Kitabı oku: «The House 'Round the Corner», sayfa 14
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH THE AREA WIDENS
If any critic, on perusing this chronicle, is moved to peevish condemnation of Armathwaite's amazing conduct that morning, the man himself would be the last to protest. He might urge that he was dazzled by the new and entrancing realm whose bright waters and fair meads he could discern beyond the present rough and dangerous ground. He might plead the literal truth – that when he went in pursuit of Marguérite Ogilvey he had no more intention of declaring his love than of hastening to Dover and endeavoring forthwith to swim the English Channel. But, making every allowance for a confirmed celibate who had suddenly become a devout lover, and to whose arms the lady of his choice had committed herself without any pretense of restraint, it must still be admitted that he was guilty of a most singular omission in failing to make known to her his very identity!
He remembered the phenomenal lapse when too late. Even to that practical side of his character which reproached the emotional side with a ridiculous forgetfulness, he could only say, in mitigation of sentence, that the sudden appearance of the car brought about such a novel situation that all else yielded to the need for prompt and skillful judgment in deciding Marguérite's immediate future.
It was all the more difficult to think logically and act decisively when Marguérite herself, ever and anon, was lifting adorably shy eyes to his while the two were making the best of the unusual meal he had provided. There, nevertheless, within a few feet, stood the obedient giant whose stout mechanism rendered many things possible that were hitherto impossible. The chauffeur, who gave his name as Storr, had taken off the bonnet for a critical glance at the six cylinders which had forced nearly two tons of metal and wood up the stony and rutted surface of one of the worst moorland tracks in Yorkshire. He seemed to be more than satisfied. The water in the radiator had got rather excited, but that was only to be expected. A close eye was given to other essentials, and the tire covers were examined, but every part of the car had withstood the strain of a fearsome hill splendidly.
Storr had never doubted, but, like a prudent general, he reviewed his forces after the engagement, and found them not only intact, but ready for mightier deeds. Then, merely to gratify the sense of touch, as a horseman strokes a willing and well-groomed steed, he fingered a tap or two, shut off the engine, and asked Armathwaite if he might smoke a cigarette while awaiting further orders.
His employer thanked him for the word. It recalled the motive of Marguérite's flight. Some plan of action must be arrived at, and without delay.
"Smoke, by all means," he said, summing up the man at a glance as a bluff and honest sort of follow who would be thoroughly dependable if properly handled. "How long did the run from York to Elmdale take?"
"A little more than two hours, sir. I started at half-past seven. Your telegram said I was to arrive by noon, but our people thought they'd please a new customer by bein' a bit afore time. They didn't wire, because the car would be to hand almost as quick as a telegram."
"Can you go from Leyburn to York in two hours?"
"Easily, sir."
"Very well. Just pull your machine a few yards ahead, and Miss Ogilvey and I will discuss the day's program."
Storr obeyed, and Armathwaite outlined to a willing listener the project he had already formed.
"First," he said, "here is a telegram from your mother. I opened it. I thought it was best – "
"Why, of course, Bob dear; why shouldn't you?"
Bob dear! It was very pleasant to hear the phrase on Marguérite's lips, yet it rendered doubly distasteful the suggestion he had in mind; since where is the lover who will bring himself willingly to the task of telling his lady-love that they must part? But it had to be done. Marguérite must go – not quite so far as Cornwall, it is true, but much too far to please him, and he must return to the Grange, where, a sure instinct warned him, weighty matters would be settled that day.
A cry of dismay from the girl gave him the cue he wanted.
"Oh, she has started already!" she almost sobbed. "While I was flying to Warleggan she is traveling North. We shall pass each other on the way!"
"No," he said, "that must not happen. You are going to be a good little sweetheart, and do as I tell you. This most excellent and comfortable car will take you to York. There you will ascertain from an obliging station-master what time Mrs. Ogilvey can arrive from Tavistock, assuming she left there at or about the hour stated in the message, and you'll meet her. At a rough guess, Mrs. Ogilvey should be in York about six o'clock. You'll escort her to the station hotel, give her something to eat, and calmly discuss the whole affair while the same luxurious automobile is bringing you back to Elmdale."
