The Tempting of Tavernake Part 17

"Say Monday morning," Mr. Dowling suggested, taking down his hat. "I shall be playing golf to-morrow and Friday, and of course Sat.u.r.day.

Monday morning you might let me have a report."

Tavernake went back to his office. After all, then, things were to come to a crisis a little earlier than he had thought. He knew quite well that that report, if he made it honestly, and no other idea was likely to occur to him, would effectually sever his connection with Messrs.

Dowling, Spence & Company.

CHAPTER IX. THE PLOT THICKENS

The man whom Tavernake had left walking up and down the corridor lost no time in presenting himself once more at the apartments of Mrs. Wenham Gardner. He entered the suite without ceremony, carefully closing both doors behind him. It became obvious then that his deportment on the occasion of his previous appearance had been in the nature of a bluff.

The air with which he looked across the room at the woman who watched him was furtive; the hand which laid his hat upon the table was shaking; there was a gleam almost of terror in his eyes. The woman remained impa.s.sive, inscrutable, simply watching him. After a moment or two, however, she spoke--a single monosyllable.

"Well?"

The man broke down.

"Elizabeth," he exclaimed, "you are too--too ghastly! I can't stand it.

You are unnatural."

She stretched herself upon the couch and turned towards him.

"Unnatural, am I?" she remarked. "And what are you?"

He sank into a chair. He had become very flabby indeed.

"What you are always calling me, I suppose," he muttered,--"a coward.

You have so little consideration, Elizabeth. My health isn't what it was."

His eyes had wandered longingly toward the cupboard at the further end of the apartment. The woman upon the couch smiled.

"You may help yourself," she directed carelessly. "Perhaps then you will be able to tell me why you have come in such a state."

He crossed the room in a few hasty steps, his head and shoulders disappeared inside the cupboard. There was the sound of the withdrawal of a cork, the fizz of a sodawater syphon. He returned to his place a different man.

"You must remember my age, Elizabeth dear," he said, apologetically.

"I haven't your nerve--it isn't likely that I should have. When I was twenty-five, there was nothing in the world of which I was afraid."

She looked him over critically.

"Perhaps I am not so absolutely courageous as you think," she remarked.

"To tell you the truth, there are a good many things of which I am afraid when you come to me in such a state. I am afraid of you, of what you will do or say."

"You need not be," he a.s.sured her hastily. "When I am away from you, I am dumb. What I suffer no one knows. I keep it to myself."

She nodded, a little contemptuously.

"I suppose you do your best," she declared. "Tell me, now, what is this fresh thing which has disturbed you?"

Her visitor stared at her.

"Does there need to be any fresh thing?" he muttered.

"I suppose it is something about Wenham?" she asked.

The man s.h.i.+vered. He opened his lips and closed them again. The woman's tone, if possible, grew colder.

"I hope you are not going to tell me that you have disobeyed my orders,"

she said.

"No," he protested, "no! I was there yesterday. I came back by the mail from Penzance. I had to motor thirty miles to catch it."

"Something has happened, of course," she went on, "something which you are afraid to tell 'me. Sit up like a man, my dear father, and let me have the truth."

"Nothing fresh has happened at all," he a.s.sured her. "It is simply that the memory of the day I spent at that place and that the sight of him has got on my nerves till I can't sleep or think of anything else."

"What rubbis.h.!.+" she exclaimed.

"You have only seen the place in fine weather," he continued, dropping his voice a little. "Elizabeth, you have no idea what it is really like.

Yesterday morning I got out of the train at Bodmin and I motored through to the village of Clawes. After that there were five miles to walk.

There's no road, only a sort of broken track, and for the whole of that five miles there isn't even a farm building to be seen and I didn't meet a human soul. There was a sort of pall of white-gray mists everywhere over the moor, sometimes so dense that I couldn't see my way, and you could stop and listen and there wasn't a thing to be heard, not even a sheep bell."

She laughed softly..

"My dear, foolish father," she murmured, "you don't understand what a rest cure is. This is quite all right, quite as it should be. Poor Wenham has been seeing too many people all his life--that is why we have to keep him quiet for a time. You can skip the scenery. I suppose you got to the house at last?"

"Yes, I got there," continued her father. "You know what a bleak-looking place it is, right on the side of a bare hill--a square, gray stone place just the color of the hillside. Well, I got there and walked in.

There was Ted Mathers, half dressed, no collar, with a bottle of whiskey on the table, playing some wretched game of cards by himself. Elizabeth, what a brute that man is!"

She shook her head.

"Go on," she said. "What about Wenham?"

"He was there in a corner, gazing out of the window. When I came he sprang up, but when he saw who it was, he--he tried to hide. He was afraid of me."

"Why?" she asked.

"He said that I--I reminded him of you."

"Absurd!" she murmured. "Tell me, how did he look?"

"Ill, wretched, paler and thinner than ever, and wilder looking."

"What did Mathers say about him?" she demanded.

"What could he? He told me that he cried all day and begged to be taken back to America."