A VISITOR AT THE ESTANCIA
Cynthia accordingly held her tongue. Nevertheless, that evening
Richard Walton said to her across the dinner table:
"So you were, after all, molested by one of the hands, Miss Cynthia."
"Molested!" cried Robert Daventry indignantly.
Cynthia's face flamed.
"Who told you?" she asked of Richard Walton.
"Pedro."
Cynthia had not thought of the Gaucho. He had seemed so entirely
uninterested, so utterly unalarmed.
"'Molested' is too strong a word," she said hastily. She now meant to
make as light of the encounter as she possibly could. "It was very
likely my fault. I got out of the trap and walked toward the wheat. It
may be that the man fancied I wished to speak to him."
"What did he do?"
The question came from Joan Daventry.
"He sprang from his seat, ran to me, and stopped in front of me. That
was all."
"Quite all?"
Cynthia nodded.
"He just stood and stared at me until Pedro drove up."
"Did he say nothing?"
"Not a word."
In spite of her resolve to treat the adventure lightly, Cynthia's
voice grew troubled as she answered the questions. For she answered
them with her eyes upon Joan Daventry's face, and she saw the
perplexity there deepen into disquietude and misgiving. She turned
toward Robert Daventry. Upon his face uneasiness was still more
evident. He was plainly agitated. He sat listening in suspense. His
indignation had gone.
Cynthia's fear revived under the stimulation of their anxiety. She
continued slowly:
"But although he did me no harm, although he threatened none, there
was something strange. He saw me at once. He ran so very quickly to me
the moment I was within reach. He seemed almost to be looking out for
me."
Joan sank back into her chair with a gesture of helplessness, which
was all the more alarming because it was so singularly out of keeping
with her character. Her eyes sought her husband's and sought them in
dismay. Cynthia noticed both the gesture and the look. They kindled a
vague terror in the girl. The wide brown plain was as a picture before
her. She saw the great wheat-field glistening in the heat, a
wind-wheel in a corner above a well, and this man with the evil eyes
and the face of malice looking her over from head to foot.
"Yes," she said. "He seemed to be expecting me, and there was
something else. He seemed to hate me;" and Robert Daventry with a cry
sprang sharply to his feet.
Joan raised a quick warning hand. But the cry had been uttered; and
with a sob Cynthia buried her face in her hands.
"I am frightened now," she said. "You frighten me."
Robert Daventry stood over her, clumsily remorseful, and laid his
great hand on her shoulder.
"There's nothing to fear, Cynthia," he began. "Joan and I--" he broke
off abruptly at a second warning from his wife. "We will pack that man
off about his business to-morrow."
"Yes," said Mrs. Daventry. She had mastered her agitation, and now
affected carelessness. "We can't really have Cynthia's birthday spoilt
in this way."
"No, of course not," cried Robert Daventry, seizing upon this
explanation of his distress. But he could not leave it in its
simplicity. "It's abominable that Cynthia should have her birthday
spoilt. She has only one a year, poor girl. That's what's troubling
us, Cynthia. Nothing else. But it's enough to upset us, isn't it? To
think that you should actually have your birthday spoilt--by one of my
men, too."
So he went on, like a commentator on an ancient text, expanding the
explanation, underlining it, and forcing upon Cynthia's intelligence
its complete improbability. Even in the midst of her fears she could
not but look with amusement toward Joan; and the two women exchanged
the smile of their sex at the perennial clumsiness of man.
"He shall go first thing to-morrow morning," cried Mr. Daventry; and
Richard Walton quietly rejoined:
"He has gone already. I paid him off this morning."
Mr. Daventry ceased abruptly from his vociferations.
"Thank you, Walton," he said. "Then that's ended," and he sat down.
But he had hardly taken his seat when the door opened and the
parlor-maid brought to him upon a salver a folded slip of dirty paper.
"A man came with this to the door, sir. He is waiting for an answer."
Robert Daventry unfolded the slip and read the message written within
it. He did not lift his eyes when he had read. He sat staring at the
paper like a statue. And he sat amidst a deep silence. The cloud which
had but now been lifted, had gathered once more above the heads of
that small company. Though Robert Daventry did not speak, his long
silence spoke for him; and though he schooled his face to composure,
it was plain that he schooled it. A vague disquiet held the others at
the table. Not one of them but had a conviction that this dirty,
insignificant, scrap of writing announced a catastrophe.
Joan was the first to move. She walked round the table and stood
behind her husband. He did not hear the rustle of her gown; and he was
not aware that she leaned over him to read the message until the
pressure of her hand upon his shoulder reminded him that she was his
ally.
