ROBERT DAVENTRY EXPLAINS
Thus the greater part of three years passed, but toward the end of the
third the influenza became virulent throughout that country. It was a
winter of sharp frosts and sudden thaws. One week the lanes were deep
in snow and the fields white squares ruled off by the hedges; the next
the whole country-side ran water. The epidemic was at its worst in
November, and during that month it attacked Joan Daventry. She was now
a woman of seventy, and the activity of her life had worn out her
heart. She died within a week of her seizure, and from that time
Robert Daventry's strength steadily declined. It may have been that
the loss of Joan loosened his hold on life, or, again it may have
been, as Dr. Hill declared, that he caught a chill at the graveside
which he could not shake off. But, whatever the cause, he ailed
through November, and in the beginning of the following month, while
sitting on the bench at Ludsey, he was seized with a great faintness.
He was driven back to the white house, and took to his bed; and on the
next day the snow fell again.
Ten days after he had fallen sick, Dr. Hill came from the bedroom and
found Cynthia waiting as ever for his news. He was an oldish man, and
quite at home in that house. He slipped his arm through hers and said
in a grave and gentle voice:
"Your father wants you, my dear. He has something to say to you."
Cynthia looked at him anxiously.
"Won't it tire him too much to talk?"
"He will not, I think, be tired for very long. You had better go to
him at once, for his mind is quite clear now. I will come back
to-morrow morning, unless you telephone to me before then that you
want me. It is now, I am afraid, a matter of waiting."
He drove away from the door. Cynthia walked back along the passages to
the room where the old man lay in a great four-poster bed. The
afternoon was closing in, and the room was not yet lit. But there was
light enough for her to appreciate all that Dr. Hill had meant. Robert
Daventry had grown so frail, his hands and face were so very nearly
transparent.
"I have a good deal to tell you, Cynthia," he said feebly, and his
lips tried to smile. "So listen to me carefully."
The nurse went out of the room. Cynthia sat down by the bed and took
the old man's hand in hers. She made no pretence that another
opportunity would come.
"You will be very well off, my dear, I am thankful to say," he
continued. "There's the estancia, about which I will say a word to you
later, and a little more than four hundred thousand pounds in the
stocks. It's practically all coming to you. Of course, the profit on
the estancia varies with the season, and may in bad years mean
nothing; but on the average, I reckon you ought to have about
twenty-five thousand a year. That leaves out this house and the little
farm which goes with it. They are yours already. I have made Hill one
of my executors--he'll be rather a figurehead, I expect--and Isaac
Benoliel, of Culver, the other. They are both friends and neighbors of
yours, and understanding people. I have tied up half the money on you
and your children. If you haven't any children you will bequeath it as
you like. But I am hoping very much that you will have them. I once
asked a woman what she looked back upon as the happiest time of her
life, and she said the evenings when she and her husband used to sit
alone together before their first child was born. I think that was a
wise saying, Cynthia. It struck me very much at the time, and has
never since seemed to me less true than it did then. And, you know,
everybody can't expect quite the same luck as Joan and I had in
finding you." He pressed her hand with such strength as he had, and
lay for a little while silent, husbanding his strength.
"I was advised by my lawyer," he resumed, "to tie my whole fortune up.
But I talked it over with Joan and we were afraid that it might
perhaps occur to you afterward that we didn't completely trust you."
"Oh, father, I should never have thought that," Cynthia protested
gently.
The old man shook his head.
"One can never be quite certain that queer, stinging ideas won't
come," he said. "And we both were anxious that you should be sure
always that we had no fear of the way in which you would manage your
life. So you will be completely mistress of half your fortune," and he
hesitated for a moment, "when you come of age. But I would like you,
when you are in doubt, to consult Isaac Benoliel. I have a great faith
in him."
"I, too," said Cynthia. "I will consult him."
A look of relief came into Robert Daventry's face.
