Mr. Hazlewood was very glad that Richard
was away in London during this week. Excitement
kept him feverish and the fever grew as the number
of days before Thresk was to come diminished.
He would never have been able to keep his secret had
every meal placed him under his son’s eyes.
He was free too from Stella herself. He met her
but once on the Monday and then it was in the deep
lane leading towards the town. It was about five
o’clock in the evening and she was driving homewards
in an open fly. Mr. Hazlewood stopped it and
went to the side.
“Richard is away, Stella, until
Wednesday, as no doubt you knew,” he said.
“But I want you to come over to tea when he comes
back. Will Friday suit you?”
She had looked a little frightened
when Mr. Hazlewood had called to the driver and stopped
the carriage; but at his words the blood rushed into
her cheeks and her eyes shone and she pushed out her
hand impulsively.
“Oh, thank you,” she cried. “Of
course I will come.”
Not for a long time had he spoken
to her with so kind a voice and a face so unclouded.
She rejoiced at the change in him and showed him such
gratitude as is given only to those who render great
service, so intense was her longing not to estrange
Dick from his father.
But she had become a shrewd observer
under the stress of her evil destiny; and the moment
of rejoicing once past she began to wonder what had
brought about the change. She judged Mr. Hazlewood
to be one of those weak and effervescing characters
who can grow more obstinate in resentment than any
others if their pride and self-esteem receive an injury.
She had followed of late the windings of his thoughts.
She put the result frankly to herself.
“He hates me. He holds me in horror.”
Why then the sudden change? She
was in the mood to start at shadows and when a little
note was brought over to her on the Friday morning
in Mr. Hazlewood’s handwriting reminding her
of her engagement she was filled with a vague apprehension.
The note was kindly in its terms yet to her it had
a menacing and sinister look. Had some stroke
been planned against her? Was it to be delivered
this afternoon?
Dick came at half-past four from a
village cricket match to fetch her.
“You are ready, Stella?
Right! For we can’t spare very much time.
I have a surprise for you.”
Stella asked him what it was and he answered:
“There’s a house for sale
in Great Beeding. I think that you would like
it.”
Stella’s face softened with a smile.
“Anywhere, Dick,” she said, “anywhere
on earth.”
“But here best of all,”
he answered. “Not to run away that’s
our policy. We’ll make our home in our
own south country. I arranged to take you over
the house between half-past five and six this evening.”
They walked across to Little Beeding
and were made welcome by Mr. Hazlewood. He came
out to meet them in the garden and nervousness made
him kittenish and arch.
“How are you, Stella?”
he inquired. “But there’s no need
to ask. You look charming and upon my word you
grow younger every day. What a pretty hat!
Yes, yes! Will you make tea while I telephone
to the Pettifers? They seem to be late.”
He skipped off with an alacrity which
was rather ridiculous. But Stella watched him
go without any amusement.
“I am taken again into favour,” she said
doubtfully.
“That shouldn’t distress you, Stella,”
replied Dick.
“Yet it does, for I ask myself
why. And I don’t understand this tea-party.
Mr. Hazlewood was so urgent that I should not forget
it. Perhaps, however, I am inventing trouble.”
She shook herself free from her apprehensions
and followed Dick into the drawing-room, where the
kettle was boiling and the tea-service spread out.
Stella went to the table and opened the little mahogany
caddy.
“How many are coming, Dick?” she asked.
“The Pettifers.”
“My enemies,” said Stella, laughing lightly.
“And you and my father and myself.”
“Five altogether,” said
Stella. She began to measure out the tea into
the tea-pot but stopped suddenly in the middle of
her work.
“But there are six cups,”
she said. She counted them again to make sure,
and at once her fears were reawakened. She turned
to Dick, her face quite pale and her big eyes dark
with forebodings. So little now was needed to
disquiet her. “Who is the sixth?”
Dick came closer to her and put his arm about her
waist.
“I don’t know,”
he said gently; “but what can it matter to us,
Stella? Think, my dear!”
“No, of course,” she replied,
“it can’t make any difference,” and
she dipped her teaspoon once more into the caddy.
“But it’s a little curious, isn’t
it? that your father didn’t mention
to you that there was another guest?”
“Oh, wait a moment,” said
Dick. “He did tell me there would be some
visitor here to-day but I forgot all about it.
He told me at luncheon. There’s a man from
London coming down to have a look at his miniatures.”
“His miniatures?” Stella
was pouring the hot water into the tea-pot. She
replaced the kettle on its stand and shut the tea-caddy.
“And Mr. Hazlewood didn’t tell you the
man’s name,” she said.
“I didn’t ask him,”
answered Dick. “He often has collectors
down.”
