What Ralph thought, it was not easy to tell. His features were utterly expressionless. The only change was that he no longer lolled against the parapet but straightened himself and stood upright. The earl was looking straight at him; and Sophy, watching, had an odd sensation that silently the old man was pleading with him, asking for sympathy and understanding, almost for help. But Ralph’s own gaze was averted, directed towards that wide expanse of countryside, of field and wood and pasture, of hedge and grove and spinney, all lying there in the quiet afternoon sunshine, all of it land over which for centuries the Hoyles had borne sway and rule.
Arthur was still gaping, open-mouthed, open-eyed. The impression he gave was of a complete and indeed incredulous astonishment. One expected every moment to hear him burst out laughing and remark that it had been a good joke and now let’s be serious. Anne was leaning forward, her hands on the tea table, her eyes intent upon the claimant. There was questioning and doubt and anger in her gaze, and something else as well that Sophy, at least, did not understand, something of poise and calculation as at secret, unknown thoughts. Yet what Sophy remembered best in after days, when thinking over that strange scene, in the first moments at least so strangely silent, was neither the dark impassivity with which Ralph listened to his great-uncle’s declaration, nor the change in the claimant’s attitude from nervousness to swaggering assurance, nor the suggestion in Anne’s eyes of hidden, secret thoughts, nor Arthur Hoyle’s almost ludicrous surprise, nor yet that impression as of a pleading for sympathy, even for help, Earl Wych seemed to her somehow to convey, but rather the sharp intake just behind her of the lawyer’s breath, and of how when she turned for a moment to look she saw his strong white even teeth so firmly clamped upon his under lip that spots of blood showed here and there.
No one had spoken. The only person who had even moved was the claimant, who had dropped into a chair, where he lolled with a kind of insolent self-assurance, as if now perfectly at home. Angrily Sophy thought to herself:—
“Yes, but it wouldn’t take much to send you running again.”
In a perfectly level, expressionless voice, as if he were merely remarking that it was a fine day, or that he would like another cup of tea, without letting his eyes wander from their contemplation of the fair countryside before him, Ralph said over his shoulder and almost casually:—
“That’s a lie.”
There followed another silence. Earl Wych went very red and then very pale. He struck his hand heavily on the back of a chair near. Then he said:—
“That’s the first time in my life I’ve been called a liar.”
Ralph turned and faced him.
“It may be the first time that you have lied,” he said.
Earl Wych still had his hand on the back of a chair. But now it seemed less in anger than for support. Sophy had the idea that he might fall, and instinctively took a step or two towards him. He seemed to understand, and, instead of resenting her action, to be glad of it. He said to Anne:—
“Give your cousin Bertram some tea.”
Sophy found suddenly that the old man was leaning a little heavily on her shoulder. He began to walk back towards the castle, still availing himself of her support, of which indeed he was evidently glad. She had the impression that his sight had become dim, that he no longer saw surrounding objects very clearly. She heard him muttering to himself, but she could not tell what he said, though twice over she heard the word ‘Bertram’ pronounced, and once the phrase ‘wretched boy’, and then again she heard: ‘No lie, no lie. Bertram’s there.’
But what this meant she could not imagine.
They entered the castle through the great open french windows of the small drawing-room—its length, by the way, was about thirty feet, its breadth in proportion— and then on to the library where the earl was accustomed to sit. At its door he paused and looked at Sophy with a slight air of surprise, as if wondering who she was and why she was there and why he was leaning on her shoulder. He said:—
“Thank you, my dear. I shall be all right now.” Then he said:— “Ralph should take it better. Bertram has his rights. Can’t the boy trust me?”
