Dorman Royle was the oddest hero for such an adventure. He followed
the profession of a solicitor, and the business he did was like
himself, responsible and a trifle heavy. No piratical dashes into the
Law Courts in the hope of a great haul were encouraged in his office.
Clients as regular in their morals as in their payments alone sought
his trustworthy and prosaic advice. Dorman Royle, in a word, was the
last man you would think ever to feel the hair lifting upon his scalp
or his heart sinking down into a fathomless pit of terror. Yet to him,
nevertheless, these sensations happened. It may be that he was
specially chosen just because of his unflighty qualities; that, at all
events, became his own conviction. Certainly those qualities stood him
in good stead. This, however, is surmise. The facts are beyond all
dispute.
In June, Royle called upon his friend Henry Groome, and explained that
he wanted Groome's country house for the summer.
"But it's very lonely," said Groome.
"I don't mind that," replied Dorman Royle, and his face beamed with
the smile at once proud and sheepish and a little fatuous which has
only meant one thing since the beginning of the world.
"You are going to be married!" said Groome.
"How in the world did you guess?" asked Royle; but it must be supposed
that there had been some little note of regret or jealousy in his
friend's voice, for the smile died away, and he nodded his head in
comprehension.
"Yes, old man. That's the way of it. It's the snapping of the old
ties--not a doubt. I shall meet you from time to time at the club in
the afternoon, and you will dine with us whenever you care to. But we
shall not talk very intimately any more of matters which concern us.
We shall be just a trifle on our guard against each other. A woman
means that--yes. However, I do what I can. I borrow your house for my
honeymoon."
Groome heard the speech with surprise. He had not expected to be
understood with so much accuracy. He seemed to be looking at a new
man--a stranger, almost certainly no longer his friend, but a man who
had put friendship behind him and had reached out and grasped a
treasure which had transfigured all his world.
"And whom are you going to marry?" Groome asked; and the answer
surprised him still more.
"Ina Fayle."
"Ina--you don't mean----?"
"Yes, I do," said Royle, and the note of his voice was a challenge.
But Groome did not take it up. Ina Fayle, of course, he knew by sight
and by reputation, as who in London at that time did not? She was a
young actress who had not been content to be beautiful.
"Yes, she's a worker," suddenly said Royle. "She has had to work since
she was sixteen, and what she is, sheer industry has made her. Now she
is going to give up all her success."
Groome wondered for a moment how in the world she could bring herself
to do it. A girl of twenty-three, she had gained already so much
success that she must find the world a very pleasant place. She had
the joy of doing superbly the work she loved, and a reward besides,
tremendous because so immediate, in the adoration of the public, in
the great salary after she had been poor, and while she was young
enough to enjoy every penny of it. Groome was still wondering when
once more Royle broke in upon him.
"Yes. It's the sort of renunciation which is much more surprising in a
girl than it would be in a man. For the art of the stage is of much
the same stuff as a woman's natural life, isn't it? I mean that
beauty, grace, the trick of wearing clothes, the power of swift
response to another's moods, play the same large part in both. But,
you see, she has character, as well as gifts--that's the explanation."
Royle looked at his watch.
"Come and see her, will you?"
"Now?"
"Yes. I promised that I would bring you round," and as he got up from
his chair he added: "Oh, by the way, as to your house, I ought to have
told you. Ina has a dog--a black spaniel--do you mind?"
"Not a bit," said Groome, and he put on his hat.
The two men walked northwards, Royle at once extremely shy and
inordinately proud. They crossed the Marylebone Road into Regent's
Park.
"That's her house," said Royle, "the one at the end of the terrace."
Ina Fayle lived with a companion; she was not quite so tall as Groome,
who had only seen her upon the stage, expected her to be. He had
thought to find a woman a trifle cadaverous and sallow. But she had
the clear eyes and complexion of a child, and her wealth of fair,
shining hair spoke of a resplendent health. She came across the room
and took Groome into a window.
"You know Dorman very well, don't you? I want to show you something I
have bought for him. Oh, it's nothing--but do you think he will like
it?"
She was simple and direct in her manner, with more of the comrade than
the woman. She showed Groome a gold cigarette-case.
"Of course it will do. But you have already made him a better
wedding-gift than that," said Groome.
