“How long is it since you have seen Cynthia, Mr. Fayre?”
Lady Staveley’s fine eyes were alight with amusement as she turned
them on her guest. He had just alluded to Lady Cynthia Bell as “a
demure little thing” and was now discussing his tea-cake with the
serenity of one quite unaware that he has been guilty of an incredible
misstatement.
Allen Fayre, better known to his friends as “Hatter,” a nickname he
had somehow managed to collect in his unregenerate Oxford days, paused
for reflection.
“Quite twelve years, I should think. She was a leggy little thing of
about eight when I last set eyes on her.”
Lady Staveley gave a soft gurgle of amusement.
“She’s leggy still! All these modern girls are, you know, but I’m
afraid you’ll find that the demureness has evaporated. She’s decidedly
what the children’s old nurse used to call ‘a cure’ now.”
Hatter Fayre caught the mirth in her voice and responded to it. When
he smiled it was easy to see how he had come by the network of fine
wrinkles at the corners of his keen grey eyes and why the old Oxford
nickname had persisted through all the long years of his exile in
India, for a nickname, unless it is an unkind one, rarely sticks to a
man who is not beloved of his friends.
“I do seem to be a bit of a back number!” he admitted ruefully. “Girls
occasionally were demure, you know, in my day.”
“I’m fond of Cynthia,” went on his hostess thoughtfully. “But she
sometimes makes me rejoice that my peck of troubles are all sons.”
Fayre turned to his other neighbour.
“What do you say, Sybil? You know Lady Cynthia, don’t you?”
Lady Kean, who had been listening to the discussion in silence, shot a
languid glance of derision at her hostess.
“Eve’s a cat,” she said. “She’s only trying to assert her
independence. Cynthia can twist her round her little finger. She
twists us all, I think, except perhaps Edward. He’s untwistable.”
Sir Edward Kean, catching the sound of his name, strolled towards
them.
“What about Edward?” he asked, smiling down on his wife from his great
height. “Something flattering, I hope.”
To Fayre, deeply interested in these old friends from whom he had been
separated for so long, there was nothing he had come across since his
return to England more surprising or touching than Kean’s attitude
towards his wife. Fayre and Sybil Kean had known each other since
their nursery days; had played together as children in the country and
had foregathered again later in London. Kean had come into both their
lives later, at a time when he was a struggling young barrister and
Fayre was cramming for the Indian Civil. When Sybil Lane, as she was
then, fell madly in love with her first husband, a handsome guardsman,
married and was carried off by him to Malta, Fayre had a suspicion
that Kean was badly hit. Certainly he had remained single and had
developed a capacity for work which, according to his friends, was
almost demoniacal. To Fayre, far away in India, had come, first the
news of the death of Sybil’s husband, killed in the first year of the
War, and second the report of her marriage to Kean five years later,
and now he was back in England for good, picking up old threads once
more and keenly interested to see how time had dealt with the friends
of his youth. For a week, now, they had been at Staveley together, and
what he had seen there had both saddened and touched him.
To the outside observer it would seem that Kean had at last achieved
the two great ambitions of his life. He had married the woman of his
choice and a knighthood had already set the seal on his fame as the
most brilliant counsel of his day. But to Fayre, who had known Sybil
Kean too well in the past to be deceived by appearances, his absolute
devotion to his invalid wife seemed little short of tragic in its
intensity. For Sybil Kean was of the kind that does not forget. Her
husband’s death had come near to killing her; for weeks she lay
hovering between life and death, only to emerge with her health
shattered and an empty life before her. When, at last, Kean’s
insistence was rewarded and he persuaded her to marry him, she gave
him all she had to give, a sympathy and understanding such as has
fallen to the lot of few men and a rare loyalty. But her health had
grown steadily worse and Fayre, on first seeing her after the lapse of
years, had been appalled at the change in her.
He had often wondered, during the long hours on shipboard, how these
two would run in double harness and, curiously enough, his fears had
been all for Sybil. For even in his youth Kean had been hard, as hard
perhaps on himself as on others, in the pursuit of his aims, a man who
did not make allowances and expected none. His judgments were ruthless
and pitilessly exact and he had carved his way, with neither influence
nor money to help him, by sheer strength of personality and an amazing
brilliance both of mind and speech. When addressing a jury he used
sentiment with a skill that is only shown by those whose perceptions
are never blurred by emotion and he was a cruel cross-examiner. Kean,
the lawyer, had been no surprise to Fayre, who had watched him in the
first stages of his career, but Kean, the husband, had come as a
revelation. To Fayre, the tenderness and consideration he showed
towards his wife was almost incredible, until he remembered that, even
in his youth, Kean had always been a man of one idea. Then he had
sacrificed everything, sleep, diversion, even food, to his work, his
whole being concentrated on achieving success in the career he had
chosen, and now an influence even stronger than ambition had come into
his life and he had given himself up to it with that complete
absorption that was so characteristic of him. And the pity of it was
that all his devoted care, backed by the luxury with which he was now
able to surround her, did not serve to strengthen Sybil Kean’s frail
hold on life.
