The Evil Shepherd Part 23

"I have not seen her maid this morning, sir," the man replied, "but Mrs.

Hilditch never rises before midday. Sir Timothy hopes that you slept well, sir, and would like you to sign the visitors' book."

Francis signed his name mechanically, and was turning away when Lady Cynthia called to him from the stairs. She was dressed for travelling and followed by a maid, carrying her dressing-case.

"Will you take me up to town, Mr. Ledsam?" she asked.

"Delighted," he answered.

Their dressing-cases were strapped together behind and Lady Cynthia sank into the cus.h.i.+ons by his side. They drove away from the house, Francis with a backward glance of regret. The striped sun-blinds had been lowered over all the windows, thrushes and blackbirds were twittering on the lawn, the air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, a boatman was busy with the boats. Out beyond, through the trees, the river wound its placid way.

"Quite a little paradise," Lady Cynthia murmured.

"Delightful," her companion a.s.sented. "I suppose great wealth has its obligations, but why any human being should rear such a structure as what he calls his Borghese villa, when he has a charming place like that to live in, I can't imagine."

Her silence was significant, almost purposeful. She unwound the veil from her motoring turban, took it off altogether and attached it to the cus.h.i.+ons of the car with a hatpin.

"There," she said, leaning back, "you can now gaze upon a horrible example to the young women of to-day. You can see the ravages which late hours, innumerable c.o.c.ktails, a thirst for excitement, a contempt of the simple pleasures of life, have worked upon my once comely features. I was quite good-looking, you know, in the days you first knew me."

"You were the most beautiful debutante of your season," he agreed.

"What do you think of me now?" she asked.

She met his gaze without flinching. Her face was unnaturally thin, with disfiguring hollows underneath her cheekbones; her lips lacked colour; even her eyes were l.u.s.treless. Her hair seemed to lack brilliancy.

Only her silken eyebrows remained unimpaired, and a certain charm of expression which nothing seemed able to destroy.

"You look tired," he said.

"Be honest, my dear man," she rejoined drily. "I am a physical wreck, dependent upon cosmetics for the looks which I am still clever enough to palm off on the uninitiated."

"Why don't you lead a quieter life?" he asked. "A month or so in the country would put you all right."

She laughed a little hardly. Then for a moment she looked at him appraisingly.

"I was going to speak to you of nerves," she said, "but how would you ever understand? You look as though you had not a nerve in your body.

I can't think how you manage it, living in London. I suppose you do exercises and take care of what you eat and drink."

"I do nothing of the sort," he a.s.sured her indignantly. "I eat and drink whatever I fancy. I have always had a direct object in life--my work--and I believe that has kept me fit and well. Nerve troubles come as a rule, I think, from the under-used brain."

"I must have been born with a b.u.t.terfly disposition," she said. "I am quite sure that mine come because I find it so hard to be amused. I am sure I am most enterprising. I try whatever comes along, but nothing satisfies me."

"Why not try being in love with one of these men who've been in love with you all their lives?"

She laughed bitterly.

"The men who have cared for me and have been worth caring about," she said, "gave me up years ago. I mocked at them when they were in earnest, scoffed at sentiment, and told them frankly that when I married it would only be to find a refuge for broader life. The right sort wouldn't have anything to say to me after that, and I do not blame them. And here is the torture of it. I can't stand the wrong sort near me--physically, I mean. Mind, I believe I'm attracted towards people with criminal tastes and propensities. I believe that is what first led me towards Sir Timothy. Every taste I ever had in life seems to have become besmirched.

I'm all the time full of the craving to do horrible things, but all the same I can't bear to be touched. That's the torment of it. I wonder if you can understand?"

"I think I can," he answered. "Your trouble lies in having the wrong friends and in lack of self-discipline. If you were my sister, I'd take you away for a fortnight and put you on the road to being cured."

"Then I wish I were your sister," she sighed.

"Don't think I'm unsympathetic," he went on, "because I'm not. Wait till we've got into the main road here and I'll try and explain."

They were pa.s.sing along a country lane, so narrow that twigs from the hedges, wreathed here and there in wild roses, brushed almost against their cheeks. On their left was the sound of a reaping-machine and the perfume of new-mown hay. The sun was growing stronger at every moment. A transitory gleam of pleasure softened her face.

"It is ages since I smelt honeysuckle," she confessed, "except in a perfumer's shop. I was wondering what it reminded me of."

"That," he said, as they turned out into the broad main road, with its long vista of telegraph poles, "is because you have been neglecting the real for the sham, flowers themselves for their artificially distilled perfume. What I was going to try and put into words without sounding too priggish, Lady Cynthia," he went on, "is this. It is just you people who are cursed with a restless brain who are in the most dangerous position, nowadays. The things which keep us healthy and normal physically--games, farces, dinner-parties of young people, fresh air and exercise--are the very things which after a time fail to satisfy the person with imagination. You want more out of life, always the something you don't understand, the something beyond. And so you keep on trying new things, and for every new thing you try, you drop an old one. Isn't it something like that?"

"I suppose it is," she admitted wearily.

"Drugs take the place of wholesome wine," he went on, warming to his subject. "The hideous fascination of flirting with the uncouth or the impossible some way or another, stimulates a pa.s.sion which simple means have ceased to gratify. You seek for the unusual in every way--in food, in the subst.i.tution of absinthe for your harmless Martini, of cocaine for your stimulating champagne. There is a horrible wave of all this sort of thing going on to-day in many places, and I am afraid," he concluded, "that a great many of our very nicest young women are caught up in it."

"Guilty," she confessed. "Now cure me."

"I could point out the promised land, but how, could I lead you to it?"

he answered.

"You don't like me well enough," she sighed.

"I like you better than you believe," he a.s.sured her, slackening his speed a little. "We have met, I suppose, a dozen times in our lives. I have danced with you here and there, talked nonsense once, I remember, at a musical reception--"

"I tried to flirt with you then," she interrupted.

He nodded.

"I was in the midst of a great case," he said, "and everything that happened to me outside it was swept out of my mind day by day. What I was going to say is that I have always liked you, from the moment when your mother presented me to you at your first dance."

"I wish you'd told me so," she murmured.

"It wouldn't have made any difference," he declared. "I wasn't in a position to think of a duke's daughter, in those days. I don't suppose I am now."

"Try," she begged hopefully.

He smiled back at her. The reawakening of her sense of humour was something.

"Too late," he regretted. "During the last month or so the thing has come to me which we all look forward to, only I don't think fate has treated me kindly. I have always loved normal ways and normal people, and the woman I care for is different."

"Tell me about her?" she insisted.

"You will be very surprised when I tell you her name," he said. "It is Margaret Hilditch."

She looked at him for a moment in blank astonishment.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "Oliver Hilditch's wife!"

"I can't help that," he declared, a little doggedly. "She's had a miserable time, I know. She was married to a scamp. I'm not quite sure that her father isn't as bad a one. Those things don't make any difference."

"They wouldn't with you," she said softly. "Tell me, did you say anything to her last night?"