by Annie Haynes
Hilda looked particularly charming in her motor array, Arthur thought as he helped her into the car. Like himself, she disdained goggles, and the little pull-on hat which she wore, which pulled low down over her forehead, enhanced rather than concealed her brilliant complexion.
At first their progress was all that could be desired. The Manor was soon left miles behind, and Sir Arthur was loud in his praises of his new toy; then, as, regardless of regulation speed, they were swinging along over a fine stretch of level road, there was a whir, a crash, and the car came to a stop with a suddenness that sent Sir Arthur against the front of the motor.
“Something’s wrong!” he said with a rueful countenance as he recovered himself.
Hilda laughed mischievously, though for one moment the colour had deserted her cheeks.
“That is certainly pretty obvious,” she said.
Sir Arthur made no comment as he bent over the machine and carefully investigated various nuts and cranks.
“It will take some time, I am afraid,” he said at last.
“Fortunately we are near Overdeen, and the smith there is an intelligent sort of man and, moreover, has had a good deal of practice on breakdowns. I dare say he will be able to help me. In the meantime”—he glanced perplexedly at Hilda—“there is the village inn, and Mrs. Medway is a very decent clean sort of person. If you would let me take you there while we put this thing to rights, I dare say she would get you a cup of tea.”
“Delicious!” Hilda exclaimed, springing out and accepting the situation with equanimity. “But you will have to let me go alone. You can’t leave the car.’’
“The car will not move,” Arthur said grimly. “Anybody who puts that in working order before I get back will deserve the thing for his pains. Come, if you can manage it—the house is by those trees.”
Mrs. Medway, the smiling buxom hostess of the Red Lion, received them with open arms. She placed a private sitting-room at their disposal, and while Sir Arthur went off to interview the smith she entertained Hilda with graphic descriptions of the different accidents that had occurred in the neighbourhood.
Finally, when Sir Arthur appeared with the tidings that the smith had declared himself fully capable of managing the repairs alone, Mrs. Medway placed a luxurious tea before the young couple and left them alone.
Sir Arthur’s eyes dwelt lovingly on Hilda as she poured out the tea and handed it to him.
“I wonder what sort of a dinner that good woman thinks we should eat if we ate all the good things she has provided?” he said with a laugh. “Ah, Hilda, this is like a foretaste of the times that are coming!”
“As to quantity, do you mean?” Hilda inquired demurely.
“You know what I mean!” he went on passionately. “Of the life that we are going to share together—-of the time when we shall be alone, Hilda.”
The girl bent her face over the tea-cup.
“Ah! If it comes—”
“Do not say ‘if’,” he cried. “Hilda, you do not know what this means to me.”
The girl raised her eyes.
“Do I not? Oh, Arthur! You must not ignore the condition I made. When my memory comes back—”
Arthur caught her hand.
“Memory! Memory!” he echoed in a low deep tone. “It is not your memory I want—it is you yourself, the woman I love. When you are my wife, Hilda, I too shall have no memory, for I shall remember nothing but the fact that you are mine and that we are together.”
Hilda bit her lip nervously.
“Oh, I wish I could remember—if I only knew my name—who my friends were!”
“Why do you wish for other friends?” Arthur cried, pressing his lips to the hand he still held. “Am I not enough for you? Sweetheart, you have filled my life so entirely that I want no one but you! Day after day I ask myself if it can really be true—if this wonderful thing had really happened to me—that you are indeed my own!”
Hilda drew her hand away nervously as she averted her face. Sir Arthur could see that she was very pale, but her very coldness only rendered her more attractive in his eyes.
“Darling,” he pleaded, “don’t turn from me! If I could only make you understand how in you everything seems completed for me! There is only one thought in my mind all day—one word fills my life, and that word is—Hilda!”
Hilda glanced round once more; her face was still pale, but a suspicion of mirth gleamed in her eyes and played round the curves of her mobile lips.
