About noon the next day Helen motored from London and took them all by
surprise.
Mrs. Leavitt was delighted. It was lonely at Deep Dale—very lonely
sometimes. For the first time in his life Stephen was sorry to see his
cousin. Her visit, he felt, foreboded no good to his momentary
enterprise, and her presence could but be something of an entanglement.
He was manager—dictator almost—at Cockspur Street, at the Poultry and
at Weybridge, and could carry it off with some show of authority, and
with some reality of it too. But here he was nothing, nobody. Helen was
everything here. No one else counted. Her rule was gentle, but not
Bransby’s own had been more autocratic or less to be swayed except by
her own fancy or whim.
Only too well he knew how this home-coming would move her. What might
she not order and countermand? Her permission to him to search and to
docket had been scant and reluctant enough in London. Here, any instant
she might rescind it. Above all he dreaded her presence in the
library—both for its interference with his further searching (of course
he had determined to search the already much-searched room again) and
for the effect of the room and its associations upon her.
She had little to say to him, and almost he seemed to avoid her. But he
ventured to follow her to the library the afternoon of her arrival—and
he did it for her sake almost as much as for his own.
She was standing quietly looking about the well-loved room; and he could
see that she was holding back her tears with difficulty. Almost he
wished that she would not restrain them—though he liked to see a
woman’s weeping as little as most men do—so drawn and set was her face.
“Who is it?” she asked presently.
“It’s I, Helen.”
She turned to him wearily—then turned to the table; he put out his hand
to restrain her, but she did not see, or she ignored it, and took up the
green and pink jade and wiped it carefully with her handkerchief. A
strange rapt look grew in her face, as she pressed the cambric into the
difficult crannies of the intricate, delicate carving. She sighed when
she had finished, and put the little fetish down—very carefully, just
where it had stood before.
“Is—is anything wrong, Helen?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here? You said you couldn’t come.”
“I know, but at the last minute I had to.”
“You had to?”
“Yes,” she answered wearily, seating herself on the broad window-seat.
“Have you looked over Daddy’s papers?”
“Yes.”
“Have you found anything—anything—about Hugh?” The listless voice was
keen and eager enough now.
“No—nothing,” he told her.
“Are you sure, Stephen?”
“Quite,” he said sadly. “Why, dear, what makes you think——”
“I don’t know—only—something told me——” She rose and came towards
the writing-table. Stephen moved too, getting between her and it—“I
felt—that we should find something here that would help us prove his
innocence—that would bring him back to me.”
The man who loved her as neither Hugh nor Richard Bransby had, winced at
the love and longing in the girl’s voice. But he answered her gently,
“There is nothing here.” For a space he stood staring at the table,
puzzled, thinking hard. “Helen.”
“Well?” she was back at the window now, looking idly out at the
leafless, snow-crusted trees.
“Had Uncle Dick any secret cupboard or safe where he kept important
papers?”
“No—you know he hadn’t. He always kept his important things at the
office—you know that.”
“Then, if there was anything about Hugh here it would be on this table.”
“Yes.” But even at Hugh’s name she did not turn from the window, but
still stood looking drearily out at the dreary day.
Perplexed and still more perplexed, Stephen stood motionless, gazing
down on the writing-table. Suddenly a thought struck him. His face lit a
little. The thought had possessed him now: a welcome thought. Surely the
paper, the hideous paper, had fallen from the table on which his uncle
had left it, fallen into the fire, and been burnt. He measured the
distance with a kindling eye. Yes! Yes! It might have been that. Surely
it had been that. It must be; it should be. Fascinated, he stood
estimating the chances—again and again. Helen sighed and turned and
came towards him slowly. He neither saw nor heard her. “That’s it. Yes,
that’s it!” he exclaimed excitedly—triumphant, speaking to himself, not
to Helen.
And, if Helen heard, she did not heed. After a little she came close to
him and said beseechingly, “You don’t think there is any hope, do you,
Stephen?”
He pulled himself together with a sharp effort—so sharp that it paled a
little his face which had flushed slightly with his own relief of a
moment ago. He took her hand gently. “I am sure there is not,” he told
her sadly.
She left her hand in his for a moment—glad of the sympathy in his
touch, then turned dejectedly away. “Poor Hugh!” she said as she moved.
