Part 42 (1/2)

The next day he had left the Abbey for the Continent, and when, at last, he had come back, he had himself again well in hand....

Only yesterday the shooters had gone by that old seventeenth-century barn, of which nothing now remained but thick low walls, and as he had tramped by the spot, so alone with his memories, if outwardly so companioned, there had swept over his heart, that heart which was still susceptible to every keen emotion, a feeling of agonised regret for what had--and what had not been.

”Ah, Letty,” he said huskily, ”you've been the best friend man ever had!

Don't you think the time has come for two such old friends as you and I have been never to part? It isn't as if I had a great deal of time left.”

An hour later Lord St. Amant was sitting up in bed, reading the fourth volume of a certain delightful edition of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon. He was feeling happier than he had felt for a very long time--stirred and touched too, as he had not thought to be again.

Complacently he reminded himself of the successful, the brilliantly successful, elderly marriages he had known in his time. 'Twas odd when one came to think of it, but he couldn't remember one such which had turned out a failure!

Dear Letty--who had known how to pa.s.s imperceptibly from youth to age with such a fine, measured dignity, while retaining so much which had made her as a girl and as an older woman the most delightful and stimulating of companions. What an agreeable difference her presence would make to his existence as he went slowly down into the shadows! He shuddered a little--the thought of old age, of real old age, becoming suddenly, vividly repugnant.

Thank G.o.d, Letty was very much younger than himself. When he was eighty she would be sixty-three. He tried to put away that thought, the thought that some day he would be infirm, as well as old.

He looked up from his book.

How odd to think that Letty had never been in this room, where he had spent so much of his life from boyhood onwards! He longed to show her some of the things he had here--family miniatures, old political caricatures, some of his favourite books--they would all interest her.

He was glad he had arranged that she should have, on this visit, his dear mother's room. When he had married--close on fifty years ago--his parents had been alive, and later his wife, as the new Lady St. Amant, had not cared to take over her predecessor's apartments. She had been very little here, for soon, poor woman, she had become an invalid--a most disagreeable, selfish invalid. He told himself that after all he had had a certain amount of excuse for--well, for the sort of existence he had led so long. If poor Adelaide had only died twenty years earlier, and he had married Letty--ah, _then_, he would indeed have become an exemplary character! Yet he had been faithful to Letty--in his fas.h.i.+on....

No other woman had even approached near the sanctuary where the woman of whom now, to-night, he was able to think as his future wife, had at once become so securely enthroned. It had first been a delicious, if a dangerous, relations.h.i.+p, and, later, a most agreeable friends.h.i.+p. During the last few months she had become rather to his surprise very necessary to him, and these last few days he had felt how pleasant it would be to have Letty always here, at the Abbey, either in his company, or resting, reading, or writing in the room where everything still spoke to him of the long-dead mother who had been so dear to him.

Of course they would wait till Oliver and Laura were married--say, till some time in February or March: and then, when those two rather tiresome younger people were disposed of, they, he and Letty, would slip up quietly to London, and, in the presence of perhaps two or three old friends, they would be made man and wife.

He reflected complacently that nothing in his life would be changed, save that Letty would be there, at the Abbey, as she had been the last few days, always ready to hear with eager interest anything he had to say, always with her point of view sufficiently unlike his own to give flavour, even sometimes a touch of the unexpected, to their conversation.

A knock at the door, and his valet came in, and walked close up to the bed.

”It's a telephone message, my lord. From Sir Angus Kinross--private to your lords.h.i.+p.”

”Yes. What is the message?”

Lord St. Amant felt a slight tremor of discomfort sweep over him. What an odd time to send a trunk-call through--at close on midnight.

”Sir Angus has been trying to get on for some time, my lord; there was a fault on the line. Sir Angus would be much obliged if you would meet him at your lords.h.i.+p's rooms at one o'clock to-morrow. He says he's sorry to trouble your lords.h.i.+p to come up to London, but it's very important. He came himself to the telephone, my lord. He asked who I was. I did offer to fetch your lords.h.i.+p, but he said there was no occasion for that--if I would deliver the message myself.”

”All right, Barrett.”

”Sir Angus begs your lords.h.i.+p not to tell any one that your business to-morrow is with him.”

”I quite understand that.”

CHAPTER XXVI

”We have solved the mystery of G.o.dfrey Pavely's death!”

Such were the words with which Sir Angus Kinross greeted Lord St. Amant, when the latter, arriving at his rooms, found the Commissioner of Police already there.