“How about the car, and the orchids, and the Elaine?” she asked mischievously. “No, no, Arthur, your heart is not like the letter-lock of your safe! It will open for more words than one.”
For a moment Arthur looked distinctly aggrieved. That Hilda was not a demonstrative girl, that she was inclined apparently rather to scoff at his sentiment when they were alone, he had long since discovered, but he told himself that it was a girlish caprice, that she was only delaying the day of complete surrender, and his face brightened.
“Don’t you understand how outside one’s life all those things are? Hilda—”
“Is the only combination for which the key will turn,” she said as she laughed, though the man saw that her slender hands were trembling and took courage. “Are you sure, Arthur? Suppose I tried orchids or motor or Elaine?”
“Elaine means Hilda to me,” he smiled, entering into the spirit of her jest. “You might try that and be successful.”
“Isn’t it strange?” Hilda said abruptly, her mind evidently wandering from Sir Arthur’s love-making. “I know I have seen one of those letter-locks before, and I cannot tell where or what the word was. I wonder whether it was the same as yours?”
“Hardly likely, I think,” Sir Arthur said quickly. “Don’t try to remember, Hilda. Memory is more likely to come back if you do not try to strain it.”
Already the look of helpless bewilderment that he had learned to dread was coming into the girl’s face; she leaned forward and put her hands over her eyes.
“Oh, I thought the cloud was lifting then! Just for a moment I seemed to have a vision of what had been — and—now—now it is all dark again!”
Sir Arthur felt desperate—consolation seemed impossible when these moods of depression overtook Hilda. He laid his hand on her shoulder.
“It will come all right some day.”
The girl stirred impatiently.
“It—I seemed to see it all then; and now, with the letters, it has all faded away. But it is near—so near. Arthur”—looking at him with eyes once more filled with tears—“if I could only remember that word I feel sure that everything would come back, and something seems to tell me that it is the same as yours.”
“I do not think it is very likely, dear. Ours is a very ordinary little word, and so far as I know it has never been altered.”
Hilda’s lips quivered pitifully.
“If I could only find out, Arthur! If you love me, help me—tell me yours.”
My darling, it has always been kept a dead secret, and it could not possibly—”
Hilda’s face seemed to quiver all over into sobs.
“Such a little thing, and you said you loved me; and it is so near—so near! Then all would be clear, and we could be happy as we never can be till I know.”
“Hilda, dearest!” Arthur bent over her.
She pushed him away and buried her face in her hands.
“Oh, how can I make myself remember? It will kill me!”
Arthur put his arms round her and drew her, still resisting, to his heart.
“If the word will help you, sweetheart, you shall know it. And after all it is not breaking the rule, for you and I are to be one—you are to be my second self!”
“Yes, yes!” Hilda whispered, her arms stealing for one instant round his neck. “Ah, so soon, Arthur— when I know!”
“It is such a simple word,” Arthur went on; ”just ‘m—i—n—e’—mine, you see, only we spell it backwards—‘e—n—i—m.’—That is all the
secret, Hilda. Now does it help you, dear?”
“I don’t know. Wait a minute,” the girl said slowly, her head still resting on his shoulder, her perfumed hair sweeping across his face and intoxicating his senses. “It—Oh, Arthur, I see a tall man with white hair! I remember him—he was my father, my dear father! And they called him General—General—Oh, it is going! I can’t remember—”
There was a knock at the door.
“If you please, Sir Arthur, the man has brought your car round,” said Mrs. Medway, discreetly averting her eyes from the young couple, whose confusion was plainly evident. “He says he hopes as you will be able to manage it home all right now.”
Chapter Eighteen
“ARE THE Pontifexes coming down?”
“I think so. All our friends have been very kind; but, Garth, though we have looked forward to Arthur’s coming of age all this time, now that it is at hand I don’t seem to care—it is all spoilt.”
Mavis’s eyes were very troubled as she glanced up at her tall lover and she watched his dark face anxiously in the pause that followed.