“I see.” Her head
was bent over the tea-table; she was busy with her
brew of tea. “And I was specially asked
to come this afternoon. I had a note this morning
to remind me.” She looked at the clock.
“Dick, if we are to see that house this afternoon
you had better change now before the visitors come.”
“That’s true. I will.”
Dick started towards the door, and
he heard Stella come swiftly after him. He turned.
There was so much trouble in her face. He caught
her in his arms.
“Dick,” she whispered,
“look at me. Kiss me! Yes, I am sure
of you,” and she clung to him. Dick Hazlewood
laughed.
“I think we ought to be fairly
happy in that house,” and she let him go with
a smile, repeating her own words, “Anywhere,
Dick, anywhere on earth.”
She waited, watching him tenderly
until the door was closed. Then she covered her
face with her hands and a sob burst from her lips.
But the next moment she tore her hands away and looked
wildly about the room. She ran to the writing-table
and scribbled a note; she thrust it into an envelope
and gummed the flap securely down. Then she rang
the bell and waited impatiently with a leaping heart
until Hubbard came to the door.
“Did you ring, madam?” he asked.
“Yes. Has Mr. Thresk arrived yet?”
She tried to control her face, to
speak in a careless and indifferent voice, but she
was giddy and the room whirled before her eyes.
“Yes, madam,” the butler
answered; and it seemed to Stella Ballantyne that
once more she stood in the dock and heard the verdict
spoken. Only this time it had gone against her.
That queer old shuffling butler became a figure of
doom, his thin and piping voice uttered her condemnation.
For here without her knowledge was Henry Thresk and
she was bidden to meet him with the Pettifers for
witnesses. But it was Henry Thresk who had saved
her before. She clung to that fact now.
“Mr. Thresk arrived a few minutes ago.”
Just before old Hazlewood had come
forward out of the house to welcome her! No wonder
he was in such high spirits! Very likely all that
great show of kindliness and welcome was made only
to keep her in the garden for a few necessary moments.
“Where is Mr. Thresk now?” she asked.
“In his room, madam.”
“You are quite sure?”
“Quite.”
“Will you take this note to
him, Hubbard?” and she held it out to the butler.
“Certainly, madam.”
“Will you take it at once? Give it into
his hands, please.”
Hubbard took the note and went out
of the room. Never had he seemed to her so dilatory
and slow. She stared at the door as though her
sight could pierce the panels. She imagined him
climbing the stairs with feet which loitered more
at each fresh step. Some one would surely stop
him and ask for whom the letter was intended.
She went to the door which led into the hall, opened
it and listened. No one was descending the staircase
and she heard no voices. Then above her Hubbard
knocked upon a door, a latch clicked as the door was
opened, a hollow jarring sound followed as the door
was sharply closed. Stella went back into the
room. The letter had been delivered; at this
moment Henry Thresk was reading it; and with a sinking
heart she began to speculate in what spirit he would
receive its message. Henry Thresk! The unhappy
woman bestirred herself to remember him. He had
grown dim to her of late. How much did she know
of him? she asked herself. Once years ago there
had been a month during which she had met him daily.
She had given her heart to him, yet she had learned
little or nothing of the man within the man’s
frame. She had not even made his acquaintance.
That had been proved to her one memorable morning
upon the top of Bignor Hill, when humiliation had so
deeply seared her soul that only during this last month
had it been healed. In the great extremities
of her life Henry Thresk had decided, not she, and
he was a stranger to her. She beat her poor wings
in vain against that ironic fact. Never had he
done what she had expected. On Bignor Hill, in
the Law Court at Bombay, he had equally surprised her.
Now once more he held her destinies in his hand.
What would he decide? What had he decided?
“Yes, he will have decided now,”
said Stella to herself; and a certain calm fell upon
her troubled soul. Whatever was to be was now
determined. She went back to the tea-table and
waited.
Henry Thresk had not much of the romantic
in his character. He was a busy man making the
best and the most of the rewards which the years brought
to him, and slamming the door each day upon the day
which had gone before. He made his life in the
intellectual exercise of his profession and his membership
of the House of Commons. Upon the deeps of the
emotions he had closed a lid. Yet he had set out
with a vague reluctance to Little Beeding; and once
his motor-car had passed Hindhead and dipped to the
weald of Sussex the reluctance had grown to a definite
regret that he should once more have come into this
country. His recollections were of a dim far-off
time, so dim that he could hardly believe that he had
any very close relation with the young struggling man
who had spent his first real holiday there. But
the young man had been himself and he had missed his
opportunity high up on the downs by Arundel. Words
which Jane Repton had spoken to him in Bombay came
back to him on this summer afternoon like a refrain
to the steady hum of his car. “You can get
what you want, so long as you want it enough, but
you cannot control the price you will have to pay.”