"I?" Her forehead puckered in a frown. "What gift?"
"A very remarkable gift of insight, which he never had before."
She coloured a little with pleasure, and her eyes and her voice
softened together.
"I am very glad," she answered. "One takes a great deal. It is
pleasant to give something in return."
Dorman Royle and Ina Fayle were duly married towards the end of the
month, and began their life together in the house which Groome had
lent them.
It stood on the top of a hill amongst bare uplands above the valley of
the Thames, in a garden of roses and green lawns. But the house was
new, and the trees about it small and of Groome's own planting, so
that every whisper of wind became a breeze up there, and whistled
about the windows. On the other hand, if the wind was still there was
nowhere a place more quiet, and the slightest sound which would never
have been heard in a street rang out loud with the presumption of a
boast. Especially this was so at night. The roar of the great trains
racing down to the west cleft the air like thunder; yet your eyes
could only see far away down in the river-valley, a tiny line of
bright lights winking amongst the trees. In this spot they stayed for
a week, and then Ina showed her husband a telegram summoning her to
the bedside of her mother.
"It's not very serious, as you see," she said. "But she wants me, and
I think that for a day or two I must go."
She went the next morning. Dorman Royle was left alone, and was
thoroughly bored until late on the night before Ina's return. It was,
in fact, not far from twelve o'clock when Royle began to be
interested. He was sitting in the library when he heard very
distinctly through the open window a metallic click. The sound was
unmistakable. Somewhere in the garden a gate had been opened and
allowed to swing back. What he had heard was the latch catching in the
socket. He was interested in his book, and for a moment paid no heed
to the sound. But after a second or two he began to wonder who at this
hour in that lonely garden had opened a gate. He sat up and listened
but the sound was not repeated. He was inclined to think, clear and
distinct though the sound had been, that he had imagined it, when his
eyes fell upon Ina's black spaniel. He could no longer believe in any
delusion of his senses. For the dog had heard the sound too. He had
been lying curled up on the varnished boards at the edge of the room,
his black, shining coat making him invisible to a careless glance. Now
he was sitting up, his ears cocked and his eyes upon the window with
the extraordinary intentness which dogs display.
Dorman Royle rose from his chair.
"Come," he said, in a whisper, but the spaniel did not move. He sat
with his nose raised and the lip of the lower jaw trembling, and his
eyes still fixed upon the window. Royle walked softly to the door of
the room. It opened on to a hall paved with black and white stone
which took up the middle part of the house. Upon his right a door
opened on to the drive, on his left another led out to a loggia and a
terrace. Royle opened this second door and called again in a whisper
to the spaniel:
"Come, Duke! Seek him out!"
This time the dog obeyed, running swiftly past his legs into the open
air. Royle followed. It was a bright, moonlit night, the stars hardly
visible in the clear sky. Royle looked out across the broad valley to
the forest-covered Chilterus, misty in the distance. Not a breath of
wind was stirring; the trees stood as though they had been metal.
Three brick steps led from the terrace to the tennis-lawn. On the
opposite side of the tennis-lawn a small gate opened on to a paddock
It was this gate which had opened and swung to. But there was no one
now on the lawn or in the paddock, and no tree stood near which could
shade an intruder. Royle looked at the dog. He stood upon the edge of
the terrace staring out over the lawn; Royle knew him to be a good
house-dog, yet now not a growl escaped him. He stood waiting to leap
forward--yes, but waiting also for a friendly call from a familiar
voice before he leapt forward; and as Royle realised that a strange
thought came to him. He had been lonely these last days; hardly a
moment had passed but he had been conscious of the absence of Ina;
hardly a moment when his heart had not ached for her and called her
back. What if he had succeeded? He played with the question as he
stood there in the quiet moonlight upon the paved terrace. It was she
who had sped across the paddock twelve hours before her time and
opened the gate. She had come so eagerly that she had not troubled to
close it. She had let it swing sharply to behind her. She was here
now, at his side. He reached out a hand to touch her, and take hers;
and suddenly he became aware that he was no longer playing with a
fancy--that he believed it. She was really here, close to him. He
could not see her--no. But that was his fault. There was too much
dross in Dorman Royle as yet for so supreme a gift. But that would
follow--follow with the greater knowledge of her which their life
together would bring.
