“Val—don’t cry! Why are you crying? You haven’t got anything to cry for.” He kissed her angrily, desperately. “Why should you cry? You don’t care!”
She raised her head, panting, choking.
“I hate you—I hate you! I do care!”
“You don’t. You’ll go away and forget me.”
“No, I won’t!”
“You’ll have to.” He pushed her away from him. “I don’t think it’ll be very hard for you. But whether it’s hard or easy, you’ll have to do it.”
“Why?” said Valentine on a shaken breath.
“Because you must. I’ve no money.”
“But you said—Barclay said—I would have lots of money.”
“And you think I’m the sort of swab who marries for money?”
“Not for money—for me.”
“Not for you, or for anyone else. I’ll marry when I’m making enough to keep a wife, and not before.”
Valentine threw up her head.
“I don’t want to marry you—I don’t want to marry anyone! I never said I wanted to marry you. Oh, I didn’t!”
“It’s just as well,” said Austin in his roughest voice.
He heard her catch her breath on a sob; her hands went to her breast. She said “Unkind!” in a voice that he had not heard before; there was wonder in it, as if she had not thought that he would strike her like that.
“What’s the good of talking?”
“Why did you kiss me? You did kiss me. Why?”
“Because I lost my head.”
“You oughtn’t to kiss me if you’re not fond of me. Why did you?”
“I tell you I lost my head. I shan’t do it again. You won’t be bothered with me any more after to-morrow.”
Valentine’s hands dropped.
“Won’t you come and see me?”
“No.”
“Or write?”
“What on earth’s the use?”
She came a step nearer.
“Why are you being so horrid? I want to write to you and tell you all about everything. What’s the good of anything if I haven’t got anyone to write to about it? You said I could write to you.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh, you did! You said it only a week ago. You said that you were going to be in London, and that you were going to be secretary to your cousin who is in Parliament. And you said we would write to each other—you did, Austin!”
“I was a fool.”
She came nearer still.
“Austin—aren’t you a little bit fond of me?”
“I’m fool enough to be in love with you, if that’s what you mean.”
She clapped her hands.
“Really? Truly?”
He did not answer.
“Austin—”
“That’s enough,” said Austin in a choked voice.
“Austin—”
He turned and strode away, knocking over one of the deck chairs as he went.
Dinner was not a very lively meal. It was obvious that Valentine had been crying, and that Austin Muir was wrapped in gloom. Neither of them ate very much, and at the first possible moment Austin disappeared, to be seen no more that evening.
“Well, well,” said Barclay. He sipped his coffee. Then, “Master Austin’s in a fit of the sulks—eh?”
Valentine sat with her elbows on the table and said nothing. She had been happy; and suddenly all the happiness had gone, just as the light used to go on the island when the sun went down—it was light, and then it was dark. She had been happy; and now she didn’t feel as if she were ever going to be happy again. She looked up at Barclay with eyes that hurt him.
“What’s the matter, kid?”
“He’s unkind.”
“Austin? Well, my dear, I shouldn’t let that keep you awake at night.”
“It doesn’t,” said Valentine literally. “But it hurts—here.” She touched her side. “Why does it hurt, Barclay?”
“It won’t go on hutting, kid. Things don’t. You think they’re going to, but they don’t. What’s Austin been doing?”
“It’s my money. He says he hasn’t got any, and he says he won’t marry me because I’ve got a lot. And I said I didn’t want to marry him or anybody.”
Barclay leaned towards her over the table.
“Now look here, kid! I’m going to talk to you like a Dutch uncle.”
A fleeting gleam of interest crossed the mournful face.
“How does a Dutch uncle talk, Barclay?”
“Like I’m going to. You just sit up and take notice, and you’ll know. Now, my dear, don’t you be in a hurry over this marrying business. For one thing, you’re a lot too young; and for another, you don’t know enough. See? Take Master Austin. I haven’t got anything against him except his temper. But you’ll meet dozens of young fellows that would suit you better and be a heap easier to live with. Why, I’d be a heap easier to live with myself—and if I thought it was playing the game, I’d make the running and cut Master Austin out.” He laughed good-naturedly, but he was watching her. “Eh, kid? What would you think of it if I did? Too old—eh—and too fat? That’s about the size of it—isn’t it?”
Valentine looked interested.
“You’re much fatter than Austin. Are you very, very old?”
“Old enough to be your Dutch uncle anyway—and old enough not to make a fool of myself.”
Barclay’s voice was sufficiently rueful to attract her attention.
“Why did you say it like that?”
“Because I am a fool. Look here, kiddy, I’m going to play the game all right. But just supposing that things don’t turn out right for you, and there isn’t any fairy prince, and you ever come to feel that I’m not too old and too fat—well, I’d like you to know that as far as I’m concerned it would be a deal.”
Valentine took her elbows off the table and sat up straight.
“What does all that mean?”
“Well, my dear, it means that if you ever want Nicholas Barclay, you can have him.”
A bright and beautiful colour came into her face; her lips parted eagerly.
“Are you proposing to me?”
“Well—”
“Like in a book?”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Barclay.
