Part 32 (1/2)
”I see. Very good, sir. I'll see to things, of course. And about letters, perhaps you won't want them forwarded as you didn't last time, and--”
”I shall want every letter forwarded, the very hour it arrives,” said Hugh quickly.
”Very good, sir. Where shall I send them to?”
”I don't know yet. I'll wire you an address.”
Yes, he must go to London. He could not go and watch Joan at Starden, but he could go to London and watch Mr. Philip Slotman.
”What I'll do is this--I'll have a watch kept on that man. There are private detective chaps who'll do it for me. If he goes down to Starden, I'll be after him hot-foot. And if he does go there to annoy and insult Joan--I'll break his neck!” he added, with cheerful decision.
”And she--she is going to marry another man, a man she doesn't love--she can't love. I know she cannot love.” He added aloud: ”Joan, you don't love him, my darling, you know you don't. You dared not stay and face me that day. Your words meant nothing. You may think you despise me, but you don't: you want to, my dear, but you can't; and you can't because, thank G.o.d, you love me! Oh, fool! Cheer yourself up, slap yourself on the back. It doesn't help you. She may love you as you boast, but she'll never marry you. She wants to hate you, and she'll keep on wanting to hate, and I believe--Heaven help me--that her will is stronger than her heart. But--but anyhow, that brute Slotman shan't worry her while I can crawl about.”
He was driven to the station the following morning. And now he was in the train for London.
”I'll find out a firm of detectives and put 'em on Slotman,” he thought, ”but first I'll go and have a look round. What's the name of the place?--Gracebury.”
At the entrance to Gracebury, which as everyone knows is a cul-de-sac of no considerable extent, Hugh stopped his taxi and got out. He walked down the wide pavement till he came to the familiar door.
”I'll see him,” he thought. ”I'll go in and have a few words with him, just to remind him that his neck is in jeopardy.”
He went up the stone steps and paused.
The door of Mr. Philip Slotman's office was closed. On the door was pasted a paper, stating that a suite of three offices was to let.
CHAPTER XXIX
”WHY DOES SHE TAKE HIM FROM ME?”
”Why--why--why?” Ellice asked herself. Why should this woman who did not love him wish to take him away from her, who wors.h.i.+pped the ground he trod on, who looked up to him as the best, the finest of all G.o.d's created creatures?
That Joan Meredyth did not love John Everard no one understood more clearly than Ellice Brand. She had watched them when they were together, she had watched the girl apart; and the watcher's body might be that of a child, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman, as was her heart too.
”Why should she take him from me?” she asked herself, and all her being rose in pa.s.sionate revolt and resentment.
”Perhaps she does not know that I love him. Perhaps she looks on me only as a child--a silly, foolish, infatuated child. But I am not! I am not!”
Ellice cried. ”I am not! I love him. I loved him when I was a baby, when I came here eight years ago, and now I am eighteen and a woman, and I have never changed and never shall!”
During the days that followed the announcement of Joan Meredyth's engagement to John Everard, Connie watched the girl. She felt troubled, anxious, and yet scarcely could say why. She knew the girl's pa.s.sionate nature. Connie almost dreaded something reckless even tragic. She was more worried than she could say and of course she could not consult Johnny. There was no one to consult but Helen, and Helen did not understand Ellice in the least. Helen was inclined to look down on Ellice from her superior height as a wayward, wilful, foolish child--nothing more.
”Send her away. I suppose she is really too old to go to school now, Connie. How old is she, sixteen?”
”Eighteen.”
”She has the heart and the body of a child.”
”And the soul of a woman!”
”Sometimes, Connie dear,” said Helen sweetly, ”you make me almost angry.