by Annie Haynes
But Lady Carew shook her head. “I am tired of all those messes, Célestine; I can’t stand any more of them. Look me out a train. I shall get up and see a dentist. You will find a Bradshaw in the library.”
“But Miladi has courage,” Célestine remarked as she left the room. “I would rather apply remedies all the day than go to see the dentist—me. He give you too much pain.”
Left alone, Judith dropped the handkerchief from her face and began to walk restlessly up and down the room. “What else can I do?” she breathed. “And yet—and yet, if she should guess.”
As if taking a sudden resolution, she went out of the room and up the stairs to the nursery. Paul was just awake; he stretched out his arms to his mother, and as Judith took him, and he nestled his fair head down into the hollow of her neck, for a moment the pain at her heart was lulled.
“It is for your sake, my little boy,” she whispered, as she pressed her lips to the soft gold down on the top of his head. “For your sake, and your father’s. For myself, what would it matter?”
“Ah, miladi, is it that the pain is better?” Célestine stood in the doorway, her sharp black eyes regarding Lady Carew curiously. “There’s a train up to town from Carew village at 11.30, miladi.”
“Eleven-thirty!” Judith repeated. “That will do very well. Tell them to bring the pony carriage round, Célestine. I will drive down.”
“Yes, miladi.” Célestine waited while Judith went to the inner nursery and gave Paul back to his nurse. “Shall we be coming home to-night, miladi, or do we spend the night in town?”
“Oh, I shall come back to-night,” Judith said quickly. “But I shall not take you, Célestine. I shall have a taxi straight from the station to the dentist’s and manage quite well alone.”
At the station, as Lady Carew got out of the carriage, a man on a bicycle came swiftly up and dismounted at the steps. When she took her ticket to London, he was just behind her. When Judith got out at St. Pancras the same man was close behind her again and took the next taxi to hers.
But once in London Lady Carew’s toothache apparently disappeared. The taxi rolled rapidly westward, and passing down Park Lane and by Hyde Park Corner, made its way to Chelsea.
As it drew nearer it became increasingly obvious that Judith was exceedingly nervous. The taxi passed through the better streets, and finally came to a stop before a quaint old-fashioned house standing a little back from the road. Judith paid her cab and dismissed it, then went up the steps, and rang the bell with fingers that trembled visibly.
“Is Mrs. Rankin at home?” she asked when a smiling, white-capped maid had answered the door.
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl showed her into a pretty, unpretentious drawing-room.
Judith did not sit down. She turned and waited, standing with her face towards the open door, her hand clutching at the small inlaid table at her right.
At last there was the sound of a door opening. Judith’s eyelids flickered slightly, her hand tightened its grasp.
Mrs. Rankin was coming slowly across the hall, obvious lagging unwillingness in every step. As she entered the room she looked at Judith with cold condemning eyes. “So you have come at last, Lady Carew?”
“Yes, I have come,” Judith assented quickly.
Mrs. Rankin had not offered her hand; she had not attempted any sort of greeting, but as she spoke she turned and carefully closed the door.
Judith did not appear to resent her manner, or to expect any other kind of welcome. “I had to come,” she said, her breath catching her in the throat with a hoarse sob. “You saw Anthony the other day. Sophie was down in our neighbourhood, I had to come to ask you. You will not tell Anthony—if he questions you—you—”
Mrs. Rankin cast one swift look at her visitor’s agitated face, then quickly glanced away again. “You may rely on me, as you have always relied on me for the past two years, Judith. Has not your very silence proved your trust? Or had you forgotten?”
“Ah, no!” Judith caught her breath with a sob. “I had not forgotten—how could I ever forget? But I was afraid. I—I knew you would say I was doing wrong.”
“You might have trusted me, Judith. It was not my place to judge another. I might have tried to persuade you to be brave—to be true to yourself.”
“Ah, yes,” Judith cried with a great sob that threatened to choke her. “I know you would. And I only wanted to be happy, to forget—if I could.”
The pity in the other woman’s eyes grew and strengthened.