"Come, Duke," he said, and he went back into the house and sat late in
the smoking-room, filled with the wonder of this new, strange life
that was to be his. A month ago and now! He measured the difference of
stature between the Dorman Royle of those days and the Dorman Royle of
to-day, and he was sunk in humility and gratitude. But a few hours
later that night his mood changed. He waked up in the dark, and,
between sleep and consciousness, was aware of some regular, measured
movement in the room. In a moment he became wide awake, and understood
what had aroused him. The spaniel, lying on the coverlet at the foot
of the bed, was thumping with his tail--just as if someone he loved
was by him, fondling him. Royle sat up; the bed shook and creaked
under him, but the dog paid no heed at all. He went on wagging his
tail in the silence and darkness of the room. Someone must be there,
and suddenly Royle cried aloud, impetuously, so that he was surprised
to hear his own voice:
"Ina! Ina!" and he listened, with his arms outstretched.
But no answer came at all. It seemed that he had rashly broken a
spell. For the dog became still. Royle struck a match and lighted the
candle by his bed, straining his eyes to the corners of the room. But
there was no one visible.
He blew out the candle and lay down again, and the darkness blotted
out all the room. But he could not sleep; and--and--he was very
careful not to move. It was not fear which kept him still--though fear
came later---but a thrilling expectation. He was on the threshold of a
new world. He had been made conscious of it already; now he was to
enter it--to see. But he saw nothing. Only in a little while the
spaniel's tail began once more to thump gently and regularly upon the
bed. It was just as if the dog had waited for him to go to sleep
before it once more resumed its invisible communion. This time he
spoke to the dog.
"Duke!" he whispered, and he struck a match. The spaniel was lying
upon his belly, his neck stretched out, his jaws resting upon his
paws. "Duke, what is it?"
The animal raised its head and turned a little to one side. The human
voice could not have said more clearly:
"What's the matter? You are interrupting us."
The match burned out between his forefinger and thumb. Royle did not
light another. He laid himself down again. But the pleasant fancy born
in him upon the moonlit terrace had gone altogether from his thoughts.
There was something to him rather sinister in the notion of the dog
waiting for him to go to sleep and then, without moving from its
place--so certain it was of the neighbourhood of some unseen being to
whom it gave allegiance--resuming a strange companionship. He no
longer thought of Ina--Ina as the visitor. He began to wonder how the
dog had come to her, who had owned it before her. He plunged into
vague and uncomfortable surmises. No doubt the darkness, the silence
of the night, and his own sleeplessness had their effects. He lay in a
strange exaltation of spirit, which deepened slowly and gradually into
fear. Yes, he was afraid now. He had a sense of danger, all the more
alarming because it was reasonless. There were low breathings about
his bed; now some one bent over him, now a hand lightly touched the
coverlet. He, the most unimpressionable of men, rejoiced when a grey
beam of light shot through a chink of the curtain and spread like a
fan into the room. He turned over on his side and slept until the sun
was high.
In the clear light of a July morning Royle's thoughts took on a more
sober colour. None the less, he made a cautious inquiry or two that
day from the gardener, and from the shops in the village. The answer
in each case was the same.
"The house had no history, no traditions. It had only been built ten
years back. There was nothing but a field then where the house now
stood. Even the trees had been planted at the time the house was
built."
Indeed, the assurance was hardly needed; for the house was new and
bright as a hospital. There was hardly a dark corner anywhere,
certainly nowhere a harbour for dark thoughts. Royle began to revert
to his original fancy; and when that evening his wife returned, he
asked her:
"Last night, just before midnight--what were you doing?"
They were together in a small library upon the first floor, a room
with big windows opening upon the side of the house. The night was hot
and the windows stood open, and close to one of them at a little table
Ina was writing a letter. She looked up with a smile.
"Last night--just before midnight? I was asleep."
"Are you sure?"
Some note of urgency in his voice made her smile waver. It disappeared
altogether as she gazed at him.
"Of course," she answered, slowly, "I am sure;" and then, after a
little pause and with a slight but a noticeable hesitation, she added:
"Why do you ask?"
Dorman Royle crossed over to her side and most unwisely told her:
"Because at midnight the gate into the paddock was opened and swung to
without any hand to touch it. I had been thinking of you, Ina--wanting
you--and I wondered."
