Beaumaroy Home from the Wars Part 24

"Letters--and the old man's description; he had a considerable command of language, and very violent likes and dislikes. I made a picture of them--and it's turned out pretty accurate."

"And those were the nearest kith and kin your poor old man had?" Naylor shook his head sadly. "The woman obviously cared not a straw about anything but handling his money--and couldn't even hide it! A gross and horrible female, Beaumaroy!"

"Were you really hurt about their insisting on staying?" asked Mary.

"Oh, come, you're sharper than that, Doctor Mary! Still, I think I did it pretty well. I set the old girl thinking again, didn't I?" He broke into laughter, and Mary joined in heartily. Old Naylor glanced from one to the other with an air of curiosity.

"You two people look to me--somehow--as if you'd got a secret between you."

"Perhaps we have! Mr. Naylor's a man of honour, Doctor Mary; a man who appreciates a situation, a man you can trust." Beaumaroy seemed very gay and happy now, disembarra.s.sed of a load, and buoyant alike in walk and in spirit. "What do you say to letting Mr. Naylor--just him--n.o.body else--into our secret?"

Mary put her arm through old Mr. Naylor's. "I don't mind, if you don't.

But n.o.body else!"

"Then you shall tell him--the entire story--at your leisure. Meanwhile I'll begin at the wrong end. I told you I'd made a picture of the hated cousins, of the heirs-at-law, these sorrowing chief mourners. Well, having made a picture of them that's proved true, I'll make a prophecy about them, and I'll bet you it proves just as true."

"Go on," said Mary. "Listen, Mr. Naylor," she added, with a squeeze of the old man's arm.

"You're like a couple of naughty children!" he said, with an affectionate look and laugh.

"Well, my prophecy is that they'll swear the poor dear old man's estate at under five thousand."

"Well, why shouldn't----?" old Naylor began; but he stopped as he saw Mary's eyes meet Beaumaroy's in a rapture of quick and delighted understanding.

"And then perhaps you'll own to being sorry, Doctor Mary!"

"So that's what you were up to, was it?" said Mary.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE GOLD AND THE TREASURE

Old Mr. Naylor called on Mary two or three days later--at an hour when, as he well knew, Cynthia was at his own house--in order to hear the story. There were parts of it which she could not describe fully for lack of knowledge--the enterprise of Mike and Big Neddy, for example; but all that she knew she told frankly, and did not scruple to invoke her imagination to paint Beaumaroy's position, with its difficulties, demands, obligations--and temptations. He heard her with close attention, evidently amused, and watching her animated face with a keen and watchful pleasure.

"Surprising!" he said at the end, rubbing his hands together. "That's to say, not in itself particularly surprising. Just a queer little happening; one would think nothing of it if one read it in the newspaper! Things are always so much more surprising when they happen down one's own street, or within a few minutes' walk of one's garden wall--and when one actually knows the people involved in them. Still I was always inclined to agree with Dr. Irechester that there was something out of the common about old Saffron and our friend Beaumaroy."

"Dr. Irechester never found out what it was, though!" exclaimed Mary triumphantly.

"No, he didn't--for reasons pretty clearly indicated in your narrative."

He sat back in his chair, his elbows on the arms and his hands clasped before him. "If I may say so, the really curious thing is to find you in the thick of it, Doctor Mary."

"That wasn't my fault. I couldn't refuse to attend Mr. Saffron. Dr.

Irechester himself said so."

He paid no heed to her protest. "In the thick of it--and enjoying it so tremendously!"

Mary looked thoughtful. "I didn't at first. I was angry, indignant, suspicious. I thought I was being made a fool of."

"So you were--a fool and a tool, my dear!"

"But that night--because it all really happened in just one night--the chief mourners, as Mr. Beaumaroy always calls them, were no more than----"

"Just a rather amusing epilogue--yes, that's all."

"That night, it did get hold of me." She laughed a little nervously, a little uneasily.

"And now you tell it to me--and I must say that your telling made it twice the story that it really is--now you tell it as if it were the greatest thing that ever happened to you!"

For a moment Mary fenced. "Well, nothing interesting ever has happened in my humdrum life before." But old Naylor pursed up his lips in contempt of her fencing. "It did seem to me a great--a great experience.

Not the burglars and all that--though some of the things, like the water-b.u.t.t, did amuse me very much--but our being apart from all the world, there by ourselves--against the whole world in a way, Mr.

Naylor."

"The law on one side, the robbers on the other--and you two alone together!"

"Yes, you understand. That was the way I felt it. But we weren't together, not in every way. I mean--we were fighting between ourselves too--right up to the very end." She gave another low laugh. "I suppose we're fighting still; he means to face me with some Radbolt villainy, and make me sorry for what he calls my legalism--with an epithet!"

"That's his idea, and my own too, I confess. Those chief mourners will find the money--and some other things that'll make 'em stare. But they'll lie low; they'll sit on the cash till the time comes when it's safe to dispose of it; and they'll bilk the Inland Revenue out of the duties. The remarkable thing is that Beaumaroy seems to want them to do it."

"That's to make me sorry; that's to prove me wrong, Mr. Naylor."

"It may make you sorry--it makes me sorry, for that matter; but it doesn't prove you wrong. You were right. My boy Alec would have taken the same line as you did. Now you needn't laugh at me, Mary. I own up at once--that's my highest praise."

"I know it is; and it implies a contrast?"

Old Naylor unclasped his hands and spread them in a deprecatory gesture.

"It must do that," he acknowledged.

Mary gave a rebellious little toss of her head. "I don't care if it does, Mr. Naylor! Mr. Beaumaroy is--my friend now."

"And mine. Moreover I have such confidence in his honour and fidelity that I have offered him a rather important and confidential position in my business--to represent us at one of the foreign ports where we have considerable interests." He smiled. "It's the sort of place where he will perhaps find himself less trammelled by--er--legalism, and with more opportunities for his undoubted gift of initiative."

"Will he accept your offer? Will he go?" she asked rather excitedly.

"Without doubt, I think. It's really quite a good offer. And what prospects has he now--or here?"

Mary stretched her hands towards the fire and gazed into it in silence.

"I think you'll have an offer soon too, and a good one, Doctor Mary.

Irechester was over at our place yesterday. He's still of opinion that there was something queer at Tower Cottage. Indeed he thinks that Mr.

Saffron was queer himself--in his head--and that a clever doctor would have found it out."

"That he himself would, if he'd gone on attending----?"

"Precisely. But he's not surprised that you didn't; you lacked the experience. Still he thinks none the worse of you for that, and he told me that he has made up his mind to offer you partners.h.i.+p. Irechester's a bit stiff, but a very straight fellow. You could rely on being fairly treated, and it's a good practice. Besides he's well off, and quite likely to retire as soon as he sees you fairly in the saddle."