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

sands. I promised to call him directly you came."

I moved toward the door, but she checked me with an imperative gesture.

"Wait," she said.

I came slowly back and stood by my table. She was sitting with her hands clasped together, looking into the fire. She looked very girlish and frail.

"I want to think—for a moment," she said. "Everything seems confusion.
My father has commanded me to break my engagement with Colonel Ray."

I remained silent. What was there, indeed, for me to say?

"In my heart," she went on slowly, "I know that my father is wrong and that Colonel Ray is right. He has simply done his duty. Blenavon was being sorely tempted. He is better away—out of the country. Oh, I am sure of that."

"Colonel Ray has done what he believed to be his duty," I said slowly.
"It is hard that he should suffer for that."

"Often," she murmured, "one has to suffer for doing the right thing. My father has made himself a poor man because of his sense of what was right. I do not know what to do."

I glanced out of the window. For many reasons I did not wish to prolong this interview.

"He is waiting," I reminded her.

"I must do one of two things," she murmured. "I must break my faith with my father—or with him."

Then she lifted her eyes to mine.

"Tell me what you think, Mr. Ducaine?" she asked.

I opened my lips to speak, but I could not. Was it fair that she should ask me? My little room was peopled with dreams of her, with delightful but impossible visions. My very nerves were full of the joy of her presence. It was madness to ask for my judgment, when the very poetry of my life was an unreasoning and hopeless love for her.

"I cannot!" I muttered. "You must not ask me."

She seemed surprised. After all, I had guarded my secret well, then?

"You will not refuse to help me," she pleaded.

I set my teeth hard. I longed for Ray, but there were no signs of him.

"Your father has ordered you to break your engagement with Colonel Ray," I said, "but he has done so under a misapprehension of the facts. You owe obedience to your father, but you owe more—to—the man whose wife you have promised to be. I do not think you should give him up."

She listened eagerly. Was it my fancy, or was she indeed a little paler? Her eyes seemed to gleam with a strange softness in the twilight. Her head drooped a a little as she resumed her former thoughtful attitude.

"Thank you," she said, simply. "I believe that you are right."

I caught up a bundle of papers from my desk and stole softly from the room. Ray was close at hand, and I called to him.

"She is in there waiting for you," I said. "I have some transcribed matter, which I am taking up to the safe."

Ray nodded abruptly, and I heard the door of my cottage open and close behind him.

CHAPTER XXX MOSTYN RAY'S LOVE STORY

In a dark corner of the library, sitting motionless before a small writing-desk, I found the Duke. The table was littered all over with papers, a ledger or two and various documents. I had met Mr. Hulshaw, the agent to the estates, in the drive, so I judged that the two had had business together.

The Duke had not greeted me on my entrance, and he seemed to be asleep in his chair. But at the sound of the electric bell, which announced the opening of the safe, he turned sharply round.

"Is that you, Ducaine?"

"Yes, your Grace," I answered.

"What are you doing there?"

"I have brought up the first batch of copy, sir," I answered.

"You have sealed it properly?"

"With Lord Chelsford's seal, sir," I told him.

He turned round in his chair sharply.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Lord Chelsford gave me an old signet ring before he left, sir," I said, "with a very peculiar design. I wear it attached by a chain to an iron bracelet round my arm."

"Let me see it," the Duke ordered.

I took off my coat, and baring my arm, showed him the ring hanging by a few inches of strong chain from the bracelet. He examined the design curiously.

"How do you detach it?" he asked.

"I cannot detach it, sir," I answered. "The bracelet has a Bramah lock, and Lord Chelsford has the key. He used to wear it many years ago when he was Queen's messenger."

The Duke examined the ring long and searchingly. Then he looked from it into my face.

"You mean to say that you cannot take that off?"

"A locksmith might, sir. I certainly could not."

The Duke shrugged his shoulders.

"Chelsford's methods seem to me to savour a little of opera bouffe," he remarked drily. "For my own part I believe that these marvellous documents would be perfectly safe in the unlocked drawer of my desk. I do not believe any of these stories which come from Paris about copies of our work being in existence. I do not wish you to be careless, of course, but don't overdo your precautions. This place is scarcely so much a nest of conspirators as faddists like Chelsford and Ray would have us believe."

"I am glad to hear that you think so, sir," I answered. "Our precautions do seem a little elaborate, but it is quite certain that the Winchester papers were disturbed."

"I do not choose to believe it, Ducaine," the Duke said irritably.
"Kindly remember that!"

"Very good, sir," I answered. "There is nothing else you wish to say to me?"

"There is something else," the Duke answered coldly. "I understand that the police yesterday, on a sworn affidavit, were granted a search warrant to examine your premises for stolen property. What the devil is the meaning of this?"

