"Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two."
Dick Wantele opened the door of the drawing-room. Lined with panels of
cedar-wood and sparsely furnished with fine examples of early French
Empire furniture, the great room looked, as did so many of the
apartments of Rede Place, foreign rather than English, and it was only
used by Mr. and Mrs. Maule on the rare occasions when they gave a
dinner-party.
The master and mistress of Rede Place were awaiting their guests.
Richard Maule, his figure looking thinner, more attenuated than ever,
leant heavily with his right hand on a stick, his left lay on the
mantelpiece. Dick noticed that he looked more alive than usual; there
were two spots of red on his cheeks. Mrs. Maule was moving restlessly
about the room: she disliked exceedingly finding herself alone with her
husband, and she seldom allowed so untoward an accident to befall her.
Wantele looked at her curiously. His cousin's wife had the power of ever
surprising him anew. To-night it was her dress which surprised him. It
was deep purple in tint, of a diaphanous material, and rendered
opalescent, shot with gleams of pale blue and pale yellow, by some
cunning arrangement of silk underneath. Made, as even he could see, with
but slight regard to the fashion of the moment, Wantele realised that
this gown, beautiful, even magnificent as was its effect, would not
appear a proper evening dress to the conventional eye of Mrs. Pache and
of Mrs. Pache's daughter.
A fold of the thin shimmering stuff veiled Athena's dimpled shoulders,
and swept up almost to her throat, and her arms gleamed whitely through
cunningly arranged twists of the same transparent stuff carried down to
the wrist.
Her dark, naturally curling hair, instead of being puffed out stiffly as
was the ugly fashion of the moment, was braided closely to her head, and
on her head was placed a wreath made of bunches of small deep purple
grapes unrelieved by leaves. The only ornament worn by her was a large
burnt topaz--that stone which fire turns a rose red tint--attached to a
seed pearl chain.
Wantele told himself with rueful amusement that Mrs. Pache would
probably take the opportunity of wearing this evening her ancient
diamond tiara and her most _décolleté_ gown.
"I suppose you'll come back here after dinner?" he addressed Athena, and
as he spoke he could not help telling himself that she was really
enchantingly lovely. Mrs. Maule looked to-night as if she had stepped
down from one of the friezes of the Parthenon, or perhaps had leapt from
a slender vase garlanded with nymphs dancing to the strains of
celestial music.
The Frenchman who had designed her dress was evidently, as are so many
modern Parisians, a lover and a student of Greek art.
"Yes, I suppose we must. It would be cruel to inflict Mrs. Pache and
Patty on Richard."
But she did not look at her husband while she spoke. She often conveyed
messages, and even asked questions of him, by the oblique medium of Dick
Wantele.
Richard Maule gave no sign of having heard her words.
"I suppose you will like to have a talk with General Lingard?" The young
man turned to the silent, frail-looking figure standing by the
mantelpiece. He was himself unaware of how much his tone changed and
softened when he addressed his cousin.
"Yes, I'd like a few words with General Lingard. I wonder if Jane has
told him that I'm her trustee. Perhaps he won't mind coming in alone to
me for a few moments."
* * * * *
"Miss Digby."
The girl advanced into the room a little timidly. She had put on her
best evening gown in honour of the famous soldier who was Jane
Oglander's betrothed. It was a pale blue satin dress, touched here and
there with pink. Wantele told himself regretfully that Mabel Digby's
gown looked stiff, commonplace, in fact positively ugly, by contrast
with Athena's beautiful costume. He liked Mabel best in the plain coats
and skirts, the simple flannel or linen shirts, she always wore in the
daytime.
The door was again flung open, and a small crowd of people came into the
room. Mrs. Pache was wearing, as Wantele noticed with concern, her
tiara, and a mauve velvet dress which had done duty at one of the last
of Queen Victoria's Drawing-rooms. Hard on her mother followed Patty
Pache, looking as her type of young English womanhood so often looks,
younger than twenty-seven, which was her age; and then Mr. Pache and his
son Tom, the latter a neat young man with a pleasant job in the Board of
Trade, whom his mother fondly believed to be one of the governing forces
of the Empire. Lagging behind the others was a tall lean man wearing
old-fashioned, not very well-cut evening clothes. This must of course be
General Lingard, the guest of the evening.
