MR. THURWELL MAKES SOME INQUIRIES
And so Helen had her own way, and went back to her home on the moors,
where Mr. Thurwell, who had just finished his hunting season, was very
glad to see her, although not a little surprised. But she told him no
more than she had told her aunt, that she had no taste for London life.
The time would soon come when he would know the whole truth, but until
her lover's return the secret was her own.
She had one hasty note from him, posted in Paris on his way to Italy,
and though there were only a few lines in it, she treasured up the
little scrap of paper very tenderly, for, such as it was, it was her
first love letter. He had given her an address in the small town to
which he was bound, and she noticed, with a slight wonder at the
coincidence, that it was the same place where he had first seen her. She
had written to him, and now there had come a pause. She had nothing to
do but to wait.
But though such waiting is at best but a tedious matter, those few days
brought their own peculiar happiness to her. She would have found it
impossible to have confided her secret to any human being; she had no
bosom friend to whom she could go for sympathy. But her healthy,
open-air life, her long solitary walks, and a certain vein of poetry
which she undoubtedly possessed, had given her some of that passionate,
almost personal, love of nature which is sweeter by far than any human
friendship. For her those long stretches of wild moorland, with the dark
silent tarns and far-distant line of blue hills, the high cliffs where
the sea wind roared with all the bluster and fury of a late March, the
sea itself with its ever-changing face, the faint streaks of brilliant
color in the evening sky, or the wan glare of a stormy morning--all
these things had their own peculiar meaning to her, and awoke always
some echo of response in her heart. And it chanced that at that time all
the sweet breezy freshness of a late spring was making glad the country
which she loved, and the perfect sympathy of the season with her own
happiness seemed to her very sweet, for it was springtime too in her
heart. A new life glowed in her veins, and sometimes it seemed to her
that she could see the vista of her whole future bathed in the warm
sunlight of a new-born happiness. The murmuring pine groves, the gay
reveling of the birds, the budding flowers and heath--all these things
appealed to her with a strange sympathetic force. So she took long
walks, and came home with sparkling eyes, and her cheeks full of a rich
color, till her father wondered what had come to his proud silent
daughter to give this new buoyancy to her frame, and added physical
beauty to her face, which had once seemed to him a little too
_spirituelle_ and ethereal.
Once more Helen and her father sat at breakfast out on the sheltered
balcony of Thurwell Court. Below them the gardens, still slightly coated
with the early morning dew, were bathed in the glittering sunshine, and
in the distance, and over the tops of the trees in the park, a slight
feathery mist was curling upward. The sweet, fresh air, still a little
keen, was buoyant with all the joyous exhilaration of spring, and
nature, free at last from the saddened grip of winter, was reasserting
itself in one glad triumphant chorus. Down in the park the slumberous
cawing of the rooks triumphed over the lighter-voiced caroling of
innumerable thrushes and blackbirds, and mingled with the faint humming
of a few early bees, seemed to fill the air with a sweetly blended
strain of glad music. It was one of those mornings typical of its own
season, in which the whole atmosphere seems charged with quickening
life. Summer with its warm luscious glow, and autumn with its clear calm
repose, have their own special charms. But a spring morning, coming
after the deep sadness of a hard winter, gains much by the contrast.
There is overflowing energy and passionate joy in its newly beating
pulses, the warm delight of reawakening life, happy to find the earth so
fair a place, which the staider charms of a more developed season
altogether lack.
It was in some measure owing to this influence, and also to the fact
that she held in her hand a letter from her lover, which her father had
handed her without remark, but with a somewhat curious glance, that
Helen was feeling very happy that morning. The last year had dealt
strangely with her. Tragedy had thrown its startling, gloomy shadow
across her life, and had left traces which could never be altogether
wiped out. Anxieties of another sort had come, perplexities and strange
unhappy doubts, although these last had burned with a fitful, uncertain
flame and now seemed stilled for ever. But triumphing over all these was
this new-born love, the great deep joy of a woman's life, so vast, so
sweet and beautiful, that it transfuses her whole being, and seems to
lift her into another world.
And so Helen, leaning back in her chair, with her eyes wandering idly
over the pleasant gardens and park below, to where, through a deep gap
in the trees, was just visible a faint blue line of sea, was wrapped up
very much in her own thoughts, and scarcely doing her duty toward
entertaining her father. Indeed, she seemed almost unconscious of his
presence until he looked up suddenly from a letter he was reading and
asked her a question.
"By the bye, Helen," he said, "I've meant to ask you something every day
since you've been home, but I have always forgotten it. Who was that
young man who came down here to help Johnson with the auditing, and who
went away so suddenly? A _protege_ of yours, I suppose, as he came here
on your recommendation?"
"Yes, I was interested in him," she answered, looking steadily away, and
with a faint color in her cheeks. "Why do you ask? Did he not do his
work properly?"
