The Lonely Stronghold

by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds

  CHAPTER XIX

  A DISCOVERY

  Olwen was very busy. For the last fortnight she had devoted herself tothe library, and it had been a far more laborious business than she hadanticipated. The books seemed to have been snatched from their places,thrown in a pile on the floor, and taken thence and thrust into shelvesquite haphazard.

  Not only was there no classification, but even the volumes of thedifferent sets were divided, and had to be hunted for.

  She had, by dint of steady work, made considerable progress, thoughstill there were rows of books lying on the ground, carefully shieldedfrom dust by newspapers.

  This morning the sun was streaming blithely in through all the windows,and the sharp frost made one feel buoyant. Olwen was in vigorous health.Since she left the Palatine Bank she had improved very much in looks.The tints of her face were like a sun-warmed peach, her eyes were brightand clear, and the excellent feeding made her plump, though the exerciseshe took kept her from growing stout. She sang as she stood upon thelibrary steps, garbed in a blue overall, with duster and feather brush.It seemed to her that all was right with the world.

  The upper shelves were devoted to fiction, and she had just hunted outand found the last volume completing a set of Bulwer Lytton. Shecarried them up to their destined shelf, and was carefully arrangingthem according to their numbers, when one dropped from her hand into herlap. The leaves fell apart, and a photograph slipped out from betweenthem. Seated upon the top step, she took up the portrait and studiedit.

  A young lady, with ebullient hair, teeth and a smile. She wore a largefeathered hat and a low--generously low--evening dress, with a rose ather bosom and a diaphanous scarf over one shoulder.

  "An actress," thought Olwen, and sighed a little pitifully; for the bigbistred eyes were wistful, and the lips, so evidently carmined, had apathetic droop. She turned over the cardboard and saw words scrawledacross the back in a thick, heavy hand:

  "Ninian, from his Lily."

  Beneath this, which was written in ink, the same hand had addedsomething else in pencil: "_Mrs. Ninian Guyse._"

  To her own surprise Olwen coloured hotly. She sat down abruptly on thetop step, studying the pictured face intently.

  "So that was the kind of girl he tried his hand upon last! No wonder Ipuzzled him! No wonder that he didn't exactly know where he was withme! ... This was Lily Martin! How could they engage such a person? Howcould they have her in the house? No wonder Sunia said she was notpukka!"

  Sitting there, chin on hand, she caught sight of her own reflection inthe glass of the opposite cupboards. A small person in a long plainoverall, almost childish, nunnishly garbed from throat to foot!

  Then again her eyes sought the flamboyant image upon the cardboard.

  "From that to this!" she thought, with a curled lip.

  Her puzzled eyes, staring out across the room, fell, as they often did,upon the family motto, carved above the Tudor chimneypiece:

  "_Guyse ne scait pas se deguyser._"

  Like many old mottoes, it seemed ambiguous. Did it mean that, once aGuyse you could not cease to be a Guyse, nor persuade anyone that youwere anything else! Or did it mean that any Guyse would scorn to stoopto deception? Or did it mean (as Ninian vowed it did) that a Guyse wassuch a hopeless fool that any attempt to disguise or mask himself wassure to be found out?

  She had herself inclined to the first interpretation. "Once a Guysealways a Guyse" would have been her paraphrase.

  Now she looked upon it with a curl of the lip. She was recallingNinian's telling of the story of Lily Martin. The recital had seemed toher to bear the stamp of truth. To-day her mind had received a nastyjolt.

  She and Ninian had come far--very far--since their first meeting. Onlylast night the question of her remaining at the Pele had beenpractically decided. Ninian had expounded the rules to her. "If youwanted to leave at the month you should have given warning at the end ofa fortnight, Miss. Now you have been here six weeks you will have togive a month's warning; after this month is over we shall engage youannually, as they used to do the farm-hands at Caryngston mid-summerfair."

