BOTH SIDES OF THE DOOR
Within the room the three people were standing, the reaper upon one
side of the table, Joan and Robert Daventry close together upon the
other. The reaper was still laughing.
"Cynthia!" he cried, repeating contemptuously the name which Robert
Daventry had used. "There's no Cynthia. There's a very pretty little
girl I saw this morning in the corn. But her pretty little name is
Doris Challoner. And, taking all in all, it's the better name of the
two."
He spoke with an easy and most disquieting assurance, but Joan had
enough of that quality to meet with him in the gate. She had always
been a good fighter; she had stood by her husband often enough in the
early days of the estancia, when his nerve would have failed him but
for her; and she was for putting up to-night the best fight of her
whole long, active life. Money, to her thinking, they could make
again, old as they were, if the need came. But they could not open
their hearts to a second Cynthia, even if they could find one.
"Nonsense," she answered boldly. "Her name is Cynthia Daventry."
"Where was she born, then?" asked the reaper.
"In Patagonia."
"Never in this world," cried the man. "She was born in Concepcion, and
that's her farthest south."
Joan shrugged her shoulders.
"We ought to know. She is my husband's niece."
A grin overspread the reaper's face.
"And is that so?" he asked, in a mock surprise. "I wasn't aware of
it."
"Well, you are now," said Joan.
"Yes, and the news alters our relations altogether, doesn't it?" he
said pleasantly.
He tossed his battered hat upon the table, pulled out a chair, and sat
down in it at his ease, his legs stretched out, his hands deep in his
pockets. He nodded familiarly to Joan.
"How do you do, sis?" He turned his face toward Mr. Daventry, "You
have got a nice little place, brother Robert. Shows what honest work
can do if persevered with day after day for a great number of
consecutive years. Quite a nice little place. You haven't, by any
chance, got a nice little cigar, too, have you, Robert, for your
long-lost brother?"
Robert Daventry's face grew red, and the veins swelled upon his
forehead. He was a man quickly moved to passion, and quick, too, the
passion exhausted, to swing back into doubts and hesitations. He blew
either hot or cold, and, sooner or later, he was sure to blow cold.
Now, however, his temper was up, and he brought his great fist down
with violence upon the table.
"What do you mean by your insolence?" he shouted "Stand up!"
Joan laid a hand upon the old man's arm to restrain him. The reaper,
for his part, never budged from his attitude.
"You have got a nerve," he said. "You tell me a pack of lies--that's
all right, you've got money. But when I take you at your word, it's
'insolence' and 'stand up.' How's that, if you please?" He sat and
laughed for a little in contemptuous jerks. "Your niece, indeed! The
girl's my daughter."
Neither Joan nor Robert believed him for a moment. They thought of
Cynthia, and compared that image at their hearts with the actual man
who sprawled on the chair in front of them. Robert counted him up, his
heavy features, his grime-engrained, spoilt hands, the whole degraded,
unkempt look of him. Cynthia's father! The claim was preposterous.
"Her father!" cried Robert Daventry, leaning across the table. "Look
at yourself in the glass!"
The sneer stung the reaper to a fury. He sprang to his feet, and from
habit his hand slipped to the knife at the back of his waistband. But
he mastered himself in a second or two. He was there for other ends
than violence, and he withdrew his hand.
"I sha'n't forget that," he said, in a perfectly quiet voice, which
contrasted in the strangest way with the convulsion of his face. "You
got home there. Right home;" and he sat down again.
Joan interposed before her husband could say another word, and used
soft words. The man was not Cynthia's father to be sure, but he knew
something of the girl's history. That was certain--and he knew more
than either Joan or Robert knew themselves. If she was to fight her
battle with success, she must know what he knew.
"You could not expect us to accept your mere statement," she said.
"No, that's reasonable," said the reaper, and he began his story. But
the insult rankled in his breast and as he spoke he kept turning a
murderous eye on the man who had inflicted it.
He told the story of the earthquake at Valparaiso, and the flight of
James Challoner across the Andes. It was a story told with a wealth of
detail, and difficult altogether to discredit. Neither Joan nor Robert
did altogether discredit it. It might be true or it might not. This
man might have obtained it from James Challoner, or might somehow have
come across it by himself. But they were still convinced he could not
be James Challoner himself.
"We shall want more proof than that," said Joan calmly, and Robert
nodded his head. Neither of them had felt more confidence than at this
moment since the crumpled slip of paper had been brought into the
dining-room.
