CHAPTER VII
BOTH SIDES OF THE DOOR
WITHIN THE ROOM the three people were standing, the reaper upon one side of the table, Joan and Robert Daventry close together upon the other. The reaper was still laughing.
“Cynthia!” he cried, repeating contemptuously the name which Robert Daventry had used. “There’s no Cynthia. There’s a very pretty little girl I saw this morning in the corn. But her pretty little name is Doris Challoner. And, taking all in all, it’s the better name of the two.”
He spoke with an easy and most disquieting assurance, but Joan had enough of that quality to meet with him in the gate. She had always been a good fighter; she had stood by her husband often enough in the early days of the estancia, when his nerve would have failed him but for her; and she was for putting up to-night the best fight of her whole long, active life. Money, to her thinking, they could make again, old as they were, if the need came. But they could not open their hearts to a second Cynthia, even if they could find one.
“Nonsense,” she answered boldly. “Her name is Cynthia Daventry.”
“Where was she born, then?” asked the reaper.
“In Patagonia.”
“Never in this world,” cried the man. “She was born in Concepcion, and that’s her farthest south.”
Joan shrugged her shoulders.
“We ought to know. She is my husband’s niece.”
A grin overspread the reaper’s face.
“And is that so?” he asked, in a mock surprise. “I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Well, you are now,” said Joan.
“Yes, and the news alters our relations altogether, doesn’t it?” he said pleasantly.
He tossed his battered hat upon the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down in it at his ease, his legs stretched out, his hands deep in his pockets. He nodded familiarly to Joan.
“How do you do, sis?” He turned his face toward Mr. Daventry, “You have got a nice little place, brother Robert. Shows what honest work can do if persevered with day after day for a great number of consecutive years. Quite a nice little place. You haven’t, by any chance, got a nice little cigar, too, have you, Robert, for your long-lost brother?”
Robert Daventry’s face grew red, and the veins swelled upon his forehead. He was a man quickly moved to passion, and quick, too, the passion exhausted, to swing back into doubts and hesitations. He blew either hot or cold, and, sooner or later, he was sure to blow cold. Now, however, his temper was up, and he brought his great fist down with violence upon the table.
“What do you mean by your insolence?” he shouted “Stand up!”
Joan laid a hand upon the old man’s arm to restrain him. The reaper, for his part, never budged from his attitude.
“You have got a nerve,” he said. “You tell me a pack of lies — that’s all right, you’ve got money. But when I take you at your word, it’s ‘insolence’ and ‘stand up.’ How’s that, if you please?” He sat and laughed for a little in contemptuous jerks. “Your niece, indeed! The girl’s my daughter.”
Neither Joan nor Robert believed him for a moment. They thought of Cynthia, and compared that image at their hearts with the actual man who sprawled on the chair in front of them. Robert counted him up, his heavy features, his grime-engrained, spoilt hands, the whole degraded, unkempt look of him. Cynthia’s father! The claim was preposterous.
“Her father!” cried Robert Daventry, leaning across the table. “Look at yourself in the glass!”
The sneer stung the reaper to a fury. He sprang to his feet, and from habit his hand slipped to the knife at the back of his waistband. But he mastered himself in a second or two. He was there for other ends than violence, and he withdrew his hand.
“I sha’n’t forget that,” he said, in a perfectly quiet voice, which contrasted in the strangest way with the convulsion of his face. “You got home there. Right home;” and he sat down again.
Joan interposed before her husband could say another word, and used soft words. The man was not Cynthia’s father to be sure, but he knew something of the girl’s history. That was certain — and he knew more than either Joan or Robert knew themselves. If she was to fight her battle with success, she must know what he knew.
“You could not expect us to accept your mere statement,” she said.
“No, that’s reasonable,” said the reaper, and he began his story. But the insult rankled in his breast and as he spoke he kept turning a murderous eye on the man who had inflicted it.
He told the story of the earthquake at Valparaiso, and the flight of James Challoner across the Andes. It was a story told with a wealth of detail, and difficult altogether to discredit. Neither Joan nor Robert did altogether discredit it. It might be true or it might not. This man might have obtained it from James Challoner, or might somehow have come across it by himself. But they were still convinced he could not be James Challoner himself.
“We shall want more proof than that,” said Joan calmly, and Robert nodded his head. Neither of them had felt more confidence than at this moment since the crumpled slip of paper had been brought into the dining-room.
But outside the door Cynthia huddled in the great chair with her ear to the door, listened with a growing terror. She had never doubted until this hour that she was the daughter of Robert Daventry’s brother. She had been secure in that belief. Now the security was going. She clutched the arms of her chair, feeling the whole world slipping from beneath her feet — even as it had slipped at Valparaiso. For certain memories, quite clear in her mind, were being explained to her. An open hill-side at night, a strange red light upon the world, the crash of houses, little flames creeping, and ships quietly at anchor on the smoothest of seas — that was one picture in her memories which had often puzzled her, which would puzzle her no longer if she believed the story which was being told on the other side of the door. She remembered, too, a long journey amongst mountains, and a bridge over a deep and narrow torrent, and many people with kind faces who spoke to her.