He pushed open the library door and went in, leaving Sophy on the threshold as if he had forgotten she was there, as indeed very likely was the case. Evidently he wished to be alone. Sophy hesitated for a moment, not quite knowing what to do. But she was a young woman with a healthy appetite and she had by no means finished her tea, which, indeed, had been a somewhat interrupted meal. She decided to go back to the terrace and see if anything to eat was still there. She found herself wondering if the old earl had been quite fair to Ralph in saying he should have taken it better. To her surprise she discovered that she was feeling a little sorry for Ralph. Odd, to feel sorry for that strong, aloof personality. She was on the terrace now and she was aware of Martin, the butler, hovering at a distance. She had a disagreeable impression that he was watching. By the tea-table no one seemed to have moved or even to have spoken. Except that Anne had poured out for her newly-discovered cousin a cup of tea, which he was sipping with an air of smug triumph that made even Sophy long to box his ears. His earlier nervousness had entirely disappeared and he had an almost bragging air of possession, even though he did still keep a wary eye on the still and silent figure by the parapet. Sipping his tea as he spoke Bertram was saying now:—
“You know, Cousin Anne, I remember you perfectly. I should have known you again anywhere, any time. So would you me perhaps?”
“No,” said Anne, though in a queer, detached, unemotional voice.
“Too bad,” Bertram smiled without a trace of discomposure. “I expect I’ve changed more than you, though. Now Cousin Arthur—” He paused and looked at Arthur, who still had not lost his manner of extreme and indeed incredulous bewilderment. “No,” Bertram decided. “I should not have known Cousin Arthur again. One forgets a lot in ten years, especially in the sort of rough and tumble life I’ve had out there, not to mention a whack on the head I had that got me six months in hospital without knowing who I was or how I got there. Of course, they had me remembering again after a time. That was from getting mixed up in a street row, and when the cops came along, well, they just naturally clubbed every one around. They’re handy with their night sticks, those lads, and if you get some when they’re handing it out, well, it’s just too bad, and that’s all there’s to it.”
He paused and looked round with a kind of sly triumph, and there came into Sophy’s mind a sudden, sure conviction that the man was a liar and an impostor, and that he had put forward this story to explain a probably soon apparent ignorance of things he ought to have known, that a genuine Bertram would certainly have known. No one made any comment. The story had been too crude, its intention too evident. Even Bertram himself seemed to feel its reception unsatisfactory. He stared around with what Sophy felt was an insolent defiance, challenging them, as it were, to express disbelief. He drank up his tea and handed the cup to the silent and the watchful Anne.
“May I have another, Cousin Anne?” he asked, and, addressing himself for the first time to the impassive, sombre Ralph, he said:—“Cousin Ralph I hardly remember at all, but then we never saw much of each other, did we? Only in the hols., and not always then.”
“I never saw you before to-day,” Ralph answered slowly; “and please don’t call me your cousin. I believe you to be a liar and an impostor.”
“Now, now, now,” protested Bertram. “I can make allowances for the way you feel about it, but what’s the good of taking it bad? You heard what grand-pa said. I ask you, is it likely grand-pa would accept me as his grand-son and heir if he wasn’t satisfied?”
“Have you seen the Countess?” asked Arthur abruptly.
“I have so,” Bertram answered readily. “Dear old grand-ma.” He shook his head. “Made me go all queer like, here,” he said, tapping the spot where he—erroneously—supposed his heart to be. “She just simply couldn’t believe it at first, but bless the old dame, sh
e came round as soon as we had talked a bit. Knew me at once then. ‘Bertram, my dear boy,’ she said, ‘this is the happiest day of my life. Now I can depart in peace, same as the Bible says.’ The very words she used,” he added defiantly, aware that all this was being received with some incredulity since his listeners knew very well that old Countess Wych was extremely unlikely to have said anything even remotely resembling such expressions as he reported. He went on a little quickly as if anxious no more should be said about his interview with the Countess:—“You know, I can quite understand the way you feel; just the way I should myself in your place, if you see what I mean. I shan’t take offence. A bit thick to call the old boy a liar. But you can trust me. I’ll tell him to forget it. I realize Cousin Ralph is a bit upset. Any one would be. What I say is, let’s all shake down together and try to make the best of it. I know just how Ralph’s feeling. Natural. But there it is. I’ve come back and here I am, and I’m more than willing to be friends. What say, Ralph?”
“I say,” answered Ralph in the same quiet, conversational tones, “that you’re a barefaced and impudent fraud, that I intend to prove it, and I don’t think it will be difficult either. I saw you when you got here. I saw the way you looked round. You had never been in the place before. Everything was strange.”