But outside the door Cynthia huddled in the great chair with her ear
to the door, listened with a growing terror. She had never doubted
until this hour that she was the daughter of Robert Daventry's
brother. She had been secure in that belief. Now the security was
going. She clutched the arms of her chair, feeling the whole world
slipping from beneath her feet--even as it had slipped at Valparaiso.
For certain memories, quite clear in her mind, were being explained to
her. An open hill-side at night, a strange red light upon the world,
the crash of houses, little flames creeping, and ships quietly at
anchor on the smoothest of seas--that was one picture in her memories
which had often puzzled her, which would puzzle her no longer if she
believed the story which was being told on the other side of the door.
She remembered, too, a long journey amongst mountains, and a bridge
over a deep and narrow torrent, and many people with kind faces who
spoke to her.
"Of course, it isn't certain," she pleaded to herself desperately; and
the husky voice behind the door began again:
"I travelled down to Buenos Ayres by train. I had little money, and no
prospects, and a child on my hands. I couldn't make a home for her. So
I went straight to the foundling hospital. It stands back in a garden,
and is kept by some wealthy sisters. There's a turnstile in the brick
wall of the garden, a little iron turnstile--but you know it well,
both of you;" and he broke off with a laugh.
Inside the study Joan and Robert Daventry, still remained unconvinced.
Outside Cynthia was persuaded.
"It's true then," she whispered to herself. "It's quite true;" and she
wrung her hands in the darkness, and her voice broke in a sob. She had
no longer any shadow of doubt. The turnstile in the brick wall was for
her the overwhelming proof.
Examined in a court of law by the rules of evidence, it might seem
flimsy enough. To Cynthia, it was complete corroboration of the
testimony of her memories. The turnstile in the brick wall--the one
ugly thing in her imagined wonderland of heroes--the turnstile which
had always been there before the land was--how had it come there, she
asked herself? And she was in no doubt as to the answer. The turnstile
was a memory too. It was the turnstile of a foundling hospital, where
her father had left her and gone his way. No wonder, she reflected
bitterly, it was the one ugly thing in her world of fancies.
She leaned back, shivering, with her hands covering her face. She was
humiliated, but she was still more terrified. Shame cut deep, but fear
touched the very nerves of her heart. The man who had this morning
rushed at her was her father, and she remembered the malice of his
smile, and the evil, covetous look of him as he appraised her. She
grew hot, now, as she thought upon it.
"What harm does he mean?" she asked; and suddenly she sat forward on
the edge of her chair, quivering from head to foot like a spring some
touch had released. For her father's voice rose again:
"I tied a bootlace round the child's arm. I can't say that I ever
thought to come back for her. But there's a convention in these
things, isn't there?" he added with a grin. "I have been a
conservative all my life, and now I have found the advantage of it."
"How?" asked Joan. "Even if your story were true, your daughter
wouldn't be wearing a bootlace or even the mark of it round her arm
now."
"No, from the look of her she'd be more likely to be wearing a diamond
bangle, bless her! But all the same the bootlace helps."
"How?"
Again the implacable question was uttered by Joan. She must know all
that this man had upon his side by way of argument. That was her first
necessity.
"How does the bootlace help?"
"It helps because the child wearing that bootlace was received by the
same old ladies who allowed you a few months afterward to adopt
her--that's how. Don't you leave those old ladies out of your
reckoning, Mrs. Daventry, or you will run up against a snag. I went
back to the foundling a year ago and claimed my daughter."
"You did?" cried Joan. She was startled. For a moment, too, she was
disconcerted. She knew nothing of any such visit. But the statement
was so easily capable of proof that the reaper would hardly have made
it, had it not been true. And she was quick to see how strong a
presumption such a visit would create, that he was the girl's father.
Then she sprang to the weak point in the statement.
"If it were true that Cynthia was your daughter, and that you claimed
her a year ago, how is it that you wait until a chance meeting in a
field brings you face to face?"
"There's no chance about it, believe me," James Challoner returned.
For it was he. The delicate manners had been rubbed off him, the
gentle voice, which had charmed so many dollars from reluctant pockets
long ago at Punta del Inca, had thickened and grown husky, the
well-knit figure had spread to heaviness. But this was James
Challoner, after fourteen years had told their tale. "The old ladies
lied to me. Yes, actually lied to me," and he spread out his hands in
indignation. "Lied to a father about his daughter! They were religious
people too!"
"If they did lie," Robert Daventry burst in, "they did the best thing
they ever did in all their good lives."
James Challoner waved Robert Daventry and his outburst aside. He kept
his eyes fixed upon Joan's face.