"Oh, yes, he did his work very well, I believe," Mr. Thurwell said
impatiently. "It was what he did after working hours, and which has just
come to my notice, which makes me ask you. It seems he spent the whole
of his spare time making covert, but I must say ingenious, inquiries
respecting Sir Geoffrey's murder, and I am also given to understand that
he paid Falcon's Nest an uninvited visit in the middle of the night.
What does it all mean? Was it merely curiosity, or had he any object in
it?"
"I think--he had an object," she answered slowly.
"Indeed!" Mr. Thurwell raised his eyebrows and waited for an
explanation.
"You remember, papa, that awful scene here when Rachel Kynaston died,
and what her last words to me were?"
"Yes, I remember perfectly," Mr. Thurwell answered gravely.
"Well, at that time I could not help having just a suspicion that Mr.
Brown must be mixed up in it in some way, and it seemed to me that I
should not be quite at ease if I let matters go on without doing
anything, so I--well, this young man came down here to see whether he
could find out anything."
Mr. Thurwell seldom frowned at his daughter, of whom he was secretly a
little afraid, but he did so now. He was seriously angry.
"It was not a matter for you to have concerned yourself in at all," he
said, rising from his seat. "At least, I should have been consulted."
"It was all very foolish, I know," she admitted humbly.
"It was worse than foolish; it was wrong and undutiful," he declared. "I
am astonished that my daughter should have mixed herself up with such
underhand work. And may I ask why I was kept in ignorance?"
"Because you would not have allowed me to do what I did," she said
quietly, with downcast eyes. "I thought it was my duty. I have been
punished--punished severely."
He softened a little, and resumed his seat. She was certainly very
contrite. He was silent for a moment or two, and then asked her a
question.
"Did this young man--detective, I suppose he was--find out anything
about Mr. Brown?"
She looked up, a little surprised at the curiosity in his tone.
"Why, papa, it was I who found out how stupid I had been," she said.
"When I discovered that our mysterious tenant was Bernard Maddison, of
course I saw the absurdity of suspecting him at once."
Mr. Thurwell moved a little uneasily in his chair.
"He did not find out anything, then?" he asked.
She was silent. She had not expected this, and she scarcely knew how to
answer.
"He found out what Mr. Brown--I mean Mr. Maddison--himself told me, that
he had known Sir Geoffrey abroad."
"Nothing more?"
"I did not ask. To tell the truth, I was not interested. The idea of Mr.
Maddison being connected with such a crime is simply ridiculous. I was
heartily sorry that I had ever taken any steps at all."
Mr. Thurwell lit a cigarette, and drew his remaining letters toward him.
"I must confess," he said slowly, "that when his house was searched in
my presence, and all that we discovered was that Mr. Brown was really
Bernard Maddison, I felt very much as you feel; and, as you no doubt
remember, I went out of my way to be civil to the man, and brought him
up here to dine. But since then things have cropped up, and I'm bound to
say that it looks a little queer. I hear that young man of yours told
several people that he had in his pocket what would bring Mr. Brown to
the scaffold any day."
"It is not true," she answered in a low firm tone. "I know that it is
not true."
Mr. Thurwell shrugged his shoulders.
"I hope not, I'm sure. Still, I'd rather he did not come back here
again. Some one must have done it, you see, and if it was a stranger,
he must have been a marvelous sort of fellow to come into this lonely
part of the country, and go away again without leaving a single trace."
"Criminals are all clever at disguises," she interposed.
"Doubtless; but they have yet to learn the art of becoming invisible,"
he went on drily. "I'm afraid it's no use concealing the fact that
things look black against Maddison, and there is more than a whisper in
the county about it. If he's a wise fellow, he'll keep away from here."
"He will not," she answered. "He will come back. He is innocent!"
Mr. Thurwell saw the rising flush in his daughter's face, but he had no
suspicion as to its real cause. He knew that Bernard Maddison was one of
her favorite authors, and he put her defence of him down to that fact.
He was not a particularly warm advocate on either side, and suddenly
remembering his unopened letters, he abandoned the discussion.
Helen, whose calm happiness had been altogether disturbed, rose in a few
minutes with the intention of making her escape. But her father, with an
open letter in his hand, checked her.
"Have you been seeing much of Sir Allen Beaumerville in town, Helen?" he
asked.
"Yes, a great deal. Why?" she asked.
"He's coming down here," Mr. Thurwell said. "He asks whether we can put
him up for a night or two, as he wants to do some botanizing. Of course
we shall be very pleased. I did give him a general invitation, I
remember, but I never thought he'd come. You'll see about having some
rooms got ready, Helen!"
"Yes, papa, I'll see to it," she answered, moving slowly away.
What could this visit in the middle of the season mean? she wondered
uneasily. It was so unlike Sir Allan to leave town in May. Could it be
that what her aunt had once laughingly hinted at was really going to
happen? Her cheeks burned at the very thought. She liked Sir Allan, and
she had found him a delightful companion, but even to think of any other
man now in such a connection seemed unreal and grotesque. After all, it
was most improbable. Sir Allan had only shown her the attention he
showed every woman who pleased his fastidious taste.