Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy strolled after dinner to the bottom of the
lawn and watched the punt which Francis was propelling turn from the
stream into the river.
“Perfectly idyllic,” Lady Cynthia sighed.
“We have another punt,” her companion suggested.
She shook her head.
“I am one of those unselfish people,” she declared, “whose idea of
repose is not only to rest oneself but to see others rest. I think these
two chairs, plenty of cigarettes, and you in your most gracious and
discoursive mood, will fill my soul with content.”
“Your decision relieves my mind,” her companion declared, as he arranged
the cushions behind her back. “I rather fancy myself with a pair of
sculls, but a punt-pole never appealed to me. We will sit here and enjoy
the peace. To-morrow night you will find it all disturbed--music and
raucous voices and the stampede of my poor, frightened horses in the
park. This is really a very gracious silence.”
“Are those two really going to marry?” Lady Cynthia asked, moving her
head lazily in the direction of the disappearing punt.
“I imagine so.”
“And you? What are you going to do then?”
“I am planning a long cruise. I telegraphed to Southampton to-day. I
am having my yacht provisioned and prepared. I think I shall go over to
South America.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Alone?” she asked presently.
“I am always alone,” he answered.
“That is rather a matter of your own choice, is it not?”
“Perhaps so. I have always found it hard to make friends. Enemies seem
to be more in my line.”
“I have not found it difficult to become your friend,” she reminded him.
“You are one of my few successes,” he replied.
She leaned back with half-closed eyes. There was nothing new about their
environment--the clusters of roses, the perfume of the lilies in
the rock garden, the even sweeter fragrance of the trim border of
mignonette. Away in the distance, the night was made momentarily ugly by
the sound of a gramophone on a passing launch, yet this discordant
note seemed only to bring the perfection of present things closer. Back
across the velvety lawn, through the feathery strips of foliage, the
lights of The Sanctuary, shaded and subdued, were dimly visible. The
dining-table under the cedar-tree had already been cleared. Hedges,
newly arrived from town to play the major domo, was putting the
finishing touches to a little array of cool drinks. And beyond, dimly
seen but always there, the wall. She turned to him suddenly.
“You build a wall around your life,” she said, “like the wall which
encircles your mystery house. Last night I thought that I could see a
little way over the top. To-night you are different.”
“If I am different,” he answered quietly, “it is because, for the first
time for many years, I have found myself wondering whether the life I
had planned for myself, the things which I had planned should make life
for me, are the best. I have had doubts--perhaps I might say regrets.”
“I should like to go to South America,” Lady Cynthia declared softly.
He finished the cigarette which he was smoking and deliberately threw
away the stump. Then he turned and looked at her. His face seemed harder
than ever, clean-cut, the face of a man able to defy Fate, but she saw
something in his eyes which she had never seen before.
“Dear child,” he said, “if I could roll back the years, if from all
my deeds of sin, as the world knows sin, I could cancel one, there is
nothing in the world would make me happier than to ask you to come with
me as my cherished companion to just whatever part of the world you
cared for. But I have been playing pitch and toss with fortune all my
life, since the great trouble came which changed me so much. Even at
this moment, the coin is in the air which may decide my fate.”
“You mean?” she ventured.
“I mean,” he continued, “that after the event of which we spoke last
night, nothing in life has been more than an incident, and I have
striven to find distraction by means which none of you--not even you,
Lady Cynthia, with all your breadth of outlook and all your craving
after new things--would justify.”
“Nothing that you may have done troubles me in the least,” she assured
him. “I do wish that you could put it all out of your mind and let me
help you to make a fresh start.”
“I may put the thing itself out of my mind,” he answered sadly, “but the
consequences remain.”
“There is a consequence which threatens?” she asked.
He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he had recovered all
his courage.
“There is the coin in the air of which I spoke,” he replied. “Let us
forget it for a moment. Of the minor things I will make you my judge.
Ledsam and Margaret are coming to my party to-morrow night. You, too,
shall be my guest. Such secrets as lie on the other side of that wall
shall be yours. After that, if I survive your judgment of them, and
if the coin which I have thrown into the air comes, down to the tune
I call--after that--I will remind you of something which happened last
night--of something which, if I live for many years, I shall never
forget.”
She leaned towards him. Her eyes were heavy with longing. Her arms,
sweet and white in the dusky twilight, stole hesitatingly out.