"Yes, they lied to me," he said. "I gave them the day and the month
and the year, when I placed Doris on the turnstile. They pretended to
make inquiries, and they lied to me. They told me she was dead. Ah!"
and he suddenly leaned forward and pointed an accusing finger at Joan,
"You are glad to hear that. Yes, I thought you would be."
Try as she did, Joan had not been able to keep a flash of joy out of
her face.
"It's a matter of indifference to me," she replied, "since Cynthia is
not your child."
She still clung obstinately to that belief. He might have heard the
story from James Challoner, and James Challoner might be dead. Any
hypothesis was possible in her eyes, except the one which was true.
She would not have it that this man was Cynthia's father.
"Oh, it is a matter of indifference to you!" said Challoner
ironically. "I will tell you something that won't be. Those old ladies
lied just as clumsily as I have ever seen it done. Poor old souls,
they were rattled out of their senses at the thought of the sin they
were committing. A child could have seen they were lying--as I did who
am no child. And I began to cast about for a reason for the lie. It
wasn't very difficult to find it. Some one had adopted her, some one
they didn't want me to discover, some one rich, then, I reckoned, who
could give the girl a position."
At the word "rich" Robert and Joan exchanged a glance. So much were
they disconcerted by Challoner's knowledge and assurance that now they
hoped rather than feared that blackmail was the end he had in view.
"So I began to make inquiries," continued Challoner. "I found out who
were the patrons, who took most interest in the institution, and
amongst them who had adopted a child. I came upon you in the end." And
again he began to laugh. "Those poor innocent old women had actually
given me the date when you took Doris away as the date of the child's
death. It took me a little time to find out all about you; and when I
had found out I had no money. So I had to work my way along until I
reached you. But I have reached you," he exclaimed, lolling back in
his chair, "and, by George, the very first day I am at work here, out
the girl comes to meet me. Why, I recognized her in a second;" and
Joan slipped in, as she thought, under his guard. With a thrill of
delight she believed that he had made a mistake, and a mistake which
would discredit every word of his story.
"Recognized her!" she repeated scornfully. "And the last time, when,
on your own showing, you saw her she was three years old!"
Challoner, however, merely smiled at her.
"If you had a family at your back, old lady, you wouldn't be so high,"
he said; and once more Robert Daventry interposed.
"Speak respectfully to my wife," he cried.
"What, are you butting in again?" asked Challoner, with a look of
surprise. "You didn't do any good, you know, the last time you
interfered."
Once more Joan was called upon to restrain her husband. She saw the
man convicted of a lie, and she did not mean to lose the advantage of
that conviction.
"How did you recognize her?" she asked, smiling in her turn. "How did
you recognize in the girl of seventeen the child of three?"
"I'll tell you," said Challoner confidently. "And, by the way, she's
not seventeen to-day. It might interest you to know that. She's
seventeen and a half. She was born on the seventeenth of July."
"Keep to the point," said Joan.
"Certainly, I will," replied Challoner, "though it's by no means
necessary to substantiate my authority--yes," and his voice suddenly
rang out loud upon the word, so that Cynthia in the darkness on the
other side of the door shivered as if she had been struck, "yes, my
authority. I don't say that she's like what she was when she was
three. I don't even say she's like her mother. She isn't. She's a
Challoner--and in the Challoner's home, by Wareham in Dorsetshire,
there are some pictures worth looking at. I sat opposite one of them
at the dinner table all through my boyhood, and whenever I was at
home afterward--until I came out here. It was the portrait of my
great-great-grandmother, painted by Romney, when she was a girl; and I
tell you the girl who came stepping so prettily across the field this
morning, in her white frock and big straw hat, might have stepped
right out of that picture frame. That's how I recognized her."
He ended on a note of triumph, and for the first time Joan's
confidence failed her altogether. Again, it was not, of course, a
conclusive piece of evidence, gauged by any laws of reasoning, but
just as Challoner's description of the turnstile had convinced Cynthia
outside the door because of the particular illumination it lent to an
obscure fancy, so this detail of the picture did more to convince Joan
Daventry than the rest of the story. Some portions of that story she
knew to be true: the bootlace, the abandonment of the child. But what
she had obstinately been combating was the contention that it was true
of this man who sat before her. He might have learnt it all from the
real father; he might now be seeking to make his profit out of the
knowledge. That had been her hope. But it failed her now. For the
particular detail of the girl's resemblance, now that she was
seventeen, to the Romney portrait in the Challoners' dining-room he
could not have learned from another. It did suggest that the man in
front of her was the Challoner he claimed to be. Of course the detail
might have been invented. But it did not sound to her invented; and,
so far as her knowledge could test it, the rest of his story was true.
She looked him over again with new eyes.
