It was with delighted surprise, therefore, that she stood at the top of the winding path which went down the steep cliff face and looked about her.
There were three huts, and they were placed artistically at irregular intervals on jutting outcrops of rock. The log-cabin design and rough-hewn steps which led down to the smooth yellow sand were in perfect keeping with their surroundings. When the weather had mellowed the timber more the little cabins would be in perfect harmony with all around.
Ruth was pleased; more pleased than she could have imagined, for the bay had been something alive to her— something with a soul. She went down the steep path and sat on a boulder on the far side, admiring the new cabins across the bay.
When she eventually saw Edmund Hersheil standing at the top of the narrow pathway down which she had come she was ready to praise his new idea generously.
“Well, what do you think of them?” he asked, noticing her contemplation of the cabins.
“I think they’re splendid,” Ruth said. “I was half afraid, at first, that they might spoil the beauty of the bay,” she confessed.
“There’s not much sense in having an artist staying in the same house if you don’t make use of his talents!” Hersheil replied. “Personally, I thought the design a bit backwoods at first.”
So it had been Victor Monset’s idea! Ruth felt glad that the artist had been at Carbay Hall.
“They are certainly in keeping with the surroundings, and I suppose they are comfortable enough inside,” she remarked.
“Haven’t you been across yet?” Hersheil asked. “Come on! I’ll show you round.”
Each cabin was furnished simply, with a long seat made of polished logs, a copper foot-bath, a small wooden table, and a mirror framed in bark on the wall. Ruth liked them, and stood on the little wooden balcony outside the last cabin looking out across the water. Subconsciously she knew that she was trying to find the peace of the bay again, a peace which had disappeared at Edmund Hersheil’s coming. Then, quite suddenly, she was aware of Hersheil close behind her. For a moment she stood there, with his warm breath on the nape of her neck, quite unable to move. She knew instinctively that he was about to take her in his arms, but she was incapable of flight. He came round to her side, smiling down into her flushed face.
“This is quite an event, Ruth,” he said half mockingly. “It is not often I get the chance to see you alone. Either you are phenomenally busy or you are avoiding me with maddening deliberation.”
Ruth moved uneasily.
“I am very busy as a rule,” she said.
He put his arm round her back and clasped the log rail on her other side, imprisoning her.
“What’s the objection to my company?” he asked.
“I have no very great objection to your company—at a distance!” she flashed.
She tried to free herself, but instantly his hand left the rail and he caught her by both arms. His face was flushed and his eyes were unnaturally bright.
“Look here, Ruth, you know I’m crazy about you,” he said huskily. “There’s no need for us to be anything but friends.”
“That is what I would prefer us to remain,” Ruth said, breathing quickly in spite of a determined effort to keep calm. “Will you please let me go?”
Edmund laughed at that.
“Let you go! Not on your life! I told you it was not often I was lucky enough to find you alone!”
His hands were fastening tighter on her arms and he was drawing her towards him, his head bent until his flushed face was almost touching her own. Desperately Ruth tried to free herself, straining away from him so that their added weights were pressing against the rustic rail of the tiny balcony. There was a sharp wrenching sound and instantly Ruth felt his grip on her slacken as the rail gave way and he clutched out to save himself. She caught hold of the remaining part of the rail to steady herself and was about to turn to his assistance when she saw him overbalance and disappear below the level of the tiny platform.
For an instant she could not move, and then, horror-stricken, she gazed over to the sands beneath. It was not a long drop, but there were one or two jagged rocks immediately below the cabin. She saw Hersheil stretched out on the sand beyond, rigid, unstirring. She turned towards the steps and realised that her shaking limbs were almost refusing to carry her. It was impossible that anything serious had happened to Hersheil, and yet ... and yet ...
She reached the bottom step at last and turned towards the rocks. With a sigh of infinite relief she saw him picking himself up from the sand and dusting down his riding- jacket. He was obviously unhurt, but as he turned to her and she saw the fury in his face, she caught her breath in once more. He strode over to where she stood at the foot of the steps.
“So you thought to make a fool of me?” he said between clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said, “I could scarcely be responsible for the accident. I—are you much hurt?”
“Not much,” he said, “but you deserve a lesson for this, and I think that I might be able to give you one.” He caught her again roughly. “Why resist a kiss that is inevitable?”
“I think we might dispense with this, don’t you?”
The deep voice broke in upon them from the steps above. A flood of intense relief rushed over Ruth as she looked up and saw John Travayne standing on the rocks above them with Pete jumping at his feet.
Hersheil released her, scowling at the newcomer.
“What the devil has this to do with you?” he demanded angrily. “You’re not wanted here.”
Travayne permitted himself the ghost of a smile.
“I think I am,” he said, looking across at Ruth for the first time.
Ruth went up to him silently, and he held out his hand to help her over the rough stones. Glancing back for a moment at the man on the sands, she was appalled at the look of concentrated fury on Hersheil’s face. Somehow, she knew that it was not her rescuer’s timely entry upon the scene which had inspired that look, but the vague, fleeting smile which John Travayne had permitted himself at Edmund’s expense.
