Part 23 (1/2)

”And then he began to write to me,” she went on rather breathlessly, as if answering some inward questioning of her own rather than of his. ”I was amazed when I received his first letter--it seemed such a strange thing for him to write to me, and then he asked if he might come and see me before he went away.”

She waited a moment, and went on, ”I was the only person to whom he wrote while he was away. He's had a very lonely life, d.i.c.k,--no brothers, no sisters, and his mother died when he was a little child.”

There was a world of anxious apology, of excuse, underlying her confidences.

When, at last, they went back into the house, they found General Lingard sitting with his host, and it was in Richard Maule's presence that Jane made her request--a request to which Lingard gave eager a.s.sent.

Of course he would go and see Mrs. Kaye, and bestir himself concerning her son's affairs! He had been very much struck by Mrs. Maule's account of Bayworth Kaye that morning. She had said other things of him to Lingard, but he naturally made no allusion to these when discussing his coming interview with Mrs. Kaye.

Athena had told Lingard, with angry scorn, of the way certain people in the neighbourhood had talked of her friends.h.i.+p with the young soldier, and he had felt that inarticulate rage and disgust which any decent man would have felt on receiving Athena's confidences. Lingard's opinion of the world had altered, and greatly for the worse, since he had made Mrs.

Maule's acquaintance.

CHAPTER XIV

”Opportunity creates a sinner: at least it calls him into action, and like the warming sun invites the sleeping serpent from its hole.”

The dramas of love, of jealousy, of hatred, which play so awful a part in human existence, only form eddies, perhaps it would be more true to say whirlpools, on the vast placid current of life.

The owners of Rede Place were not allowed to forget for long that in General Lingard they were entertaining a guest who belonged to the world at large, rather than to them or to himself.

It had been arranged that the next day, the twenty-sixth of October, Wantele was to take Lingard to a big shoot. Athena, when reminded of the fact by a casual word the night before, felt curiously pleased. The absence of the two men for a long day would relieve the strain, and make it possible for her to have a serious talk with Jane Oglander. Somehow, it seemed almost impossible to do so with Wantele and Lingard always about.

Athena was no coward, and the time had come when she felt she must discover what her friend knew, or rather, what her friend suspected--for as yet there was very little to know. And if Jane suspected the truth--the little, that is, there was to suspect--she must discover what Jane meant to do.

The men made an early start, and from one of her bedroom windows Mrs.

Maule watched the dogcart spinning down the broad road through the park.

d.i.c.k Wantele was driving; Hew Lingard sitting stiffly, with folded arms, by his side.

At last they turned the corner at the end of the avenue, and Athena went back to bed with the feeling that it was pleasant to know that she need not get up for another two hours, and also that, after her talk with Jane Oglander, she would be free to do what she liked all day.

As she lay back, feeling a little stupid and drowsy, for she had taken a dose of chloral the night before, Athena gave a regretful, kindly thought to Bayworth Kaye.

Yes, though no one knew it but herself, the G.o.ds had shown the young man that kindness which is said to prove their love. His only fault as a lover--a serious one from Mrs. Maule's point of view--had been an almost insane jealousy. He would have taken badly, perhaps very badly, her marriage to such a man as General Lingard.

It was well for Bayworth, and, in a lesser sense, well for her also, that he had died in this sad, sudden way. Death is the only final, as it is the only simple, solution of many a painful riddle.

Athena had not allowed the thought of Bayworth Kaye to trouble her unduly; but she had been uncomfortably aware that he might remain, for a long time, a point of danger in her life. She acknowledged that in the matter of this young man she had been imprudent, but he had come across her at a moment when she was feeling dull and ”under the weather.”

Poor Bayworth! He had taken the whole thing far too seriously. He had been so young, so ardent, so--so grateful. His death at this juncture was a relief. Athena paid his memory the tribute of a sigh.

And then she turned her thoughts to Jane Oglander. During the last few years she had had many proofs of Jane's deep and loyal affection for herself; but the type of woman to which Mrs. Maule belonged can never form any true intimacy with a member of her own s.e.x.

Jane had always been ignorant of everything that concerned Athena's real inward life--the vivid, exciting, emotional life, which she lived when away from Rede Place. Bayworth Kaye had been the one exception to the wise rule she had made for herself very soon after her arrival in England.

Jane Oglander, so Athena was quite convinced, knew nothing of the greatest of the great human games--had never fallen a victim to that jealous, compelling pa.s.sion which plays so tragic a part in the lives of most of those sentient human beings who are not absorbed in one of the other master-pa.s.sions.