"But you can't prove that," she said. "Even if it were true, you
couldn't prove it."
"Should I need to?" asked Challoner. "After I had put those old ladies
from the Foundling into the witness-box, should I need to, Mrs.
Daventry? Would they stick to their lie? Any tenth-rate attorney could
turn 'em inside out as easy as an old glove, if they tried to. But
they wouldn't try--and you know it as well as I do."
Challoner had put his finger on the danger-spot of the Daventrys'
position. Those two old ladies would have suffered much
heart-searching before they told their lie, and not a little remorse
afterward. Questioned upon their oaths they would speak the truth, and
the whole truth. Of that Joan felt sure.
"There are men, too, in Buenos Ayres who knew me when I was in Chile,"
Challoner continued; and then once more Robert Daventry interposed.
"But you wouldn't be mad enough to go to law with us," he cried, and
Challoner laughed.
"Oh, yes, I would, and I would put you into the witness-box, too. A
pretty figure you would cut, with your Patagonian brother, eh? I
wouldn't bring my action here, of course, in this district. You've got
your local syndic in your pocket, I grant you. But the law runs in
Buenos Ayres nowadays, and don't you forget it."
Robert Daventry turned aside to hide his discomfiture, and walked once
or twice across the room. He had no doubt that this man was James
Challoner and Cynthia's father. His story was too circumstantial to be
disputed. Moreover, neither he nor Joan could publicly dispute it.
There had been no brother in Patagonia. He turned abruptly to
Challoner: "How much do you want?"
Joan moved quickly to his side with a cry of protest. Money it might
be necessary to pay, but it must be asked for, not offered. To offer
it was to admit the claim.
"What are you saying, Robert?" she cried.
Robert turned to her quietly.
"It must come to that in the end. Why not now and have done with it?
How much?"
A smile of triumph broadened over Challoner's face. Outside the door
Cynthia leaned forward, her hands clasped over her heart in an agony
of suspense. Why didn't he answer? Why was he so long?
The answer came at length:
"I want my daughter, nothing else. She is not of age. I have a right
to her; I'll take her away with me to-night."
Cynthia crouched back in her chair, clasping its arms tightly with her
hands, and making herself very small. To Joan and Robert Daventry the
demand was incredible, even though their ears had heard it. Challoner
could not mean it. It was an expedient to raise the price. But Cynthia
had caught a note of malice in his voice which brought back before her
eyes the malice of his looks as he had stood before her in the field.
He meant to take her away, and that night. She glanced toward the
door. To leave her home, to be swallowed up in the darkness with this
stranger for her companion! She clung to the chair in a panic of
terror. Then she heard Robert Daventry repeating the words in a daze:
"You want to take her away? Cynthia?" And as though the meaning of
Challoner's demand for the first time broke in on him, "Never!" he
cried violently.
"I want to take her away to-night;" and now the malice in Challoner's
voice was audible to Joan too. She stared at him over the table. He
sat nodding his head at her with little quick movements, his eyes very
bright, and a horrid smile about his mouth. She remembered what
Cynthia herself had said: "He seemed to hate me."
"You grudge her her happiness, her life with us!" she exclaimed; and
Challoner beat his fist upon the table in a sudden anger.
"Is it strange?" he cried. "All these years here she has been sitting
soft and walking daintily. What have I been doing? 'Look at yourself
in a glass'--That's what you said," and he turned to Robert Daventry.
"I told you I'd remember it, and I do. A fine life I have had of it
for fourteen years. Mate tea and enough work a day to throw a
trades-unionist into hysterics! No wonder I've lost my looks."
All the bitterness of his fourteen years of degradation seemed to be
concentrated in his words. The easy good-humor with which he had begun
had vanished. He was a man venomous with grievances. He was still the
old James Challoner in this; he had enemies, only now the enemies were
not a few to be searched for through a list, but all who had a
sixpence in their pockets. Joan herself was frightened. She realized
the mistake which she and her husband had made in their eagerness to
disbelieve the story of this man. She understood now that when she had
thought of Cynthia and compared her with the reaper, she had been
thinking only of the flower and had omitted her own assiduous
cultivation of the plant. She recognized now that the look of race
which fourteen years of luxury had refined in the girl, fourteen years
of degradation might well have obliterated in the man.
"I have had enough of it," cried James Challoner. "It's now her turn."
"But we offer you freedom from that life," said Joan, and her voice
began to plead.
"I want my daughter," Challoner retorted implacably.
"But you can't make a home for her," said Robert Daventry.
Challoner chuckled and his voice lost its violence.
