Читать книгу The Law of the Land - Fred M. White - Страница 4

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"I might ask you the same question," Ralph said playfully, after a long pause. "Are you quite sure, darling, that I am the only man?"

"Passing fancies," Enid said with a little laugh. "Of course, I have met men that I liked. At one time it was Stephen Holt. I fancy you met him at the Ronald-Claytons. He used to be at Eton with my brother. But I am talking nonsense, Ralph. Still, it is good for me to lie in your arms and tell you these things."

"I know the man," Ralph said. Try as he would, he could not keep a little hardness out of his voice. "I had forgotten that your brother and Holt were friends. We were all at Eton together, as a matter of fact. I have met Holt recently. Where is he now?"

There was anxiety in the question, but Enid did not seem to notice it.

"How small the world really is!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Holt is staying with a friend near us, and is dining with us to-night. He goes back to town by the last train. Can't I persuade you to come over to-night and meet him?"

But Ralph shook his head. He was far more disturbed and uneasy than he would have cared for Enid to know. He had hugged himself with the delusion that he had buried all the old ghosts, and yet here was one in his path, far away from the haunts that he had left for ever.

"I don't think so, dearest," he said. "My first visit to your place must be to pay a formal visit to your father and tell him what has happened. To-morrow afternoon. And if Sir Charles listens favourably to my suit I may be asked to dinner afterwards."

"As if dad ever refused me anything!" Enid laughed. There was a wonderfully tender happiness shining in her blue eyes. "If you like I will keep our beautiful romance a secret a little longer. And what a delightful thing it is! I feel as if I shall have to tell it to everybody as I go along. And I hope I shall never be jealous of you, Ralph. Where we Charteris women love we have no halfway house. You know something of our family history."

A slight shadow crossed Ralph's face. There was more than one dark story in the family archives, and jealousy had been at the bottom of them all. But there was no sign of that mad passion in the melting blue eyes that Ralph was looking down into; he shook off the sense of impending evil and kissed the smiling red lips again.

"And now I must go," Enid said. "Do you mean to say that it is half-past six. I shall barely have time to get home and dress for dinner. Ralph, I positively command you to ring the bell and order my horse round at once."

Enid was on her horse at last, and flung down the drive with Ralph gazing after her. It seemed as if something was going out of his life again. But it was not for long. He would go over to Charteris Park to-morrow and put the engagement on a proper footing. Yet there was a frown on Ralph's lace and a puckering of his brows as he stood on the terrace with a cigarette between his strong teeth. He was uneasy to find how near to him the dim past had come. He had almost forgotten that other pair of blue eyes. They were the same as Enid's, and yet how utterly different!

"Why do I dwell upon it?" he asked himself impatiently. "What have I to fear? I had quite forgotten that Holt was a friend of Dick Charteris. And so Holt was making love to Enid before I knew her! What an escape for her! What a lucky thing that she did not give her heart to that black-guard! And yet there was a time when I was very little better. And he knows all about Kate Lingen, too. So does Barca for that matter. It would have been better to have told Enid everything, to have made a clean breast of it. And yet to-day.....I couldn't. Still......"

Ralph threw his cigarette away and strode moodily into the house. Physically he was no coward; he was ready to face any danger, and had his nerves under perfect control.

And yet there were one or two things that he should have told Enid. Episodes of his past...... He should have trusted her love for him further than he had done.

The dark clouds had cleared away by dinner time, when Ralph sat alone. Barca came back before dark; he seemed on good terms with himself. He had had a perfectly successful operation, but was rather tired, and meant to go to bed early. He asked no questions about Miss Charteris, and Ralph was grateful. Like most Bohemians, he was the soul of hospitality; at the same time, he was anxious to know how much longer Barca was going to stay at Abbey Close. He desired to cut away the old life as speedily as possible. Barca's eyes flashed murderously for a moment, and he played with his dessert knife as if it been a lancet.