He spoke half in jest, but there was no jesting reply. For a little
while, indeed, Ina did not answer him at all. He was standing just a
step behind her as she sat at the table in the window, so that he
could not see her face. But her body stiffened.
"It must have been a delusion," she said, and he walked forward and
sat down in a chair by the table facing her.
"If so, it was a delusion which the dog shared."
She did not change her attitude; she did not stir. From head to foot
she sat as though carved in stone. Nor did her face tell him anything.
It became a mask; it seemed to him that she forced all expression out
of it, by some miracle of self-command. But her eyes shone more than
usually big, more than usually luminous; and they held their secret
too, if they had a secret to hold. Then she leaned forward and touched
his sleeve.
"Tell me!" she said, and she had trouble to find her voice; and,
having found it, she could not keep it steady.
"I am sorry, Ina," he said. "You are frightened. I should not have
said a word."
"But you have," she replied. "Now I must know the rest."
He told her all that there was to tell. Reduced to the simple terms of
narrative, the story sounded, even to him, thin and unconvincing.
There was so little of fact and event, so much of suggestion and vague
emotion. But his recollection was still vivid, and something of the
queer terror which he had felt as he had lain in the darkness was
expressed in his aspect and in the vibrations of his voice. So, at all
events, he judged. For he had almost expected her to laugh at the
solemnity of his manner, and yet Ina did not so much as smile. She
listened without even astonishment, paying close heed to every word,
now and then nodding her head in assent, but never interrupting. He
was vaguely reminded of clients listening to his advice in some grave
crisis of their affairs. But when he had finished she made no comment.
She just sat still and rigid, gazing at him with baffling and
inscrutable eyes.
Dorman Royle rose. "So it wasn't you, Ina, who returned last night?"
he said.
"No," she answered, in a voice which was low, but now quite clear and
steady. "I slept soundly last night--much more soundly than I usually
do."
"That's strange," said Royle.
"I don't think so," Ina answered. "I think it follows. _I was let
alone_. Yes, that's all of a piece with your story, don't you see?"
Dorman Royle sprang up, and at his abrupt movement his wife's face
flashed into life and fear.
"What are you saying?" he cried, and she shrank as if she realised now
what a dangerous phrase she had allowed her lips to utter.
"Nothing, nothing!" she exclaimed, and she set herself obstinately to
her letter.
Royle looked at the clock.
"It's late," he said. "I'll take the dog out for a run."
He went downstairs and out at the front of the house. To-night the air
was mistier, and the moon sailed through a fleece of clouds. Royle
walked to a gate on the edge of the hill. It may have been a quarter
of an hour before he whistled to the dog and turned back to the house.
From the gate to the house was perhaps a hundred yards, and as he
walked back first one, then another, of the windows of the library
upon the first floor came within his view. These windows stood wide
open to the night, and showed him, as in a miniature, this and that
corner of the room, the bookcases, the lamps upon the tables, and the
top-rails of the chair-backs, small but very clear. The one window
which he could not as yet see at all was that in which his wife sat.
For it was at the far end of the room and almost over the front door.
Royle came within view of it at last, and stopped dead. He gazed at
the window with amazement. Ina was still sitting at the writing-table
in the window, but she was no longer alone. Just where he himself had
stood a few minutes before, a step behind her shoulder, another man
was now standing--a man with a strong, rather square, dark face, under
a mane of black hair. He wore a dinner-jacket and a black tie, and he
was bending forward and talking to Ina very earnestly. Ina herself sat
with her hands pressed upon her face and her body huddled in her
chair, not answering, but beaten down by the earnestness of the
stranger's pleading. Thus they appeared within the frame of the
window, both extraordinarily distinct to Royle watching outside there
in the darkness. He could see the muscles working in the stranger's
face and the twitching of Ina's hands, but he could hear nothing. The
man was speaking in too low a voice.
Royle did not move.
"But I know the man," he was saying to himself. "I have seen him, at
all events. Where? Where?" And suddenly he remembered. It was at the
time of a General Election. He had arrived at King's Cross Station
from Scotland late one night, and, walking along the Marylebone
Road, he had been attracted by a throng of people standing about a
lamp-post, and above the throng the head and shoulders of a man
addressing it had been thrown into a clear light. He had stopped for a
moment to listen; He had asked a question of his neighbour. Yes, the
speaker was one of the candidates, and he was the man who now stood by
Ina's side.