"You must take me for a softy," he said with a drawl of amusement. "I
mean her to make a home for me, where I can do a bit of sitting soft
and recover my good looks."
"But she can't make a home for you," said Joan.
"Oh, yes she can."
"How?"
Cynthia outside the door waited in a despairing bewilderment. The
changed tones of those whom she had looked upon as her parents assured
her that the reaper had authority and rights, could claim her, could
take her away. But how, she asked herself, was she to make a home for
him? She had learned no profession, practised no art. The tears rose
to her eyes and flowed down her cheeks; and the answer came.
"She's a rare one for looks," said Challoner. His eyes narrowed to
slits and his face became mean and despicable to look upon. "You'll
not find her equal strolling under the lamps of Buenos Ayres."
Joan flinched and uttered a cry. The movement was that of one who has
been slapped in the face. Cynthia felt her heart stand still within
her breast. She had lived in Buenos Ayres, where knowledge comes
quickly to women. She was neither ignorant nor a fool. She understood,
and once more her eyes went to the door. It was all quiet in the hall.
A few quick steps and she would be out of the house. She rose from her
chair. For the dark night, which a minute before had so appalled her,
now appealed to her as a friend and refuge. But as she turned, she
heard Robert Daventry say in a choking voice:
"Go! or I'll have you thrown out;" and the bell rang violently.
"Oh, is that the game?" replied Challoner.
Daventry strode round the room.
"Not a word! Go! I loathe you."
And the door was wrenched violently open. Cynthia had just time to
drop into her chair. She heard her father's voice close to her, and no
longer through the panels of a door. She cowered down, covering her
face with her hands, and drawing in her feet.
"All right, I'll go," said Challoner. "I can afford to go. For I have
the law on my side."
"The law! Try it!"
"I will."
Challoner was standing in the doorway now. He was looking back into
the study. But he had only to turn his head to see that blur of misty
white in the chair, only to bend down and draw the trembling hands
from the girl's face to find his daughter in his grasp. Cynthia lay
holding her breath, ready at a touch of him to swoon.
"She's my daughter. All your money won't get over that. Just wait
and see. I'll come back with the law at my side, and take her
away--yes--if I have to tie her hand and foot to take her."
He flung out across the smoking-room, looking neither to the right nor
to the left. Joan and Robert Daventry followed quickly behind him,
afraid lest he should force his way into the dining-room where they
had left Cynthia. Not one of them saw the girl huddled in the great
chair in the dark room. Richard Walton came into the hall.
"I'll see you off the premises," he said to Challoner, and a moment
afterward the front door slammed.
With the slamming of that door Cynthia seemed to swim back into life;
and all at once there came upon her a great longing for comfort and
kind words. She was hurt and humiliated as she had never thought to
be. It seemed to her that she was tainted, and she was terribly
afraid. She took a swift step toward the door, and there Joan's voice
speaking in a whisper arrested her.
Joan was standing with her husband by the dining-room, and seeking to
compose her agitation before she entered it. Her voice was still
shaking from her encounter.
"Not a word to Cynthia," she said. "We sha'n't let her go, Robert,"
and her voice was very wistful, and appealed for confirmation of her
words. "So there's no need to trouble her--as this story would trouble
her."
"No, we'll not say a word to her," replied Robert. He made an effort
to be hearty, but it quite failed to hide his distress. "We shall find
a way out somehow when we think it all over. No, we'll not breathe a
word, my dear. Cynthia's birthday mustn't be spoilt," and, thoroughly
miserable, the old couple went into the dining-room and closed the
door behind them.
Cynthia made up her mind. Since they wished her not to know, since it
would add so much to their distress if they learned that she did know,
she would keep her knowledge to herself. It seemed to her then a small
return to make to them for their devotion, but it was to cost her much
more than she imagined. She would wait, schooling herself to patience,
hiding her fears. But she could not face her friends to-night and keep
her secret. For that she had not the strength. She ran swiftly and
silently up to her room and flung herself upon her bed and buried her
face in the pillows. There she lay trembling until the thought came to
her that Joan would not retire without coming to ask why she had gone
upstairs so early. She undressed and was hardly in bed before Joan
knocked on the door.
"I had a headache," said Cynthia. "It is the heat, no doubt. I shall
be myself in the morning."
"You are sure? You wouldn't like the doctor?" Joan asked anxiously.
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Cynthia.
Joan put her hand to the switch of the light, and Cynthia started up
in bed with a wild gesture.
"Don't turn the light out, please, mother," she cried; and the next
moment feared that Joan would have heard the terror underneath her
words. But Joan herself was occupied. She kissed Cynthia and left her
alone with the light burning in her room.