Part 15 (1/2)
”I must be a fool,” he said, ”for I certainly can't see it.”
Harcutt lowered his tone.
”Look here, Wolfenden,” he said, ”I have no doubt that you are right, and that your father's work is of no value; but you may be very sure of one thing--Mr. Sabin does not think so!”
”I don't see what Mr. Sabin has got to do with it,” Wolfenden said.
Harcutt laughed.
”Well, I will tell you one thing,” he said; ”it is the contents of your father's study which has brought Mr. Sabin to Deringham!”
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM THE BEGINNING.
A woman stood, in the midst of a salt wilderness, gazing seaward. Around her was a long stretch of wet sand and of seaweed-stained rocks, rising from little pools of water left by the tide; and beyond, the flat, marshy country was broken only by that line of low cliffs, from which the little tufts of gra.s.s sprouted feebly. The waves which rolled almost to her feet were barely ripples, breaking with scarcely a visible effort upon the moist sand. Above, the sky was grey and threatening; only a few minutes before a cloud of white mist had drifted in from the sea and settled softly upon the land in the form of rain. The whole outlook was typical of intense desolation. The only sound breaking the silence, almost curiously devoid of all physical and animal noises, was the soft was.h.i.+ng of the sand at her feet, and every now and then the jingling of silver harness, as the horses of her carriage, drawn up on the road above, tossed their heads and fidgeted. The carriage itself seemed grotesquely out of place. The coachman, with powdered hair and the dark blue Deringham livery, sat perfectly motionless, his head bent a little forward, and his eyes fixed upon his horses' ears. The footman, by their side, stood with folded arms, and expression as wooden as though he were waiting upon a Bond Street pavement. Both were weary, and both would have liked to vary the monotony by a little conversation; but only a few yards away the woman was standing whose curious taste had led her to visit such a spot.
Her arms were hanging listlessly by her side, her whole expression, although her face was upturned towards the sky, was one of intense dejection. Something about her att.i.tude bespoke a keen and intimate sympathy with the desolation of her surroundings. The woman was unhappy; the light in her dark eyes was inimitably sad. Her cheeks were pale and a little wan. Yet Lady Deringham was very handsome--as handsome as a woman approaching middle age could hope to be. Her figure was still slim and elegant, the streaks of grey in her raven black hair were few and far between. She might have lived hand in hand with sorrow, but it had done very little to age her. Only a few years ago, in the crowded ball-room of a palace, a prince had declared her to be the handsomest woman of her age, and the prince had the reputation of knowing. It was easy to believe it.
How long the woman might have lingered there it is hard to say, for evidently the spot possessed a peculiar fascination for her, and she had given herself up to a rare fit of abstraction. But some sound--was it the low wailing of that seagull, or the more distant cry of a hawk, motionless in mid-air and scarcely visible against the cloudy sky, which caused her to turn her head inland? And then she saw that the solitude was no longer unbroken. A dark object had rounded the sandy little headland, and was coming steadily towards her. She looked at it with a momentary interest, her skirt raised in her hand, already a few steps back on her return to the waiting carriage. Was it a man? It was something human, at any rate, although its progression was slow and ungraceful, and marked with a peculiar but uniform action. She stood perfectly still, a motionless figure against the background of wan, cloud-shadowed sea and gathering twilight, her eyes riveted upon this strange thing, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks as pale as death. Gradually it came nearer and nearer. Her skirt dropped from her nerveless fingers, her eyes, a moment before dull, with an infinite and pitiful emptiness, were lit now with a new light. She was not alone, nor was she unprotected, yet the woman was suffering from a spasm of terror--one could scarcely imagine any sight revolting enough to call up that expression of acute and trembling fear, which had suddenly transformed her appearance. It was as though the level sands had yielded up their dead--the s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners of generations, and they all, with white, sad faces and wailing voices, were closing in around her. Yet it was hard to account for a terror so abject. There was certainly nothing in the figure, now close at hand, which seemed capable of inspiring it.
It was a man with a club foot--nothing more nor less. In fact it was Mr. Sabin! There was nothing about his appearance, save that ungainly movement caused by his deformity, in any way singular or threatening. He came steadily nearer, and the woman who awaited him trembled. Perhaps his expression was a trifle sardonic, owing chiefly to the extreme pallor of his skin, and the black flannel clothes with invisible stripe, which he had been wearing for golf. Yet when he lifted his soft felt hat from his head and bowed with an ease and effect palpably acquired in other countries, his appearance was far from unpleasant. He stood there bare-headed in the twilight, a strangely winning smile upon his dark face, and his head courteously bent.
