"A matter of urgent importance," read the Squire again from a card just
handed him by a servant, and which bore the inscription: "Miss Calmour."
"What on earth can the girl want next? She's got her money--far more
than any court would have awarded her. What the deuce is she bothering
us further for?"
"I can't imagine. Still, I'll see her, if you like."
"I wish you would, Wagram. The fact is, I'm sick of the very sound of
the name."
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the two were strolling together
in the shrubbery. Both were, not unnaturally, somewhat annoyed.
"The young lady's in the morning room, sir," said the footman. "I put
her in there, sir, because she said she'd come on a matter of business,
and hoped no one else would come in."
"Quite right," said Wagram.
Delia rose as he entered. She did not put forth her hand, and did not
seem to expect him to. She was busying herself extracting something
from an envelope, and he noticed that her hands shook.
"I would have been over about this the first thing this morning," she
began, speaking quickly, "but my tyres were punctured. I did not want
to lose a moment. But"--looking up--"it was not you I came to see, it
was your father."
"Won't I do as well, Miss Calmour? Any matter of business is all within
my province."
"Well, then, it is about this," exhibiting the letter of demand and the
cheque. Wagram felt himself growing grim.
"Has any mistake been made in the drawing of it?" he asked, bending over
to look at it. She caught at the word.
"Mistake? The whole thing is a mistake, and worse. Mr Wagram, will you
believe me when I assure you upon my honour that until I received these
two enclosures this morning I knew no more about this than--than, well--
than if I had never been born?"
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."
"Don't you? Oh, you do make it hard," with a little stamp of the foot.
"Well, then, this claim was never made by me--never--and until this
morning I did not know it had been made at all."
"Well, but--if you were hurt that time why not accept a little--er--
compensation?"
"Hurt that time? I would be hurt now, if I were not too ashamed, that
you should think me capable of such a thing. Even if I had been half
killed I would not have--have--done--what has been done. Compensation!
Look!"
She tore the cheque twice across, and laid the fragments on the table
before him, together with the letter of demand.
"Now, will you believe that my hands are entirely clean in the matter?
The moment I received this I never had a moment's doubt as to the course
I should pursue. That is the outcome." And she pointed to the torn
cheque.
She looked very pretty standing there--her breast heaving in her
excitement, her eyes brightened, and the colour coming and going in her
face--very pretty and appealing.
"Certainly I believe you," said Wagram, who now, as by an inspiration,
saw through the whole sordid affair; "and I don't think you need go to
the trouble of explaining it any further, for I can quite see how it
happened."
"But I must explain a little. Oh, Mr Wagram, my father is not well, not
always quite responsible. His health is weak, and he has had a great
deal of trouble, and might do what he would never have dreamed of doing
when he was a younger and stronger man; and the temptation, I suppose,
was too great."
Her voice tailed off into a sob, and Wagram felt a great wave of pity
overwhelm him as he looked at this girl, who now more than ever struck
him as far too good for her sordid surroundings. Her laboured apology
for her rascally old parent, too, had sent her up a hundred per cent, in
his estimation, but as an excuse for the old sot it weighed not with him
at all. The attempted blackmailing had been too flagrant, too
outrageous, but to find that Delia was entirely innocent of it afforded
him more satisfaction than he could have believed.
"Sit down, sit down. Why have you been standing all this time?" he said
gently; and the tone was too much for poor Delia, who broke down
utterly, and wept.
"There, there, now. Don't give way over nothing," he went on. "A
mistake has been made, and put right again, that's all. Meanwhile you
must accept my sincere apologies for my side of it."
"Apologies! Mr Wagram, don't. Apologies! Why, I have been feeling as
if I could never look you in the face again."
"But you don't feel that any more, of course not. Now, I know my father
would like to see you, so I will let him know you are here, if you will
excuse me for a minute or two."
As the door closed on him Delia brushed away her tears, and then did an
inexplicable, a foolish thing. She rose and pressed her lips to the
table, on the spot where his hand had rested during the interview.