Richard Maule steadied himself on his stick and took a step forward.
There was a moment of confused talking and of hand-shaking. Dick Wantele
and Mabel Digby drew a little to one side. Mrs. Pache's face broke into
a nervous smile. She was wondering whether high dresses were about to
become the fashion, or whether Mrs. Maule had a cold.
"May I introduce you," she said, "I mean may I introduce to you my
husband's cousin, General Lingard? I think you must have heard us speak
of him----"
Athena Maule held out her little hand; it lay for a moment grasped in
the strong fingers of her guest. She smiled up into his face, and
instantly Lingard knew her for the woman in the railway carriage, the
woman he had--snubbed; the woman he had--defended. "I have often heard
of General Lingard--not only from you"--she hesitated a moment--"but
also from others, dear Mrs. Pache."
Tom Pache gave a sudden laugh, as if his hostess had made an
extraordinarily witty joke, and Athena nodded at him gaily. He and she
were excellent friends, though Tom had never, strange to say, fallen in
love with her.
For a moment the five men stood together on the hearthrug.
No formal introduction had taken place between Wantele and Lingard, but
each man looked at the other with a keen, measuring look. "My cousin
never dines with us," Dick said in a low voice, "but we shall join him
after dinner. He is looking forward to a talk with you." Then he turned
to young Pache. "I'm afraid, Tom, you'll have to take in your sister.
There's no way out of it!"
Tom Pache made a little face of mock resignation.
"Isn't Miss Oglander here?" he whispered. "Why isn't Miss Oglander
here?" Then he drew the other aside. "I say, Dick, isn't this a _go_?"
Wantele nodded his head; a wry smile came over his thin lips. "Yes, it
_is_ rather a go," he answered dryly.
"We didn't even know Hew Lingard knew Miss Oglander!"
"And we only knew quite lately that you were related to General
Lingard."
Tom Pache grinned. "Father was his guardian, and would go on guardianing
him after he was grown up. He and my father had a row--years ago. But of
course we made it up with him when he blossomed out into a famous
character. Mother wrote and asked him to stay with us last time he was
in England. He wouldn't come then. But the other day he wrote her quite
a decent letter telling her of his engagement. They don't want it
announced--I can't think why----"
"I suppose they both hate fuss," said Wantele briefly. "We tried to get
Jane here before to-night--but she's nursing a sick friend, and she
can't come for another week. By the way, I've forgotten to ask how you
like your motor?"
"Ripping!" said young Pache briefly. "Unluckily Patty insists on driving
it, and father weakly lets her do it."
Dinner was announced, and the four curiously assorted couples went into
the dining-room.
While avoiding looking at him across the round table, Wantele was
intently conscious of the presence of the man who was to become Jane
Oglander's husband.
Hew Lingard was absolutely unlike what he had expected him to be.
Wantele had never cared for soldiers, while admitting unwillingly that
there must be in the great leaders qualities very different from those
which adorned his few military acquaintances. He had thought to see a
trim, well-groomed--hateful but expressive phrase!--good-looking man. He
saw before him a loosely-built, powerful figure and a dark, clean-shaven
face, of which the dominant features were the strong jaw and
secretive-looking mouth, which seemed rather to recall the wild soldier
of fortune of another epoch than the shrewd strategist and coldly able
organiser Lingard had shown himself to be.
Newspaper readers had been told how extraordinary was Lingard's personal
influence over his men. An influence exerted not only over his own
soldiers, but over the friendly native tribesmen.
Wantele, who read widely and who remembered what he read, recalled a
phrase which had caught his fancy, a phrase invented to meet a very
different case:
"They grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shows them sport, and
by whose hallo they are wont to be encouraged."
Lingard looked a man who could show sport....
