Jane Oglander Part 12

Old friends, new friends, people whom he had never met and whom he had no intention of meeting--were each and all in full cry.

The last letter he opened was in Tom Pache's handwriting. The young man had written at his mother's dictation, and the note contained a long list of the people whom she had promised to invite, or had actually invited, to meet her famous relative.

There was a postscript from Tom himself.

"It is most awfully good of Mr. and Mrs. Maule to have asked Hew Lingard over a few days before they expected him. As you see, mother's plans are all upset, and she is dreadfully worried about it all."

Then Lingard was already here? Wantele wondered how he was to answer those absurd letters--how to put off these people. He made a point of being on good, if not on very cordial, terms with his neighbours. He and Richard both acknowledged a certain duty to the neighbourhood. In spite of Mr. Maule's physical condition, Rede Place did its fair share of quiet, very quiet, entertaining, generally when Mrs. Maule happened to be away and when Jane Oglander happened to be there.

Athena had long ago decided that her neighbours were the dullest set of people to be found in an English countryside, and that the receiving of them at lunch or dinner bored her to tears.

Well! There was nothing for it now but to go and consult Athena as to what should be done. After all, she was the mistress of Rede Place, and Richard was in no state to be asked tiresome questions or required to make tiresome decisions.

Holding the letters which had so perturbed him in his hand, Wantele slowly retraced his steps. He might as well meet Jane now as at any other time or in any other way.

Wantele knocked at the door of the boudoir. Since her arrival at Rede Place, eight years ago, he had remained on very formal terms with his cousin's wife.

There fell a sudden silence on the occupants of the room, and then, after a perceptible pause, Athena called out in her clear, exquisitely modulated voice, "Come in. Who is it?"

d.i.c.k Wantele slowly turned the handle of the door, and in a flash he saw that Jane Oglander was not there.

There were but two people in the room. One was Mrs. Maule; she was sitting on a low seat close to the fire, her lovely head bent over an embroidery frame; the other, General Lingard, was standing, looking down at her with an eager, absorbed expression on his face.

Athena was wearing a white gown, fas.h.i.+oned rather like a monk's habit.

It left the slender, rounded column of her neck bare.

The intruder, feeling at once relieved and disappointed, stared doubtfully at the famous soldier. General Lingard looked a younger man than he had done the other night--younger and somehow different, far, far more vividly alive. Perhaps it was his clothes; rough morning clothes are more becoming to the type of man Wantele now took Lingard to be than is evening dress. Both he and Mrs. Maule looked most happily and intimately at ease.

Wantele felt a pang of angry irritation. How like Athena to take General Lingard away from Jane! And to keep him with her while her friend was doubtless engaged in doing what should have been her own job--that is, in looking after Richard.

But many years had gone by since Athena had even made a pretence of looking after Richard. Had Wantele been just, which he was at this moment incapable of being, he would have admitted to himself that Richard would have given Athena small thanks for her company.

"d.i.c.k! Is that you? Why, I thought you weren't coming back till the afternoon! Have you seen Richard?"

Athena had a subtle way with her of making a man feel an intruder.

But Wantele held his ground.

"I always meant to come back in the morning," he said shortly. "No, I haven't seen Richard."

"I'm glad you've come, for Richard's worried about some tiresome letters he's had this morning."

"Is Jane with Richard?" he asked abruptly.

It was odd of General Lingard not to have come forward and shaken hands.

The soldier had just nodded--that was all. He also seemed to feel the young man's presence an intrusion.

"Jane hasn't come. Didn't you know? I thought she would have written to you. She is staying a week longer with that tiresome friend of hers.

There's to be an operation now, it seems, and the woman's implored Jane to stay with her till it's over. Oh, but ever so many things have happened----"

Athena put aside her work and got up. "The poor Paches have had a motor accident, and so we--I mean Richard and I--asked General Lingard to come here at once instead of waiting till the end of the week. I'm afraid he's had rather a dull time, though the Paches have very kindly allowed us to use their motor car--the car wasn't hurt in any way--" she turned to her guest and smiled. "But now that you're back, d.i.c.k, it will be all right."

She sat down again, and again bent over the embroidery frame. Each of the men looking down at her felt himself dismissed.

Together they left the room, and d.i.c.k Wantele could have laughed aloud to see General Lingard's air of discomfiture.

He thought he could reconst.i.tute the events of the last three days. No doubt Richard had insisted on Jane's lover being asked over to stay, and Athena, as was her way, had resented the trouble of entertaining Richard's guest.