Royle tried to remember the name, but he could not. Then he began to
wonder whence the stranger had come. It was a good two miles to the
village. How, too, had he managed to get into the house? The servants
had gone to bed an hour before Royle had come out. The hall-door stood
open now. He had left it open. The man must have been waiting some
such opportunity--as he had done no doubt last night. Such a passion
of anger and jealousy flamed up in Royle as he had never known. He ran
into the hall and shot the bolts. He hurried up the stairs and flung
open the door. Ina was still sitting at the table, but she had
withdrawn her hands from her face, and, but for her, the room was
empty.
"Ina!" he cried, and she turned to him. Her face was quiet, her eyes
steady; there was a smile upon her lips.
"Yes?"
She sat just as he had left her. Looking at her in his bewilderment,
he almost came to believe that his eyes had tricked him, that thus she
had sat all this while. Almost! For the violence of his cry had been
unmistakable, and she did not ask for the reason of it. He was out of
breath, too, his face no doubt disordered; yet she put no question;
she sat and smiled--tenderly. Yes, that was the word. Dorman Royle
stood in front of her. It seemed to him that his happiness was
crumbling down in ruins about him.
"Ina!" he repeated, and the dog barked for admission underneath the
window. The current of his thoughts was altered by the sound. His
passion fell away from him. It seemed to him that he dived under ice.
"Ina!"
He sat quietly down in the chair on the other side of that table.
"You have had that dog some time?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How did you get it?"
The answer came quite steadily but slowly, and after a long silence.
"A friend gave it to me."
"Who?"
There was no longer any smile upon the girl's face. Nor, on the other
hand, was there any fear. Her eyes never for a second wavered from
his.
"Why do you ask?"
"I am curious," replied Royle. "Who?"
"Raymond Byatt."
The name conveyed nothing to Royle. He did not even recollect it. But
he spoke as if it were quite familiar to him.
"Raymond Byatt? Didn't he stand for Parliament once in Marylebone?"
"Yes. He was defeated."
Royle rose from his chair.
"Well, I had better go down and let the dog in," he said, and he went
to the door, where he turned to her again.
"But if he's a friend of yours, you should ask him down," he remarked.
Ina drew herself up in her chair, her hands clinging to the arms of
it.
"He killed himself a fortnight ago."
The answer turned Royle into a figure of stone. The two people stared
at one another across the room in a dreadful silence; and it seemed as
if, having once spoken, Ina was forced by some terrible burden of
anguish to speak yet more.
"Yes," she continued in a whisper, "a week before we married."
"Did you care for him?"
Ina shook her head.
"Never."
There were words upon the tip of Royle's tongue--words of bitterness:
"It was he who came back last night. He came back for you. He was with
you to-night--the moment after I left you. I saw him." But he knew
they would be irrevocable words, and with an effort he held his
tongue. He went downstairs and let the dog in. When he returned to the
library Ina was standing up.
"I'll go to bed," she said, and her voice pleaded for silence. "I am
tired. I have had a long journey;" and he let her go without a word.
He sat late himself, wondering what in the morning he should do. The
house had become horrible to him. And unless Ina told him all there
was to tell, how could they go on side by side anywhere? When he went
upstairs Ina was in bed and asleep. He left the door wide open between
her room and his and turned in himself. But he slept lightly, and at
some time that night, whilst it was still dark, he was roused to
wakefulness. A light was burning in his wife's room, and through the
doorway he could see her. She had in her hand the glass of water which
usually stood on a little table beside her bed, and she was measuring
out into it from a bottle some crystals. He knew that they were
chloral crystals, for, since she slept badly, she always kept them by
her. He watched her shaking out the dose, and as he watched such a
fear clutched at his heart as made all the other terrors of that night
pale and of no account. Ina was measuring out deliberately enough
chloral into that tumbler of water to kill a company. Very cautiously
he drew himself up in his bed. He heard the girl stifle a sob, and as
she waited for the crystals to dissolve her face took on a look of
grief and despair which he had never in his life seen before. He
sprang out of bed, and in an instant was at her side. With a cry Ina
raised the glass to her lips, but his hand was already upon her wrist.