"But, what of the danger dad may be in?"
"I am coming to that. I believe, somehow, that your mother will relieve your mind in that respect. Remember, I have always held, since the main features of this extraordinary affair became clear, that your father has acted throughout with his wife's cognizance, if not with her complete approval. Now, if that is so, she is the one person who can decide whether you return with her to Elmdale or hasten through the night to Warleggan. Again hazarding a guess, I don't think you could reach your father to-night, even though you caught the first available train from York. Cornwall is a long way from Yorkshire. By starting this minute, you might be in York by one o'clock. Allowing eleven hours for the journey, an estimate I am doubtful about, you would arrive at Tavistock at midnight, whereas it is highly probable there is no such train, nor one so rapid. By the way, why, do you think, did Mrs. Ogilvey telegraph from Tavistock?"
"She would drive there – some twelve miles. No telegram could be dispatched from Warleggan before the post office opened at eight."
"She may have had an even more powerful reason. The message is sent to 'Garth,' not to 'Ogilvey.' Isn't it quite rational to suppose that she hopes no one in Elmdale knows about the change of name?"
"Yes," said Meg, trying to look calmly judicial. "That sounds reasonable."
"Then every consideration points to the wisdom of awaiting your mother at York."
"But, Bob dear, have you thought of the awful result if Percy carries out his threat?"
"Percy will not do anything dramatic to-day, I promise you. I have scared him badly already, and I'm going back now with the full intent that he shall cause no more mischief until I hear from, or see, Mrs. Ogilvey and yourself, or one of you. Perhaps, to relieve my anxiety, you will send a message from York announcing your decision?"
"Yes; I'll do that. You are really convinced that I ought to meet mother?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Then you can trust me. I'll do as you say. You needn't have any fear that between here and York I'll change my mind. Bob, you believe me, don't you, when I tell you that I ran away this morning because I dared not take you into my confidence? I could not bring myself to explain the true meaning of Percy's horrid insinuations."
"Please, forget Percy. I'll deal with him."
"But you won't be too angry with him? It is hard to endure, I know, that he should play on his defenseless state, but, if he were quite well and uninjured, he could offer you no resistance."
He laughed. The notion of Percy Whittaker and himself engaging in a desperate conflict for physical supremacy was intensely amusing.
"If you mean that I am not to assault him, I promise that with all my heart," he said. "I gripped him rather strenuously an hour ago, I admit, but then I was angry with him. Now I feel that I owe him a deep debt of gratitude, because he has brought to pass something which I hardly dared dream of. Don't you see, dearest, that if Percy hadn't behaved meanly to you I shouldn't now be calling you dearest, and wishing that our sharp-eyed chauffeur were anywhere else in the wide world but where he is. Now, no more words, but deeds! Off you go to York! What money have you?"
"Plenty."
"What do you call plenty?"
"Dad gave me fifteen pounds when I left home, and I've spent less than five."
"Well, then, sweetheart, it is good-by till this evening."
"Oh, Bob darling, I shall pray that it may be so!"
Storr received his orders without lifting an eyelid, which was highly creditable to him, having regard to the peculiar conditions under which he had met his employer. Of course, he was ignorant of the state of affairs at the Grange. He imagined that Mr. Armathwaite was escorting a young lady over the moor to Leyburn, which was a funny way to reach York, when Nuttonby lay on a better road, which was also the more direct route. But there was nothing unusual in the fact that he should be taking Miss Ogilvey to meet her mother, while the car would make light of the three journeys.
"You'd better have this, sir, and see if it's right," he said, giving Armathwaite a note. A glance showed that it dealt with terms for the hire of the car.
"Tell your people it is quite satisfactory," said Armathwaite, and, after a farewell pressure of Meg's hand, and a look from the brown eyes which remained with him like a blessing, the car started. He watched until it had vanished over a long undulation of the road, and saw the last flutter of Meg's handkerchief ere she crossed the sky-line. Then he mounted the bicycle, and rode swiftly back to the tiny hamlet in which, during two short days, he had passed through so many and so much varied experiences.