“Of course, it isn’t certain,” she pleaded to herself desperately; and the husky voice behind the door began again:
“I travelled down to Buenos Ayres by train. I had little money, and no prospects, and a child on my hands. I couldn’t make a home for her. So I went straight to the foundling hospital. It stands back in a garden, and is kept by some wealthy sisters. There’s a turnstile in the brick wall of the garden, a little iron turnstile — but you know it well, both of you;” and he broke off with a laugh.
Inside the study Joan and Robert Daventry, still remained unconvinced. Outside Cynthia was persuaded.
“It’s true then,” she whispered to herself. “It’s quite true;” and she wrung her hands in the darkness, and her voice broke in a sob. She had no longer any shadow of doubt. The turnstile in the brick wall was for her the overwhelming proof.
Examined in a court of law by the rules of evidence, it might seem flimsy enough. To Cynthia, it was complete corroboration of the testimony of her memories. The turnstile in the brick wall — the one ugly thing in her imagined wonderland of heroes — the turnstile which had always been there before the land was — how had it come there, she asked herself? And she was in no doubt as to the answer. The turnstile was a memory too. It was the turnstile of a foundling hospital, where her father had left her and gone his way. No wonder, she reflected bitterly, it was the one ugly thing in her world of fancies.
She leaned back, shivering, with her hands covering her face. She was humiliated, but she was still more terrified. Shame cut deep, but fear touched the very nerves of her heart. The man who had this morning rushed at her was her father, and she remembered the malice of his smile, and the evil, covetous look of him as he appraised her. She grew hot, now, as she thought upon it.
“What harm does he mean?” she asked; and suddenly she sat forward on the edge of her chair, quivering from head to foot like a spring some touch had released. For her father’s voice rose again:
; “I tied a bootlace round the child’s arm. I can’t say that I ever thought to come back for her. But there’s a convention in these things, isn’t there?” he added with a grin. “I have been a conservative all my life, and now I have found the advantage of it.”
“How?” asked Joan. “Even if your story were true, your daughter wouldn’t be wearing a bootlace or even the mark of it round her arm now.”
“No, from the look of her she’d be more likely to be wearing a diamond bangle, bless her! But all the same the bootlace helps.”
“How?”
Again the implacable question was uttered by Joan. She must know all that this man had upon his side by way of argument. That was her first necessity.
“How does the bootlace help?”
“It helps because the child wearing that bootlace was received by the same old ladies who allowed you a few months afterward to adopt her — that’s how. Don’t you leave those old ladies out of your reckoning, Mrs. Daventry, or you will run up against a snag. I went back to the foundling a year ago and claimed my daughter.”
“You did?” cried Joan. She was startled. For a moment, too, she was disconcerted. She knew nothing of any such visit. But the statement was so easily capable of proof that the reaper would hardly have made it, had it not been true. And she was quick to see how strong a presumption such a visit would create, that he was the girl’s father. Then she sprang to the weak point in the statement.
“If it were true that Cynthia was your daughter, and that you claimed her a year ago, how is it that you wait until a chance meeting in a field brings you face to face?”
“There’s no chance about it, believe me,” James Challoner returned. For it was he. The delicate manners had been rubbed off him, the gentle voice, which had charmed so many dollars from reluctant pockets long ago at Punta del Inca, had thickened and grown husky, the well-knit figure had spread to heaviness. But this was James Challoner, after fourteen years had told their tale. “The old ladies lied to me. Yes, actually lied to me,” and he spread out his hands in indignation. “Lied to a father about his daughter! They were religious people too!”
“If they did lie,” Robert Daventry burst in, “they did the best thing they ever did in all their good lives.”
James Challoner waved Robert Daventry and his outburst aside. He kept his eyes fixed upon Joan’s face.
“Yes, they lied to me,” he said. “I gave them the day and the month and the year, when I placed Doris on the turnstile. They pretended to make inquiries, and they lied to me. They told me she was dead. Ah!” and he suddenly leaned forward and pointed an accusing finger at Joan, “You are glad to hear that. Yes, I thought you would be.”
Try as she did, Joan had not been able to keep a flash of joy out of her face.
“It’s a matter of indifference to me,” she replied, “since Cynthia is not your child.”
She still clung obstinately to that belief. He might have heard the story from James Challoner, and James Challoner might be dead. Any hypothesis was possible in her eyes, except the one which was true. She would not have it that this man was Cynthia’s father.
“Oh, it is a matter of indifference to you!” said Challoner ironically. “I will tell you something that won’t be. Those old ladies lied just as clumsily as I have ever seen it done. Poor old souls, they were rattled out of their senses at the thought of the sin they were committing. A child could have seen they were lying — as I did who am no child. And I began to cast about for a reason for the lie. It wasn’t very difficult to find it. Some one had adopted her, some one they didn’t want me to discover, some one rich, then, I reckoned, who could give the girl a position.”
At the word “rich” Robert and Joan exchanged a glance. So much were they disconcerted by Challoner’s knowledge and assurance that now they hoped rather than feared that blackmail was the end he had in view.
