Part 22 (1/2)

French paused a moment.

”Ah!” said Penrose, ”I have heard rumours.”

French rose and began to pace the room.

”It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly,” he said at last. ”The night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a thing he had never done in his life before. But----”

”He has often done it since?”

French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.

”Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off.”

”Well, what came of his action?”

”Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.

Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.

You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the pavilion?”

There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose a.s.sented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won him his wife.

”But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?”

”Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never will.”

”So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use.”

French looked up anxiously.

”Because you know,” the speaker reluctantly continued, ”there's nothing to be done. The thing's finished.”

”Finished?” French's manner took fire. ”And the law can do _nothing_!

Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, or to recover his child? Ah!”--he paused to listen--”here he is!”

A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows the two within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up the flagged pa.s.sage leading to the front door.

French hurried to greet the new-comer.

”Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose--as I promised you. Sit down, old man. They'll bring us some tea presently.”

Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; then murmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, and took the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him with a furrowed brow.

”Well, here we are, Roger!--and if there's anything whatever in this horrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is your man. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. after seven years--lucky dog!--and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-American case not wholly unlike yours--Brown _v._ Brown. So I thought of him as the best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us some private informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps--if you do take any.”

”Awfully good of you both.” The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat, sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. ”Awfully good of you,” he repeated vaguely.

Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomer than ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonis.h.i.+ng complexion, was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too hearty and splendid--a too obvious and supreme king of men--for our fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of his radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the same time the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, or rea.s.suring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical and transient?

Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to him important, when there was another ring at the front door. French got up nervously, with an anxious look at Barnes.