  To this she returned that it seemed better that she should at leastremain long enough to finish the library catalogue; and to celebratethat decision Ninian, at supper, had bade Sunia bring a bottle ofchampagne, in which they all drank each other's health.

  Mrs. Guyse on this occasion looked more animated than Olwen had everseen her; and Sunia, when putting her missee to bed later, had cooedover her like a triumphant mother over a new-born child.

  Now this photo lay on her lap, and the sight of it was affecting herstrangely.

  For weeks past she had hardly given a thought to the warnings of DebAskwith or Dr. Balmayne. She had _not_ continued to keep Nin at adistance. In truth, this was a difficult feat, when Nin desired toapproach; although, looking back, she realised how cautious the approachhad been....

  ... How, exactly, had they reached the stage at which now theystood--the point at which two people have a common stock of jokes, andmemories, a common association of ideas--when they turn to each otherwith a certainty of response, an assurance of mutual understanding?

  She could not tell. Ninian, the impertinent boor of the Seven Spears,had become her comrade, she might even say her intimate friend. It wasalmost like necromancy.

  And now there lay before her this flimsy, out-of-date bit of pasteboard,with its costume of four seasons ago, so frail and worthless a thing,yet able to give the lie to her own opinion of Ninian. Here, if looksmight be trusted, was a girl of the "cheap" variety, and yet, to judgefrom her expression, not a vicious girl, not a temptress. She had livedin the house with Ninian for more than a year. Some quality in herexpression, in the appeal of the big round eyes, hurt the spirit of thegirl who gazed.

  He had told her to leave, and she had wept upon his shoulder! ... Howmany times during her stay at the Pele might she have used his shoulderas a refuge without being repulsed? Olwen shuddered. There was anelement of horror in her thoughts.

  Was this man using her as a plaything? Did he still think of her as hehad done of this predecessor of so different a type?

  No wonder that his first impression, when he went to meet his mother'snew companion, had been that of disappointment. She had not seemed topromise the kind of sport that he desired. Yet her very aloofness, hersnappish, prudish ways, had acted as a lure. She had shown plainly thathe did not please her, and he had determined that he would please her.Whether or no he found her attractive, he was resolved that she shouldso find him. She professed not to be interested, and he becamedetermined to arouse her interest.

  How long would it be before the pleasurable novelty of the situationwore off for him? Olwen clenched her small, ineffectual fists. She hadbeen very arrogant, had believed herself so strong that such a man asNinian Guyse could not matter. Now, all unaware, she found that she hadreached a point at which he did matter, more than she cared to think.

  Her wounded vanity found some comfort in the reflection that from firstto last there had been no love-making. They had become friends upon herown terms. She had, as it were, made the rules. It was now up to her tosee that he kept them. Surely she could do this. Yet the revulsion offeeling in her was so strong that she feared it must be apparent to him.She had believed his story of the "Lily Martin affair." In his mouth itseemed to her to bear the stamp of truth. Its disproof was in herhand....

  ... She recalled Balmayne's curled lips as he said, "So! I see that youare a partisan already!"

  The doctor had attended Miss Martin; he knew much more than Olwen couldpossibly know of the matter. She wished that she had allowed him totell her his version. It had not seemed to matter then. Now she wouldgive much to have Ninian cleared.

  If he and she were on bad terms, she felt that she could not stay atGuysewyke. This certainty gave her to some extent the measure of herown feeling. She caught a glimpse of th
e long road she had travelled,and saw for an instant the strength of the cobweb bonds which knittedher silently to this uncouth place and its inhabitants.

  She sat on, the photo in her hand, lost in these uncomfortablespeculations, humped up on the top of the steps, absorbed in gloomythought.

  The distant door swung back to let in a piercing sound of whistling.Nin and Daff precipitated themselves into the room with violence, andthe young man shouted gladly:

  "There you are, after all! Been looking everywhere for you! My word,you do seem busy!"

