by Annie Haynes
“Up in London everybody was so kind about it. And now—now I have come home it is all different. Anthony is quite unkind; he says Lorrimer is too old, and that he doesn’t like him for other reasons. And Judith—well, Judith doesn’t say much, but she looks white and—and disapproving. It is all very miserable.”
Crasster took the girl’s hand in his. “Anthony is naturally very anxious for his little sister’s happiness.”
Peggy’s soft fingers clung to his; her pretty lips quivered. “Tell me, you are glad, aren’t you, Stephen?”
Glad! For one moment the man caught his breath. A red mist rose before his eyes. He thought of what had been, of what he had hoped would be, then with a supreme effort he recovered his self-control.
“Of course I am glad, Peggy,” he said softly. “If you are happy, that is all I ask. Are you, Peggy?”
“Very—very happy!” the girl whispered, her cheeks flushing hotly.
“Then I am very, very glad, Peggy.” With all his might the man was battling down the mad temptation that bade him take the girl in his arms, tell her that the love that had never failed in all her bright youth was hers now; would be hers for ever.
Peggy looked up at him with grateful, humid eyes. “Oh, you never disappoint me, Stephen. One is always sure of your sympathy.”
Crasster smiled a little sadly. “You will not need my sympathy much longer, Peggy. You will have Lord Chesterham’s.” His voice changing in spite of his efforts, as he spoke his successful rival’s name.
“Oh, but I shall—I shall always need every bit of your sympathy.” Peggy had dropped his hand now; she tucked her arm within his in the old playful confiding fashion, and drew him on with her. “I don’t think that being happy,” with a deepening of colour, “ought to make one forgetful of other people.”
Stephen could not forbear a grim smile.
“Oh, what a child you are still, Peggy,” he said involuntarily.
The girl pouted. “You are not to say that. Please to remember that I was eighteen last month; Lorrimer is always forgetting, and you are almost as bad. But come, they are taking tea out, and I am simply dying for some. What is wrong with”—lowering her voice—“Stephen Anthony and Judith?”
“Wrong with Anthony and Lady Carew!” Stephen brought back his thoughts with a start. “What would be wrong with them? Lady Carew does not look well; probably it is the heat.”
“It was much hotter than this last year, and she was quite well,” Peggy remarked wisely. “Anthony is altered too. He walks about by himself and broods over things. Heigh-ho! The only one that seems unchanged at Heron’s Carew is Paul, and he isn’t really unchanged, because he gets sweeter and sweeter every day.”
As she spoke she sprang forward and pounced upon her small nephew, who was just then passing the rosery gate in his nurse’s arms.
“Come to Auntie Peggy, and we will go and have cakes with Mummy.” She carried him off in triumph, seated on her shoulder, clutching at her hair with fat dimpled hands.
Stephen followed, smiling at them both, though his heart felt heavy as lead.
Tea was served under the big beech as usual; Judith came across the lawn as they made their appearance. She was wearing a cool-looking gown of pale blue foulard. Against the blue of the gown her face looked transparently white; there were hollows in the cheeks, shadows under the eyes. Crasster was struck anew by her air of fragility as she shook hands with him.
Peggy subsided on to the rug with Paul, gurgles and shrieks of laughter testifying to his pleasure in Auntie Peggy’s society; Stephen, his hat pulled down over his eyes, watched them as he talked to Lady Carew. Suddenly he looked up.
“Why, there is some one coming across the park from Home Wood. Surely, it is not Anthony?”
“No, Anthony was going the other way,” Judith said easily. “And I am afraid he will not be back just yet. Who can this be?”
She leaned forward wrinkling her brow.
Peggy sat up, holding the chuckling Paul on his feet. “There, soon you will be able to run races with Auntie Peggy, darling!” Then she caught sight of the tall figure now rapidly advancing towards them. “Who is this?” she paused, her colour rose in a wave, flooding cheeks, neck, temples, as she sprang to her feet. “Lorrimer, oh!” She sped across the grass to meet him.
