Читать книгу Whoso Findeth a Wife - William Le Queux - Страница 4

When, a couple of hours later, we entered Mrs. Laing’s garden, the first person we encountered was the man I hated, Andrew Beck, in his ill-fitting dress clothes and broad, crumpled shirt-front, with its great diamond solitaire, lounging in a wicker chair at the river’s brink, smoking, and in solitude enjoying the glorious sunset that, reflecting upon the water, transformed it into a stream of rippling gold. “The Nook,” as Mrs. Laing’s house was called, was a charming old place facing the river at a little distance above Staines Bridge—long, low, completely covered with ivy and surrounded by a wide sweep of lawn that sloped down to the water’s edge, and a belt of old elms beneath the cool shade of which I had spent many delightfully lazy afternoons by the side of my well-beloved.

“Ah! Deedes,” exclaimed Beck, gaily, rising as we approached, “I was waiting for somebody to come. The ladies haven’t come down yet.”

“Have you seen them?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he replied; then turning to my friend Dudley, he began chaffing him about a young and wealthy widow he had rowed up to Windsor in our boat a few days before.

“We saw you, my boy. We saw you?” he laughed. “You were talking so confidentially as you passed, that Ella remarked that you were contemplating stepping into the dead man’s shoes.”

“No, no,” Dudley retorted good-humouredly. “No widows for me. She was merely left under my care for an hour or so, and I had to do the amicable. It’s really too bad of you all to jump to such rash conclusions.”

At that instant a soft, musical voice behind me uttered my name, and, turning, I met Ella, with a light wrap thrown about her shoulders, coming forward to me with outstretched hand. “Ah! Geoffrey, how are you?” she cried gaily, with joy in her brilliant, sparkling eyes. Then, as our hands clasped, she added in an undertone, “I knew you would come; I knew you would forgive.”

“I have not forgiven,” I answered, rather coldly, bending over her slim white hand.

“But I have committed no fault,” she said, pouting prettily.

“You have given me no satisfactory explanation.”

“Wait until after dinner. We will come out here together, where we can talk without being overheard,” she whispered hurriedly, then left me abruptly to greet Dudley and Andrew Beck. There was something significant in the swift, inquisitive glance she exchanged with the last-named man, and turning away I strode across the lawn annoyed. A moment later I met Mrs. Laing herself. She was elderly and effusive; tall, and of stately bearing. Her hair was perfectly white but by no means scanty, her face was clever and refined without that grossness that too often disfigures a well-preserved woman of fifty, and in her dark eyes, undimmed by time, there was always an expression of calm contentment. Her husband had been a great traveller until his death ten years ago, and she, accompanying him on his journeys in the East, had become a clever linguist, an accomplishment which her only daughter, Ella, shared.

As we stood together chatting, and watching the boats full of happy youths and maidens gliding past in the brilliant afterglow, I thought that never had I seen Ella looking so handsome, as, standing with Dudley, she had taken up Beck’s theme, and was congratulating him upon his trip with the skittish widow.

Hers was an oval face, perfect in its symmetry, clear cut and refined, a trifle pale perhaps, but from her eyes of that darkest blue that sometimes sparkled into the brightness of a sapphire, sometimes deepened into softest grey like the sky on a summer night, there shone an inner beauty, indicative of a purity of soul. The mouth was mobile, short and full, with an exquisite finish about the curve of the lips, the nose short and straight, and the hair of darkest gold—the gold that cannot be produced artificially, but has a slight dash of red in it, just sufficient to enrich the brown of the shadows and give a burnish to the ripples in the high lights. Her eyebrows were set rather high up from the eye itself, and were slightly drooped at the corner nearest the ear, imparting to her face a kind of plaintive, questioning look that was exceedingly becoming to her. Her gown was of soft clinging silk of palest heliotrope, that bore the unmistakable stamp of Paris, while on her slim wrist I noticed she wore the diamond bangle I had given her six months before. As she chatted with Dudley, she turned and laughed at me gaily over her shoulder from time to time, and when we entered the house a few minutes later, it was with satisfaction that I found myself placed beside her at table.

Dinner was always a pleasant, if slightly stately, meal at Mrs. Laing’s. She was a brilliant and accomplished hostess, whose entertainments at her house in Pont Street were always popular, and who surrounded herself with interesting and intellectual people. Bohemia was generally well represented at her receptions, for the lions of the season, whether literary, artistic, or musical, were always to be met there—a fact which induced many of the more exclusive set to honour the merry widow by their presence. Wearied, however, of the eternal small talk about new books, new plays, new pictures, and the newest fads, I was glad when, after smoking, we were free to rejoin the ladies in the quaint, oak-panelled drawing-room.