"I think, sir," I answered, "that the stolen property was a pretext. It seems that during the last few days has come to light that the man whose body I found on the sands was not washed in from the sea, but was a stranger, who had arrived in Braster the previous evening, and had made inquiries as to where I lived. It seems to be the desire of the police, therefore, to connect me in some way with the affair."

The Duke looked at me searchingly.

"I presume," he said, "that they had something in the nature of evidence, or they would scarcely have been able to swear the affidavit for the search warrant."

"They have nothing more direct, sir, than that the body was found close to my cottage, that he had presumably left Braster to see me, and that I was foolish enough to persuade the person, of whom the dead man made these inquiries in Braster, not to come forward at the inquest."

"Stop! Stop!" the Duke said irritably. "You did what?"

"The young woman of whom he inquired was close at hand when I discovered the body of the man," I said. "She told me about him. I was a little upset, and I suggested that there was no necessity for her to disclose the fact of having seen him."

"It was a remarkably foolish thing of you to do," the Duke said.

"I am realizing it now, sir," I answered.

"Did this person call on you at all?" the Duke asked.

"No, sir. You may remember that it was the night of Colonel Ray's lecture. He called to see me on his way back and found me ill. I believe that this person looked in at the window and went away. I saw no more of him alive after this."

"You have some idea, I presume, as to his identity?"

"I have no definite information, your Grace," I answered.

The Duke did not look at me for several moments.

"I am afraid," he said, stiffly, "that you may experience some inconvenience from this most ill-advised attempt of yours to suppress evidence which should most certainly have been given at the inquest. However, I have no doubt that your story is true. I have some inquiries now before me from the police station. I will do what I can for you. Good-evening, Ducaine."

"Good-evening, sir," I answered. "I am much obliged to you."

I walked homewards across the park. The carriage had gone from the private road, and Ray was alone when I entered. It was impossible to tell what had happened from his expression. He sat stretched out in my easy chair, smoking furiously, and his face was impassive. Grooton served us with dinner, and he ate and drank with only a few curt remarks. But afterwards, when I was deep in my work, he suddenly addressed me.

"Boy," he then said, "turn round and listen to me."

I obeyed him at once.

"Listen well," he said, "for I am not given to confidences. Yet I am going to speak to you of the secret places of my life."

I laid down the pen which I had been holding between my fingers, and turned my chair. I judged that it was not necessary for me to speak, nor apparently did he think so.

"I have been soldiering all my days," he said, "since I was a child almost. It is a glorious life. God knows I have never grudged a single month of it. But when one comes back once more to dwell amongst civilians one realizes that there is another side to life. It is so with me. I am not given to doubts or to asking advice from any man. But the time has come when I have the one and need of the other."

He paused, knocked out some ashes from his pipe, and relighted it.

"I have loved two women in my life, Guy," he went on slowly. "The first was your mother."

I started a little, but I still held my peace. He looked hard into the ashes of the fire, and continued.

"I tried my best," he said, "to be a friend to her after her marriage, and I hope, I think, that I succeeded. I even did my best to fight that woman's influence with your father at Gibraltar. There I failed. I was foredoomed to failure! She had the trick of playing what tune she cared to on a man's heartstrings. After it was all over, and your father and she had left the place, I spent years trying to persuade your mother to get a divorce and marry me. But she was the daughter of a Bishop, a High Churchwoman, and a holy woman. She died with your father's name upon her lips."

I shuddered! The words were spoken so deliberately, and yet with such vibrant force.

"After that," Ray continued, "came Egypt, then India, and afterwards Khartoum. I came home before the last war, and I met Lady Angela. I am so little of a woman's man that I suppose the girl whom I thought of at all became like an angel, a creature altogether apart from that sex of whom I know so little. However that may be, she was the second woman to hold any place in my—heart—as she most surely will be the last. Then the war broke out, luck came my way, and I returned with a greater reputation than I deserved. The very night of my return I asked Lady Angela to marry me, and she consented."

He puffed vigorously at his pipe, but he seemed wholly ignorant of the fact that it was out. His face was set in its grimmest lines. He looked steadily at a certain spot in the fire, and went on.

"There are things," he said, "which troubled me little at the time, but which just lately have been on my mind. The first is that I am nearly fifty, and Lady Angela is twenty-one. The second is that I came home with all the tinsel and glamour of a popular hero. Heaven knows I loathed it, but the fact remains. The King's reception, the V.C., and all that sort of thing, I suppose, accounted for it. Anyhow, I am troubled with this reflection. Lady Angela was very young, and I fear that her imagination was touched. She accepted my offer, and she has been very loyal. Until to-night no word of disagreement has passed between us. But there have been times lately when I have fancied that I have noticed a