Judith gave one swift glance at Stephen; she saw that his face was strained and tense. She looked away. Peggy had reached the advancing figure now, they were coming back together. Peggy hanging on the man’s arm, as she used to hang on Stephen’s. But, as she watched the two advancing figures, it seemed to Judith that there was something oddly, fatally, familiar about the carriage of the tall form that was bent over Peggy in so lover-like a fashion.
A black mist rose before Lady Carew’s eyes, blotting out Stephen’s tortured face, the advancing lovers; she sat very still, one hand grasping the arm of her chair. Paul, clutching at her skirts, whimpering a little in his astonishment at Peggy’s desertion of him, found himself for once unnoticed.
“Judith! Stephen!” It was Peggy’s voice, eager, appealing. “It is Lorrimer! He got his business in town over sooner than he expected. He came over from Chesterham to the Dower House this afternoon, expecting to surprise me, and Mother sent him on here.”
The mist before Judith’s eyes was dispersing: she was pulling herself together, her eyes strained themselves with pitiful intensity on the bronzed face, the tall broad-shouldered figure by Peggy’s side. Then a sudden icy cold gripped her, the touch of a deadly fear; so it was true then, Peggy’s lover, Lord Chesterham, was the one man whose coming must spell calamity and ruin to Judith, the man she had hoped and prayed she might never meet again.
Stephen, standing up, moving forward to meet the man who had taken Peggy from him, saw that Lady Carew’s face had changed, that an odd sickly pallor had overspread her cheeks. The horror in her eyes, their dumb agonized appeal, reminded him of some wild trapped thing. Moved by some sudden impulse he put himself before her.
But Judith rose. She leant heavily on the back of her wicker-chair; for one moment Stephen thought that she was going to faint, he turned quickly to her. She waved him imperatively back, her strange changeful eyes looked black as they strained themselves on the two who were very near now.
“Judith, Judith, don’t you see, don’t you understand—this is Lorrimer!” Peggy’s excited voice rang out again.
Stephen, standing aside, as the man came forward with his ready smile, his outstretched hand, noted how over Peggy’s unconscious head Judith Carew’s eyes met those of the new-comer; noted how the beautiful face had assumed a look of mask-like rigidity, in which nothing seemed alive but the great burning eyes. He saw too, in the moment, before the heavy lids drooped, the look of triumph that flashed across from Lord Chesterham.
“I hope that Lady Carew will give me a welcome to Heron’s Carew, for Peggy’s sake,” Lord Chesterham was saying as he bent over Judith’s hand.
Lady Carew’s lips moved, but there was no audible answer.
“Of course she will!” Peggy said joyously. “Only she hasn’t been well lately, and you have rather taken us by storm, you know, Lorrimer. I think we have startled her. Sit down, Judith, dear, you are paler than ever.”
But Judith put her aside. “I am quite well, Peggy. You are forgetting Mr. Crasster.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t,” Peggy said with her light laugh. “I never forget Stephen. This is Stephen, Lorrimer, who is to be your very greatest friend. I have told you all about him, haven’t I?”
Lord Chesterham laughed as he held out his hand. “You have indeed! I hope the friendship Miss Carew proposes meets with your approval, Mr. Crasster.”
Glancing into his rival’s smiling eyes, Stephen knew that his secret was his own no longer. “I hope that Peggy’s friends will: always be mine,” he said slowly.
“Why, of course they will be,” Peggy cried.
Judith had not moved, she stood a little behind. What was it that her eyes hel
d—repulsion, entreaty, fear? Stephen, watching her, could not make up his mind.
He looked again at Peggy’s lover. Lord Chesterham was apparently at his ease. Many people would have called him handsome, but Stephen’s keen gaze, accustomed to read the faces of all sorts and conditions of men, saw that the light smiling eyes were set a trifle too closely together, that there was a thickening of the lower part of the face, as well as certain lines round the mouth that spoke of an evil temper.
But he was all amiability to-day as he watched his young fiancée playing with Paul, and presently, when Judith had turned back to her tea-table, addressed a few casual remarks to Stephen.
At last Peggy got up. “I am going to take Paul back to the house.”