Looking down from the crest of the hill at the sunlit panorama of farm and field, woodland and furze-grown common, with Elmdale's cluster of homesteads nestling close beneath the moor, and the spire of Bellerby Church (near which lay the mortal remains of "Stephen Garth") rising above a cluster of elms in the middle distance, it seemed to be a fantastic and unreal notion that so many of life's evils, so much of its beauty and happiness, could have found full scope for their expression in that tiny and remote place.
As the hill was too dangerous in parts to ride, he dismounted twice. He was about to coast down the last straight slope to the house when a thought struck him with such blinding force that he nearly lost control of the bicycle. Fool that he was, his first care should have been to tell Marguérite that his name was not Armathwaite; that he had adopted an incognito simply to avoid the prying eyes and inquisitive tongues of those with whom he might be brought in contact; that, in marrying him, she was stepping forth from the seclusion of a student's retreat into the full glare of public life. Oh, the deuce take all complications and worries! He had won Marguérite by extraordinary means – he must do his wooing in more orthodox manner, and in his true colors.
He was traveling at a rate which kept pace with the tornado in his mind, but the second nature brought into being by an adventurous career bent a watchful eye on the inequalities of the road, so that he was actually slowing up somewhat short of the gate leading to the Grange garden when he became aware of an unusual concourse of people gathered in the roadway. A motor-car and two dog-carts were halted near the gable of Mrs. Jackson's cottage, and a number of men – among them two in police uniform – who seemed to have collected into a chatting group, dissolved into units when he approached.
He recognized a groom at a horse's head as Dr. Scaife's man; all the others were total strangers.
But not for long.
Sir Berkeley Hutton, brought to Elmdale by a neighborly curiosity strengthened by the call of the East, appeared to be overwhelmed with surprise at sight of Armathwaite. But the worthy baronet did not lose the faculty of speech. No conceivable catastrophe, short of instant death, could deprive him of that.
"God bless my soul!" he cried, advancing with outstretched hand. "Baluchi Bob! The last man breathing I ever expected to see in Elmdale! Did the monsoon break earlier than usual this year, or what wind of heaven blew you here?"
"Hullo, Barker!" cried Armathwaite, hailing him with manifest pleasure. "I didn't know you had pitched your tent in these parts!"
"Yes, but, dash it all, Bob, what's the game? They told me someone name of Armathwaite, in the Politicals, had taken the Grange."
"Quite true. But you know I came a cropper in India, and I was a bit tired of the sturm und drang of existence, so I hied me to cover under my mother's maiden name. I suppose I have a sort of right to it, though it doesn't seem to have proved altogether successful as a cloak."
"By gad! I can hardly agree with you there. I felt as though I'd come a purler over wire when I saw Baluchi Bob dropping off that bicycle. Great Scott! You on a bike! How have the mighty fallen! But I'll lend you a hack till you collect a few useful screws, unless you're bitten by this new craze for rushing about the country in a gastank. And won't Mollie be glad to see you! It was only the other day she was talkin' about the Pup, and sayin' that if it hadn't been for you – "
"Oh, tell Mollie to forget that old tale, or she'll make me nervous!"
Each word exchanged between the two was heard distinctly by the others, and, such is the queer way in which the affairs of life sometimes take an unexpected twist, there was a marked and instant change of attitude on the part of three men, at least, who had come to Elmdale that day prepared to treat the Grange's new tenant as a potential criminal. Banks, mouthpiece of the Nuttonby Gazette, who had bicycled thither in the hope of securing another batch of readable copy for a special Saturday edition, suddenly found himself reviewing, with a sinking heart, one or two rather ticklish paragraphs in the screed already published anent "The Elmdale mystery." As for the superintendent and inspector of police from Nuttonby, they forthwith recanted certain opinions formed after hearing Banks's story and reading the current issue of his newspaper.
