavon and I will take this carriage to the station," he said. "Will you, Ducaine, return to Lady Angela and tell her exactly what has happened?"

"Oh, come, I'm not going to have that," Blenavon exclaimed.

"It will not be unexpected news," Ray said sternly. "Your sister suspects already."

"I'm not going to be bundled away and leave you to concoct any precious story you think fit," Blenavon declared, doggedly. "I—"

Ray opened the carriage door and gripped Blenavon's arm. "Get in," he said in a low, suppressed tone. There was something almost animal in the fury of Ray's voice. I looked away with a shudder. Blenavon stepped quietly into the carriage. Then Ray came over to me, and as he looked searchingly into my face, he pointed up the carriage drive.

"Boy," he said, "you are young, and in hell itself there cannot be many such as she. You think me brutal. It is because I remember—your mother!"

He stepped into the carriage. I turned round and set out for
Rowchester.

CHAPTER XXV MY SECRET

There followed for me another three days of unremitting work. Then midway through one morning I threw my pen from me with a great sense of relief. They might come or send for me when they chose. I had finished. My eyes were hot and my brain weary. Instinctively I threw open my front door, and it seemed to me that the sun and the wind and the birds were