Now although it had seemed to Gerard, when he first arrived at the
Priory that afternoon, that all was as usual there, he had long before
this discovered that this was by no means the case.
Everything did indeed look as it had looked on his previous visits. The
visitors were quite as numerous, the conversation was quite as lively.
The groups moved about from room to room, listened to the music at one
end of the suite, played cards at the other, and drank tea between the
two, with just the same appearance of having nothing on their minds but
the amusement of the moment.
The Van Santens, on their side, behaved exactly as they had always
behaved; the young men played bridge and poker, with intervals of
conversation and laughter with those of their guests who did not
care for cards. Cora sang as sweetly as ever, was just as charming
when, instead of singing or playing, she was listening to Arthur’s
impassioned speeches, or lisping out her little crisp sentences by way
of her share in the general conversation.
Delia, as usual, flitted from group to group, never in the same place
long, and always bringing with her a sense of repose and ease, the
result of the singularly tactful and neat way she had of setting things
right when they were going wrong.
Mrs. Van Santen, perhaps, showed traces of the emotion which the
unpleasant scene of the preceding Sunday had caused her. She was
sensible enough, dear old soul, not to disturb the general harmony by
any open allusion to the trouble on that occasion, or by any appearance
of anxiety about the present. But she did not look quite so peaceful,
quite so serene, as she had looked before, and Gerard was quite sure
that she was keeping a watchful eye on her card-playing sons, lest any
more disturbances should break the peace of her family and her guests.
But underneath all this surface appearance of calm and pleasure Gerard
was now conscious that there was a current of anxiety, a subdued
unrest, which infected the whole of the Van Santen family, and had
spread, perhaps without their being fully aware of it, to their guests.
It was easily explained, of course, by the occurrences of the preceding
Sunday, by the inevitable self-consciousness which they had produced in
everybody; so that the visitors felt impelled to be more sprightly and
more at ease than usual, and the family, on their side, had to keep up
an air of having absolutely forgotten the ill-mannered attack made upon
one of them by the hasty and impetuous Sir William.
Thus the general atmosphere seemed to be electric, charged with a sort
of vague danger, and conducive to excitement and unrest.
When Gerard found himself ousted by Denver, he retreated to the
music-room, and there he found Arthur and Cora, no longer at the piano,
but conversing with intense seriousness in a corner of the room. He
had scarcely entered, when Mrs. Van Santen came in, noiselessly, but
wearing a look of unusual excitement in her good old face. She went
straight to Cora, said a few words to her in an undertone, and went
back again into the next room.
Then Cora spoke to Arthur, and he, after a few minutes’ earnest
conversation with her, sauntered across the room to Gerard.
“It seems,” he said, “that the Van Santens are rather surprised to see
you here to-day. They had an idea, I think, that you took the part of
Sir William Gurdon against them.”
By a rapid process of thought, Gerard knew how this idea had arisen in
their minds. He had left the Priory by himself on the preceding Sunday,
and had only met Sir William afterwards. As he had expressed no opinion
favorable to Sir William’s cause previous to that, but as he had, on
the contrary, done his best to persuade the baronet that he had made a
mistake, it was clear that Cora’s idea could not be based on what she
had then seen and heard.
It was because Denver had followed Sir William, having injured the
tire of his car in order to bring him to a standstill, and because he
had then discovered Gerard in the baronet’s company, and the family
understood him to be on the side of the enemy.
He was careful, however, to give no hint of what he knew to Arthur when
he was thus accused of siding with the baronet.
“Surprised to see me, are they?” said he. “Do you mean that they wish
me to withdraw?”
“No, no, oh no, of course not,” said Arthur hastily. “But they want to
understand how it is that you have changed your mind about that? And
whether you have seen Sir William since?”
Gerard perceived that Cora had sent her obedient slave, Arthur, to
try to “pump” him as to his position and intentions. It was part of
the general uneasiness that he had noticed that they wanted to know
precisely the attitude taken up by each of their visitors. And Gerard
knew that he was especially under observation, on account of his known
admiration for Miss Davison and Denver’s possible jealousy, as well as
because he was now known to have been the cause of the miscarriage of
Denver’s projected attack upon Sir William.
Although neither he nor the baronet could have sworn to the identity of
the figure, which had shadowed them and which they had then pursued,
with Denver Van Santen, or of the fact that he had been armed, there
was very little doubt in the minds of either upon those points.
Knowing that his answer would be faithfully reported, Gerard answered
with caution--
“Seen Sir William! Oh yes, I went up to town with him last Sunday. We
started in his car, but had a breakdown and went back by train.”
“And did you persuade him to think better of his disgraceful conduct?”
“I persuaded him--or rather, I helped to persuade him--to write an
apology to Mrs. Van Santen.”
“And you quite see that he made a fool of himself?”
Gerard hesitated.
“I don’t think his conduct was very wise,” he admitted at last.
“Or that he was justified in bringing such an accusation?”
“I think, if he thought what he did, it would have been better to talk
things over with his own friends before making a scene.”
This answer was not at all what Arthur wanted. It made him uneasy.
“Surely you don’t think there was anything in it? I can’t think you
would be here to-day if you had thought there was!”
“Well, we needn’t discuss that now. It’s a subject we should be bound
to get warm over, whatever we thought, isn’t it?” said he soothingly.
“It certainly makes me warm to hear a doubt cast upon my friends.”
“No doubt has been cast on anybody by me,” replied Gerard quickly. “If
they want to know, you can tell them so.”
