As she went on with her packing, Audrey reviewed the situation, and
came to a decision upon certain vital points.
In the first place, she would not be browbeaten by Mr. Candover into
silence about the gambling that was carried on, or the cheating which
accompanied it.
In the second place, she would no longer allow herself to be used as a
decoy by this man, who, if half what her late visitor had said should
prove to be true, was no better than a swindler.
She would therefore at once give up, not only the dubious title chosen
for her by him or by Mademoiselle Laure, but the business run under
that name. She thought, since she had put her own money into the
venture, and had therefore a right to get some at least of it back,
that she would see Mademoiselle Laure, and find out whether that
astute Frenchwoman were willing to buy her out, giving Audrey a small
sum for her interest.
Unfortunately, Mr. Candover had conducted the negotiations with the
help of his own solicitor, and the contracts and papers connected with
the sale were in his hands.
And Audrey suddenly asked herself, as she sat back on the floor in the
midst of her work, whether she might not find, on investigation, that
there had been trickery on his part in this matter, as there appeared
to be in everything with which he had to do.
And she rose to her feet with a low cry, as the thought flashed into
her mind that perhaps this rich, disinterested Mr. Candover, whom she
and Gerard had both liked and trusted so much, was connected with her
husband’s misfortunes as well as with her own.
But this thought she would not have dared to put into words. Once in
her mind, however, it stayed there with terrible persistency, till
Audrey’s brain reeled, and she asked herself whether her best course
would not be to go to the solicitor, the very solicitor who had
offended her so much by believing Gerard guilty.
And then, as she came to what she was sure was a sensible decision,
that she would go to him, and put up with his dry manner and his
penetrating questions, it flashed upon her that, instead of taking her
part against Mr. Candover and expressing a readiness to investigate
his conduct, the solicitor might perhaps be more inclined to
investigate hers!
For she, poor child, in her friendless and lonely condition after
Gerard’s going away, had let herself drift entirely into the ways
suggested by Mr. Candover, had gone with him to his solicitor instead
of consulting her husband’s, to arrange the lease of the showrooms,
had, indeed, put herself as completely into his hands, in her
ignorance and desolation, as if she had been a child and he her
natural guardian.
And would the stern lawyer whom she had dreaded and disliked for his
curt interrogation of Gerard be more likely to look upon her with a
kind eye than he had been before? He had plainly shown his belief that
the young couple had got into debt through the extravagance of the
beautiful wife; and this being so, he would naturally put the worst
construction upon her motives in taking to the business on the one
hand and in renting “The Briars” on the other.
What should she do? To whom should she turn? It was with a feeling of
despair at her heart that she went downstairs, after nearly three
hours’ hard work in packing and preparing for her departure.
Her luncheon had been waiting more than an hour when she came down
ready dressed for her journey; and she uttered a cry of surprise and
dismay when she came face to face, in the hall outside the
dining-room, with Mr. Candover.
“Hallo!” said he, “I see I’m only just in time to catch you. Going
out?”
“Going away,” replied Audrey curtly, as he opened the door for her.
“May I come in and speak to you? It’s important. And tell the man not
to wait. I want to say something for your ears alone.”
This was said in a whisper, and Audrey complied with his request, and,
at the urgent instance of Mr. Candover, sat down at the table, where,
however, she tried in vain to eat.
To find herself so suddenly in the presence of this man, whom she now
dreaded as much as she had once trusted him, was an ordeal she had not
expected to have to undergo so soon. She could not, she would not
pretend that nothing had happened to disturb her; on the contrary,
every word, every look was constrained and cold. Mr. Candover, gentle
and patient as ever, broke the ice himself as soon as they were alone.
“What’s this I hear,” he began, “about your having been frightened by
a madwoman this morning? Barnard tells me he found you cowering behind
a chair, and the woman muttering at you in a threatening manner.”
He looked at her fixedly, and she blushed deeply as she answered:--
“I was rather frightened, but I don’t think she really meant to do any
harm. She muttered and talked wildly, and told an extraordinary story
in a rambling manner. I got to the bell, when she had been talking for
some time, and rang, and Barnard showed her out.”
He looked at her keenly, and seemed undecided whether to ask her more
questions, but finally refrained, and said:--
“There’s another thing I want to talk about, and it is what brought me
down here. The housekeeper says you insisted yesterday upon having the
keys of the billiard-room given to you, and she is afraid of what
Madame de Vicenza will say if it comes to her ears.”
Audrey, who was looking down at her plate, answered quietly:--
“Something else will have to come to Madame de Vicenza’s ears, Mr.
Candover. For the second time since I have been staying in this house
a man has been caught--or suspected of--cheating at cards.”
“Impossible!” Mr. Candover was evidently surprised at this
intelligence, or, as Audrey shrewdly suspected, surprised at her being
in possession of it. “What reason have you for thinking so?”
