Part 39 (1/2)

”Oh, quite well.” Almost involuntarily she began to explain the intimacy.

”I was taken to their house after a hunting accident, and I was an invalid there for several weeks.”

”That so?” Again piercingly the American's eyes scanned her. ”You're real friendly then? With which in particular?”

She hesitated momentarily. Then, ”I am very fond of Mrs. Errol,” she said, speaking very quietly. ”But Nap was my first friend, and afterwards Lucas--”

”Oh, Nap!”

There was such withering contempt in the exclamation that she had perforce to remark it.

”Nap is evidently no favourite with you,” she said.

He raised his brows till they nearly met his hair. ”Nap, my dear lady,”

he drily observed, ”is doubtless all right in his own sphere. It isn't mine, and it isn't yours. I came over to this country at his request and in his company, and a queerer devil it has never been my lot to encounter. But what can you expect? I've never yet seen him in a blanket and moccasins, but I imagine that he'd be considerably preferable that way. I guess he's just a fish out of water on this side of civilisation.”

”What can you mean?” Anne said.

For the second time that afternoon she felt as if the ground beneath her had begun to tremble. She looked up at him with troubled eyes. Surely the whole world was rocking!

”I mean what I say, madam,” he told her curtly. ”It's a habit of mine.

There is a powerful streak of red in Nap Errol's blood, or I am much mistaken.”

”Ah!” Anne said, and that was all. In a flash she understood him. She felt as if he had performed some ruthless operation upon her, and she was too exhausted to say more. Unconsciously her hand pressed her heart. It was beating strangely, spasmodically; sometimes it did not beat at all.

For she knew beyond all doubting that what he said was true.

”I don't say the fellow is an out-and-out savage,” Capper was saying.

”P'r'aps he'd be more tolerable if he were. But the fatal streak is there. Never noticed it? I thought you women noticed everything. Oh, I can tell you he's made things hum on our side more times than I've troubled to count. Talk of the devil in New York and you very soon find the conversation drifting round to Nap Errol. Now and then he has a lapse into sheer savagery, and then there is no controlling him. It's just as the fit takes him. He's never to be trusted. It's an ineradicable taint.”

She s.h.i.+vered at the words, but still she did not speak.

Capper went unconcernedly on. ”I fancy Lucas once thought he was going to make a gentleman of him. A gentleman, ye G.o.ds! Teach a tiger to sit up and beg! He has a most amazing patience, but I guess even he realises by now that the beast is untamable. Mrs. Errol saw it long ago. There's a fine woman for you--A.1., gilt-edged, quality of the best. You know Mrs.

Errol, you say?”

”Yes, I know her.” Anne heard the words, but was not conscious of uttering them.

Capper gave her a single straight look. ”You wouldn't think, would you,”

said he, ”that that woman carries a broken heart about with her? But I a.s.sure you that's so. Nap Errol was the tragedy of her life.”

That quickened her to interest. She was conscious of a gradual sinking downwards of her dismay till it came to rest somewhere deep in her inmost soul, leaving the surface free for other impressions.

”He came out of nowhere,” Capper went on. ”She never tried to account for him. He was her husband's son. She made him hers. But he's been a tiger's cub all his life, a hurricane, a firebrand. He and Bertie are usually at daggers drawn and Lucas spends his time keeping the peace; which is about as wearing an occupation for a sick man as I can imagine. I want to put a stop to it, Lady Carfax. I speak as one family friend to another. Lucas seems to like you. I believe you could make him see reason if you took the trouble. Women are proverbially ingenious.”

Anne's faint smile showed for a moment. They had entered the herb garden and were pa.s.sing slowly down the central path. It was a small enclosure surrounded by clipped yew hedges and intersected by green walks. The evening sunlight slanting down upon her, had turned her brown hair to ruddiest gold. There was no agitation about her now. The grey eyes were gravely thoughtful.

She bent presently to pluck a sprig of rosemary. ”Will you tell me,” she said, ”what it is that you want to do?”

Capper shot her a keen side-glance. ”I want to cure him,” he said. ”I want to make a whole man of him.”