Almost against his will, he could not help liking the look of Jane
Oglander's lover. There was humour as well as keen intelligence in Hew
Lingard's ugly face. When he smiled, his large mouth had generous curves
which belied the strong, stern jaw. Wantele divined that he was half
amused, half ashamed, at the honours which were now being heaped upon
him, and certainly he was doing his best to make all those about him
forget that he was in any sense unlike themselves.
Wantele also became aware, with a satisfaction he would have found it
hard to analyse, that General Lingard was paying no special attention to
his hostess; or rather, while paying Mrs. Maule all the attention that
was her due, there was quite wanting in his manner any touch of the
ardent interest, the involuntary emotion, which most men showed when
brought in contact for the first time with Athena. And yet how beautiful
she looked to-night! How full of that subdued, eloquent radiance which
is the dangerous attribute of a certain type of rare feminine
loveliness!
Mrs. Maule was making herself charming--charming, not only to the famous
soldier who was her guest, but also to the dull old man who sat on her
other side, and to his tiresome, pompous wife. She was also showing
surprising knowledge of those local interests which she was supposed to
despise.
Wantele's mind travelled back to the last time a dinner-party had been
given at Rede Place.
Jane Oglander had been there, and on that occasion Athena had been in
one of her ill moods, proclaiming with rather haughty irony her contempt
for the dull neighbourhood in which she had perforce to live during
certain portions of each year. Wantele remembered how he had watched her
with a certain lazy annoyance, too content to feel really angry, for
Jane Oglander had been divinely kind to him that day, and he had
thought--poor fool that he had been!--that at last he was adventuring
further than she had yet allowed him to do into her reserved, sensitive
nature.
How little we poor humans know of what the future holds for us! Till a
few days ago Dick had always thought of himself as a young man. To-night
he felt that youth lay behind him--so far behind as to be almost
forgotten--as the three young people talked and laughed across him to
one another.
Athena was now talking to Mr. Pache, inclining her graceful head towards
him with an air of amiable, placid interest; and, as Wantele noted with
satirical amusement, Mr. Pache had the foolish, happy look that even the
most sensible of elderly men assume when talking to a very pretty
woman.
Mrs. Pache did not look either happy or at ease. Even to a nimble mind
it is difficult entirely to readjust one's views of a human being. Till
a short time ago, in fact till his name began to be frequently mentioned
in the _Morning Post_, the worthy lady had considered Hew Lingard the
black sheep of her husband's highly respectable family.
There had once been a great trouble about him. That was a good many
years ago--perhaps as much as seventeen years ago, just at the time that
dear Tom had had the measles. She had tried to pump her husband about it
last night, but he had refused to say anything, which was very tiresome,
and she couldn't remember much about it.
Hew Lingard had got into a scrape with a woman; that static, dreadful
fact of course Mrs. Pache remembered. Such things are never forgotten by
the Mrs. Paches of this world. It was worse than a scrape, for Hew had
nearly _married_ a most unsuitable person--in fact he would have married
her if the person hadn't at the last moment made up her mind that he
wasn't good enough.
That was pretty well all Mrs. Pache could remember about it. She hadn't
forgotten that rather vulgar phrase "not good enough," because her
husband had come back from London to Norfolk, where they were then
living, and had walked into the room with the words: "Well, it's all
over and done with! She's gone and married another young fool whom she
has had up her sleeve the whole time! She didn't think Hew Lingard good
enough!"
Hew had taken the business very hard, instead of rejoicing as he ought
to have done at his lucky escape. And they, the Paches, had seen nothing
of him for many years.
Three years ago, however, dear Tom had made her write to Hew Lingard,
and though Hew had refused her kind invitation, he had written quite a
nice letter.
This time both she and her husband had written to him, reminding
him--strangely enough, they had both used the same phrase in their
letters--that "blood is thicker than water," and urging their now
creditable relative to pay them a _long_ visit.
In accepting the invitation, Hew Lingard had announced his engagement to
Jane Oglander--the Miss Oglander whom they all knew so well, the Jane
Oglander who was often, for weeks at a time, one of their nearest
neighbours, and who, everybody had thought, would end by marrying Dick
Wantele!