“I have the evidence of my ears and my eyes,” said she in a tremulous
voice, but with a certain doggedness, “that gambling has been carried
on here, long after the guests were supposed to be gone. They went to
the room which is absurdly--or artfully--called the billiard-room, and
there they went on playing till four o’clock in the morning. And there
have been quarrels, and another man has been--found out.”
“Who?” asked Mr. Candover sternly.
“Madame de Vicenza’s steward or secretary, I believe, the man called
Johnson.”
Audrey glanced up and down again quickly, and saw that Mr. Candover
was really disturbed. She went on:--
“I needn’t say that I don’t intend to stay here another night. I only
waited till this morning in the hope that Lord Clanfield would come
and see me, as I wrote to him at once.”
“Why?” asked Mr. Candover sharply.
“Because his sons are among the men who have been robbed here.”
“Robbed!”
His tone was threatening, alarming. But Audrey, strung up to a high
pitch of excitement, persisted steadily:--
“Yes. Robbed. So I informed him of what went on here.”
“It was a mad thing to do,” said Mr. Candover impatiently.
“It was the right thing.”
“You have done yourself no good by it,” retorted he angrily. “You see
Lord Clanfield did not even answer your letter.”
Audrey bit her lip.
“Well, I did my duty at any rate. Now I’m going away from this hateful
place, and the men who come here will know, once for all, that I have
nothing to do with keeping it up.”
“You have kept it up for two months,” said he drily.
The hot blood rushed into Audrey’s face.
“I certainly did not keep up the billiard-room, or allow the play that
went on there,” she said sharply. “That can be proved. I had the keys
yesterday for the first time.”
“Well, it’s easy to _say_ that. Indeed, I should advise you to say
it,” said Mr. Candover, with a sudden change to provoking coolness.
“But will you get people to believe it? I think the odds are against
you.”
A cold chill crept along Audrey’s limbs. Was this true? It was, she
felt, only too likely to prove so. If she were to assert that she knew
nothing of the existence of the room where the late card-playing went
on, the servants, who, as she guessed, were all engaged in the
nefarious business carried on there, would be ready to swear that she
did know.
She kept silence.
“Of course, in the circumstances, I applaud your resolution to leave
the place,” went on Mr. Candover; “though, as you have only ten days
longer of your tenancy, to go now looks rather as though you were
disgusted at being found out.”
“Found out! I! Mr. Candover!”
“Of course, I’m putting the matter from the point of view of what
people will say. Still, you’re right to go. And now, may I ask where
do you think of going to? I scarcely like to put the question,
although once I flattered myself that I could have asked you any such
thing freely. But lately--I don’t know exactly how it is, for when I
have offended you, I’ve always been very contrite and humble in asking
forgiveness--but certainly there has been a change in your manner
towards me, so that I scarcely like to say things now which I could
have said freely when you were kinder.”
Audrey felt the subtle influence of this man’s insinuating manners,
soft voice and deprecating attitude. But she steeled herself against
him, and answered steadily:--
“I have not meant to be unkind. It is impossible that I should feel
quite the same to you now that I know you do not think with me
about--Gerard.” She would not let him protest, but hurried on: “But,
of course, I’ll tell you where I’m going. It is to Mrs. Webster, who
will put me up, I know, while I look about me.”
“And may I ask what you have in your mind to do?”
“First, to sell the business, which I refuse to carry on any longer
with all the unpleasant associations which seem to be attached to the
name under which it is carried on.”
“Rocada?”
“Yes. In the first place I shall offer it to Mademoiselle Laure, who
is, after all, the real head of it. I am a mere puppet, and only for
show.”
“Without admitting that, I think your idea is a good one,” said Mr.
Candover. “Laure might take it, if you were not too hard in your
terms. And I don’t suppose you would be.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well then, you have taken a very sensible resolution, from your point
of view. From mine, it seems a pity to give up a business which
promised to work up into a first-rate one. In the meantime, I will see
you safely as far as Mrs. Webster’s flat--Oh, I insist upon it. Even
if you are anxious to throw all the blame for what has gone wrong upon
my poor shoulders, as I think you are, you must not cut me off
altogether, when I am still only too anxious to be of use to you in
any possible way.”
Her protests were in vain. And poor Audrey began to feel, with a
terrible sinking of the heart, that the words of the stranger were
coming true, and that, try as she might to get out of range of Mr.
Candover’s uncanny and mysterious influence, she would be drawn back,
invisibly but surely, every time.
This impression was increased when they reached Mrs. Webster’s flat,
for that good lady received them both with a broad smile of welcome,
which was even more expansive for Mr. Candover than for his companion.
Indeed it was evident that his gentle voice and insinuating manners
had fascinated the widow, and Audrey soon perceived that it would be
hopeless, as well as rash, to confide in her as to his suspected
misdeeds.