"And they would have had me extort money from him, blackmail him!" she
said to herself. "Faugh! what a horrible word. But the whole thing was
horrible, shameful. Oh, but the tactfulness of him! It was wonderful.
No wonder such people seem to reckon themselves a separate order of
being. They are."
Meanwhile Wagram had found the old Squire in the library.
"The poor girl had no hand in it after all," he said. "It appears she
knew nothing about it until this morning, when she received the cheque.
The whole thing was got up by her rascally father without her
knowledge."
"Of course. But now that it's within her knowledge she won't find a
thousand pounds come in badly," was the somewhat testy answer.
"She tore up the cheque of her own accord under my eyes."
"What? Did she? That looks genuine, Wagram. By George, that looks
genuine. Fancy anything Calmour refusing a thousand pounds--or even a
hundred! Good heavens! is the world coming to an end?"
"Well, she's done it anyhow. I want you to come in and see her, father,
and put her at her ease. She's genuinely distressed that we should have
thought so badly of her, and all that."
"By the way, does she know of the trouncing you gave that precious
blackguard of a brother of hers?"
"I haven't told her. If she knows I expect she thinks he richly
deserved it. I fancy she's that sort of girl."
The blend of the courtly and the paternal in the old Squire's manner was
charming, and soon Delia was quite at ease with herself and her
surroundings. Then they showed her over the historic parts of the
house, and she gazed with awed delight at the great staircase with its
twisted stone banister and the gallery hung with family portraits and
old war trophies.
"Oh, but this is perfection," cried the girl as she leaned out of one of
the high windows to gaze upon the panorama unfolded beneath. Miles and
miles of it lay outspread in the sunlight--green meadow and dark fir
covert, cloud-like masses of feathery elms and hawthorn hedgerows, with
here and there a gleam of silver, as a winding of the river broke into
view. Then, from far and near, a chorus of song thrushes and the joyous
sound of a cuckoo lent the finishing touch to this fairest of English
landscapes.
"That spire away there beyond the dark line is Fulkston, near Haldane's
place," went on Wagram, in the course of pointing out to her the various
landmarks.
"Is it? What a delightful day that was. Isn't Miss Haldane perfectly
sweet? By the way, Mr Wagram, I enjoyed hearing how you thrashed a cad
for insulting her."
If the faintest gleam of mirth came into the other's eyes Delia missed
its point.
"Oh, I'm not proud of it, I assure you. If he had been impudent only to
me I wouldn't have touched him, for he was no match for me. If it had
been any other girl I should have thought I had given the poor devil too
much, but it being Yvonne Haldane he insulted it seemed as if he
couldn't have enough."
"I most heartily agree," said Delia, and again that curious gleam passed
across Wagram's face.
"Would you like to see a secret chamber?" he said.
"Wouldn't I? Is it a real secret chamber, opening with a sliding panel,
and all that sort of thing?"
"You shall see."
He led the way to a high gallery in an unused part of the house, a
trifle gloomy by reason of the few and narrow windows that lighted it
from one side. The old Squire had left them early in the investigation,
declaring that he did not feel equal to going up and down so many
stairs. The girl's nerves were athrill with the delightful air of
mystery suggested by the surroundings.
"You haven't asked as to the family ghosts yet," he said, "and it seems
strange."
"Strange? Why?"
"Because you are the first within my knowledge to be shown over the
house who has not asked about them long before this. Were you keeping
it till we got down again?"
"No. I wouldn't have asked such a question. How could I tell but that
it might be an unwelcome one?"
It was a small thing, but somehow it seemed to Wagram to argue an
uncommon thoughtfulness and delicacy of mind on the part of this girl--
this daughter of a drunken, blackmailing, old ex-army vet.
"I won't insist on blindfolding you, Miss Calmour," he said, with a
smile, "but I'll ask you just to look out of that window for a minute."