“How lovely! I wish Austin was here! I wish he could hear you doing it! Barclay, will you say it all over again for Austin to hear?”
Barclay leaned back in his chair and laughed until his eyes almost disappeared.
“Well, I’m blessed!” he said.
“Won’t you?”
“It’s not done,” said Barclay. “Gosh, kid! How old do you call yourself?”
Valentine looked offended.
“I’m twenty and a half. And I don’t think you ought to laugh when you’re proposing to me. None of the people in the books do.”
He pushed back his chair and got up.
“See here, Val—No, you wouldn’t understand.”
She looked up at him seriously.
“Yes, I would. I’m very intelligent—Edward said so.”
“Well, he hadn’t tried proposing to you, my dear. Would you understand if I told you that I laughed because, if I hadn’t laughed, I might have cried?”
“You’re too old to cry,” said Valentine decidedly.
“And too fat! Gosh! What a fool I am!” He came nearer. “Will you give me a kiss, Val?”
She sprang from her chair, and was out of reach even as he put out a tentative hand. There was fire in her eyes.
Barclay looked at her in amazement.
“What’s the matter? Did you think I’d kiss you against your will?” His voice wasn’t good-natured any more. “Gosh, kid, if I was that sort!”
“Edward said—”
“Look here, if you’re going to tell me what Edward said, you’ll start me saying things I oughtn’t to.”
Valentine tapped with her foot; her eyes still sparkled. She put her head a little
on one side.
“Edward said—”
It is to Barclay’s credit that he remained silent.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” inquired Miss Ryven.
He resumed his self-control.
“Not before the child,” he said, and was pleased to observe that she flushed.
“Oh, but I wanted to hear what you were going to say!”
Barclay burst out laughing.
CHAPTER VII
“Well, I don’t know how you can knit!” said Ida Cobb.
Mrs. Ryven went on knitting. She sat in the sofa corner, upright, but not stiffly upright. She knitted in the continental fashion, her hands low and almost motionless. The stocking between them moved rhythmically as the needles clicked; but Helena Ryven’s hands hardly seemed to move at all. She had been very handsome twenty years ago, and she was very handsome now. Her thick dark hair was becomingly shingled and only lightly sprinkled with grey; her skin was as smooth as a girl’s. Yet she looked her age; there was something set about her whole aspect—a suggestion of achievement, completion, which made youth and its striving uncertainties seem very far away.
Her sister, Mrs. Cobb, was of a different type—fairer, softer, with a lined plump face and greying hair precariously held in an old-fashioned coil by a great many hairpins. She had been standing by the window of her sister’s drawing-room looking out into the steadily falling rain. The window commanded a magnificent view of the Downs, but to-day the view was visible only as rolling cloud and driving mist. The house stood high amongst beech woods, now a mass of drenched, straining foliage. Where the trees had been cut away to frame the view, the mist was swirling in like the spray of some wild sea.
Ida Cobb turned to the window and said, for the twentieth time, “What an afternoon! What frightful weather!”
“You won’t make it any better by talking about it,” said Helena Ryven.
Mrs. Cobb made an impatient sound.
“Well, how you can knit!” she said again.
“I promised the stockings to little Maggie Brown, and I see no good reason for disappointing her.”
“Goodness, Helena! Reason! I should think you’d fifty thousand reasons for disappointing anyone. Honestly, I don’t feel I can bear it when you just sit there and knit.”
Helena Ryven smiled with her lips. Her very handsome eyes remained grave.
“What would you like me to do, Ida?” she inquired with a faintly sarcastic inflection.
Mrs. Cobb threw up her hands.
“Do! Well, I should think it a great deal more natural if you had hysterics.”
“That would be so helpful—wouldn’t it?”
Mrs. Cobb came forward with an exasperated rustle of a blue taffeta dress. She was the only woman of her age in England who still wore a silk petticoat. She sat down on the sofa with a flounce.
“Well, if it was me, I couldn’t sit and knit. Helena, for goodness mercy’s sake, put that stocking down, or I shall scream!”
Mrs. Ryven continued to knit. Barclay had wronged her good sense when he accused her of wearing skirts to the knee; the hem of her brown washing silk was at least three inches below it.
“Scream if you want to, my dear,” she said.
Instead of screaming, Mrs. Cobb looked at her watch.
“Half-past five,” she said. “How soon do you think they’ll be here?”
“Any time after a quarter to six.”
“Then Timothy ought to be here. Hadn’t I better telephone and see if he’s started? Honestly, Helena, I’m not going to face it without Timothy. You may say what you like, but a man is a stand-by. What’s the use of having a brother if he can’t come and support you in family emergencies?”
“I don’t feel in any need of support, thank you, Ida.”
“You don’t—but I do.”
“My dear, considering that Timothy is twenty years younger than either of us—”
“He’s a man,” said Ida Cobb. “And when everything’s going to bits I like to have a man to hold on to. And you may say anything you like, but Eustace ought to be here.”
“Eustace had a committee meeting.”
Mrs. Cobb clapped her hands together.
“What’s the good of his going to committee meetings when everything is crumbling, literally crumbling, under his feet? Helena!” She leaned forward and touched her sister’s knee. “Helena! What will Eustace do?”