“Poor Hugh,” she repeated, slipping down on to the big couch.
Stephen Pryde followed her. “Helen,” he begged, “you mustn’t grieve like
this—you must not torture yourself so by hoping to see Hugh again. You
must put him out of your mind.” Her mother could not have said it more
gently. He moved a light chair nearer the couch and sat down.
“I can’t,” she said simply.
He left his chair and sat down quietly beside her “Why won’t you let me
help you? Why won’t you——”
The girl shrank back into her corner. “Don’t, Stephen—please. We’ve
gone all through this before. It’s impossible.”
“But Hugh is unworthy of you. Oh!”—at a quick gesture from her—“don’t
misunderstand me. I love Hugh—love him still—always shall——” There
was the ring of sincerity in his voice, and indeed, so far, he had said
but the truth. “Day in and day out I go over it all in my mind, and at
night, and try to find some possible loophole for hope, hope of his
innocence. But there is none. And then the deserting! But I’d do
anything for Hugh—anything. And I’d give all I have, or ever hope to
have, to clear him. I shall always stick to him, if ever he comes back,
and in my heart at least, if he doesn’t. But you—oh! Helen—to waste
all your young years, spill all your thought and all your caring—I
can’t endure that—for your own sake—if my love and my longing are
nothing to you—I implore you—he has proved himself
unworthy—acknowledged it even——”
“Daddy loved him—even when the trouble came—and I know he would want
me to help him—if I could.”
“Helen,” Stephen said after a short pause, speaking in a low even voice
(really he was managing himself splendidly—heroically), “you want to do
everything that your father wished, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. You know that.”
“After Hugh left that night, Uncle Dick told me that it would make him
happy to think that—some day—you and I would be married——”
The last words were almost a whisper, so gently he said them. But, for
all his care, they stabbed her.
“Stephen!——” It was a cry and a protest.
The smooth voice went on, “He knew that I had always cared for you, and
that you would be safe with me. He would have told you had he lived. He
meant to——”
Never was wooing quieter. But the room pulsed about him, perhaps she
felt it throb too, so intense and so true was his passion, so crying his
longing.
“You have never told me this—before——” she began, not unmoved.
“No, dear, I didn’t want to worry you. And I—I wanted it to come from
you—the gift—of yourself. I wanted to teach you to love me—unaided.
But I couldn’t—so I turned to him—to Uncle Dick to help me—as I
always turned to him for everything from the day mother died. Oh, Helen,
can’t you, won’t you, don’t you see how I love you? I have always loved
you.”
“Please—not now——” Her face was very white. “I can’t talk to you now.
I must have time—to think—we—we can talk—another time.” She got up
unsteadily and moved to the door.
He opened it simply, and made not even a gesture to delay her.
Alone—he breathed a long sigh of mingled feelings. There was
satisfaction in it—and other things, satisfaction that she was no
longer here in this danger zone of his where the confession _might_ be
after all, and might be found at any moment to confront and undo him.
And there was satisfaction too that he had come a little nearer
prosperity in his hard wooing than he had ever come before. She had not
repulsed him—not at least as she had done before. Perhaps—perhaps—he
would win her yet—and—if he did—if he did!
Standing by the table he rested his hand there, and it just brushed the
piece of jade. He drew his hand back quickly. Helen had desired that no
one but she herself should ever touch it again. Not for much would he
have disobeyed her in this small thing. Her every wish was law to
Stephen Pryde, except only when some wish of hers threatened his two
great passions.
The paper—the cursed paper—must have gone to cinder. Surely it had
been so. He searched a drawer and found notepaper—and made a sheet to
the size—as he remembered it—of the missing piece. He laid it on the
table, brushed it off with a convulsive motion of his arm. Brief as his
instant of waiting was, it trembled his lip with suspense. Thank God!
Thank God! The paper had fallen on to the glowing asbestos. It caught.
It burned. It was gone—absolutely obliterated—destroyed as if it had
never been.
He sank down into Richard Bransby’s chair, and began to laugh. Long and
softly the hysterical laughter of his relief—sadder than any
sobbing—crept and shivered through the room.
The green Joss blinked and winked in the flickering of the high-turned
fire. The pink jade lotus grew redder in the crimson laving of the
setting sun.