“So I began to make inquiries,” continued Challoner. “I found out who were the patrons, who took most interest in the institution, and amongst them who had adopted a child. I came upon you in the end.” And again he began to laugh. “Those poor innocent old women had actually given me the date when you took Doris away as the date of the child’s death. It took me a little time to find out all about you; and when I had found out I had no money. So I had to work my way along until I reached you. But I have reached you,” he exclaimed, lolling back in his chair, “and, by George, the very first day I am at work here, out the girl comes to meet me. Why, I recognized her in a second;” and Joan slipped in, as she thought, under his guard. With a thrill of delight she believed that he had made a mistake, and a mistake which would discredit every word of his story.
“Recognized her!” she repeated scornfully. “And the last time, when, on your own showing, you saw her she was three years old!”
Challoner, however, merely smiled at her.
“If you had a family at your back, old lady, you wouldn’t be so high,” he said; and once more Robert Daventry interposed.
“Speak respectfully to my wife,” he cried.
“What, are you butting in again?” asked Challoner, with a look of surprise. “You didn’t do any good, you know, the last time you interfered.”
Once more Joan was called upon to restrain her husband. She saw the man convicted of a lie, and she did not mean to lose the advantage of that conviction.
“How did you recognize her?” she asked, smiling in her turn. “How did you recognize in the girl of seventeen the child of three?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Challoner confidently. “And, by the way, she’s not seventeen to-day. It might interest you to know that. She’s seventeen and a half. She was born on the seventeenth of July.”
“Keep to the point,” said Joan.
“Certainly, I will,” replied Challoner, “though it’s by no means necessary to substantiate my authority — yes,” and his voice suddenly rang out loud upon the word, so that Cynthia in the darkness on the other side of the door shivered as if she had been struck, “yes, my authority. I don’t say that she’s like what she was when she was three. I don’t even say she’s like her mother. She isn’t. She’s a Challoner — and in the Challoner’s home, by Wareham in Dorsetshire, there are some pictures worth looking at. I sat opposite one of them at the dinner table all through my boyhood, and whenever I was at home afterward — until I came out here. It was the portrait of my great-great-grandmother, painted by Romney, when she was a girl; and I tell you the girl who came stepping so prettily across the field this morning, in her white frock and big straw hat, might have stepped right out of that picture frame. That’s how I recognized her.”
He ended on a note of triumph, and for the first time Joan’s confidence failed her altogether. Again, it was not, of course, a conclusive piece of evidence, gauged by any laws of reasoning, but just as Challoner’s description of the turnstile had convinced Cynthia outside the door because of the particular illumination it lent to an obscure fancy, so this detail of the picture did more to convince Joan Daventry than the rest of the story. Some portions of that story she knew to be true: the bootlace, the abandonment of the child. But what she had obstinately been combating was the contention that it was true of this man who sat before her. He might have learnt it all from the real father; he might now be seeking to make his profit out of the knowledge. That had been her hope. But it failed her now. For the particular detail of the girl’s resemblance, now that she was seventeen, to the Romney portrait in the Challoners’ dining-room he could not have learned from another. It did suggest that the man in front of her was the Challoner he claimed to be. Of course the detail might have been invented. But it did not sound to her invented; and, so far as her knowledge could test it, the rest of his story was true. She looked him over again with new eyes.
“But you can’t prove that,” she said. “Even if it were true, you couldn’t prove it.”
“Should I need to?” asked Challoner. “After I had put those old ladies from the Found
ling into the witness-box, should I need to, Mrs. Daventry? Would they stick to their lie? Any tenth-rate attorney could turn ’em inside out as easy as an old glove, if they tried to. But they wouldn’t try — and you know it as well as I do.”
Challoner had put his finger on the danger-spot of the Daventrys’ position. Those two old ladies would have suffered much heart-searching before they told their lie, and not a little remorse afterward. Questioned upon their oaths they would speak the truth, and the whole truth. Of that Joan felt sure.
“There are men, too, in Buenos Ayres who knew me when I was in Chile,” Challoner continued; and then once more Robert Daventry interposed.
“But you wouldn’t be mad enough to go to law with us,” he cried, and Challoner laughed.
“Oh, yes, I would, and I would put you into the witness-box, too. A pretty figure you would cut, with your Patagonian brother, eh? I wouldn’t bring my action here, of course, in this district. You’ve got your local syndic in your pocket, I grant you. But the law runs in Buenos Ayres nowadays, and don’t you forget it.”
Robert Daventry turned aside to hide his discomfiture, and walked once or twice across the room. He had no doubt that this man was James Challoner and Cynthia’s father. His story was too circumstantial to be disputed. Moreover, neither he nor Joan could publicly dispute it. There had been no brother in Patagonia. He turned abruptly to Challoner: “How much do you want?”
Joan moved quickly to his side with a cry of protest. Money it might be necessary to pay, but it must be asked for, not offered. To offer it was to admit the claim.
“What are you saying, Robert?” she cried.
Robert turned to her quietly.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 482