The moon had risen, and ere long I strolled with Ella through the French windows, and out upon the lawn, eager to talk alone with her.

“Well,” she said at length, when we were seated in the shadow beneath one of the high rustling elms, “so you want an explanation. What can I give?”

“Your letter conveys the suspicion that there exists some secret between Beck and yourself,” I said, as calmly as I could.

“My letter!” she exclaimed, in a voice that seemed a little harsh and strained. “What did I say? I really forget.”

“It’s useless to prevaricate, Ella,” I said, rather impatiently. “You say that if I knew all I would never utter words of love to you. What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I wrote,” she answered huskily, in a low voice.

“You mean to imply that you are unworthy of the love of an honest man?” I observed in astonishment.

“Yes,” she gasped hoarsely. “I do not—I—cannot deceive you, Geoffrey, because I love you.” The last sentence she uttered passionately, with a fierce fire burning in her eyes. “You are jealous of Andrew Beck, a man old enough to be my father. Well, I confess I was foolish to allow him to walk with me here with his arm around my waist; yet at that moment the indiscretion did not occur to me.”

“But he was speaking to you—whispering into your ready ears words of love and tenderness. He spoke in persuasive tones, as if begging you to become his wife,” I said angrily, the very thought of the scene I had witnessed filling me with indignation and bitter hatred.

“No, you are entirely mistaken, Geoffrey. No word of love passed between us,” she said quietly, looking into my eyes with unwavering glance.

I smiled incredulously.

“You will perhaps deny that here, within six yards of this very spot, you stopped and burst forth into tears?” I exclaimed, with cold cynicism.

“I admit that. The words he uttered were of sufficient significance to bring tears to my eyes,” she replied vaguely.

“He must have spoken words of love to you,” I argued. “I watched you both.”

“I deny that he did, Geoffrey,” she cried fiercely, starting up. “To satisfy you, I am even ready to take an oath before my Creator that the subject of our conversation was not love.”

“What was Beck persuading you to do?” I demanded.

“No, no,” she cried, as if the very thought was repulsive to her. “No, do not ask me. I can never tell you, never!”

“Then there is a secret between you that you decline to reveal,” I said reproachfully.

She laughed a harsh metallic laugh, answering in a tone of feigned flippancy—

“Really, Geoffrey, you are absurdly and unreasonably suspicious. I tell you I love no other man but yourself, yet merely because it pleases you to misconstrue what you have witnessed you brand me as base and faithless. It is unjust.”

“But your letter!” I cried.

“I had no intention of conveying the idea that any secret existed between Mr. Beck and myself. He was, as you well know, an old friend of my father’s, and has known me since a child. Towards me he is always friendly and good-natured, but I swear he has never spoken to me of love.”

“But you cannot deny, Ella, that a secret—some fact that you are determined to keep from me—exists, and that if not of love, it was of that secret Beck spoke to you so earnestly in the garden here!”

Her dry lips moved, but no sound escaped them. She shivered. I saw my question had entirely nonplussed her, and I felt instinctively that I had uttered the truth.

At that instant, however, a servant crossed the lawn in the moonlight, and approaching, handed me a telegram, stating that Juckes, my man, had brought it over from Shepperton, fearing that it might be of importance.

Hastily I thrust it into my pocket unopened, and when the servant was out of hearing I repeated the plain question I had put to my well-beloved.

In the bright moonlight I watched how pale and agitated was her face, while involuntarily she shuddered, as if the thought that I might ascertain the truth terrified her.

“Geoffrey,” she said at last, in a low, plaintive voice as, sitting beside me, her slim fingers suddenly closed convulsively upon mine, “why cannot you trust me, when you know I love you so dearly?”

“Why cannot you tell me the truth instead of evading it? You say you are unworthy of my love. Why?”

“I—I cannot tell you,” she cried wildly, breaking into hysterical sobs. “Ah! You do not know how I have suffered, Geoffrey, or you would not speak thus to me. If you can no longer trust me, then we must, alas! part. But if we do, I shall think ever of you as one who misjudged me and cast me off, merely because of my inability to give you an explanation of one simple incident.”

“But I love you, Ella,” I cried. “Why should we part—why should—”

“Hulloa, Deedes!” interrupted Beck’s high-pitched, genial voice. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. We’re all going for a moonlight row. Come along.”

