“Yes,” I admitted. “I had a motive. It concerned a secret.”
“Of what?” she asked, instantly interested.
“A diplomatic secret,” I replied, hoping to extricate myself from an
_impasse_.
She smiled disbelievingly. I saw it in her face. No man can deceive
the woman who loves him. Only fools try it, fools of any age and in
any sphere of life. Woman’s brain is far more acute than man’s, as
every man knows. She has an amazing sense of intuition of the truth
which a man always lacks, a somehow keener sense of actual happenings,
and is never misled as a man can be.
Man, in his superiority over the gentler sex, always believes himself
invulnerable in matters of wits or subterfuge. But woman, with her
quiet, finer, and more developed instincts, always wins in such
struggles.
And I knew that my beloved Joan held the advantage.
“You Foreign Office people have strange secrets, it seems. During the
war I could have believed that there might be spies in South London.
But now that there is peace, what plotting can there possibly be?”
“We always have internal plots in England, formed by the dissatisfied
party--whatever it may be from time to time--according to the
criticisms of the Press,” I laughed, in an endeavor to lead her away
from her actual point. But it was useless. Yet how could I confess to
her my craven cowardice on that night when the well-known criminal met
his death in Bloomsbury?
No one had connected me with the tragedy--not even the woman who loved
him. She had declared, that night when I had come upon that criminal
gang, that I was not the man her lover had attacked on the curb. That
had certainly saved me from arrest as an alleged murderer. But, it had
brought the awful consequences of that foggy night.
I loved Joan with all my heart and with all my soul. She was my
affinity, without her presence and her sweet affection I could not
live; and yet, behind it all was that demoniacal shadow on me--that
frightful nightmare of my newly awakened existence--Illona, my wife.
In the darkness of the past night, as the great express had roared and
rocked across the P.L.M. from Rome to Calais, I had lain in my narrow
sleeping-berth, confused and wondering, dreading to meet my beloved,
because I knew not what explanation to give.
What would you have done, my reader of this strange adventure, had you
been an ordinary man like myself? Put yourself in my place. I loved
_sub rosa_ and in secret--because of the anger of my father--one of
the most popular and charming girls in all London, and yet, after two
years, I had found myself still as a straw drifting on the wind, still
in fear lest she should learn the truth.
I could well see that she doubted me. Was it any wonder? All my
explanations were terribly lame, I knew. And, worse still, on it all
lay that heavy fact that I had betrayed her love, that I was already
married.
It was on my tongue to make a clean confession of the whole affair, as
I suppose I really ought to have done. However, I hesitated, because I
felt that before I could reveal the whole story, I must seek the truth
concerning my union with a woman of whom I knew nothing--Illona.
She questioned me, but I fear I was too engrossed in my own thoughts
to respond intelligibly.
“You see, you never tell me the real truth, Lionel,” she exclaimed at
last. “You are always so very reticent, so strange as compared with
your old self. I never can understand you nowadays.”
“I haven’t been well,” I replied in excuse.
“Yet you do your service for the Foreign Office, constantly traveling
to the capitals. You are robust, and hearty, and never ail for a
moment.”
“Since my--my accident, I fear I have not been the same, dearest,” I
said, taking her soft hand and caressing it. “Do forgive me. It is not
all my fault. You must trust me, Joan dear.”
She turned her sweet face towards me, and our lips met.
“Of course, my darling. I know I’m hard on you sometimes, but when I
sit at home here, and think, during the days you are abroad, I--well,
I can’t describe my feelings, except that it seems to me that you are
never frank with me--that you are concealing something very important
from me.”
“I certainly am not,” I responded, with a vain attempt to be bold
beneath my love’s searching gaze.
“But, Lionel, you are--and you know quite well you are,” she replied.
“You have something on your mind that I ought to know, and yet you
will never reveal it. All you Foreign Office people are the most
secretive persons on earth. Sir George, Jack Denham, and Tommie
Tennant are all the same. I was in love with Jack once, as you know,
and he was just the same as you are--spoke in enigmas and smiled
mysteriously if I asked him to explain.”
“My dear Joan,” I said, “one of the first lessons one learns at
Downing Street is never to allow one’s left hand to know what one’s
right hand does.”
“And you’ve evidently learnt that lesson well, my dear Lionel,” said
the girl, with that quiet philosophy that became the daughter of the
eminent King’s Counsel.
“My darling,” I said, placing my arm about her waist and kissing her
upon the lips, “we are here alone to-night after my journey to Rome.
Why not let us enjoy this evening rather than allow ourselves to be at
cross-purposes? I love you, Joan!” I cried passionately, kissing her
again and again. “To me, you are my world, my all. Can I say more?”