Mrs. Ryven shifted her position very slightly; the movement took her out of Ida’s reach. She said in a colourless tone,
“Eustace is not entirely dependent on the estate.”
“Eustace isn’t; but all these schemes of his are. You know as well as I do—”
Mrs. Cobb stopped short. Helena would not like what she was going to say. She invariably felt impelled to say the things that Helena did not like. But she could not surmount a certain flutter of apprehension.
“Well, Ida, what is it that I know as well as you do?”
“Reggie says—someone told him the other day—he says—”
“I don’t think I’m particularly interested in what Reggie says, Ida.”
Reggie’s mother experienced an access of valour.
“Reggie goes about a great deal and hears everything,” she declared. “And only this morning he said that if this girl did turn out to be Maurice’s daughter—” She hesitated on the brink, then plunged. “He said it might be the means of keeping Eustace out of the bankruptcy court.”
Mrs. Ryven laid little Maggie Brown’s stocking on her knee and folded her large white hands upon it.
“Thank you, Ida,” she said.
Mrs. Cobb tossed her head. A wisp of hair tickled the back of her neck, and she put up an impatient hand.
“Well, Helena, you know as well as I do that it won’t be his fault if he doesn’t land there—pulling down all those houses. And Reggie says of course most of his income must come from the London property.”
“Slum property, Ida.”
Mrs. Cobb dug a hairpin ferociously into her coil.
“Eustace calls anything a slum which he wouldn’t like to live in himself. I hear he’s putting bathrooms into his new tenements, and giving them laundries and hot water—as if people like that wanted to wash!”
Mrs. Ryven had fought this battle before. She replied with aggressive calm and just that tincture of superiority which could be depended upon to annoy Ida:
“People who can’t wash soon lose the desire to do so. If you had six children and a drunken husband to care for in a room about ten foot square, and every drop of water had to be heated on the same small grate where you were trying to cook, how long do you suppose that you would stay clean?”
Mrs. Cobb drew herself up.
“Really, Helena! What a thing to say! Anyhow, if this girl is Maurice’s daughter, Eustace won’t be able to go on building bathrooms—so we needn’t quarrel about that.”
“It takes two to make a quarrel, Ida.” The tinge of superiority was a little more marked.
It was perhaps as well that at this moment the door should open. Timothy Brand came in.
His half-sisters did not quarrel before Timothy. Mrs. Ryven took up her knitting again. Mrs. Cobb, who had not seen Timothy for some weeks, got up and kissed him. Helena merely nodded.
“Well?” he said. “What’s happened? Lil said you didn’t tell her anything on the telephone—only that I was to come up at once. Have you heard from Waterson?” His cheerful round face wore an air of concern.
Mrs. Cobb burst into plaintive speech:
“Oh, yes, dear boy! It’s dreadful—he telephoned.”
“I think, Ida—if you will allow me to speak.”
Timothy looked at her with apprehension.
“What is it, Helena?”
“Only what I’ve anticipated ever since the cable from Honolulu.”
“Waterson thinks—”
“He thinks that there is no doubt at all that she is Maurice’s daughter.” Helena Ryven’
s tone was unruffled; no one could possibly have guessed that a cold, sick anger lay at her heart.
“He met her?”
“He went on board the yacht. He told me he had been through all the papers. She has every proof—her birth certificate—letters from me—letters from Maurice to Marion.” She paused, perhaps because her voice had for an instant threatened to betray her. If this were so, she was able to impose her usual control upon it as she continued, “He was telephoning from an hotel—he could not go into details. He is bringing her here.”
“Oh, I say!”
Ida Cobb nodded.
“That’s just what I said. If you have her here, it’s just the same as acknowledging her—isn’t it, Timothy?”
“Did Waterson advise it?”
Helena Ryven said, “Yes.” She made the word sound momentous.
Timothy ran a hand through his thick fair hair and wondered whether Helena got off her platform when she was asleep—she certainly never did during her waking hours. Then his kind heart smote him. He sat on the arm of the big chair next the sofa and leaned forward.
“I say—that means—”
“Yes,” said Helena again.
Mrs. Cobb put out an impulsive hand.
“Mr. Waterson’s an old donkey! Reggie says he’s frightfully out of date. Personally, I consider that family solicitors are a mistake. They know a great deal too much about you, and they’re so horribly afraid of publicity.”
These sentiments, though not ascribed to Reggie, were so obviously from his address that Timothy grinned.
“Hullo, Ida! How many secrets of your shady past does old Waterson know?”
Mrs. Cobb beamed upon him.
“Naughty boy! Be quiet! No, no—we must be serious. Tim, tell Helena that she’s making a mistake. Of course she won’t listen to me. But you must see that if she has this girl here, she’s simply giving the whole show away.”
“If Waterson advises it—” said Timothy slowly. “I say, where’s Eustace? He’s really the person to be consulted. Where is he, Helena?”
“We didn’t expect the yacht till to-morrow. Eustace has his usual Wednesday committee meeting in town.”
“He’s been going on with the work?” said Timothy quickly.
“Naturally. Why?”
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