Still, to-night Mrs. Pache told herself that Hew Lingard's engagement to
Miss Oglander was odd--odd was the word which Mrs. Pache had used in
this connection, not once but many times, when discussing the matter
with her sleepy husband on the night Hew Lingard's letter had come, and
when eagerly talking it over with her daughter the next morning.
It was so _odd_ that Jane Oglander had never spoken of General Lingard.
Surely she must have known that they, the Paches, were closely related
to him? It was to be hoped that now Hew Lingard had become a great man,
he was not going to be ashamed of the relations who had always been so
kind to him, and who in the past, when he was an unsatisfactory,
eccentric young man, had always advised him for his good.
What a pity it was that Hew had been in such a hurry! From what they
could make out he must have gone and proposed to Miss Oglander the very
day of his arrival in London.
And then there was that disgraceful story about Miss Oglander's brother.
It was indeed a pity Hew Lingard hadn't waited a bit! He might marry
anybody now--a girl, for instance, whose people were connected with the
Government, someone who could help on dear Tom, and get him promotion.
Jane Oglander was very nice, thoroughly nice, but she would never be of
any use to the Pache family.
Such were the troubled and disconnected thoughts which hurried through
Mrs. Pache's mind while she listened with apparent attention to her odd,
but now celebrated kinsman. General Lingard was trying to make himself
pleasant to his cousin Annie by telling her of a missionary expedition
to Tibet.
Mrs. Pache had always been interested in missionaries; she was a
subscriber to the S.P.C.K. The Society's publications satisfied that
passion for romance which sometimes survives in the most commonplace
human being, especially if that human being be a woman.
Just now General Lingard was speaking with kindling enthusiasm of a
certain medical missionary's fine work in West Africa. But Mrs. Pache's
face clouded distrustfully. She had suddenly remembered a scene in her
school-room, her children, Tom and his sister, together with two little
friends, sitting round Hew Lingard listening with breathless interest to
the adventures of another missionary.
This divine had sent home as relics the clothes he had worn when he had
succeeded in converting a whole village in Africa, and Mrs. Pache
vividly recalled the foolish verses which Lingard had declaimed to her
young people with solemn face and twinkling eyes--verses which cruelly
misinterpreted the missionary's intention.
Against her will the jingling lines ran in her head--
"He preached--and did not bore them;
Their chief, a hoary man,
Replied, 'We are converted,
But, to turn to other topics,
Betrousered and beshirted,
You're _outré_ in the Tropics.'
The preacher is convinced in turn
And dresses--like his flock...."
She remembered with irritation how the children had insisted on making a
copy of these absurd, most unbecoming, rhymes, and how they had
continually sung them to the beautiful old tune of "She Wore a Wreath of
Roses."
Mrs. Pache allowed her eyes to wander round the table. How wizened and
old Dick Wantele was beginning to look! If poor Mr. Maule lasted much
longer, Wantele would be quite middle-aged before he came into this fine
property.
At one time--oh, long ago now, ten years ago, when they first moved into
the neighbourhood, when Patty was only sixteen--Mrs. Pache had had a
vague hope that Dick Wantele and her Patty might take a liking to one
another. Oddly enough, quite the opposite had happened! Though thrown
into the conventional intimacy induced by propinquity, Patty had
disliked Dick from the first; she thought him priggish and affected, and
he was never more than coldly civil; how odd now to think that till the
other day, they had all vaguely supposed that he would end by marrying
Miss Oglander....
Mrs. Pache looked fondly at her daughter. Patty didn't look as well as
usual to-night--her gown showed too much red arm. No doubt high evening
dresses were "coming in," for Mrs. Maule was generally in advance of the
fashion.
Patty was leaning forward trying to join in the conversation of Mrs.
Maule and of her father. Mrs. Pache wished pettishly that Hew Lingard
would stop talking. She wanted to hear what Patty was saying, and her
wish became at last painted very legibly on her face.
* * * * *
"The Barkings? Oh, Mrs. Maule, they're such nice people! I do hope you
will call on them"--Patty's voice was raised in unusual animation. And
then her father's gruff voice broke in: "They were out when my wife
called on them; but Lady Barking wrote a note asking Patty over to
dinner. They have four men staying in the house just now, and only their
married daughter to entertain them."