Arthur went away, evidently not quite satisfied, and Gerard strolled
through the adjoining room into the card-room at the end of the suite.
There had been changes in the position of affairs during the short
interval since he left Miss Davison conversing with Denver in the
middle room.
Rachel herself had disappeared, and he learned from Delia, who, in the
course of her pacifying errands, met him and asked him whether he was
going to play bridge, that she had gone upstairs with a headache.
This statement was received by Gerard with certain vague suspicions.
He entered the card-room, and found play in full swing at four
different tables. As usual, Harry Van Santen was playing bridge, and
Denver was having his usual luck at poker.
The table at which he sat was the nearest to the door communicating
with the adjoining room, and it was also the nearest to the window,
which was closed and hidden behind the drawn curtains.
Cecil Jones formed one of the poker party, and he was being eased of
the money of which he had boasted.
But Gerard, who had now had time to consider his face well, was
surprised to note in his usually sheepish face something which made
him quite sure that there was some mystery about this friend of Miss
Davison’s. He had suspected it before, but he was now sure of it. Not
only was there under his expression of surface silliness an occasional
look which showed intelligence of a quite unusual kind, but there was
to-day in his manner a certain quiet watchfulness, which made Gerard
think he was lying in wait for something.
What that something was--whether a signal from one of the Van Santens,
or a scene, or a signal from somebody else and another sort of
scene--he could not be sure. But that there was trouble of some kind in
the air he knew quite well.
He almost thought, indeed, as he watched Cecil Jones from the doorway,
and saw him losing his money with little silly exclamations of
impatience or surprise, that the man appeared to be listening for
something.
Once or twice he glanced in the direction of the window, although, as
it was closed and curtained, he could see nothing whatever of it.
He lost more and more heavily as time went on, and bore his losses with
wonderful equanimity.
But when play had gone on for some time, and while he was being
steadily eased of his money, Gerard heard a soft rustling sound behind
him, and turning quickly saw that old Mrs. Van Santen was standing at
his elbow, with a look of indescribable terror and distress upon her
face. It seemed to him that she was watching Cecil Jones as if he had
been, not the innocent idiot he looked, or the confederate which Gerard
had till that day believed him to be of her sons, but some harbinger of
evil, some messenger of adverse fate.
And in a moment the last rag of suspicion that Jones could be a decoy
and a partner in the Van Santen operations fled from Gerard’s mind.
The game went on, meanwhile, although it seemed to him that the old
lady would fain have stopped it. She even made an attempt to catch
Denver’s eye, and partially succeeded at last. But he only made her an
abrupt sign to withdraw, and went on with the congenial task of winning
from the placid Jones the money which he had so openly boasted of
having brought with him.
At a sign from her son, Mrs. Van Santen suddenly disappeared, and
Gerard saw her no more for some time, and wondered whether she had
retired to “have a good cry” over her son’s gambling propensities, and
the troubles which she perhaps foresaw for him in consequence.
Gerard, who was quite sure in his own mind that Cecil Jones was being
robbed, and that he was aware of the fact, found himself growing more
and more excited, as he waited, in a state of extreme nerve-tension,
for the crisis which he felt must be approaching.
The sounds of voices, of movements, became dull and confused in his
mind; the figures of the players became blurred, and a sort of singing
in his ears warned him that he had better find relief to his intense
excitement in the open air, when suddenly, just as he was turning to go
towards the French window of the middle room, there was a sound like
the hissing of a serpent, followed immediately by the overthrow of
half a dozen chairs, and turning, he saw that, as he had foreseen, the
crisis had come.
Cecil Jones, leaning across the card-table, had seized Denver’s arm,
and dragged out from the sleeve of the American a card, which he flung
down, face upwards, upon the table.
Leaning across the table, and looking up steadily into the face of the
baffled Denver, who had sprung up from his chair, and was standing,
still in the grip of Jones, pale with rage and discomfiture, Jones
said, in a quiet voice that carried clearly to every corner of the room
and into that beyond--
“I thought so. You are a card-sharper!”
In an instant there was an uproar in the room.
The men who had been playing at the same table with Denver and Jones
were on their feet already, exclaiming, protesting, uttering indignant
exclamations.
There was now a rush from the other tables, and Harry Van Santen led
the crowd that gathered round the detected cheat.
Harry, with a very white face, uttered a harsh laugh which was meant to
be reassuring, but which was hollow, hideous, unreal, and horrible to
hear.
“What’s this?” he cried. “It’s a trick, a silly trick that some of you
have played upon my brother! Who is it? You, Jones? Come, speak up and
own to it like a man.”
Hard as was his forced laughter, the manner of the older American was
so assured, his voice was so deep and so confident, that one or two of
the men present seemed at first inclined to believe that the version of
the affair which he was trying to maintain was the true one.
But Cecil Jones suddenly sprang up from his sprawling attitude, and
stood erect.
“Gentlemen,” he said, addressing, conspicuously, not the two Americans,
but the rest of the company, “there has been systematic cheating
carried on here, as some of you might have guessed, I should think.
Don’t be alarmed. There is nothing to be feared except by the men who
have robbed you.”
The uproar of voices, excited, indignant, which had ceased when he
began to speak, rose again when he left off.
In the midst of it, there was a shrill scream, and Mrs. Van Santen,
looking, not the dear, simple old lady they were all used to, but a
very virago, with flaming eyes and harsh voice, cried, addressing Harry
and Denver--
“You can’t get away. The house is surrounded!”