“Last night was so long ago. Won't you take a later memory?”
Once again she lay in his arms, still and content.
As they crossed the lawn, an hour or so later, they were confronted by
Hedges--who hastened, in fact, to meet them.
“You are being asked for on the telephone, sir,” he announced. “It is a
trunk call. I have switched it through to the study.”
“Any name?” Sir Timothy asked indifferently.
The man hesitated. His eyes sought his master's respectfully but charged
with meaning.
“The person refuses to give his name, sir, but I fancied that I
recognised his voice. I think it would be as well for you to speak,
sir.”
Lady Cynthia sank into a chair.
“You shall go and answer your telephone call,” she said, “and leave
Hedges to serve me with one of these strange drinks. I believe I see
some of my favourite orangeade.”
Sir Timothy made his way into the house and into the low, oak-beamed
study with its dark furniture and latticed windows. The telephone bell
began to ring again as he entered. He took up the receiver.
“Sir Timothy?” a rather hoarse, strained voice asked.
“I am speaking,” Sir Timothy replied. “Who is it?”
The man at the other end spoke as though he were out of breath.
Nevertheless, what he said was distinct enough.
“I am John Walter.”
“Well?”
“I am just ringing you up,” the voice went on, “to give you what's
called a sporting chance. There's a boat from Southampton midday
tomorrow. If you're wise, you'll catch it. Or better still, get off on
your own yacht. They carry a wireless now, these big steamers. Don't
give a criminal much of a chance, does it?”
“I am to understand, then,” Sir Timothy said calmly, “that you have laid
your information?”
“I've parted with it and serve you right,” was the bitter reply. “I'm
not saying that you're not a brave man, Sir Timothy, but there's such a
thing as being foolhardy, and that's what you are. I wasn't asking you
for half your fortune, nor even a dab of it, but if your life wasn't
worth a few hundred pounds--you, with all that money--well, it wasn't
worth saving. So now you know. I've spent ninepence to give you a chance
to hop it, because I met a gent who has been good to me. I've had a good
dinner and I feel merciful. So there you are.”
“Do I gather,” Sir Timothy asked, in a perfectly level tone, “that the
deed is already done?”
“It's already done and done thoroughly,” was the uncompromising answer.
“I'm not ringing up to ask you to change your mind. If you were to offer
me five thousand now, or ten, I couldn't stop the bally thing. You've a
sporting chance of getting away if you start at once. That's all there
is to it.”
“You have nothing more to say?”
“Nothing! Only I wish to God I'd never stepped into that Mayfair agency.
I wish I'd never gone to Mrs. Hilditch's as a temporary butler. I wish
I'd never seen any one of you! That's all. You can go to Hell which way
you like, only, if you take my advice, you'll go by the way of South
America. The scaffold isn't every man's fancy.”
There was a burr of the instrument and then silence. Sir Timothy
carefully replaced the receiver, paused on his way out of the room to
smell a great bowl of lavender, and passed back into the garden.
“More applicants for invitations?” Lady Cynthia enquired lazily.
Her host smiled.
“Not exactly! Although,” he added, “as a matter of fact my party would
have been perhaps a little more complete with the presence of the person
to whom I have been speaking.”
Lady Cynthia pointed to the stream, down which the punt was slowly
drifting. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and Francis' figure, as he
stood there, was undefined and ghostly. A thought seemed to flash into
her mind. She leaned forward.
“Once,” she said, “he told me that he was your enemy.”
“The term is a little melodramatic,” Sir Timothy protested. “We look
at certain things from opposite points of view. You see, my prospective
son-in-law, if ever he becomes that, represents the law--the Law with a
capital 'L'--which recognises no human errors or weaknesses, and judges
crime out of the musty books of the law-givers of old. He makes of the
law a mechanical thing which can neither bend nor give, and he judges
humanity from the same standpoint. Yet at heart he is a good fellow and
I like him.”
“And you?”
“My weakness lies the other way,” he confessed, “and my sympathy is with
those who do not fear to make their own laws.”
She held out her hand, white and spectral in the momentary gloom. At the
other end of the lawn, Francis and Margaret were disembarking from the
punt.
“Does it sound too shockingly obvious,” she murmured, “if I say that I
want to make you my law?”