"Wasn't it lucky? And I enjoyed myself so much!" Everyone looked at the
fortunate Patty. Even Wantele felt a thrill of lazy interest. Newcomers
in a country neighbourhood count for much, and rightly so, to the old
inhabitants.
"You remember what Halnaver House used to look like in the days of poor
dear old Lady Morell? Well, now it's quite different! You remember the
staircase, the famous old carved oak staircase?"
Patty looked round the table eagerly, and Wantele nodded assent.
"Well, they've taken the staircase away! They're building a most
delightful house in town, right in the middle of London, and yet it's to
be exactly like a country house! So they're going to put that oak
staircase there, and they've installed a lift at Halnaver instead! You
press a button and the lift takes you up to any floor--even right to the
very top of the house, where the garrets have been turned into the most
delightful bachelors' rooms----"
"Oh Patty, you didn't tell me that," cried her mother. "What an
extraordinary thing! Then where are the servants' quarters to be?"
"I did tell you, mother--I know I did! Where the old stables used to be,
of course! They've built a wing out there. It really has become a
wonderful house," said Patty happily. It was not often that she was
listened to with such respectful attention. "By simply pressing a button
as you lie in bed you can lock and unlock the door of your room!"
"The house must be all buttons"--observed Wantele thoughtfully.
But Patty went on: "One of the men staying there, a Major Biddell, said
he had never stayed in such a comfortable house! In fact he said--and he
seems to know everybody and go everywhere--that it was as comfortable as
the Paris Ritz Hotel. Indeed, he went further, and declared that not
even the Ritz Hotel has a quarter of the clever contrivances that Lady
Barking has managed to put into that poor old place!"
"There can be no doubt at all," said Mrs. Pache, "that the Barkings will
prove a most delightful addition to the neighbourhood." She looked
insistently at Athena Maule. "I do hope you are going to call on them,"
she said.
Athena looked down. Mrs. Pache noticed with some irritation that her
hostess had extraordinarily long and silken eyelashes. She almost
wondered if they could be real.
"I think not," Mrs. Maule at last answered, very quietly.
Lingard was struck by the purity of her enunciation. To Mrs. Maule her
father's tongue was an acquired language. As a child she had only spoken
modern Greek and French.
"I have seen the Barkings. Dick and I passed them once when we were
driving. And then last week I found myself, for a few minutes, in a
railway carriage with Lady Barking and her daughter----"
For a swift moment Athena, raising her eyes, looked straight at General
Lingard; then her violet, dark fringed eyes dropped, and she added, "I
dare say they are excellent people."
"They're much--much more than that!" cried Patty, offended.
"But surely a little noisy? I did not feel them to be of our sort--I
mean Richard's and mine," said Athena. "We are very quiet folk. No," she
threw her head back with the proud, graceful little gesture most of
those present were familiar with--"I do not think it likely that we
shall know the Barkings."
"Oh, but, Mrs. Maule, do stretch a point"--Patty's voice was full of
earnest entreaty. "They are so anxious to know you! They have heard so
much about Rede Place!" She turned appealingly to Wantele, but he
looked, as those about him so often saw him look, irritatingly
indifferent, almost bored.
Again Mrs. Maule smilingly shook her head.
"If they entertain as much as they are going to do, I'm sure that
friends of yours will often be staying with them," Patty said defiantly.
"I do not think that very likely." Mrs. Maule spoke with a touch of
scorn in her voice, and Patty Pache felt a wave of anger sweep through
her. She had _promised_ her new friends that Mrs. Maule should call at
Halnaver House.
"Then you'll be rather surprised to hear that even now there is a man
there, that Major Biddell--such an amusing, delightful man--who _does_
know you! Lady Barking wanted to send him over to call. He seemed rather
shy about it, but I told him that you and Dick were always pleased to
see people, even when Mr. Maule did not feel up to the exertion."
"I hope, Miss Patty, that you do not often take my name in vain"--there
was a touch of severity in Dick Wantele's voice.