John had made an enemy; how powerful an enemy he could not have been expected to realise at the moment as he helped Ruth up the winding pathway which led to the cliff top.
Ruth was glad of the steep climb which made speech unnecessary until they reached the top. The scene on the beach had filled her with a strange embarrassment and she would have been happier not to have referred to it at all.
“What can I say?” she began nervously. “It was good of you to come to my assistance.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders.
“Being an unwilling witness of the first part of the little pantomime, what could I do but rush to the hero’s assistance when he took a nose-dive off the balcony?”
A sense of relief swept Ruth’s embarrassment aside as she laughed with him.
“Don’t you mean the villain?” she smiled. “A hero would never act like that!”
“Some do, nowadays!” he grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so funny as Hersheil taking that backwards somersault off the balcony!”
“You’ve made an enemy,” Ruth said more gravely.
“I don’t think I shall be afraid of Edmund Hersheil,” he said, and then, the laughter fading out of his eyes, he turned to her. “It’s not going to be easy to work with him after this, I’m afraid, Ruth.”
“You know I must find it easy,” she said. “I’m not likely to meet him in the bay—alone—again.”
All the laughter died out of his face and it was set and grim, like something carved out of granite.
“I wish I had the right to protect you,” he said suddenly, as he bent to open the gate at the foot of the home field for her to pass through.
There was very little she could have said to such a remark, she thought afterwards, but she carried the memory of it in her heart for many days to come until other events crushed in to crowd it out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It had long been a custom at Carbay Hall that the afternoon post should be left at the lodge by the main gate. This arrangement served two excellent purposes: firstly, it saved the postman the extra quarter of a mile walk along the winding drive to the house on his last round of the day; and secondly, it gave Alric Veycourt, who walked down to collect the mail, an object for the only form of exercise left to him. The Squire was rarely seen beyond the confines of his own high stone wall. On wet days the letters were brought up to the house by Eckford, the gardener, who lived in the cottage tucked away behind the big main gates.
Alric Veycourt’s stick tapped on the gravel as he walked slowly back towards the house, the two letters he had collected at the lodge thrust into the pocket of his corduroy jacket. His habitually hard features had broken up into a smile, for memory had parted the curtain of the years and he was back again, a young man, a gun under his arm in place of the stick he now carried, and a dark-haired, clear-eyed boy walked by his wide plying him with innumerable questions.
He went through the big main doorway, across the hall and straight to his study, closing the door behind him and sitting for a long time before his desk gazing at the bare surface as if he saw the whole procession of the past mirrored in its polished top.
At last, he drew the letters from his pocket and slit the envelopes with the long ivory paper-knife which had lain on the desk for half a century and which had been a sword, a dagger, or the head of a spear as the mood had taken a small dark-haired warrior in the days that were past now for ever. The Squire sighed and turned to his correspondence.
The first letter, from his solicitors, he laid aside to be replied to at a more convenient hour. The second he frowned over as he read the heading on the paper. Moneylenders, eh! What was this?
His face was flushed and, as he read further, the hand which held the sheet of typescript began to tremble. His mouth was working and his eyes had hardened to pinpoints of grey intensity before he came to the signature.
“The scoundrel!” he muttered at last, and strove to rise from his chair.
Rage had paralysed him temporarily, however, and he lifted his heavy stick and banged on the polished surround of the floor. Within two minutes the butler was by his side.
“Sir! Is there anything wrong?”
Mead had not seen his master in one of these rages for many years.
“Send my nephew here immediately,” the Squire ordered, his voice quivering.
“Yes, sir—immediately.” Mead hesitated. “Can I get you anything in the meantime, sir?”
Alric Veycourt waved his stick.
“Don’t stand there!” he shouted. “Get my nephew—at once!”
Mead withdrew hurriedly.
The Squire was still standing in the same spot, his stick clutched in his trembling hand, when Edmund came into the study, a cigarette between his lips, a question in his close-set eyes.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked.
Alric Veycourt pointed to a chair drawn up before his desk.
“Sit down,” he commanded.
At the sound of his voice Edmund looked closely at his uncle for the first time.
“I say,” he said quickly, “what’s up?”
The older man moved to the desk and flung the letter across its polished surface.
“That!”
The single word was like a gun-shot.
Edmund picked the sheet up and began to read. He read to the end, but before he was half-way through his face began to pale until, by the time he had reached the signature, it was a ghastly greyish-white.
“The dirty money-grabbing devil!” he muttered, staring down at the crumpled name at the end of the letter. “The doublecrossing little—”
“That’s enough!” Veycourt cut him short. “I didn’t bring you in here to ask you what you thought of a moneylender.” He leaned over the wide desk, his eyes glittering. “I brought you here to listen to your explanation of how you came to owe such a man that sum of money in the first place.”
Edmund made a feeble attempt to pull himself together.