"I am glad of that," he said. "There are people, of course, who are
prejudiced against him. He is a Jew, and he's new, and he has that
queer sort of indefinable position which attracts criticism. But I
think you will find him a valuable friend."
Daventry's voice had weakened to a whisper, and he lay back upon his
pillows with his eyes closed. Cynthia moved, but the pressure of his
hand retained her. She sat and waited, speaking no word and holding
back the tears which smarted in her eyes. Robert Daventry spoke again.
"There's some medicine," he said. "Hill gave it me to keep me going.
It's in a glass."
Cynthia lifted a glass filled with some grayish liquid, and held it to
the old man's lips. He drank, and resumed:
"I have written down during the last day or two the heads of what I
wanted to say on a paper."
Cynthia found a slip of paper on the table by the bedside.
"Just read."
There were some words written one below the other on the paper in a
straggling hand. Cynthia read them out.
"Money."
"I have said all I have to say, I think, about that."
"Diana Royle," Cynthia read next. But she read the name slowly, so
slowly that Robert Daventry noticed her deliberation.
"I don't think you can see, Cynthia," he said. "It's getting dark."
"Oh, yes, father, I can see quite clearly," she replied. "What of Mrs.
Royle?"
"You know her," said Robert. "You like her, too, I think, don't you?"
Cynthia did not reply, but Daventry had not asked the question in
the tone of one needing a reply. "You will want some one to live with
you until you get married, which, by the way, you don't seem to be
in a hurry to do, my dear. The young fellows round here don't seem
to have made much impression. Oh! I am not bustling you, my dear.
Only--only--don't leave it too long, Cynthia," he said, and his hand
sought hers again.
Cynthia stirred uneasily. It was the way of men, to want to marry
every girl off as soon as possible, she knew. It was a form of vanity.
But she wished to give no promise.
"You will probably go to London, I don't want you to mope down here
all the time. There's no reason that you should. You can have your
house in town. But you will want some one with you, and I thought my
cousin, Diana Royle, would be the most suitable person."
Cynthia raised her head as if she was about to speak. But she did not,
and Daventry said:
"I wrote to her about it."
"Oh," said Cynthia slowly. "You have already written?"
"Yes, and she consented at once. You see her husband left her badly
off when he died. So it will be an advantage to her. And though she is
older than you are, she is not so much older that you won't be in
sympathy with one another."
Cynthia nodded her head.
"I see," she said. "Yes, of course, I know her very well." But a note
of reserve was audible, or rather would have been audible to any other
in that room. But Robert Daventry was altogether occupied in the
effort to master his overmastering weakness. There was more which he
wished to say; there was something which he must say.
"Then that's settled," he whispered; and with his eyes he asked for
his cordial. Cynthia once more supported him, and held the glass to
his lips.
"Now, what comes next?" he asked, and Cynthia looked at the paper.
"The estancia," she said.
"Yes," said Daventry, and a smile suddenly illumined his face and made
it young. "The estancia! You have the right to dispose of it, Cynthia.
For one never knows what changes may come. But I don't want you to let
it go unless there is some great necessity. It brings in, generally, a
good income, and now that Walton looks after it, it gives very little
trouble. Walton is a good man. I should give him an interest in it, if
I were you, and as time goes on increase his interest. Keep him and
keep it. I want you very much to do that. I am proud of the Daventry
estancia, for one thing. For another, the best part of Joan's life and
of mine was spent there. There, too, we first brought you when you
came to us. There's yet another reason," and he stopped, and thought.
"Yes, there's yet another reason why I care for it so much--but--" and
he shook his head and gave up the effort to interpret it: "it's not
very clear in my mind just now. I only know it's there--a strong
reason."
He was speaking with a depth of tenderness in his voice for which
Cynthia was hardly prepared. Always he had seemed to her to look upon
the estancia as a business proposition rather than as the soil in
which his heart was rooted. Always, too, he had seemed so contented to
live in England, and he had taken his part with so much zest in the
local administration of the county. She was as puzzled now by this
note of yearning--for it was no less than yearning--as by the reason
which he could not interpret. It was all made plain to her in after
years, but by another than Robert Daventry.