For Sir Berkeley Hutton was a county magnate, chairman of the Nuttonby bench, an alderman of the County Council, a Deputy Lieutenant, and goodness knows what else of a power in civic and social circles, and here was he hailing this stranger as an intimate friend, being himself greeted by the nickname earned by a loud and strident utterance which never failed, speaking of Lady Hutton as "Mollie," of his eldest son as "the Pup." County police and country editors must be chary of accepting the evidence of James Walkers and Tom Blands against the guarantee of such a man, or they may get their corns trodden on most painfully!
All at once, Sir Berkeley Hutton seemed to recollect the talk which had been going on outside the locked and barred gate, for Begonia Smith and his henchmen had refused to pass anyone but the doctor and nurse, who were with their patient at that moment.
"I say, Bob," he went on, in a thunderous whisper quite as audible as his ordinary voice, "I'm devilish glad it's you – I am, 'pon my soul! – because some of these chaps have been spinnin' the queerest sort of yarn, in which a murder, a suicide, a ghost, and a pretty girl are mixed up in fine style. Just tell 'em all to go to blazes, will you? – except Dobb. Dobb's a decent fellow, and he acted for the people who used to live here – Hi! Dobb. This is – " Then it dawned on him that his friend might wish still to preserve his anonymity save in the sacred circle of the elect, so he broke off into "Come along, Dobb! I want you to meet one of the best fellows who ever wore shoe-leather!"
Dobb advanced. With him came a gentleman who was as unknown to Nuttonby as Armathwaite himself. Before the solicitor could speak, his companion said quietly:
"Sir Robert Dalrymple, I believe?"
"Yes," and Marguérite's "chosen mate" looked him very searchingly and squarely in the eyes.
"My name is Morand," said the other. "I am sent here by the India Office to tell you – " he glanced around in momentary hesitation.
"Pray, go on," said Dalrymple, as Armathwaite must be described henceforth. "There is nothing that the India Office has to communicate which I am not willing that all the world should hear."
"Happily, Sir Robert, this is a communication which all the world ought to hear. The Maharajah of Barapur is dead. He was assassinated last Monday while driving through the bazaar. His prime minister, Chalwar Singh, was with him, and was mortally wounded at the same time."
"Then India is well rid of two pestilent scoundrels," said Dalrymple unconcernedly.
"That is the view now held by the Government," was the grave answer.
"A death-bed conversion, of a sort," commented his hearer dryly.
"A death-bed confession, too," said Morand. "It was a fortunate thing that both men lived long enough to reveal that they had concocted the whole story of the Maharani's pearls in order to get you shelved. Your administration was too honest. They played on your well-known carelessness in trivial matters of detail, and bribed your native secretary, Muncherji, to include in your correspondence the letters which seemed to prove your complicity in a serious breach of trust. Muncherji, by rare good chance, was not in Barapur when the Maharajah and Chalwar Singh were riddled with bullets, so he was arrested before he knew of the affair. He, too, has confessed. In fact, I can convey everything in a sentence. The Government of India has reinstated you in the High Commissionership, and you are gazetted as absent on leave. I am the bearer of ample apologies from the India Office, which will be tendered to you in person by my chief when he meets you in London. Meanwhile, I am to request you to allow the announcement to be made public that you will return to India on a named date, while the appointment of your deputy is left open for your recommendation."
Dalrymple paled slightly, which was the only evidence he gave of the effect such a statement was bound to produce on a proud and ambitious nature, but Sir Berkeley Hutton was irrepressible.
"By gad!" he roared, "somebody's gold lace has been rolled in the dust of Calcutta before the India Department climbed down like that. I never heard anything like it – never! 'Pon me soul! Won't Mollie be pleased?"
Yet the man to whom the path of empire was again thrown open spoke no word. It was good to have his honor cleared of the stain put on it by a scheming Indian prince and his henchmen. It was good to find himself standing once more in the high place he had won by self-sacrificing work and unflinching adherence to an ideal of efficient government. But his thoughts were with a sorrow-stricken girl speeding to a sad tryst with a mother who might bring tidings that would blight her life for many a year.