"You had better see the man, Robert," she said. "He calls late, but
probably he needs help."
Thus she sought to pass the message off.
"Very well, I will," said Robert. He turned to the parlor-maid. "Bring
him to my study when I ring the bell."
"I will come with you," said Joan, as the servant went out from the
room.
Richard Walton rose from his chair.
"Perhaps you would like me, too?"
"No, I don't think that's necessary," replied Joan Daventry. "But
perhaps you would stay within sound of the bell. We don't know who
this man is or what he wants. If we ring again, you would know that we
needed your advice."
"Certainly, I will be upon the lookout," said Walton, and he went from
the room and crossed to the servants' quarters. There he would hear
the bell at once should it ring for him. Joan meanwhile turned with a
smile to Cynthia.
"We will leave you here for a few minutes," she said, and the
composure of her voice almost reassured the girl; would, indeed, have
quite reassured her but for Robert Daventry. She saw that his hands
trembled so that the paper shook in them, even as her hands had
trembled this morning when she climbed up by the edge of the wheat
into her cart.
"Yes, wait here, Cynthia," said Robert Daventry, as he got to his
feet; and Cynthia noticed that while he spoke to her he altogether
avoided the glance of her eyes. The old couple went out of the room
together, leaving her alone, and carefully latched the door behind
them. In the hall for a moment they stood resting from their pretence.
A broken word or two burst from Robert Daventry:
"What shall we do, Joan? This is what we have dreaded always."
Joan raised her finger to her lips.
"Hush! Speak lower. What I said was true. We don't know who he is, or
what he wants. He may not be the man who stopped her in the field at
all."
Robert Daventry shook his head. It was rather his nature to run to
meet misfortune if he saw its shadow in his way.
"What shall we do?" he repeated. "Money will send him away," said
Joan.
"And bring him back again," replied Robert hopelessly. "Sooner or
later Cynthia will know;" and Joan threw up her head at his words.
"No," she said vigorously. "No."
At her left hand a door stood open upon a dark room. This was the
smoking-room. She entered the room and crossed it to the opposite
wall. Then she opened a second door, and advancing into this inner
room, felt for the switch in the darkness and turned on the light.
Bookcases, filled for the most part with books on agriculture, lined
the room, a round table, littered with papers, occupied the centre, in
the recess of a window stood a writing-desk. This was Robert
Daventry's study. Her husband followed her, and saw that her finger
was already on the bell.
"Let us decide what we are to do," he said, "before you ring."
Joan shook her head.
"We can't. We must be guided by what the man knows, and by what he
wants. Only we admit nothing," she declared resolutely; and she
pressed the bell. It rang in the passage by the kitchen, but Cynthia,
left alone in the dining-room, heard it too.
The moment she heard it, Cynthia rose from her chair, and ran silently
to the door. She unlatched it without a sound, and drew it toward her
until it was just wide enough open for her to see out. There she stood
grasping the door-knob, and in a moment a heavy foot sounded in the
hall. Cynthia set her eyes to the chink. She saw first a maid-servant
cross the hall, and pass into the smoking-room, and after the maid a
man. The man was the reaper who had leapt from his machine and rushed
toward her that morning. The maid-servant came back alone and crossed
the hall again to the servants' quarters. A door was shut loudly--the
door of Robert Daventry's study--and then another door opened
noiselessly, and opened wide--the door of the dining-room. Cynthia
came out into the hall. All the color had gone from her face, her eyes
were wide with terror. The man meant her harm--not a doubt of it. He
had some power to inflict the harm--that was sure. Otherwise why was
he admitted, why were her friends in such concern?
Cynthia was quite alone in the hall now. Voices sounded faintly from
the kitchen and in the room behind her a clock ticked. But there were
no other sounds. She crossed to the threshold of the smoking-room and
looked in. At the other end a bright bar of light on the floor held
her eyes. The light came from the study. Cynthia watched it for a
moment irresolute. But the temptation grew. She was sure that beyond
that bright bar of light, behind that closed door, here in this
far-away corner of Argentina, good and evil were at grips for her. A
sense of loneliness suddenly possessed her, she longed for the
neighborly noises of a city. And while she stood she heard her own name
pronounced by Robert Daventry, and at once a harsh, strange voice rose
in a laugh, loud and arrogant. She looked about her in a panic. She
must fly, or she must know the truth, the whole of it, the worst of
it. She stole swiftly and noiselessly into the room. Close by that bar
of light a big, low chair stood against the wall. Cynthia crouched in
the chair, her frock a blur of misty white in the darkness. There she
remained, very still and quiet; and every word spoken in the study
came clearly to her ears.