"I want you very much to keep the estancia, Cynthia."
"Of course I will keep it," she said, and again she made no pretence
that the day was distant when it would be hers to keep. Her heart was
heavy with grief, it went out in love to this dear friend of hers; she
was young and the cry was loud in her bosom, "What will I do without
you?" but her lips did not utter it. He would be quite sure of her
love without her protests. There was comprehension enough, and to
spare, between them to make her certain of that. And, since he wanted
her to listen, she put aside her distress and the thought of the
loneliness which awaited her and obeyed him.
"I would even be glad"--and the old man hesitated with the timidity of
one asking a heavy favor.--"Yes, I would be glad if you would go back
there--oh, not often--but just once or twice to see that all was going
on well."
Cynthia's hand trembled for a moment. She looked at him with a sudden
terror in her eyes. But he was lying now upon his side with his face
to the window, and seeing things not to be seen through its panes. It
cost Cynthia a great deal to make the promise he sought from her. She
shrank from a return to the estancia with every fibre of her body. But
she made it. He besought her in so wistful a voice.
"Yes, I will go back, father."
"Thank you," he said gently.
Outside the window the snow lay white and deep upon the slate roofs of
the outbuildings, and was piled upon the black branches of the trees.
Overhead was a gray sky of winter. But for the glimmer of the snow it
would almost have been dark. A smile shone again on the old man's
face.
"Perhaps Walton's cutting the corn to-day! Think of it!" he said, with
a great longing, and before Cynthia's eyes there rose immediately
the vision of a great glistening field of standing wheat and a
reaping-machine like a black toy outlined against it. They remained
thus in silence for a little while. Cynthia was thinking.
"After all, he may not be in the Argentine.... I may not meet
him.... He will have no power over me.... There is no reason why I
should be afraid."
And then, as though in answer to these arguments, Robert Daventry
said:
"You can go back now, Cynthia, without fear."
The girl looked at him with startled eyes. Had she spoken aloud, she
asked herself? Had she betrayed her secret just at this last moment?
But her eyes fell upon the slip of paper in her hand, and there she
saw written plainly under the word "estancia" the name "James
Challoner."
Robert Daventry looked toward a bureau which stood by the window.
"The little drawer on the left. No, the one above that. There's a
cutting from a newspaper."
Cynthia found in the drawer half a column of a Spanish newspaper. The
name was on the top of the column. It was a paper published in Buenos
Ayres. She brought the cutting back to the bed and placed it between
his fingers.
"Yes, that's it," he said, and he lay back upon his pillows, and
gathered his strength. "I have got to tell you now something which we
have always kept a secret from you."
"There is no need to tell it," said Cynthia.
Robert Daventry stared at her.
"If you do know it," he said slowly, "we have made the cruellest
mistake we could possibly have made. You can't know it!"
"It's about James Challoner--my father?" asked Cynthia, and Robert
Daventry shut his eyes with a look of great distress upon his face.
"How long have you known?" he asked.
"From the night when he came to the estancia," she answered. And she
told how she had slipped into the smoking-room and how, huddled in the
great chair, she had heard all that James Challoner proposed for her.
The shadow deepened upon Daventry's face as he listened, and when she
had ended he asked with deep regret:
"Why didn't you tell us this, Cynthia?"
"Because, just outside the smoking-room door in the hall, you both
decided not to tell me--not to breathe a word of--of my father's
visit. You thought the knowledge would trouble and frighten me. You
thought it would hurt. Well, I was as certain that you would be
greatly distressed to know that already I had the knowledge. So I held
my tongue."
"And it did trouble you?"
"Yes."
"A great deal?"
"Yes," Cynthia admitted. "I was frightened. I did not know what power
he might have. I knew you had fled from him for my sake."