Further conversation was, I saw, out of the question, and a few minutes later we had all embarked, with the exception of Mrs. Laing, and were gliding slowly down the stream, now glittering in the brilliant moonbeams. Dudley had brought Ella’s mandoline from the house, and as our prow cut the rippling waters he played a soft, charming gondolier’s song. My love sat beside me in the stern, and her eyes mutely asked forgiveness as ever and anon she turned to me. I saw how beautiful she was, how full of delicate grace, and how varying were her moods; yet she seemed nervous, highly-strung, with a strange harshness in her voice that I had never before noticed. She spoke no word to Beck, and I remarked within myself that she avoided him, while once, when he leant over to grasp her hand, she shrank shudderingly from its contact.

An hour later, when, after rowing down to Laleham, we had returned to the “Nook” and, at the instigation of the ladies, were enjoying cigars, I accidentally placed my hand in the breast-pocket of my dress-coat and there felt the telegram which I had until that moment entirely forgotten. Opening it, I was amazed to find it in cipher. The cipher signature was that of the Earl of Warnham, and I saw it had been transmitted over the private wire from Warnham, his seat in Sussex.

Taking a pencil from my pocket I at once proceeded to transcribe the mysterious array of letters, and when I at last discovered the purport of the message, I sat back in my chair, breathless and rigid, while the flimsy paper nearly fell from my nerveless fingers.

“Why, Geoffrey!” cried Ella, starting up in alarm and rushing towards me, “what’s the matter? You are as pale as death. Have you had bad news?”

“Bad news!” I answered, trying to laugh and slowly rousing myself. “No bad news at all, except that I must leave for town at once.”

“Well, you certainly look as if you’ve been hard hit over a race,” Beck exclaimed, laughing.

“You can’t possibly get a train now till 11:30. It’s hardly ten yet,” said my well-beloved, exchanging a strange, mysterious glance with Dudley.

“Then I must go by that,” I answered, again re-reading the pink paper, replacing it in my pocket, and endeavouring to preserve an outward calm.

Presently, when Ella was again alone with me, her first question was—

“What bad news have you received, Geoffrey?”

“None,” I answered, smiling. “It is a private matter, of really no importance at all.”

“Oh, I thought it must have been something very, very serious, your hand trembled so, and you turned so pale.”

“Did I?” I laughed cheerily. “Well, it’s nothing, dearest; nothing at all.”

Thus reassured, she continued to chat with that bright vivacity that was one of her most engaging characteristics. I have, however, no idea of what she said; I only answered her mechanically, for I was too full of gloomy apprehensions to heed her gossip, even though I loved her with all my soul.

Half-an-hour later, Dudley, finding that I had to go to town, announced his intention of walking back to Shepperton.

“The night is lovely, and the moon bright as day,” he said, as we all shook hands with him in the hall. “I shall enjoy the walk.”

“Beware of widows!” shouted Beck, standing at the top of the wide flight of steps.

We all laughed heartily.

“None about to-night,” my friend shouted back good-humouredly, and, setting out briskly, disappeared a moment later down the long, winding carriage drive.

“It’s really too bad to tease Mr. Ogle about widows,” Ella protested when we went in.

“He enjoys the joke hugely,” I said. “Dudley’s an excellent fellow. I’ve never in my life seen him out of temper.”

“In that case he ought to make a good husband,” she replied, laughing, as together we all entered Mrs. Laing’s pretty drawing-room, with its shaded lamps and cosy-corners, where we spent another three-quarters of an hour chatting until, finding we had just time to catch our train, Beck and I made our adieux. When I shook hands with Ella she whispered an earnest appeal for forgiveness, which, truth to tell, I feigned not to hear. Then we parted.

With Beck at my side, I walked sharply down the drive, rendered dark by the thick canopy of trees overhead, and had almost gained the gate leading to the high road when suddenly, catching my foot against some unseen object in the pathway, I fell heavily forward upon the gravel, just managing to save my face by putting out both hands.

“Hulloa!” cried Beck; “what’s the matter?”

“The matter!” I gasped, groping at the mysterious object quickly with my hands. “I believe I’ve fallen over somebody.”

“Drunk, I suppose. Come along, or we sha’n’t catch our train.”

But, still kneeling, I quickly took my vestas from my pocket and struck one. By its fitful light I distinguished the prostrate body of a man lying face downwards, with arms outstretched beyond his head. Turning him over with difficulty, I lit another vesta and held it close down to his face.

Next second I drew back with a loud cry of dismay and horror. It was Dudley Ogle.

His bloodless features were hideously distorted, his limbs rigid, his wildly-staring eyes were already glazed, and his stiffened fingers icy cold.

In an instant I knew the truth. He was dead.