He had reached Little Beeding only
a few moments before Dick and Stella had crossed into
the garden. He had been led by Hubbard into the
library, where Mr. Hazlewood was sitting. From
the windows he had even seen the thatched cottage
where Stella Ballantyne dwelt and its tiny garden bright
with flowers.
“It is most kind of you to come,”
Mr. Hazlewood had said. “Ever since we
had our little correspondence I have been anxious to
take your opinion on my collection. Though how
in the world you manage to find time to have an opinion
at all upon the subject is most perplexing. I
never open the Times but I see your name figuring
in some important case.”
“And I, Mr. Hazlewood,”
Thresk replied with a smile, “never open my mail
without receiving a pamphlet from you. I am not
the only active man in the world.”
Even at that moment Mr. Hazlewood
flushed with pleasure at the flattery.
“Little reflections,”
he cried with a modest deprecation, “worked out
more or less to completeness may I say that? in
the quiet of a rural life, sparks from the tiny flame
of my midnight oil.” He picked up one pamphlet
from a stack by his writing-table. “You
might perhaps care to look at The Prison Walls.”
Thresk drew back.
“I have got mine, Mr. Hazlewood,”
he said firmly. “Every man in England should
have one. No man in England has a right to two.”
Mr. Hazlewood fairly twittered with
satisfaction. Here was a notable man from the
outside world of affairs who knew his work and held
it in esteem. Obviously then he was right to
take these few disagreeable twists and turns which
would ensure to him a mind free to pursue his labours.
He looked down at the pamphlet however, and his satisfaction
was a trifle impaired.
“I am not sure that this is
quite my best work,” he said timidly “a
little hazardous perhaps.”
“Would you say that?” asked Thresk.
“Yes, indeed I should.”
Mr. Hazlewood had the air of one making a considerable
concession. “The very title is inaccurate.
The Prison Walls must Cast no Shadow.”
He repeated the sentence with a certain unction.
“The rhythm is perhaps not amiss but the metaphor
is untrue. My son pointed it out to me.
As he says, all walls cast shadows.”
“Yes,” said Thresk.
“The trouble is to know where and on whom the
shadow is going to fall.”
Mr. Hazlewood was startled by the
careless words. He came to earth heavily.
All was not as yet quite ready for the little trick
which had been devised. The Pettifers had not
arrived.
“Perhaps you would like to see
your room, Mr. Thresk,” he said. “Your
bag has been taken up, no doubt. We will look
at my miniatures after tea.”
“I shall be delighted,”
said Thresk as he followed Hazlewood to the door.
“But you must not expect too much knowledge from
me.”
“Oh!” cried his host with
a laugh. “Pettifer tells me that you are
a great authority.”
“Then Pettifer’s wrong,”
said Thresk and so stopped. “Pettifer?
Pettifer? Isn’t he a solicitor?”
“Yes, he told me that he knew
you. He married my sister. They are both
coming to tea.”
With that he led Thresk to his room
and left him there. The room was over the porch
of the house and looked down the short level drive
to the iron gates and the lane. It was all familiar
ground to Thresk or rather to that other man with
whom Thresk’s only connection was a dull throb
at his heart, a queer uneasiness and discomfort.
He leaned out of the window. He could hear the
river singing between the grass banks at the bottom
of the garden behind him. He would hear it through
the night. Then came a knocking upon his door,
and he did not notice it at once. It was repeated
and he turned and said:
“Come in!”
Hubbard advanced with a note upon a salver.
“Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to give you this at
once, sir.”
Thresk stared at the butler.
The name was so apposite to his thoughts that he could
not believe it had been uttered. But the salver
was held out to him and the handwriting upon the envelope
removed his doubts. He took it up, said “Thank
you” in an absent voice and waited until the
door was closed again and he was alone. The last
time he had seen that writing was eighteen months
ago. A little note of thanks, blurred with tears
and scribbled hastily and marked with no address,
had been handed to him in Bombay. Stella Ballantyne
had disappeared then. She was here now at Little
Beeding and his relationship with the young struggling
barrister of ten years back suddenly became actual
and near. He tore open the envelope and read.
“Be prepared to see me.
Be prepared to hear news of me. I will have a
talk with you afterwards if you like. This is
a trap. Be kind.”
He stood for a while with the letter
in his hand, speculating upon its meaning, until the
wheels of a car grated on the gravel beneath his window.
The Pettifers had come. But Thresk was in no hurry
to descend. He read the note through many times
before he hid it away in his letter-case and went
down the stairs.