"You are anxious to get rid of me, my friend," he said. "Well, perhaps it is natural. I shall go and tell the others that Ralph Kingsmill has turned respectable; that he is going to divert his brilliant intellect in the direction of broadcloth and square-toed boots; that he is going to be married. And what will the fair Kate say?"

"What makes you think I am anxious to get rid of you?" Ralph asked uneasily. "I have never said a word to you which would convey that impression."

Barca smiled in his dark, inscrutable fashion. He took a peach from the dish before him and peeled it deliberately. He might have been dissecting a human heart. Ralph could imagine those cold, steady hands working calmly on some unhappy creature in the last stages of a fell disease.

"You have said absolutely nothing," Barca replied. "In that way you are the soul of discretion, but when a man has made up his mind to marry, it is no unusual thing for him to find it prudent to cut off the friends of his youth. I don't suppose Miss Charteris will have much sympathy with a casual like Richard Barca."

"I don't recollect mentioning Miss Charteris's name at all," Ralph said coldly, "beyond casually remarking that she had been here this afternoon. Apart from that—"

"Is there really any reason for more?" Barca laughed. "I can tell what has happened from the expression of your face and the dreamy look in your eyes. Since we sat down you have glanced several times at the clock, as if wondering how much longer it would be before I left you to pursue my evening experiments as usual. Still, a man can't altogether escape from the indiscretions of his youth, and, as I ventured to ask before, quite in the way of chaff, what will the fair Kate say? You must not forget that certain tender passages—"

Ralph writhed uneasily in his chair. It seemed to him that there was a distinct menace behind the bantering tones of his companion. Just for an instant he detected a steely flash in Barca's brown eyes. If there was, he ignored it.

"Mrs. Lingen is nothing to me," he said. "It is a year since we parted. I shall be glad if you will not refer to the subject again, Barca. It displeases me. And I had always suspected you of a tenderness in that quarter. If my opinion is worth anything."

Barca's eyes flashed with a consuming fire. The handle of his dessert knife was gripped so tightly that his knuckles showed clean white to the bones. The man was trembling from head to foot with passion. And yet his laugh was steady.

"I am not so favoured," he said. "And I have no time for the tender passions. I who have only myself to depend upon. What has the obscure doctor whose first recollection is the whitewashed wall of a foundling hospital to do with love? It is not as if I had come into a lovely place like this. Upon my word, I envy you. I have made a study of the house. There are art treasures, tapestries, and the like, in a great storeroom in the attics that would furnish the place twice over. And the grand old Persian carpets. Why, the one on the floor here is priceless."

Ralph agreed eagerly. He was grateful to Barca for changing the conversation. And in sooth, the dining-room carpet was a marvellous affair, cream and gold and pallid blue, unfaded and unchanged after the lapse of three centuries. Ralph stood contemplating it long after Barca had pleaded fatigue and gone to bed. It was getting late now, and all the servants had retired. The long window leading to the lawn was not closed; the silken curtains flitted to and fro in the breeze. Ralph had no inclination for bed; he preferred to sit where he was, in a glow of delight, contemplating his new great happiness.

The past lay behind him, forgotten for the moment. The curtains before the window shook ominously, but Ralph took no heed. He did not hear footsteps on the gravel, and looked up in mild surprise as the curtains parted and a man stepped into the room.

A puff of wind closed the door gently but firmly, and the shaded lamps smoked to the breeze.

"I am about the last visitor you expected," the intruder said harshly.

He advanced to the centre of the room, a tall, slim figure, with good-looking features marred by the traces of dissipation. The grey eyes were a little too close together, the lips under the fair moustache too sensual. But the eyes were blazing, and the man's whole frame quivered with impatient anger.

"Stephen Holt," Ralph said. "It is some time since we met. I should have thought after our last meeting that you would not have ventured to intrude upon me again. What do you mean by coming here in this fashion at this hour?"

The stranger laughed hoarsely. There was a studied insolence in his manner.

"One question at a time," he said. "It will be my turn presently. I left Charteris Park to go to town by the last train. I got as far as the Junction, and then left my carriage and came here by way of the fields. I should not have come at all had I not discovered something at dinner to-night. You are engaged to Enid Charteris?"