Mrs. Maule had no liking for a man on half terms. With her it must be all or nothing--too often it was all that she received; seldom, as in this case--nothing. Wantele felt a malicious pleasure in the knowledge that for once Athena's spells would be powerless, that in this unique instance there was stretched before her a gateless barrier. Hew Lingard was the lover of her friend, and Athena, so Wantele acknowledged, loved Jane Oglander with whatever truth was in her.

Such were his disconnected thoughts as he walked silently by the other's side. Yes, Lingard seemed strangely unlike the man who had dined there a week ago. d.i.c.k Wantele possessed an almost feminine power of observation, of intuition. He would have been a happier man had he lacked it.

"I must go and find my cousin," he said at last. "I haven't seen him yet. But he won't keep me long."

"Please don't trouble about me. I've a lot of letters to write. Mrs.

Maule has been good enough to give me a sitting-room."

Lingard spoke with a touch of rather curt impatience. He had no wish to be entertained by this odd, idle young man. Mr. Maule's heir did not attract him; d.i.c.k Wantele took too much upon himself.

Lingard was already on excellent terms with his host--his poor, feeble, afflicted host. As for Mrs. Maule--he thought of her as Athena, had she not already asked him to call her Athena?--she was, if only as Jane Oglander's intimate friend, already set apart on a pedestal. And then Athena had said a word--only a word--of the painful position she occupied in her husband's house, that of an occasional and not very welcome guest. It had made Lingard seethe with unspoken, but the more deeply felt, indignation.

There is something moving, to a generous masculine mind something very pathetic, in the sight of a beautiful woman hardly used by fate. Lingard already suspected that in this case d.i.c.k Wantele played the ugly part of fate. True, Jane seemed very fond of the young man, and he had been good to her in the terrible affair of her brother; but the taste of women in the matter of men is not always to be trusted.

General Lingard, in spite of the qualities which made him a successful leader of fighting men, had not troubled himself, indeed he had not had the time, to probe or question certain accepted axioms.

As the two came into the hall, Lingard stepped aside and took up the heavy mail bag.

"Please don't do that! It must be awfully heavy!" The host in d.i.c.k Wantele was roused. "It ought to have been put in your sitting-room long ago."

Lingard gave a short, not very pleasant, laugh. He was very strong and Wantele looked delicate, languid--not the sort of man Lingard liked or was accustomed to meet. It was a pity Wantele had come back so soon. The three days alone with Richard Maule--and with Athena--had been very pleasant....

d.i.c.k went on, with his quick, light steps, into the Greek Room. He had again shouldered his burden, and it was pressing on him even more hardly than usual. If only Jane had been there! He now longed for her presence as a man longs for a lamp in dark subterranean places from which he knows no issue.

With a shock of surprise he realised that the letters he had meant to show Athena were still in his hand, and that he had said nothing to her of their contents.

He found Richard Maule sitting, as he always did sit in any but the hottest summer weather, crouched up in front of the fire; but when d.i.c.k came in Mr. Maule smiled as a man smiles at his own son, and the other saw that his cousin looked more vigorous, more alive, than usual. There was even a little colour in his white drawn cheeks.

It was a long time since they had had any visitor, any man that is, staying at Rede Place; and Wantele now asked himself whether they were wise in leading so quiet a life. Richard was evidently enjoying General Lingard's visit.

"He's a good fellow, d.i.c.k. He grows on one with acquaintance. I don't know but that Jane----" He stopped abruptly. The thought in his mind to which he had all but given utterance was that Jane Oglander, after all, had done well for herself. "He's not a bit spoilt. And yet there must be a lot of people running after him! Just look at these letters! We shall have to do something about them. Eh? Some of these people will have to be asked here to meet him, I suppose?"

And Wantele, again with mingled annoyance and amus.e.m.e.nt, saw another pile of notes--far smaller, it was true, than his own--lying on the reading-desk which was always close to his cousin's hand.

"The duke has written to me. They want to have him over there for a couple of nights--if we can spare him."

Mr. Maule smiled, not unkindly.

"It's evident we can't hope to keep the hero all to ourselves. It's lucky Jane Oglander isn't here! I thought it such a pity yesterday, but now I'm glad. We may be able to ask a few people over before she arrives--when she's here, Lingard won't want a crowd about. We might begin with the Sumners--you see they ask themselves, it's very good of them, for to-morrow!" he laughed outright, a thin, satirical and yet again not an unkindly laugh.