“Happiness does not come that way, Judith.”
“I know that, I know that!” cried Lady Carew recklessly. “Nothing comes but misery—utter hopeless misery.” She thrust back her golden hair from her brow; she held out her hands. “Do I look like a happy woman?” she demanded. “I tell you that I am wretched, wretched.”
Looking at her tragic face, beautiful even in its pallor, Mrs. Rankin could not doubt the truth of her words. The elder woman’s face softened involuntarily, she moved a step or two nearer, then she stopped before she reached her visitor.
“What does he—Sir Anthony—know of the past? What have you told him?”
Judith laughed drearily. “What should he know? Nothing, except that I was Sophie’s governess. He has heard of peaceful days in the old convent at Bruges before, that is all. He does not guess, how should he, at the blackness of the shame and the misery that lie between.”
Mrs. Rankin drew a deep breath. “Ah, Judith, if you had only trusted him—if you had only told him. Surely, surely he would have forgiven, he would at least have taken care that you were safe.”
“That I was safe!” A sudden change swept over Judith’s face, the passion, the pain died out, leaving it white and rigid. “What do you mean?” she said hoarsely, speaking slowly with a little pause between each word. “What do you know?”
Mrs. Rankin’s face was white, too, now. She leaned across the little table, her voice sinking to a whisper.
“I know nothing. But one night last spring we had a visitor.” She paused and drew a handkerchief across her trembling lips.
“Yes!” said Judith, in a harsh, loud tone. “Yes! you had a visitor?” Her eyes watched Mrs. Rankin’s in a very anguish of dread. “You had a visitor, you say. Who was it?”
Again Mrs. Rankin glanced round, her voice dropped until it became almost inaudible.
“He—he called himself Charles Warden.”
There was a long silence. Judith’s eyes wandered round the room, it was all so familiar, so homelike.
Mrs. Rankin’s voice sounded a very great way off when she began to speak again. Judith could hardly bring herself to attend to it. What was she saying?
“He called himself Charles Warden, he wanted to know where you were to be found. When we professed entire ignorance of your whereabouts, he told us that he had come into a large fortune, and that he meant to share it with you And he begged me if I should hear of you, if I could recall any clue that would help him in his search for you, to let him know at once at the—”
At last Judith brought her eyes back to the face of the woman standing opposite. “Yes! Where were you to let him know?”
“At Abbey Court, at—at No. 42,” Mrs. Rankin whispered.
“Ah!” Judith slipped sideways from her hold on the table on to the chair behind.
Mrs. Rankin did not move; she went on speaking with stiff, pale lips.
“That was on Tuesday, and when I saw the papers on Thursday evening I—I was frightened. Judith, tell me, you do not know who was in the flat that night, who fired the fatal shot?”
“I wish to Heaven I did.”
The words and accent alike had the force of complete truthfulness. Mrs. Rankin’s face altered; the reserve, the hardness broke up, melted. She came round the table, she took both the ice-cold hands in hers.
“Forgive me, Judith, if I doubted,” she whispered. “I was frightened—terribly frightened! I know the awful temptation it might have been. Forgive me, child!�
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Judith’s hands lay listlessly in hers. “There is nothing to forgive!” she said dully. “You only judge as the world will judge when it hears the story of that night. And something tells me the time is drawing very near now.”
The grey shadow was stealing over Mrs. Rankin’s face again, now her clasp of the cold hands loosened.
“What do you mean, Judith; you were not there, child? You do not know who the woman in the flat was?”
Judith drew herself slowly from the encircling arms, she freed her hands.
“I was the woman the papers spoke of. Yes, you were quite right when you thought so,” she said slowly. “I was at the flat in Abbey Court that night, but I did not kill Cyril Stanmore. I do not know who did.”
“Judith!” Mrs. Rankin’s cry was full of horror—horror that changed to pity as she looked at the white worn face, at the passionate pathetic eyes.