”The most delightful of unexpected meetings,” he murmured. ”I am afraid that I have come upon you like an apparition, dear Lady Deringham! I must have startled you! Yes, I can see by your face that I did; I am so sorry. Doubtless you did not know until yesterday that I was in England.”
Lady Deringham was slowly recovering herself. She was white still, even to the lips, and there was a strange, sick pain at her heart. Yet she answered him with something of her usual deliberateness, conscious perhaps that her servants, although their heads were studiously averted, had yet witnessed with surprise this unexpected meeting.
”You certainly startled me,” she said; ”I had imagined that this was the most desolate part of all unfrequented spots! It is here I come when I want to feel absolutely alone. I did not dream of meeting another fellow creature--least of all people in the world, perhaps, you!”
”I,” he answered, smiling gently, ”was perhaps the better prepared. A few minutes ago, from the cliffs yonder, I saw your carriage drawn up here, and I saw you alight. I wanted to speak with you, so I lost no time in scrambling down on to the sands. You have changed marvellously little, Lady Deringham!”
”And you,” she said, ”only in name. You are the Mr. Sabin with whom my son was playing golf yesterday morning?”
”I am Mr. Sabin,” he answered. ”Your son did me a good service a week or two back. He is a very fine young fellow; I congratulate you.”
”And your niece,” Lady Deringham asked; ”who is she? My son spoke to me of her last night.”
Mr. Sabin smiled faintly.
”Ah! Madame,” he said, ”there have been so many people lately who have been asking me that question, yet to you as to them I must return the same answer. She is my niece!”
”You call her?”
”She shares my name at present.”
”Is she your daughter?”
He shook his head sadly.
”I have never been married,” he said, with an indefinable mournfulness in his flexible tones. ”I have had neither wife, nor child, nor friend. It is well for me that I have not!”
She looked down at his deformity, and woman-like she s.h.i.+vered.
”It is no better, then?” she murmured, with eyes turned seaward.
”It is absolutely incurable,” he declared.
She changed the subject abruptly.
”The last I heard of you,” she said, ”was that you were in China. You were planning great things there. In ten years, I was told, Europe was to be at your mercy!”
”I left Pekin five years ago,” he said. ”China is a land of Cabals. She may yet be the greatest country in the world. I, for one, believe in her destiny, but it will be in the generations to come. I have no patience to labour for another to reap the harvest. Then, too, a craving for just one draught of civilisation brought me westward again. Mongolian habits are interesting but a little trying.”
”And what,” she asked, looking at him steadily, ”has brought you to Deringham, of all places upon this earth?”
He smiled, and with his stick traced a quaint pattern in the sand.
”I have never told you anything that was not the truth,” he said; ”I will not begin now. I might have told you that I was here by chance, for change of air, or for the golf. Neither of these things would have been true. I am here because Deringham village is only a mile or two from Deringham Hall.”
She drew a little closer to him. The jingling of harness, as her horses tossed their heads impatiently, reminded her of the close proximity of the servants.
”What do you want of me?” she asked hoa.r.s.ely.
He looked at her in mild reproach, a good-humoured smile at the corner of his lips; yet after all was it good humour or some curious outward reflection of the working of his secret thoughts? When he spoke the reproach, at any rate, was manifest.
”Want of you! You talk as though I were a blackmailer, or something equally obnoxious. Is that quite fair, Constance?”
She evaded the reproach; perhaps she was not conscious of it. It was the truth she wanted.
”You had some end in coming here,” she persisted. ”What is it? I cannot conceive anything in the world you have to gain by coming to see me. We have left the world and society; we live buried. Whatever fresh schemes you may be planning, there is no way in which we could help you. You are richer, stronger, more powerful than we. I can think,” she added, ”of only one thing which may have brought you.”
”And that?” he asked deliberately.
She looked at him with a certain tremulous wistfulness in her eyes, and with softening face.
”It may be,” she said, ”that as you grow older you have grown kinder; you may have thought of my great desire, and you were always generous, Victor, you may have come to grant it!”
The slightest possible change pa.s.sed over his face as his Christian name slipped from her lips. The firm lines about his mouth certainly relaxed, his dark eyes gleamed for a moment with a kindlier light. Perhaps at that minute for both of them came a sudden lifting of the curtain, a lingering backward glance into the world of their youth, pa.s.sionate, beautiful, seductive. There were memories there which still seemed set to music--memories which pierced even the armour of his equanimity. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. With a quick gesture she laid her hand upon his.
”Believe me, Victor,” she said, ”I have always thought of you kindly; you have suffered terribly for my sake, and your silence was magnificent. I have never forgotten it.”
His face clouded over, her impulsive words had been after all ill chosen, she had touched a sore point! There was something in these memories distasteful to him. They recalled the one time in his life when he had been worsted by another man. His cynicism returned.