Garth’s eyes wandered from her to the other side of the room, where Hilda sat with Sir Arthur, leaning forward in a pretty attitude of attention and listening to him with her eyes fixed on his face, a diamond star, Arthur’s latest gift, sparkling in her gleaming hair.
“I am very sorry, dearest,” he said slowly at last, “but from the first I have seen that this—this infatuation of Arthur’s could only bring trouble.”
“Poor mother has to accept it because Arthur is so determined,” Mavis went on, “but it is worrying her dreadfully, and she is getting quite thin. She is so disappointed because it means the downfall of her dearest hopes. Still, after all”—in a brighter tone—“one must not always look at the dark side of things. Mother doesn’t really dislike Hilda, and if everything should turn out satisfactory about her I dare say she will be happy enough about the match after all.”
“I hope so.”
But neither Garth’s countenance nor tone was expressive of confidence, and the momentary gleam of brightness in Mavis’ face faded away.
“You do not think so. Garth, you have not heard— I have not told you that yesterday just for a moment Hilda had a flash of memory? She remembered her father—a tall old man with white hair—and she said they called him General; but it all faded away before she could remember the name.”
“That was unfortunate.” A curious smile played for a moment round Garth’s mouth. “I gave myself a holiday on Tuesday, Mavis.”
The girl looked at him in surprise at the sudden change of subject.
“Did you? Where did you go? I thought you said you were so much occupied just now. Why, you said you were so busy that you could hardly spare the time to come down here!”
“So I was—so I am busy,” Garth said imperturbably; “but I was determined to make time for this. I went down to Brighton.”
“To Brighton?” Mavis did not look quite pleased.
“Yes. I wonder whether you will be surprised to hear that my visit was to the superintendent of police there.”
“Oh, Garth! Does that mean that you have discovered anything—that you have found Hilda’s—”
“I found out one thing,” Garth went on, “that no daughter of Mrs. Leparge’s has disappeared from a Brighton school. The whole story, as far as Brighton is concerned, is an entire fabrication.”
“Garth, how could you—”
“It was not difficult. I felt very doubtful of the lady from the first moment I saw her. Her grief for her daughter did not ring true. When I found that no disappearance of the kind had been reported to the police my suspicion that the whole was a made-up story became almost a certainty; but I obtained a list of the ladies’ schools in Brighton. There is no Miss Chesterton, but there are a Chester and a Chesham. I called upon both and found, as I had expected, that no Hilda Leparge had been a pupil, and that there had been no disappearance from their schools. The rest of the matter I left in the superintendent’s hands. I had his report this morning. No such name is known at any of the Brighton schools, and, in short, he says that if his inquiries have made one thing more certain than another it is that no disappearance in the circumstances related by Mrs. Leparge has taken place at Brighton.”
Mavis caught her breath quickly.
“Garth, what does it all mean? What object could she have had in coming here if she had not lost her daughter? I can’t understand it.”
“Neither can I at present,” said Garth in a curiously significant tone. “But we are gathering up the threads, Mavis, and I think it will not be long before the end of this remarkably tangled skein is in our hands.”
Mavis did not reply for a minute; she was looking puzzled and worried.
“I—I don’t see what you mean, Garth,” she said slowly. “I don’t see what Mrs. Leparge’s coming has to do with Hilda, unless”—thoughtfully—“Hilda has been the victim of some plot, that perhaps Mrs. Leparge has been one of the people who have ill-treated her, that they thought they could get possession of her again, and when she was here she found it hopeless as we should make so many inquiries and so gave it up. Is that what you think, Garth?”
“Not—not exactly,” he said slowly. “In fact I should be puzzled to tell you what I do think, Mavis. My feeling is more one of vague suspicion than anything definite.”
“Suspicion of Mrs. Leparge?”
“Oh, of her and other people.”
Mavis sighed.