Morand grew anxious. He shared Dalrymple's knowledge of the tremendous issues bound up with an affair of State of real magnitude, and he did not want to fail in this, his first confidential mission.
"If there is anything else I can say, Sir Robert – " he began, and his voice disrupted a dream.
"It's all right, Morand," said the other, letting a hand rest on the shoulder of the younger man in that characteristic way of his. "I'm not such a cur as to snarl when I have been proved right, and my traducers are ready to admit their blunder. I didn't yelp when the blow fell. I'm not going to kick up a bobbery now when I'm given back my spurs. Tell your chief that I'll come to him soon, within a week, if possible. I have business on my hands here that calls imperatively for settlement. I'll deal first with that; then I'll come. Are you returning to town at once?"
"By the first available train. More than that, I am to telegraph your decision to Whitehall. Between you and me, some people are in a howling funk lest a question should be put in the House."
"That isn't the frontier method. Men who appeal to Parliament when things go wrong are of no value to India. But I don't want to preach."
"Won't you come in?"
"If you'll pardon me, I'll hurry back to Nuttonby. That telegram is called for urgently. What about your deputy?"
"Collins was transferred to Oudh because he supported me. Send him to Barapur. The natives will understand that better than a dozen gazettes."
"Thanks. That clinches it, Sir Robert. Mr. Dobb, do you mind if we start immediately?"
Mr. Dobb did mind. For one thing, he had not spoken a word to Sir Robert Dalrymple yet. For another, Nuttonby loomed larger in his mind than some wrangle in far-away Hindustan, and Nuttonby was seething with rumors anent present and past inhabitants of the Grange.
"We, like the State of Barapur, have our little troubles," he said guardedly. "Sir Robert has shown already that he appreciates their gravity. My car will take you to Nuttonby, Mr. Morand, and come back for me."
The representative of the India Office was only too pleased to get away on any terms. He knew that a reassuring message was wanted in Whitehall. There were wheels within wheels. A question was put in the House that night, and an Under-Secretary scoffed at the notion that Sir Robert Dalrymple, "a trusted servant of his country, whose splendid work on the Indus was most thoroughly appreciated by the Government of India," had been requested to resign. As a matter of public interest, he was pleased to inform the honorable questioner that Sir Robert Dalrymple, only that day, had put forward the name of Mr. Mortimer Collins, I.C.S., to act as his deputy in Barapur until he returned from short leave granted on "urgent private affairs."
The motor was already trumpeting its way through a mob of Elmdale urchins, who seldom saw a car, and had never before seen two in one day, when Dalrymple found himself regretting he had not inquired how Morand contrived to get on his track so easily. Some weeks elapsed before he learned that the only friend in London who knew his whereabouts thought it a duty to speak when the hue and cry went forth from the India Office.
Dalrymple was with his friend, a retired general, in his club when the vexed administrator announced his intention to retire from the arena and take a well-earned rest.
"I'll assume my mother's name, Armathwaite," he had said, "and rusticate in some place where Barapur is unknown and India never mentioned. Let's have a look at the map!"
He glanced at a motoring road-book lying on the club table.
"Here we are!" he laughed. "Judging by the condition of the highways, there are backwoods near Nuttonby, in Yorkshire. My postal address will be Armathwaite, near Nuttonby, for some months. But I'll write."
So that was how it happened that Sir Robert Dalrymple came to the Grange, and met Marguérite Ogilvey. Some part of the outcome of that meeting was foreshadowed while Smith of the Begonias was unlocking the gate, because a procession of three appeared in the porch.
Dr. Scaife and a nurse were carrying Percy Whittaker between them. The doctor's distress was almost comical when he caught sight of Dalrymple. He shouted brokenly, being rather breathless:
"For goodness' sake – Mr. Armathwaite – come and persuade this young man – to remain here. He insists – on being taken away – at once!"