“Well, of course, so it was,” agreed Bertram easily. “Likely to be after ten years. I went away a boy of nineteen. I come back a man of twenty-nine. I don’t feel the same person. In a sense I’m not the same person. Same thing here. It’s all the same, but it’s all different. Things I remember aren’t there any longer and things I don’t remember are there instead. Strange isn’t the word.”
“Do you remember whose portrait used to hang in the library over the fireplace?” Ralph asked.
“Oh, well, if we are going to play the memory game,” Bertram answered promptly, “I’ll agree at once there are probably a whole heap of things I’ve forgotten—I daresay that’s true of you, too. Do you remember what happened that day we tried to cook a hedgehog gipsy fashion?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Ralph retorted.
“There you are, you see,” smiled Bertram. “It just shows. Clear in my mind as if it was yesterday and gone clean out of yours. Funny, isn’t it? I daresay we could go on asking each other things like that all day. Only where would it get us? Likely as not, now I’ve reminded you, you’ll remember all about that hedgehog business and what happened afterwards. When we got together those days you were always the leader, and likely the things you did made more impression on me than they did on you because I admired them so. I remember when we were playing Indians—”
“We never played Indians,” interrupted Ralph.
The other shook his head doubtfully.
“Well, what did we play at, if it wasn’t Indians?” he asked.
But this time Ralph saw the trap.
“Don’t talk about ‘we’,” he snapped. “There’s no ‘we’ in it.”
“You mean it was you all alone?” smiled Bertram. “I expect you just thought I didn’t count. Well, what did we play at? Indians if you ask me. All boys play Indians.”
Ralph made an angry step forward, his fists clenched, his eyes blazing, and Bertram’s expression of a smug complacence was crossed by a quick look of apprehension. Sophy noticed that he even edged his chair a little nearer Anne, as though he felt safer closer to her. Sophy was sure, too, that Anne also had noticed that instinctive movement, and that in some odd way Anne was not displeased by it. This puzzled Sophy enormously. Impossible to suppose that Anne wanted her newly-returned cousin to be a coward—if he really were a coward, that is, which Sophy found a surprising idea. Because she had always taken it for granted that all men were always enormously brave just because they were men, and just as she knew herself to be a dreadful coward, because, she supposed, she was only a girl. Cows, for instance—a painful line of thought Sophy did not attempt to follow up. Of course, Ralph had looked very dreadful, almost for the moment as if he could have killed the other. No wonder perhaps, after all, that Bertram, though a man, and therefore strong and brave, had looked quite frightened. Anyhow, that slight movement towards Anne could not have been an instinctive seeking protection from her vicinity, because as Sophy knew, it was against the nature of things for a man to seek protection from a woman.
Such thoughts flashed swiftly and confusedly through her mind, and it was only later that she understood them clearly. At the moment her chief impression was of relief that that terrible look passed from Ralph so quickly, the ancient look of the man who sees before him his enemy and thinks only of instant attack. A momentary throwback to primitive emotions inconsistent with twentieth century tea tables nicely laid with cake and cream, and with civilized, cultured people gathered round.
Anyhow, it was a considerable relief when Ralph’s hands dropped to his side and he turned away. He felt he had nearly made a fool of himself. For the moment he had seen red. It passed, but he still had the sensation of having been trapped. That insidious use of ‘we’, for example. His own remark ‘We never played Indians’ that might so easily be twisted into an avowal that they had played together at other things. Why hadn’t he said instead: ‘We never played at anything because you were never there to play with’, or something like that. For the first time he was conscious of what was almost fear. Was it like this, he wondered, that the fly felt when the first invisible threads of the spider’s web began to entangle it? He found that Clinton Wells, the lawyer, who hitherto had been silent, watchful and eager indeed but silent, was at his side.
“Ralph,” he said, “this is serious. You must be careful. It’s no good doing anything rash.”
“The fellow’s an impostor, a rank impostor,” Ralph said. “I ought to have kicked him out at once.”
“Can’t do that,” Clinton answered dryly. “Can’t kick people out of other people’s houses.”