“No! You are not to come with me, sir,” with a mischievous glance at Chesterham, who had sprung forward. “I want you, Stephen, because I wish most particularly to know what you think of Lorrimer.”
CHAPTER XII
Stephen and Peggy walked slowly across the grass towards the house, Paul nestling in Peggy’s arms, the echo of her soft laughter reaching the two who were left behind.
Judith did not look after them, did not move so much as an eyelid; she sat beside the tea-table, absolutely motionless, her hands clasped together in her lap, her eyes staring straight before her.
Lord Chesterham drew up one of the chintz-covered easy chairs and sat down near her; apparently she did not even see him, she remained absolutely immobile.
Presently he leaned forward. “It is a great pleasure to meet you here, Lady Carew,” he said in his pleasant well-modulated tones. “Delightful to think that one of one’s friends at any rate is safely in harbour, in spite of the world’s storm and stress.”
Then at last Judith turned her head slowly, and looked at him. Hardened sinner though he was, the man momentarily shrank from the horror, the loathing in her eyes.
“How—how dare you!”
He laughed brazenly. “My dear Lady Carew—”
Judith was still staring at him with big frightened eyes. She shuddered as she heard the sound of his laughter. “You—you are Lord Chesterham!”
“I am Lord Chesterham,” he acquiesced, still with that evil smile. “Sometimes I have thought, I have wondered whether you knew, dear Lady Carew, whether you guessed—”
“Guessed—” Judith shrank away from him with unconquerable aversion. “Great heaven! how should I guess, how should I dream that such a thing should be—that heaven should let you come here—to torture me?”
He laughed softly. “I don’t know that heaven had much to do with the matter. As for torturing you—if I had had any of the intentions with which you so kindly credit me, I might have said a few words that would have materially altered your son’s position. But you see—” spreading out his hands.
“Ah, Paul!” Judith’s throat twitched miserably, her staring eyes were dominated, held by the wicked smiling gaze of the man opposite. “You—you devil,” she said hoarsely.
He laughed again. “Ah! Now if you talk to me like that I shall forget I am being honoured by a tête-à-tête with Lady Carew. I shall fancy I am back again at the Casa Civito with Judy—”
“Hush!” Judith’s voice rose almost to a shriek; she threw up her arm with a gesture of despair. “You shall not mention that name here, you shall not. I forbid you, do you hear?”
The man glanced round uneasily. It was no part of his plan that she should be tormented into self-betrayal:
“Hush! Hush!” he said imperatively. “You are foolish! If I had intended to tell your secret should I not have spoken sooner? Come, we must be friends, you and I. We shall soon be related—let me see, what shall we be? Brother and Sister-in-law, I believe that is the precise term, is it not?”
Judith raised herself. “No!” she said jerkily. “No! We shall not be related; you shall never marry Peggy! You shall never be Peggy’s husband!”
Chesterham’s eyes darkened; he leaned forward and looked her fully in the face.
“How do you propose to prevent me?”
For one moment Judith struggled vainly for speech, her mouth twitched painfully.
“I will go to my husband, I will tell him—”
A sneer contorted the man’s sensual lips. “What will you tell him? Where we last met, for instance? I can imagine your story interesting him enormously if you do. Come, Judy, don’t be a fool!” as she stared at him helplessly. “Don’t you see that you can’t hurt me without betraying yourself? Don’t you realize that you are hopelessly in my power? That instead of threatening me, you should be begging for my mercy, for my silence? Don’t you think that Sir Anthony Carew, as well as the public generally, would be intensely interested to hear the circumstances of that last meeting?”
Judith caught her breath sharply. “Why haven’t you told them? Why have you kept silence?”
He did not answer for a moment; his eyes were watching her face keenly.
“Because I was sorry for you,” he said slowly at last. “Because I knew, none better, what your life had been like in the past; because I could guess something of what led to that last mad act.” He shrugged his shoulders. “No. Let the police blunder on; I felt in no way bound to help them. You may rely on my silence, unless you interfere with my plans. Come, is it a bargain?”
He held out his hand; Judith struck it aside.
“No! No! How can I? How can I let you marry Peggy—you?”