She blushed uncomfortably. "Oh, but it's true!" she cried. "You and Mrs.
Maule often see people when Mr. Maule isn't well!"
As the ladies walked out of the room, Athena lingered a moment at the
door. "Please bring them all back to the drawing-room," she whispered
hurriedly to Wantele. "I wish to take General Lingard in to Richard
myself. Jane asked me to do so in her last letter."
Wantele looked at her musingly. He felt certain Jane had done nothing of
the kind. Athena was fond of telling little useful lies. It was a matter
of no importance.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later Athena Maule and Hew Lingard passed slowly across
the square atrium, which formed the centre of Rede Place.
Save for the white marble presences about them they were alone, alone
for the first time since that brief moment of dual solitude in the
railway carriage when Lingard had looked at her in cold, mute apology
for the scene he had provoked, and which she had perforce witnessed.
The door of the room they were approaching opened, and a man-servant
came out with a covered dish in his hand.
"My husband is not quite ready for us," Athena spoke a little
breathlessly. She felt excited, wrought up to a high pitch of emotion.
For once Chance, the fickle goddess, was on her side. "Shall we wait
here a few moments?" She led him aside into a deep recess.
Then, when the servant's footsteps had died away, she turned her face up
to him and Lingard saw that her beautiful mouth was quivering with
feeling, her eyes suffused with tears. So might Andromeda have stood
before Perseus when at last unloosened from the cruel rock, the living,
eloquent embodiment of passionate and innocent shame.
"I want to thank you----" she whispered. "And--and--let me tell you
this. Simply to know that there is in this base, hateful world a man who
could do what you did for a woman unknown to him, has altered my life,
given me courage to go on!"
Mrs. Maule spoke the truth as far as the truth was in her to speak. The
incident in the railway carriage had powerfully moved and excited her;
she had thought of little else even after Jane Oglander's letter
announcing her engagement had come to divert the current of her life.
Nay, the news conveyed in Jane's letter had brought with it the
explanation of what had happened. Athena had leapt instinctively on the
truth. Her unknown friend--her noble defender--could have been no other
than General Lingard himself, on his way to stay with the Paches.
It was Athena Maule, in her character of Jane Oglander's dearest friend,
who had made the quixotic stranger's sword spring from its scabbard. The
knowledge had stung; but she was now engaged in drawing the venom out of
the sting. It was surely her right to make this remarkable, this famous
man value and respect her for herself--not simply for Jane's sake.
"I wish I could have killed the cur!" Lingard's voice was low, but his
face had become fierce, tense--the face of a fighter in the thick of
battle.
Mrs. Maule was filled with a feeling of exquisite satisfaction. Once
more she found life worth living....
But General Lingard must not be allowed to forget Jane Oglander,
Athena's friend--Athena's almost sister--the one woman who loved and
admired her whole-heartedly, unquestioningly.
"Because of what you did the other day, and--and because of Jane"--her
voice shook with excitement--"we must be friends, General Lingard." She
held out her hand, and Lingard, taking the slender fingers in his, wrung
Athena's hand, and then with a sudden, rather awkward movement he raised
it to his lips.
"And now we must go on," she said quietly. "Richard is waiting for us."
All emotion has a common denominator. The last time Lingard had been as
moved as he was now was when he had parted from Jane Oglander in the
little sitting-room in that shabby house on the south side of the
Thames.
There was in Jane a certain austerity, a delicate reserve of manner,
which had made him feel that she was a creature to be worshipped from
afar, rather than a woman responsive to the man she loves.
Each happy day of the week they had spent together practically alone in
London, Lingard had had to woo her afresh. But that, to a man of the
great soldier's temperament, had been no matter for complaining. Her
scruples and delicacies had been met by him with infinite indulgence and
tenderness.
Then on the last day, they had had their first lovers' quarrel. He had
entreated her to come away with him, to accept, that is, the Maules'
eager invitation. Was he not going to the Paches' simply because they
lived near Rede Place? But Jane had promised to stay a week with a
friend who was ill--and she would not break her word. Lingard had become
suddenly angry, and in his anger had turned cold.