“The fellow’s a rank impostor,” Ralph repeated.
“I know he is,” Clinton answered. “I am as certain of that as you are. But both Earl Wych and the Countess have acknowledged him as their grandson and heir.”
“Yes, I know,” Ralph said, and stood still. “Well, why?” he asked. “Why? what’s it mean?” he asked again, bewilderedly, in the utter blank bewilderment only those can feel who see all their familiar accustomed world vanish at a touch. “Why?” he repeated.
“I don’t know,” Clinton answered. “Only there it is. We must face facts. If you’ll let me say so, it doesn’t help to call your great-uncle a liar.”
“Did I do that?” Ralph asked. They had walked away from the tea table group and now had reached the end of the terrace, where stone steps led down to the grounds.
Ralph came to a halt there. He said:— “So I did, didn’t I? Well, he is.”
“No,” Clinton declared. “Not consciously at least. It’s their sub-conscious longing for their grandson to return that’s done the trick. Natural enough in a way. Probably in secret, almost without knowing it, they’ve been longing for a direct heir. Thinking if only Miss Anne were a boy, if only one of the boys had lived. They’ve had a tough time, you know. Their own three sons killed in the last war, two grandsons killed in a motor accident, the third dying as a child. It’s a tragic record. You can’t wonder if two old people, their age telling on them, brooding very likely over their losses, should be only too willing to be convinced by the first fellow who comes along with a plausible story. And it is plausible—as plausible as butter. He had it all pat as you please. Most convincing.”
“Do you mean?”
“No, I don’t,” Clinton interrupted quickly. “I’m a trained lawyer remember. The story is full of holes to me. But I can see how a jury might react, and your great-uncle and aunt—well, with them it’s just wishful thinking. They wanted a grandson. A grandson appears. They fall on his neck. There you are.”
“Well, I’m not going to fall on his neck,” Ralph growled. From where they were sta
nding together at the end of the terrace, he looked back towards the tea table. Anne was in the act of handing cakes to the claimant. Not falling on his neck, of course. Indeed, she was showing no more than the bare civility due to a guest introduced by the head of the house. All the same, Ralph scowled. He would rather have seen the plate of cakes smashed on Bertram’s head. “Making himself at home already,” he said angrily.
“Very wise on Miss Anne’s part, too,” declared Clinton, who had detected the note of resentment in Ralph’s voice. “For the moment, the only thing to do is to go softly. Remember he’s been accepted and introduced by Earl Wych himself.”
“Look here,” Ralph said. “All that sub-conscious stuff and wishful thinking is all very well. Only Uncle Ralph”—Ralph was the traditional name of the first born in the Hoyle family, it was why Ralph himself had been given it—“only Uncle Ralph’s not like that. There’s precious little wishful thinking about the old man. He knows that fellow’s an impostor as well as I do.”
But Clinton shook his head again.
“My dear fellow,” he protested, “Earl Wych is the very last man to welcome an impostor. Why should he? Why should any one? Inconceivable, doubly inconceivable in your uncle’s case. You know his family pride. No one could possibly think Earl Wych would knowingly and deliberately, of malice aforethought so to say, accept as his grandson someone he knows to be an impostor? You can’t really think that?”
“Only I do,” Ralph answered. “Uncle lied, and he knew it, and knew that I knew it.”
Clinton Wells shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, don’t say that to any one else,” he advised. “Blind credulity in a very old man—that’s natural. Wilful deceit is out of the question. Wishful thinking, that’s all. Remember Lady Tichborne. She accepted as her own son—not grandson—a blatant, obvious fraud. This fellow at least is plausible. Arthur Orton wasn’t. But look what it took to prove the truth. All because Lady Tichborne wanted her son back so badly she was ready to believe anything. Every lawyer knows there’s nothing more difficult to prove than the truth. If you’ve a lie to prove, you back it up with other lies, and that’s all right. But the truth has to stand on its own legs, and sometimes they’re pretty shaky legs, too. And if you aren’t careful you may prejudice your case from the first. What do you mean to do?”
Ten Star Clues Page 3