Fayre’s kindly heart was troubled as he watched these two: Sybil Kean,
incredibly slender and still beautiful, in spite of her forty years,
lying half buried in the cushions of a huge armchair, and Kean
standing over her, his height accentuated by his habit of standing
with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, dark and
saturnine, his face alight with amusement at something his wife had
just said.
“When do you get back, Edward?” asked Lady Staveley.
“Thursday, at latest, if you can really put up with me for a little
longer. I’ll try to get through to you to-morrow; I shall know better
then.”
“Meanwhile I shall have Sybil to myself for a couple of days. On the
whole, I think I’m glad you’re going, Edward!”
Kean laughed.
“Make her behave herself, and if that minx, Cynthia, arrives in the
middle of the night, as she no doubt will, keep her out of Sybil’s
room, will you? They haven’t met for at least a month and she’ll want
to tell her the story of her life.”
“You must admit that it’s a good story,” murmured Lady Kean from the
depths of the big chair.
“It will keep,” said her husband dryly, “till breakfast to-morrow
morning. I must go now, if I’m to catch the five-forty.”
“What time do you get in?” asked his wife as he bent over her.
“Six-twenty to-morrow morning. A barbarous time.”
“Make them give you a good breakfast before you go on to Chambers.”
“You’ll be all right?” Fayre heard him murmur.
“Of course. Run now, or you’ll miss it. I wish it wasn’t such a vile
day. Listen to the wind!”
“Excellent weather for traveling. Good-by.”
He was gone, and soon afterwards Lady Kean disappeared with her
hostess and Fayre was taken off by Lord Staveley to the billiard-room.
After dinner that night he gravitated as usual to Sybil Kean’s side.
For a long time they discussed old friends and Fayre gradually became
well posted in all that had happened during his absence.
“Tell me about Cynthia,” he said at last. “What _is_ she like now.
You’ve all been rather mysterious about her, you know.”
Sybil Kean glanced at him. There was the same spark of amusement in
her eyes that he had surprised in Lady Staveley’s.
“I wonder how you’ll like her,” she said thoughtfully. “I believe you
_are_ rather old-fashioned, Hatter. She’s a very perfect specimen of
the modern girl, plus extreme good looks and a charm that’s quite her
own. She manages her elders perfectly, when she takes the trouble;
when she doesn’t, she just goes her own way and entirely ignores us.”
“She sounds a minx,” remarked Fayre dryly.
“Oh, no, she isn’t! Besides, there are no minxes nowadays, my dear.
She’s very affectionate, very loyal, and with an excellent head on her
shoulders. When I say she ignores us, I simply mean that she considers
her own judgment quite as good as ours and goes by it. I’m not at all
sure she isn’t right.”
“Which means that she’ll ride for a fall one of these days and get it
and then her elders will have to pick her up and see to the damage.”
Lady Kean’s eyes were very thoughtful.
“I wonder. The new generation is better able to look after itself than
any of us are willing to admit. If she does come a toss, which is more
than possible, I’m inclined to think she will pick herself up and say
nothing about it. She’s got more grit than I ever had, Hatter.”
“Nonsense!” Fayre began explosively; but she interrupted him.
“It’s true,” she went on, her voice half whimsical, half sad. “I never
stood up to life and it broke me. If I had, I should not be the
useless creature I am to-day. Cynthia will fight like a little tiger
and come out at the end, scarred perhaps, but probably a wiser and
better woman than she was before. There’s something gallant about
her. . . .”
Her voice trailed off and he knew she was thinking of the past.
“Useless creature is grossly inaccurate,” he said gruffly. “No one who
has seen you with Edward could call you that.”
She turned on him eagerly.
“Do you think he’s happy?” she asked with an insistence that surprised
him. “He gives so much and I seem to have so little to offer in
return.”
“You are everything to him,” he answered with conviction. “I have
never seen a man so changed. I believe he’s younger now at heart than
he was when I first knew him.”
“His capacity for work is still inhuman. If he hadn’t got nerves like
steel he would have broken down long ago. I feel frightened about him
sometimes. He’s so incapable of half-measures. Sometimes I think these
very strong people are really the weakest. Their hold on things is so
tremendous that when they lose them . . .”