She drew herself slowly but deliberately from my embrace, and in a
low, changed voice said:
“Yes, darling. You can tell me the truth if you like.”
“Of what?” I cried, with affected concern.
My feigned bewilderment did not impress her. With her woman’s clever
intuition she saw instantly that my assumed ignorance was mere
pretence.
“What has arisen to be a bar against our happiness?” she asked in a
low, hard voice. “You know what it is. If you are an honest man,
Lionel, you will tell me the truth!”
The truth! How could I tell my dearest, when I knew not the truth
myself?
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
MY FATHER’S STORY
While I was still sitting in argument with Joan, her father--stout,
hale, and hearty--returned.
“Hulloa, Lionel!” he exclaimed, greeting me in his usual cheery
manner. “Back again, eh? Joan said you’ve been to Rome. How are things
there? We were there at the Grand two years ago. I had to appear in a
bank case, and I went over to get some information.”
“Oh, Rome is always Rome, you know,” I laughed. “Sir Richard
Kingscliffe and Lady Betty are well. We spoke of you.”
“He wrote me a month ago, saying they were coming over on leave in a
few weeks. My wife has invited them to stay with us, instead of going
to a hotel.”
“Lady Kingscliffe told me so.”
“I expect Sir Richard finds his post pretty difficult under the
Mussolini régime, eh?” remarked the great King’s Counsel, whose name
was so well known throughout the land. A stout, clean-shaven,
bald-headed man, with a somewhat arrogant manner when in Court, he was
a terror as a cross-examiner. From the Recordership of Reading, he had
been invited twice by the Lord Chancellor to accept a judgeship, but
had refused on both occasions. He had told me that a judicial seat did
not appeal to him after his constant work at the Bar, for his briefs
were among the most highly marked of any man in the Temple.
To become a judge meant a loss of quite fifteen to twenty thousand a
year. Hence, the reason was not far to seek. One often regrets that
English judges are so poorly paid, and that when they attain the plums
of the legal profession they are given a rather worthless knighthood,
and receive only a living wage, considering the dignity they are
compelled to support So, often the greatest legal men prefer to remain
at the Bar, while others of fewer mental attainments wear judicial
robes.
Everyone knew John Gell. He dined out a great deal, his ponderous
personality being a most lovable one. He had the habit of smoking
unusually large cigars, and when he laughed his stomach rose and fell,
until his hilarity became contagious. In all London no after-dinner
speaker was more witty. The reporters were ever on the alert for some
_bon mot_ from his lips.
He took me from Joan’s side into the dining-room and compelled me to
have a night-cap with him--a gin and soda with half a lemon squeezed
into it, and a chunk of ice.
Suddenly he turned to me, and asked:
“Do you feel better than you did, my boy? Before you left you
complained of bad pains in the head. Joan has been very anxious about
you.”
“I feel better,” I replied. “But I suppose it is the result of my
accident.”
“You certainly had a very narrow squeak,” replied the great lawyer.
“When I heard you were at Guy’s I went down at once to see you.
Bellamy, the surgeon, had very little hope of your recovery. Still,
that’s all over, and you seem fit enough, or you wouldn’t be able to
do the long journeys to the capitals.”
How I wished I dared confide in him all that had happened to me, and
my strange awakening in Rome. I thought it best, however, to confide
in no one except my own father.
I had rung him up before dinner and learnt that he had gone down to
Bulwick on the previous day.
Therefore, early on the following morning I left King’s Cross, and at
noon the car met me and took me up through the park to my old home.
The spacious old Tudor mansion, with its tall, twisted chimneys and
castellated turret, was unchanged, though for over two years, to my
knowledge, I had not seen it. The dear old governor, in his gardening
suit and faded straw hat, came out to greet me.
In town he was always well dressed, even dandified, a well-known
figure in the Park on Sundays, and often declared to be one of the
smartest of the elderly brigade in the House. But at home he always
enjoyed the ease of old clothes, with the comfort of old slippers in
the evening.
“Well, my boy!” he cried. “I’m so glad to get you home again. You
seldom come down here nowadays. But there! You surely have sufficient
traveling.”
We walked through the open French windows of the old-fashioned
morning-room, with its cool chintz covers--the room which my poor
mother had so dearly loved. In the centre of the polished table stood
a great bowl of yellow, sweet-scented roses, while upon a side-table
stood a blue china bowl of pot-pourri.
We threw ourselves into deep arm-chairs opposite each other, and then
I exclaimed:
“The reason I’ve come home is because I want to speak seriously with
you, dad.”
“My dear boy. Just say what you like. If you wish to confide anything
to me, you know that I am always discreet in your interests.”