Chesterham’s expression was not pleasant to see as he tugged at his moustache.
“I think you are forgetting one thing,” he said at last, gazing towards the rosery where a glimpse of the tail of Peggy’s white gown was to be caught. “I may not be good enough to be Peggy’s husband—Heaven forbid that I should contradict you,” a momentary softening in his voice. “But,” his eyes hardening to steel again, “I put it to you, should I not be at least as suitable as a husband for her as you for a sister-in-law? Do you think you are precisely in a position to throw stones?”
Judith quivered from head to foot, her throat was parched and burning. She drank feverishly of the tea standing by her side. It was cold now, but it seemed to steady her nerves, to cool the fever in her blood. She found courage to turn, to look fully at that mocking face at her side.
“I—I should like to tell you—to let you know that though you met me coming away from the flat that night that I never harmed him—Cyril,” she said, speaking fast and jerkily. “I know that you think I did. It is natural perhaps, that you should, but I had nothing to do with his death—nothing.”
“Then who had?” the man asked quietly. His eyes watched every movement of her face, every fluctuation of her colour.
Judith raised her eyes despairingly. “How should I know? I was there in the darkened room, and I heard the revolver shot, that is all I know. I did not see anyone, I—I only heard the breathing.”
There was a pause. Judith’s voice had ceased, her eyes were downcast. Still leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, Chesterham watched her intently.
Then at last he laughed aloud. The sound of it struck across Judith’s flagging spirit like a lash of whipcord. She raised her head, her colour mounting hotly. Chesterham laughed again.
“I am afraid you will have to try another story, Lady Carew,” he said lightly. “I will think over the affair myself. Perhaps I might be able to help you to something more probable. As for what you have told me—”
A certain amount of courage had come back to Judith. “I have told you the truth!” she said icily.
“Have you?” Chesterham questioned lightly. “Then I am afraid that it will hardly carry conviction. Let me put it to you. You had the strongest of all motives for getting rid of Stanmore. You are young, beautiful you have attained an assured position; you are happy in the love of your husband and your child. Stanmore’s coming to England, his discovery of you spelt ruin for you. He insists on seeing you. Presumably, at any rate you visit him at his flat alone, late at night. The next morning he is
found dead—shot. As far as can be ascertained by the strictest inquiry you were the only visitor; you were met and recognized coming away. No, no! I’m afraid your story won’t do, Lady Carew.”
“Nevertheless, it is true,” Judith said wearily.
“Well, then,” Chesterham shrugged his shoulders. “I should delay making it public for as long a time as possible, dear Lady Carew. In all probability it will be received with a good dealt of scepticism. In the meantime, I assure you, you may rely upon my silence as long as you do not interfere with my plans. Now allow me to suggest that you pull yourself together. Peggy is coming back, and some one is with her; it is not the estimable Crasster. I conclude, therefore, that it must be your—it must be Sir Anthony Carew.”
Judith looked up. Yes, it was Anthony who was coming towards them from the rosery at Peggy’s side; Anthony, with his dear dark face downbent, looking by no means pleased at the prospect of making his future brother-in-law’s acquaintance.
Lord Chesterham got up and went to meet them. Judith heard Peggy’s introduction. “This is Lorrimer, Anthony.” She saw that Sir Anthony only bowed stiffly; that he paused noticeably before taking Chesterham’s outstretched hand. Peggy left the two men together and flew across to her sister-in-law.
“Stephen was obliged to go,” she complained. “Wasn’t it tiresome? Just when I particularly wanted him to stay and make friends with Lorrimer.”
Sir Anthony and Lord Chesterham joined them in a minute or so. Chesterham was evidently laying himself out to make a good impression on Peggy’s brother. Under the influence of his genial manner and ready, pleasant smile Sir Anthony’s first ill-humour was apparently thawing.
Yet Judith saw that his eyes had a puzzled expression. After a minute or two Chesterham noticed it also.
“I wonder whether you have marked the great likeness that is said to exist between the portrait of my ancestor who fell at Fontenoy and myself, Sir Anthony?” he asked tentatively.