"Let me go!" she cried, and she struggled to free herself. But he took
the glass from her, and suddenly all her self-command gave way in a
passion of tears. She became a frightened child. Her hands sought him,
she hid her face from him, and she would not let him go.
"Ina," he whispered, "what were you doing?"
"I was following," she said. "I had to. He stands by me, always,
commanding me." And she shook like one in a fever.
"Good God!" he cried.
"Oh, I have fought," she sobbed, "but he's winning. Yes, that's the
truth. Sooner or later I shall have to follow."
"Tell me everything," said Royle.
"No."
But he held her close within the comfort of his arms and wrestled for
her and for himself. Gradually the story was told to him in broken
sentences and with long silences between them, during which she lay in
his clasp and shivered.
"He wanted me to marry him. But I wouldn't. He had a sort of power
over me--the power of a bully who cares very much," she said; and a
little later she gave the strangest glimpse of the man. He would
hardly have believed it; but he had seen the man, and the story fitted
him.
"I was in Paris for a few days--alone with my maid. I went to see a
play which was to be translated for me. He was in the same hotel,
quite alone as I was. It was after I had kept on refusing him. He
seemed horribly lonely--that was part of his power. I never saw anyone
who lived so completely in loneliness. He was shut away in it as if in
some prison of glass through which you could see but not hear. It made
him tragic--pitiful. I went up to him in the lounge and asked if we
couldn't be just friends, since we were both there alone. You'll never
imagine what he did. He stared at me without answering at all. He just
walked away and went to the hotel manager. He asked him how it was
that he allowed women in his hotel who came up and spoke to
strangers."
"Ina--he didn't!" cried Royle.
"He did. Luckily the manager knew me. And that night, though he
wouldn't speak to me in the lounge, he wrote me a terrible letter.
Then, when you and I were engaged, he killed himself--just a week
before we married. He tried to do it twice. He went down to an hotel
at Aylesbury and sat up all night, trying to do it. But the morning
came and he had failed. The servant who called him found him sitting
in his bedroom at the writing-table at which he had left him the night
before; and all night he had written not one word. Next day he went to
another hotel on the South Coast, and all that night he waited. But in
the morning--after he had been called--quite suddenly he found the
courage--yes----" and Ina's voice trailed away into silence. In a
little while she began again.
"Ever since he has been at my side, saying 'I did it because of you.
You must follow.' There was the chloral always ready. I found myself
night after night, when you were asleep, reaching out my hand
obediently towards it--towards it----"
"Except last night," Royle interrupted, suddenly finding at last the
explanation of some words of hers which had puzzled him, "when he came
here, and you were away."
"And I slept soundly in consequence," she agreed. "Yes. But
to-night--if you hadn't been here--I should have obeyed altogether."
"But I am here," said Royle, gently; and, looking up, he saw that the
morning had come. He rose and pulled aside the curtains so that the
clear light flooded the room.
"Ina, do something for me," he pleaded, and she understood. She took
the bottle of crystals, poured them into the basin, and set the tap
running.
"Stay with me," she said. "Now that I have told you, I believe that I
shall sleep, and sleep without fear. When you came into the room
before I was only pretending."
She nestled down, and this time she did sleep. It seemed to Royle that
the victory was won.
Some months later, however, a client talking over his affairs with
Royle in his private office mentioned Raymond Byatt's name. Royle
leaned forward with a start.
"You knew that man?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the client with a laugh. "He forged my name for a
thousand pounds--and not mine alone. He was clever with his pen. But
he came to the end of his tether at last. He saved himself from penal
servitude by blowing his brains out."
Royle jumped out of his chair.
"Is that true?"
"Absolutely."
And Royle sat down suddenly.
"That's the best piece of news I have ever had in my life," he cried.
Now for a sure thing the victory was his. He went home that evening in
the highest spirits.
"What do you think, Ina, I discovered to-day?" he blurted out. "You'll
be as glad to hear as I was. Raymond Byatt didn't kill himself for
you, after all. He did it to save himself from a prosecution for
forgery."
There was a moment's silence, and then Ina replied:
"Indeed!" and that was all. But Dorman Royle, to his perplexity,
detected a certain unexpected iciness in her voice. Somehow that new
insight which Groome had discovered in him had on this evening failed
him altogether.