“Well, I hope it will all come right some day. Oh, Garth, how I should like to go to sleep and wake up and find that everything was a bad dream—everything that has happened since we dined at the Court, I mean!”
Garth looked out of the uncurtained window—the moon was so bright that, in spite of the electric light, outside things stood out almost as clearly as in the day-time; his eye was caught by a dark bank of clouds near the horizon.
“See, Mavis,” he said, directing her attention to it, “those threatening clouds will spread presently and obscure all this moonlit sky, but after a while they will pass, and everything will be bright again. I think our lives are like that—when troubles come they darken and alter the face of the world for us, but some day it will be all clear again.” His hand just touched hers. “Can’t you believe it, Mavis?”
The girl’s eyes looked up at him trustingly.
“Oh, yes. I will—I do! But it seems difficult to realize the silver lining when one only sees the cloud.”
“Ah, we all feel that!” Garth said absently, his attention once more straying to his future brother-in-law, whose back was towards them, but whose attitude of admiring attention was sufficiently obvious. “Oh, by the way,” he went on, “when I was in town I had a regular turn-out, made my man institute a systematic search, and I have found the pouch you worked for me, Mavis, and which the police professed to believe was the one discovered in the small library at the time of Nurse Marston’s disappearance. I shall take it in and have a talk with Stokes in the morning.”
“Oh, I am glad!” Mavis exclaimed. “I hate you to lose my presents, and Stokes seemed so horrid about it besides. I wonder what Arthur and Hilda will say when they know that Mrs. Leparge’s daughter was not lost from Brighton.” She raised her voice. “Hilda!”
“Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell them for the world,” Davenant said in a low, emphatic tone, “or you may spoil everything.”
The other two looked up in some surprise as he sauntered over to them with some excuse about the latest political canard, and Mavis was left alone to puzzle out the mystery of his words.
When Garth rose to take his leave she glanced once more out of the window; the dark clouds of which he had spoken had fulfilled their prophecy in so far as they had spread over the sky. Obscured by them, the moon shone slantwise across the heavens, and even as she watched a vivid flash of lightning almost blinded her for a moment, and nearly simultaneously a crash of thunder seemed to shake t
he very house. The girls sprang to their feet and looked at one another in consternation.
Sir Arthur turned to the window.
“It is late in the season for such lightning,” he remarked. “I wonder if it has struck anything. Garth, my boy, how are you going home? The storm will be upon us directly.”
Garth laughed.
“Well, I am not exactly sugar and salt. I drove Gipsy over in the high cart, and I fancy her nerves are pretty well seasoned.”
Mavis laid hold of him.
“Well, mine are not,” she declared positively. “No, Garth, indeed you are not going out of this house until the storm is over. Do you think I could sleep to-night if I knew that you had been out in such a storm as this promises to be? Besides, this lightning might strike you dead,” as another flash lighted up the room. “Oh, no. Indeed, Garth, you must not go!”
“Why, what is this? Garth thinking of going?” Lady Laura, roused by the thunder, was sitting up and rearranging the scrap of lace, called by courtesy a cap, on her hair. “It is out of the question, my dear boy,” she went on. “Here you are, and here you must stop until it is fine again. Do you hear that?” as the thunder crashed overhead, and the first few heavy drops amid the stillness that followed heralded a veritable downpour. “That settles it, I think.”
Garth smiled in her harassed eyes. The two women’s solicitude was very pleasant to him, and though in his heart he felt that Lady Laura was really responsible, from sheer kind-heartedness and lack of worldly wisdom, for much of her own trouble, yet his real affection for her made him long to smooth away the wrinkles from her forehead, the tired lines round her mouth.
“It does sound rather alarming, doesn’t it?” he said.
“I will wait a little, if you will allow me, Lady Laura. But you are not afraid of lightning, are you?” as a vivid forked flash lit up the room and she shuddered. “There is no danger really.”
“Oh, one never knows! I always feel a little nervous in these old houses; something may catch fire,” and Lady Laura glanced round apprehensively.