She made a little gesture with her hand, a hand so frail that Fayre
turned his eyes away from it quickly. His protest was as much for his
own reassurance as for hers.
“I don’t think Edward’s of the kind to lose anything once he’s got
it,” he asserted with a cheeriness he tried to feel. “He’s a very
lucky man, Sybil.”
He was more moved than he cared to show, and for a time he sat smoking
in silence. When he spoke, it was to lead the conversation back to its
original subject.
“I’m intrigued about our friend the minx,” he said. “What’s she up to
that she should arrive at country houses in the middle of the night?”
Lady Kean laughed.
“That’s an exaggeration of Edward’s. She’s motoring over and dining
with a Miss Allen on the way. She’ll probably be here before twelve.
As to what she’s up to, I’ve got my own suspicions.”
Fayre settled himself comfortably in his chair.
“This is gossip,” he said fervently. “Tell me some more.”
“It isn’t gossip; on the contrary, it’s solid fact. Cynthia is at
present engaged in bringing down her mother’s grey hairs with sorrow
to the grave. The result is that she’s having rather a thin time at
home just now.”
“It’s a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Cynthia’s
mother,” remarked Fayre thoughtfully. “But I seem to remember that I
never liked her.”
“She set her heart on a good match for Cynthia and of course the
inevitable happened. The wretched child has engaged herself to a boy
with nothing to recommend him but a fine war record and an inadequate
pension. Her mother is beside herself and, in a way, I don’t blame
her. Cynthia might have married anybody.”
“Instead of which she’s marrying a nobody. And you like him.”
“How on earth did you know that?” said Lady Kean, startled. “You’re
quite right, I do. John Leslie’s a nice boy and he knows how to manage
Cynthia. There’s plenty of money on her side of the family and he’s
working hard, farming on a small scale, and, I believe, manages to
make it pay. The last I heard of the affair, he had been forbidden the
house.”
“In spite of which, the engagement continues?”
“Of course! And I happen to know that Cynthia’s people went up to
London this afternoon. John Leslie’s farm is halfway between Callston
and Miss Allen’s. All of which accounts largely for Cynthia’s decision
not to arrive here till late this evening. I don’t know anything; this
is pure conjecture.”
“It seems sound reasoning. Who is this Miss Allen?”
“Mrs. Draycott’s sister.”
“Oh!” remarked Fayre, taking another cigarette and lighting it
thoughtfully.
Lady Kean regarded him with approval.
“That was nice of you,” she said. “I don’t like her, either. The
sister’s quite different, though. She went on to stay with her
yesterday. I expect Cynthia’s meeting Mrs. Draycott to-night and if
_she_ doesn’t like her she’ll say so!”
Fayre meditated, enjoying his cigarette.
“No, I don’t like her,” he said at last. “We get women like that in
India.”
“We get them in England too.”
Lady Kean’s voice sounded suddenly flat and lifeless and Fayre,
realizing suddenly how late it was, decided that she was tired and
that he had better leave her to herself for a time. In any case, he
had no desire to discuss Mrs. Draycott. She had been his fellow-guest
at Staveley for the past week and he had been glad to see her go.
He had just risen to his feet when the door opened and Lady Cynthia
came in.
She stood in the doorway, straight and slim, sheathed in vivid blue,
her dark shingled hair clinging in tight waves about her beautiful
little head and, at the sight of her, Fayre realized the truth of Lady
Kean’s description. There _was_ something “gallant” about this quaint
mixture of youth and self-reliance, and it appealed to him at once.
That she was popular, there could be no doubt. A chorus of welcome
greeted her entrance, and Lady Staveley swept to meet her and draw her
up to the fire.
“Cynthia, dear, you must be frozen. Your hands are like ice. Is it
bitter outside?”
The girl nodded.
“Pretty bad. The wind’s dropped, though.”
To Fayre, observing her with frank curiosity, her voice sounded tense
and there was a glitter in her eyes and a flush just beneath them that
troubled him. Was the “modern” girl, he wondered, usually as exotic as
this? If so, heaven help her! He watched her as she bent over Lady
Kean and was struck by the real affection and solicitude she showed in
her manner.
“You look tired, child,” said her hostess. “Was it very dull at Miss
Allen’s?”
“It wasn’t dull,” answered Lady Cynthia slowly. “Anything but.”
She stood by the fire warming her hands in silence; then, abruptly, as
if she had come to a sudden decision, she drew herself up and faced
the room.
“You’ll hear it to-morrow, so I may as well tell you now,” she cried
with a ring of defiance in her voice. “Mrs. Draycott was killed this
afternoon. She was found shot in John’s sitting-room at the farm.”