  She did not change her posture, but turned her gaze down upon him as hestood below, smiling broadly up at her, his teeth gleaming, the suncatching the pale metallic gleam of his eyes, changing from green toshot gold where the iris touched the pupil, and making him look, as sheoften thought, like an animal. The same sun was shining richly throughher own hair, so that she looked down upon him from a halo.

  "Seeing that I told you at breakfast that I should be cataloguing allthe morning, it's not very complimentary of you to forget it so soon,"said she disagreeably.

  "Hallo! Got the hump? I should think so, perched up there all thesehours! You look like a saint and talk like a shrew! D'you know it'slunch-time?"

  "No, I didn't. I've been so busy."

  "You looked it as I walked in. You were sound asleep, I believe. Nowcome along down to me! I'll jump you!"

  He stood at the ladder's foot, his arms extended. But yesterday, andshe would have jumped into them. To-day she felt that she would ratherdie.

  "Oh, do get out of the way," said she; "you make me nervous. Thesesteps are rickety. Stand aside, please."

  "Oh, come, Teacher! Don't go back to last month in that discouragingway! I ain't done nothink fresh, 'ave I? Ain't 'ad the coppers arterme these three weeks, swelp me, I ain't, miss! Tell yer strite, I don'tmove from this 'ere till I gets yer! Come! Moight as well jump firstas lawst!"

  "Oh, please, Mr. Guyse"--in worried accents--"don't be silly. Stand onone side and let me come down."

  He gave her a long, keen look, then moved aside and stood still, withheightened colour, while she replaced the photo in "The Last Days ofPompeii," rose upright, and deposited the volume in the shelf next itsfellow. Then she descended slowly backwards, reached the ground, andshook the dust from her overall before unbuttoning it.

  "Are you in earnest? Have I dropped a brick of any kind?" he asked in atotally changed voice, a voice which caused her to feel an insane desireto be friends.

  "Oh, no, only one does get so tired of that everlasting ragging," shereplied slightingly, moving towards the door.

  He moved more quickly than she, and laid his hand upon the iron ringwhich raised the latch. His colour had faded, and he looked so whitethat she halted, a little frightened.

  "D'you think it's fair?" he began, and broke off. "Sorry you're putout," he then said. "Don't know what it's about. Anyway, it's beastlydisappointing. I had come to tell you such jolly good news. The ice isbearing, you know.... I've been over this morning to see."

  Surprise stayed her retreat. "Ice? I didn't know there was anywater--I mean, any water you could skate on--hereabouts."

  "It's some miles away--Hotwells Lough," said he, pronouncing the word asthey do in Northumbria--Loff. "Quite near the Roman Wall, you know. Theice is like glass."

  Olwen drew a long breath. If she loved one thing it was to skate. Fromthe time when her uncles taught her upon the ornamental water inBramforth Park to the Christmas holidays when Ben Holroyd had taken herand Gracie some stations up the line to the Great Stang, it had been hergreatest winter joy. Need she deprive herself of that joy simplybecause she had determined, after all, to "keep Muster Nin at adistance"? ... There was not much skating in the neighbourhood, andthere would be others there--perhaps Dr. Balmayne.

  "Are you thinking of going over?" she asked.

  "Not to-day; it's too far. If we go we ought to start to-morrow morningafter an early breakfast, and take our lunch with us."

  "Near the Roman Wall?" said she, waveringly.

  "Quite near, really. Near the best bit of all."

  "Well," said Olwen, half relenting, "we'll hear what Madam says. I mustjust run and wash my hands."

  With these words she disappeared and hastened up the newel stair. Ninstood motionless for some seconds after her departure; then, softlyclosing the door, he ran up the ladder steps, passed his hand along theshelf, and took down "The Last Days of Pompeii.'"

  The book fell open in his hand and he saw the photo. He stared at it asin a passion of disgust. Then he took it up hesitatingly and turned itover. His brows contracted into a portentous frown as he saw theinscription. His mouth puckered itself into a whistle, as if of sharpsurprise.

  "The devil!" he said. "Oh, the devil!"