For the first time in his knowledge of her, tears had sprung to Jane's
eyes. Where is the man who does not early make the woman who loves him
weep? But these tears, or so it had seemed to him, had unlocked a deep
spring of poignant feeling in her heart, or perchance had made it
possible for her to allow her lover to know that it was there.
He had moved away from her side, and then, in a moment, had come from
her a smothered cry, a calling of her whole being for and to him. She
had thrown out her hands with the instinctive gesture of a child who
wishes to turn one who has been unkind, kind. And when she was in his
arms, there had come to her that sense of spiritual and physical
response which had brought to him the moment of exultant triumph he had
thought would never be his.
How strange that after that she should still have held out, still have
kept her word to the sick woman who needed her! It was of Jane
Oglander--of Jane as she had been, all tenderness and fire, on that day
when they had parted, that Lingard thought as he followed the woman whom
he now called friend into the room where Richard Maule sat waiting for
him.
* * * * *
The Paches' horseless carriage was proceeding through the park at a pace
which two of the five sitting in it felt to be, if delightful, then
rather dangerous.
"Athena grows more beautiful every time I see her," said Tom Pache
suddenly. He and Hew Lingard were sitting side by side opposite Mr. and
Mrs. Pache. Patty was wedged in between her parents.
"I thought her gown very odd and unsuitable," said his mother sharply.
"It isn't as if she had a cold. I suppose she keeps her smart evening
gowns for her smart visits."
"Yes, I thought it a pity she should hide anything so good as her
shoulders," answered her son thoughtfully.
The man by his side made a restless movement, and increased the distance
between himself and his young cousin.
"I told you the Barkings had heard all about Athena Maule and Bayworth
Kaye, mother," said Patty eagerly.
"They probably know a great deal more than there is to know," said her
father gruffly. "People talk of London as the home of scandal. I say I
never heard as much scandal in my life as since we came to live in this
neighbourhood."
"But, father, you must admit Bayworth Kaye was quite cracked about
Athena? I don't think anyone could deny that who ever saw them together.
Why it made one feel quite uncomfortable!"
Lingard felt as if he must get out, away from these horrible people.
When he had last seen the Paches, Patty had been a pretty little girl,
pert perhaps, but not too much so in the eyes of the young, indulgent
soldier. He now judged her with scant mercy.
"I don't think Athena could very well help what happened," said Tom
Pache judicially. He and his father generally took the same side.
"Bayworth Kaye had the run of Rede Place since he was born. And
so--well, I don't suppose it took very long for the mischief to be
done--so far as he was concerned, I mean."
"Oh, but, Tom, it was much more than that! Athena could have helped
it--of course she could!" Patty's voice rose. "Why, she got him asked to
a lot of houses where she was staying herself, and they say in the
village that she gave him her key of the Garden Room. He used to stay
there fearfully late--long after Mr. Maule and Dick Wantele had gone to
bed!"
"It was very hard on Mabel Digby," said Mrs. Pache irrelevantly. She had
a tepid liking for her young neighbour.
"I don't think Mabel really cared for him, mother." There was a streak
of thin loyalty in Patty Pache's nature. "You know she was almost a
child when Bayworth Kaye first went to India."
"She was seventeen," said Mrs. Pache, "very nearly eighteen. And I know
they wrote to one another by every mail--his mother told me so."
"It's rather hard on the women of the neighbourhood, when one comes to
think of it," said Tom Pache, smiling in the darkness. "Athena's a
formidable rival." His mother and his sister felt that he spoke more
truly than he knew.
"There's only one person," cried Patty suddenly, "who's never been in
love with Athena! And it's so odd, because he's always with her--I mean
Dick Wantele."
"My dear child, how you let your tongue run on," said her mother
reprovingly. "You seem to forget that Athena is a married woman!" In
another, a more natural, tone she added: "And then Dick Wantele, as you
know perfectly well, has always been attached to----"
Her husband gave her a violent shove and she did not finish her
sentence. They had all forgotten the large, silent, alien presence of
Hew Lingard.