“Yes, I am the woman the papers speak about, the woman the police are looking for,” Judith went on in low, monotonous tones. “What do you think it feels like, Mrs. Rankin, to know you are being hunted, tracked down, that every day your doom is growing closer, a little more certain? I wonder what it feels like to be hanged, if it hurts one much?” in a curiously impersonal tone.
“Hush! hush! I can’t stand it, Judith!” Mrs. Rankin cried, in tones of passionate pain. “You did not hurt Cyril Stanmore; haven’t you just told me so? You could prove your innocence.”
“I couldn’t,” Judith contradicted dully. “I was there in the dark, when somebody shot him, but I didn’t see—I didn’t know.”
Something in the slow colourless voice seemed to strike a passionate chord of pity in the elder woman’s heart. She laid her arms round Judith again. “Tell me all about it, Judith!”
And Judith feeling the help of the womanly sympathy that had never failed her in her need before, in a few faltering sentences told her the story of that terrible night.
Mrs. Rankin’s arms never relaxed their hold. When the last words of the bald recital of terrible facts was said, a little fluttering sigh escaped her. Judith, looking up, saw the kindly face was as white as death, the eyes looking down at her held a great dread, an infinite pity.
“My child! my child!” Mrs. Rankin said brokenly. “What a terrible tangle you have involved yourself in. What can we do to help you, Judith?”
Judith stirred restlessly. “There isn’t anything to be done but to wait—for the end—till the blow falls,” she said drearily. “But you won’t help it on, you won’t tell them what you know?”
“Never, never, Judith!” Mrs. Rankin lowered her voice. “I suppose it isn’t possible—it couldn’t be that Lady Palmer suspects? She has taken to coming here. Mrs. Dawson, her sister, lives in the parish, and Lady Palmer seems positively to haunt me. She often asks me about you, and sometimes I have fancied that she is trying to find out.”
“I dare say.” Judith caught her breath with a bitter laugh. “Probably she is in league with the police. I know she hates me; I have felt it all along. She would do me any harm she could. She loved Anthony, you know, years ago, and he—he loved her. If I were out of the way they would be happy together.”
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Rankin said gently. “Your husband loves you, Judith. I have only seen him once, but I am sure of that, and he is an honourable, upright man. There is only one thing for you to do now.”
Judith’s slight form grew rigid. “And that?”
“Go to Sir Anthony,” Mrs. Rankin said in a firm, decided voice, though her eyes looked frightened, “tell him everything from the very beginning as you have told me. He would believe you, and he would help you as no one else can. Promise me you will do this. You will go to him, Judith.”
“Never!” Judith set her teeth. “Rather than do that, rather than Anthony should know, I would kill myself!” she declared passionately.
CHAPTER XXII
“I thought I was never going to see you again, Peggy.”
“Did you?” The girl was walking with a slow listless step through the Home Wood.
Peggy had altered curiously of late, her spirits had become capricious and variable, she was noticeably thinner and paler. She flushed hotly now as she heard Stephen Crasster’s voice behind her. Since the day when Chesterham had so rudely torn the veil from her eyes, she had avoided her old friend as much as possible. To-day, for the first time, she found herself alone with him.
“And it seems to me that our lunch at Talgarth is never coming off,” Stephen went on lightly. “You are always engaged.”
“Yes.” Peggy’s voice sounded muffled as she turned her face away. “Yes, it is very unfortunate. I was very much disappointed. It is so kind of you to ask me.”
“Kind to myself,” Crasster smiled. “You might take pity on my loneliness, Peggy; more particularly as my time for giving invitations to Talgarth is getting short.”
“What do you mean?” Peggy turned a startled face upon him.
Stephen did not answer for a moment.
“The Annesley Wards have always had a fancy for Talgarth,” he said slowly at last. “I am going to let it to them, with the option of buying it at the end of the year.”
“You are going to let Talgarth?” Peggy repeated in tones of consternation. “Oh, Stephen, we thought you had come to settle down among us.”
“So did I at first,” Stephen assented. “But I am beginning to fancy I am a bit of a rolling stone, Peggy. And, in any case, if I went on with my profession I shouldn’t have much time for Talgarth. It is no use keeping on a big house like that for one man.”