"And since you have been here--during these three years--you have
still been troubled, still frightened lest he should come and claim
you with the law at his side?"
Though the old man could hardly speak above a whisper, he was
strangely insistent in his questioning. The words came unevenly, with
breaks between, and now and then a weak gasp for breath. Cynthia
replied quite simply:
"Yes, here, too, I have thought that he might come. I used to be
frightened at night. I used to hear him in the house."
And with every word she spoke the compunction and distress deepened in
Daventry's mind.
"What a pity!" he said. "Neither of us guessed, not even Joan, who was
quicker than I to notice things. And we thought we knew all about you,
Cynthia!" A faint smile lit up his face. "How little, after all, we
did know! For we could have spared you all this trouble. Read." And
opening his hand he let her take from it the newspaper slip. She
uttered a cry as she read the first lines.
"It's true," said Daventry, from the bed.
Cynthia carried the cutting over to the window and read by the fading
light. It gave the account of an inquest held at a small town
twenty-five miles up the line from the Daventry estancia on the body
of an Englishman who had been stabbed to the heart by a Gaucho in a
drunken quarrel at a tavern. There was a witness who had worked with
the Englishman, and could identify him. He called himself James
Challoner, and, when he was drunk, he would boast of his family.
Cynthia looked at the date of the paper. It was almost three years
old. James Challoner had been killed within a week of his dismissal by
Robert Daventry. Cynthia let the slip of paper fall from her fingers,
and stood by the window until Robert Daventry called her to his side.
"You held your tongue so as not to distress us," he whispered. "We
held ours so as not to frighten you. And so because we were careful of
your happiness, and you of ours, you have gone through years of
anxiety and terror. Needless anxiety! Terror without a cause! I am so
sorry. It seems so pitiful. It seems rather grim to me, Cynthia."
Cynthia answered quietly:
"That's the way things happen." And when she had spoken, Robert
Daventry, with an effort, raised himself upon his elbow and peered
into her face.
"You oughtn't to be able to say that, Cynthia," he said remorsefully.
"You oughtn't to be able to think it. It's not the proper philosophy
for twenty. I am afraid, my dear, that trouble has gone deep." He fell
back and in a moment a little whimsical smile flickered upon his face.
"I don't think I'll tell Joan about this," he said. "She wouldn't like
it. She wouldn't forgive herself for not having noticed that you were
troubled."
"After all, it was my fault," said Cynthia. "For I hid in the room.
However, it's all over now."
But Daventry was not prepared to accept her word. Some flash of
insight forbade him.
"It has left its mark, my dear," he insisted, and in broken sentences
he dwelt upon his theme. His mind began to wander after a little, but
through his wanderings there ran the thread of this idea:
"Joan was always so careful.... Even when you were quite a little girl
... we were never to laugh at you.... 'Children and dogs' she used to
say, 'you must never laugh at them. Little things warp children for
life.' ... Do you remember when you used to write plays and perform
them to us at Christmas, in a toy theatre, with small figures in tin
slides?... Joan was always careful that we should take them seriously,
and not laugh at the wrong place. I never did want to laugh at the
wrong place. I thought you wrote very good plays, Cynthia. I used to
say you were a genius. But Joan wouldn't have it. 'No!' she said, 'All
children are born dramatists, but they forget the trick of it
afterward.' ... I suppose she knew. She was a very clever woman--" and
so he drifted off gradually into sleep. Cynthia stayed by his side
while the twilight faded and the darkness came; and the light of the
fire danced ever more brightly upon the ceiling of the room. The wind
set from the west, and as the hours passed the chimes from the great
clock in Ludsey Church tower came softly and faintly into the room.
But they did not disturb the old man's rest. He went floating out on a
calm tide of sleep to his death, and Cynthia sat by his side wondering
in the intervals of her grief at the strange arrangement of life which
ordained that the efforts of people to secure the happiness of others
should only cause needless terrors and vain miseries.