"Certainly," she said. "Why, this is more than interesting."
"That'll do. Thanks."
"Can I look?"
"Yes."
The inner wall of the gallery was patterned faintly in large squares
diagonally divided, so that you might see in them squares or triangles
according to the caprice of the eye. Now, where one of these squares
had been Delia saw a dark aperture easily large enough to admit the body
of a man. It was about a yard and a half from the ground.
"What was it used for?" she said, as her eyes becoming more accustomed
to the gloom she made out a narrow, oblong chamber, or rather closet,
about eight feet by four, and running parallel with the wall.
"A priest's hiding-place. There is still a sprinkling of them to be
seen in our old country houses, more or less perfect still."
"This one seems perfect. But how did they get light and air?"
"They didn't get much of the first. For the last, there's a small
winding shaft that opens under the roof."
"And did they spend days in here? It must have been dreadful."
"Not to them, because their mission was in its highest sense the reverse
of dreadful. But there was a dreadful side to it, for at that time
every one of them who came to this country came with the quartering
block and boiling pitch before his eyes, as, sooner or later, his
certain end. You can imagine, then, that to such men there would be
nothing very dreadful in spending a few days in a place like this."
"Of course not. What a stupid remark of mine."
"As a matter of fact, the last to use this place met with just that
fate. He was a relation, and was captured in that avenue which was the
route of the procession this day last week."
"How terrible," said Delia, gazing with renewed awe into the gloomy
chamber. "How you must venerate this place, Mr Wagram."
"Well, you can imagine we do; in fact, it isn't often shown."
"Oh, then I do feel honoured--I mean it seriously."
He smiled.
"Have you seen enough? because if so we'll shut it up again."
"One minute. How does it open and shut? Why, it isn't a mere panel,
it's a solid block of stone."
"Ah, that's the secret of it. It is easily opened from within if you
know how; but from without--well, it has never been discovered. The
secret has been handed down among ourselves. It is always known to
three persons, of which, needless to say, I am one."
"How interesting! But if I were in there, and you and the other two
were not get-at-able, what then?"
"You might as well be buried alive. Now, oblige me by looking out of
that window once more."
"If I mayn't look, may I listen?"
"Certainly. Now you may turn again. Well, what did you hear?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Well, see if you can tell which of the squares it was that
opened."
"This one. No; it doesn't sound hollow. None of them do. I give it
up."
"We'll be going down again, then. You'll be glad of tea."
She protested that such a thing was beyond her thoughts amid the wonder
and delight of all she had seen. On the way he pointed out a few of the
more prominent family portraits.
"That is our martyr relative."
A cry of surprise escaped Delia.
"That! Why, Mr Wagram, it might be yourself."
The portrait was quite a small one, and in a massive frame of stained
oak. It represented a man of about the same age, with the same
thoughtful dark eyes, the same shaped face, and the same close-trimmed,
pointed beard. The figure was gowned in black, and the head crowned
with a Spanish biretta with high-pointed corners. Attached to the frame
was a Latin inscription.
"People do remark a likeness," he said; "but you can guess how we value
that portrait for its own sake. It was painted at Salamanca just before
he left for St Omer to start on the English mission."
"Is there any Spanish blood in your family, Mr Wagram?"
"A strain; but it dates rather far back. Aren't you more than ever
afraid of coming to our services now?" he added slily. "The
Inquisition, you know."
"Afraid? If I didn't know you were chaffing me I would say that I was
the more attracted after what you have shown and told me to-day."
The old Squire was waiting for them in the great hall, where they had
tea, and Delia, having now recovered her spirits completely, was
chatting away as though the matter which had brought her there was but
the recollection of a half-faded nightmare--a very note of interest and
admiration concerning all she had just seen. Then, imperceptibly to
her, they drew her on to talk about herself, and one point in the plain
tale of real, plucky, hard work, which had come within her experiences
of late, Wagram made a mental note of for future use.