Ralph smiled at the impetuosity of the question. He had all the feeling of the man who has been successful, and could afford to deal leniently with his ousted rival. It seemed hard to believe, though, that the man who stood before him had once been on friendly, not to say affectionate, terms with Enid. But then Stephen Holt had been a different man in those days, before the poison had entered his blood, and he had drifted down hill towards the brink of social ruin.

"You have been drinking," Ralph said. "You must have been somewhere since you left Charters Park. Now, just think a moment before you take a step which you may have occasion bitterly to regret. Few men would stand here and argue the question out as I am doing now, for I tell you candidly my impulse is to give you a minute to leave the house or kick you out through the window. At any rate, I decline to enter into a vulgar row with you on the subject of Miss Charteris."

"Hear this beggar on horseback talk," Holt sneered. "Listen to the struggling poet, who only a few weeks ago hardly knew what it was to have a decent meal. Perhaps you will not ride so high a horse after I have seen my sister. Yes, I see I have touched you on a soft spot there. And now once more I ask you plainly, are you or are you not engaged to Enid Charteris?"

Ralph stepped forward, fierce rage gleaming in his eyes. It suddenly occurred to him, however, that this man was a guest of a sort in his house, and that violence was out of place. With an effort he controlled himself. Coolly shrugging his shoulders, he turned away with a smile.

"You have no right to ask the question, and I am certain that she did not tell you."

"That is true enough. But I have eyes to see. And to-night at dinner she was transformed, glorified! Even then I did not guess who it was till your name was mentioned. Then as I looked at her face again and learnt where she had passed the after-noon, I knew. And, but for you, that girl would have been mine, the only woman in the world that could have held me straight. You come in and steal her from me like this. You will give her up, Kingsmill."

"My good fellow," Ralph said warmly, "you have been drinking!"

"Well, what of that?" the other asked sullenly. "I had some time to wait at the station, and I was wild with disappointed love and jealousy. Who are you to step in between any man and the woman he cares for? There was Kate Lingen, for instance, and Barca. And you will not deny that at one time your passion for Kate Lingen—"

"You had better be careful," Ralph said between his teeth. "Fortunately for me, I found out what Mrs. Lingen was before it was too late. We parted friends—"

"Yes, but you did not get your letters back," Holt sneered. "Such letters! Written by a poet with the love frenzy upon him! And I can place my hand on those letters to-morrow. Recall some of the tender phrases. If you will be so good! And think of Enid Charteris's face as she reads those letters of yours. Now, what are you going to do?"

Ralph's first impulse was to take the miscreant by the throat and shake the life out of him. There was hot passionate blood in his veins, and Holt was pushing him far. He must be careful.

"Go on," he whispered; "go on. I can see that you have a proposal to make."

"Oh, I have. You are rich, and I am desperately in need of money. Give me L2000 and break off your engagement with Enid, and those letters are yours. Enid is my one hope of salvation: she alone can keep me from going headlong to the devil. Kate played you false when she said that she had destroyed those letters. And I know where to find them. Nobody need be any the wiser, nobody knows that I have been here. I am supposed to be half-way to London by this time. Give me your promise, and you shall never hear from me again."

Mechanically Ralph took up a long-bladed paper-cutter from the table. It was an Eastern toy, but capable of being a dangerous weapon in a strong man's hands.

"And if I refuse this preposterous offer?" he said in a deep whisper.

"Then I go to Enid and tell her everything. I give her those letters to read. I can't give her up; you do not know how I love her, Kingsmill. To me she is salvation itself. Once she sees those letters you are done for, and you know it."

Ralph rose to his feet. He was seeing red before his eyes now, lost in a tempest of whirling passions. The worm must be killed, this loathsome thing swept aside. Ralph seemed to feel that he had somebody by the coat collar, somebody who was crying out in alarm. Something flashed in the air and fell with a dull thud against white living flesh; then a red stream of spurting fluid lay like a swelling river on the carpet. ...