“It isn’t so very big,” Peggy said wistfully. “And why do you say ‘if I went on with my profession,’ Stephen?”
“Why, because—” Crasster hesitated a moment and bit his lip. “The fact is that since I have come into money, as the country folk say, I suppose I am getting lazy. I feel I should like to see rather more of the world. There is an expedition starting for Central Africa in a couple of months’ time, and I have a chance of going with it, if I like.”
“But you wouldn’t, Stephen.” Peggy exclaimed in startled tones.
“I think I must, Peggy.”
The girl winked back her rising tears. “I don’t see why.”
Stephen glanced at her half-averted cheek, at the long upcurled lashes, at the mouth that trembled as she spoke. It took all his manhood’s strength of will to restrain the words that would have torn the last vestige of doubt from Peggy’s mind, to keep up the light jesting tone that had become habitual to him of late when he was speaking to Peggy.
“I think everything is changing,” the girl went on, her voice quivering. “And I—I like things to stop always the same.”
Stephen’s smile held more of sadness than of mirth. “Change is the law of this world, little Peggy. Haven’t you learnt that, child?”
There was silence for a minute, broken by a hoarse sob in Peggy’s throat.
“I ought to have,” she flashed out suddenly. “Anthony has changed, so has Judith. I should not know either of them now, and you have altered, and—and Lorrimer.” She dropped her voice as she spoke her lover’s name.
“Surely he has not changed!” Stephen was half laughing as he spoke, but his eyes showed a keen anxiety. “Or, if so, it is only for the better!” he concluded jestingly.
Peggy did not look round, she shivered a little.
“Oh, he is only like everybody else. I suppose you will tell me I must get used to it.”
“I, at least, shall never change in one way,” Stephen said gravely. “I shall always be your friend, Peggy.”
“Oh, you say so now,” the girl answered pettishly, still keeping her face turned away. “But a friend isn’t much good to one, if he is at the other end of the world.”
“I would come from the other end of the world to serve you,” Stephen declared hoarsely. “You know that. Don’t make it too hard for me.”
“I should like to make things so hard for you that you
couldn’t go at all,” Peggy retorted with some of her old spirit. “Tell the Annesley Wards they can’t have Talgarth; keep it for yourself!”
“I can’t, Peggy. Don’t ask me.”
Peggy took one swift glance at his face, then looked away, her own cheeks paling. But she did not speak, and they walked on in silence, past the Heron’s moat, with its giant bulrushes, and its glory of golden kingcups, to the Dower House.
The Dowager Lady Carew was sitting out on the lawn. At sight of the two figures beside her, Peggy’s face altered curiously, her footsteps faltered, she glanced behind as though she would willingly have turned back. But it was too late; already she had been seen, and Chesterham was coming to meet them.
“I didn’t expect you to-day,” Peggy said as he greeted them. “I thought you were in London.”
“Did you? That isn’t a very warm greeting, Peggy. I found my business could wait awhile,” Chesterham said carelessly, as he took possession of her, and he and Crasster exchanged a curt nod. “Your brother and I have been having a business talk, and now Lady Carew has asked me to stay to lunch.”
They all walked back together to the weeping willow, where the Dowager Lady Carew had established herself, her stepson beside her. He looked up as they approached.
“What is this I hear about your letting Talgarth, Crasster?”
“I don’t know what you may have heard,” Stephen laughed. “But I am going to let it to the Annesley Wards.”
Sir Anthony looked at him. “I thought you had come here to be near your friends. We looked upon you as a permanent neighbour.”
“You are very kind, all of you,” Stephen responded, speaking with apparent carelessness. “But I find that I am lost without my work, and it is better to wear out than rust out, Anthony. However, it is possible there may be a hitch yet; the Wards may draw back.”
“I hope they will,” Sir Anthony said heartily. “We can’t afford to spare you, Stephen, things have gone crookedly enough of late, goodness knows, without that. His eyes went across to his future brother-in-law, who was standing by Peggy’s side a few paces away.