And when she learned that Mr. Candover had called upon Mrs. Webster
once or twice of late, Audrey felt another pang of the terrible fear
that the net was tightly woven about her own feet. Every acquaintance,
every friend she had seemed to have come, in one way or another,
within his baleful influence.
She was, therefore, obliged to say nothing about the visit of the
mysterious stranger, and she glossed over the treatment she had
received from Lord Clanfield as much as she could. But again she noted
uneasily that Mrs. Webster seemed to have been infected with the idea
that Gerard had really been guilty of the forgery; and finding so
little sympathy with her deepest feelings, Audrey toned down her
discoveries at “The Briars” as much as she could, and dwelt more on
the gambling than on the disputes which had resulted from it.
On the following morning Audrey went to the showrooms, with reluctance
indeed but with a dogged resolution to go through the unpleasant
business of bargaining with Mademoiselle Laure with spirit and
keenness, not for her own sake only, but for that of Gerard.
If only this business had been unconnected with Mr. Candover and Marie
Laure, and the adventure with the white lady, poor Audrey felt how
gladly she would have had it to fall back upon, how proud she would
have been to be able, by her own exertions and her own money, to do
something towards making a home for Gerard and herself. As it was, she
had sunk so much of her small capital in this business that, if she
were to get nothing from it, she would have very little left, and no
means of providing some sort of home in which to nurse her husband
back to health and strength again.
So that it was with many a tremor that she re-entered the handsomely
furnished rooms, where she found Marie Laure already returned from
Paris, busily engaged in unpacking the new models which she had
brought over, and affecting as much care and secrecy over them as if
they had been royal robes.
Marie Laure received her effusively, though with the suspicious
dryness under all her compliments which made Audrey mistrust them.
She refused to talk about business that morning, and insisted on
enlisting Audrey’s services in the matter of the rearrangement of the
rooms, and in sundry other matters which occupied them both until well
into the afternoon, when, to Audrey’s annoyance, there streamed into
the rooms, in twos and threes, but at very short intervals, quite a
little crowd of the men who had been habitués at “The Briars” during
her tenancy of the house.
The firstcomers made a pretence of making purchases of bonnets and
laces, which Laure brought forward for Audrey to offer. But it was
soon evident to the unlucky nominal head of the firm that her
customers had other objects in view than these. There was a sort of
freemasonry among them which irritated and alarmed her; and she caught
an interchange of glances between them which sent the hot blood to her
cheeks.
While preserving towards her that outward decorum which had always
been carefully respected at “The Briars,” Audrey felt certain that she
was connected by them all with the scenes which had taken place there,
and that they believed her to be fully cognisant of what went on in
the billiard-room when the guests were supposed to have gone away.
She understood again that Mr. Candover’s prediction had come true, and
that they looked upon her departure from “The Briars” as caused by the
disturbance of two nights before.
Probably, she thought fiercely, it was he himself who had put the idea
into their heads.
She had answered a great many questions as to her hurried departure
from Epsom, and requests that she would not be long in finding another
house, when Mr. Candover himself, and a well-known baronet of sporting
tastes, entered together.
Audrey’s patience was at an end. Her spirit was roused to the point of
recklessness, she felt that she hated Mr. Candover, and that she must,
no matter what the risk, make one bold effort to defy and denounce
him.
When, therefore, Sir Barnaby Joyce began to rally her on her sudden
loss of “pluck,” and to express the fear that it was the noise they
had made two nights before which had frightened her away, Audrey,
sombre, outwardly calm and dignified, but inwardly on fire with a sort
of reckless indignation and despair, turned upon him fiercely.
“What noise do you mean, Sir Barnaby?” she asked, with subdued
ferocity that made Mr. Candover move uneasily as he watched her.
“Oh, I think you know! There was some sort of disturbance, wasn’t
there? Some one accused somebody else of not playing fairly, I
believe,” said Sir Barnaby, evidently surprised by her fierce tone.
Audrey fixed upon him a pair of blazing eyes.
“Yes, somebody did,” she replied firmly and steadily. “Somebody
accused somebody else of cheating, and--in all probability he was
right, quite right.” There was a movement, a stir among the men, who
were standing in idle attitudes about the room, and they turned to
look and to listen as she went on in the same clear, resolute tones:
“But I don’t pity any of you; I feel no more sympathy for those who
are cheated than for those who cheat.” The sensation of amazement
deepened among her hearers, and Mr. Candover grew deadly white. She
went on, with rising warmth: “Ought you not all to expect underhand
ways, when you meet to play in an underhand manner? Whom can you blame
but yourselves when, meeting by stealth to play games which can only
be played by stealth, you find yourselves the easy prey of----” And
she stared defiantly at Mr. Candover--“a gang of swindlers!”