“There’s some mistake,” he began.
“There’s no mistake!” the other thundered. “This is a— reputable firm, I was going to say, but the word doesn’t seem to fit! A firm of long standing, let me say—a firm that would not dare approach a man in my position unless they were in the right.”
“I tell you there’s been some mistake.” Edmund was still trembling inwardly, although on the surface he had regained some of his composure. He stretched across the table to take the letter again. “I’ll look into this,” he said.
“No, you won’t! I’ll find out all there is to know of this affair.”
Veycourt’s fist came down on the typewritten sheet, setting the ink-bottles vibrating on their silver tray. Edmund shrugged his shoulders with a pretence at indifference.
“You may save yourself the time,” he said, “and the amount of energy you waste flying into these rages. I owe the money. I admit it. I borrowed it to pay off my London gambling debts— some of them.”
“And the rest?”
“I paid those with the money you advanced me to improve the Conningscliff Guest House.”
Edmund, driven to the point of desperation, found the truth coming easily for the first time in his life. It was a kind of reckless confession, with the thought at the back of his mind that the position could not possibly be any worse.
“This is the last straw,” Veycourt gasped. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me that nothing you’ve done at Conningscliff has been paid for so far? That the local tradespeople are waiting for their money?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Edmund had suddenly decided to change his tactics. The first burst of temper over, he saw that there was little to be gained by an arrogant front. If there was anything to be gained at all, he decided that he had better crawl. It was easy enough to express sorrow. He was an adept at the contrite look.
“Look here, sir,” he said, “do you mind if I speak quite plainly for a moment?”
Frankness often won the day, he thought. It was also easy to be frank—up to a point.
“I don’t see that anything you have to say can make a better job of this!
“Uncle Alric, I was in the worst jam of my life when I went to that man.” Hersheil was determined to play his part. “I was desperate—mad—almost finished. I was being pressed by creditors in London, IOU’s were coming in on all sides, and I was at the end of my tether.” He paused, glancing across the desk to see what effect his confession was having, but the Squire made no sign. He continued to stare stonily before him. “The last thing I wanted,” Edmund continued, “was that you should find out about the—muddle I’d got my affairs into.”
“That I can believe!” Veycourt’s tone was dry. “Go on!” “Well, I borrowed this money thinking, of course, that I would be able to pay it back out of my income,” Edmund went on, “but things invariably work out better on paper than they do in actual fact, and I could never quite meet it.”
“And the Conningscliff money? The money I paid into your account for that mad Guest House scheme of yours?”
Edmund had the grace to flush.
“That went the same road,” he admitted. “There was a fellow in London who had three of my IOU’s and he began to press for the money. He threatened to take it to Court in the end, so I paid him to keep him quiet. I used the Conningscliff money. It was the only thing I could do, sir.”
“The only thing you could do! Umph!” Alric Veycourt’s lips curled in a mirthless smile. “How much more do you owe?”
Edmund hesitated, and then he made a rather unfortunate decision. It was no use, he considered, making things any worse at the moment. The few debts which still remained could quite easily wait.
“There’s nothing else,” he said.
The Squire lifted the typewritten letter and folded it carefully.
“ Get me out a list of what you owe for that m
ad-hatter idea at Conningscliff,” he commanded gruffly, “and we’ll put an end to this sort of thing once and for all.”
“You needn’t be afraid about not getting your money back out of Conningscliff,” Edmund said helpfully. “The Guest House is a sound idea.”
“I’m not afraid,” Alric Veycourt replied. “My method of getting my money back is quite simple.”
Edmund turned on his way to the door.
“You have a new idea, sir?” he asked.
“A novel idea, in fact!” Veycourt’s temper was rising again. “An idea that, carried out months ago, would have saved me a considerable amount of money. I’m selling Conningscliff to the highest bidder.”
“Selling—” Edmund stared back at his uncle in frank amazement. “You can’t do that ...”
“Can’t I?” The Squire’s laugh was harsh. “The place has caused me nothing but trouble for years, and I’ve made up my mind.” He drew notepaper and pen towards him. “I’ll settle your debts and then I’ll put the place in the hands of my solicitors. I am determined to dispose of it.”
Edmund stood still, his hand on the knob of the door. He was about to protest—to argue further for the new form of amusement he had found in Conningscliff—when a thought occurred to him. He knew that it was useless to plead with his uncle at the moment; he would only meet with an unconsidered refusal and be making things more unpleasant for himself into the bargain. No, he could afford to wait.
“Very well,” he said, and passed out at the door with a sigh of relief.
He considered that he had scraped through very nicely. The moneylender business had been a bit of a worry to him of late, but now that his uncle had agreed to settle it, well—that was that!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
John Travayne turned out of the lane which led from Conningscliff on to the moors. He strolled on leisurely, choosing the pathway above the bay and on to the rocky promontory beyond. Gulls rose and circled protestingly at his approach, screaming their anger, and the man who sat on the jutting crop of land half-way down the cliff face looked up at the commotion.
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