“They’ve made a fine mess of it between them, old Mark, Lois and Olivia, too,” he reflected, and he followed Lois up the staircase and knocked on her door.
“Lois!” he called in a low voice. But he got no answer. “Lois!” he repeated. “You’d better come down and have some supper.”
But Lois was deaf to that invitation too. Derek Crayle turned the handle of the door, but the key was turned in the lock. He listened with his ear against the panel but he could not hear a sound.
XXVI. DEREK MAKES A GESTURE
“WE MUST GO back to our guests,” said Mark; and it seemed to Olivia that he had aged by ten years. He walked with a heavy tread quite out of his character, and his shoulders stooped. Though he looked about the ballroom with a smiling face, he had death at his heart. This ball had been arranged merely to give pleasure to Lois and enhance the prestige of her beauty; all the tedium of preparation and disturbance had been well worth while on that account. And now, though the dancing went on in gaiety and laughter, she was hidden away somewhere, a detected thief. Mark tortured himself with the repetition of that word.
“You must be going? So soon? It has been a wonderful evening! So glad you’ve enjoyed it. My little girl’s a thief.” He was afraid lest the words should slip out of his mouth before he could catch them back; and once or twice, when some departing guests looked at him curiously, finding something a little distracted in his manner, he almost believed that he had spoken them.
Olivia was in hardly a better case. She knew very well that Mark was stricken to the dust and she took herself to task for her jealousy.
“I was a beast to that girl,” she reflected remorsefully. “If I could hurt her a little, I was happy. I should have made a friend of her.”
But what was the use of these reproaches? The dreadful thing had happened. Oh, would the night never end?
It ended, of course. The last carriage drove away, the last visitor retired to his room. Mark, Olivia, and Derek Crayle were left standing together in the empty ball-room.
“I am very tired,” said Mark. “We will talk to-morrow. To-night I must sleep if I can.”
He went wearily out of the room. Olivia followed him with her eyes until he had disappeared.
“Derek,” she said, “this is the end of Upper Theign,” meaning the end of their pleasant, wholesome, equable life in that big manor house which had been built for comfort rather than for display. Mark had built for himself a dream-palace upon its foundations, and they had not borne its weight.
“Don’t you believe that, Olivia!” Derek returned.
He had the confidence of his years and his epoch. Those kindly old ones had made a mess-up, the dear things. He would have to jump in and put them wise in the morning.
“You go to bed, Olivia,” he said. “Let us never forget that things are not what they seem and that the darkest hour comes before the dawn. Off you go!”
He bustled her up to her room and went to his own. He drew up the blind and saw a great oblong of yellow light thrown out upon the snow of the lawn. Lois was still awake then, for the light came from the window of her room.
“She has had no supper either,” he said to himself.
“That won’t do.”
He sat for a moment or two upon the edge of his bed, troubled by a very disturbing conjecture. Then he went out into the corridor. The whole house was in darkness, and silent as a church. He went down into the hall, switching the lights on as he went. He saw that the front door was locked and the door of every room upon the ground floor which had a window opening on the park, and he took the keys away with him upstairs.
“If anyone wants to catch an early train in the morning,” he said, “they must first ask my permission — and I shan’t give it;” and with that he tumbled into bed and went to sleep.
There were, however, no very early departures planned On the other hand, no one overstayed the reasonable hour, and by ten o’clock Olivia had said good-bye to the last of her visitors. She asked her butler, then, where his lordship was to be found, and on receiving his reply hurried in a panic into the dining-room where Derek was eating a late breakfast.
“Oh, you can sit there — munching!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands over the callousness of the world.
“I never munch,” Derek uttered with dignity, as he helped himself to another plateful of kidneys and bacon. “I eat.”
“Do you know what Mark’s doing?” she cried.
“Perfectly. I let him out of the house this morning, since he was up earlier than the servants. He’s out with a keeper and a dog.”
“And a gun;” Olivia shot the word at him with a tragedienne’s intensity.
Derek shook a forefinger at her.
“Now don’t go off at the deep end, Olivia! I know what you’re thinking and it’s absurd. Keep tight hold of your wits, my dear. Mark’s not that kind of man. Have some coffee and I’ll instruct you in the ways of life.”
Olivia allowed herself to be placed at the table. She drank some coffee. She was a little comforted. If Derek was easy in his mind, perhaps she was a little fanciful. But she looked out upon a sheet of bright white snow studded with black trees, and she imagined a scarlet patch on the snow and a body amongst the trees.
“Instruct me then!” she cried; and Derek expounded his thesis.
“When a woman’s seriously distressed, and wishes to take her mind off her troubles, she goes out and buys a new hat, doesn’t she?”
“Well — it’s one of the ways,” Olivia conceded.
“It’s the usual way,” Derek asserted.
“Very well.”
“Men, on the other hand, like old hats. They fit their heads better. They buy new ones with reluctance.”
Derek helped himself stodgily to marmalade.
“Oh, Derek, go on!”
“When a man’s seriously distressed and wishes to take his mind off his troubles, he gets a gun and kills a bird. And that’s what Mark’s doing now. It shows a curious divergence in the points of view of the two sexes to which philosophers might well devote some of their attention.”
“You think Mark has really gone out shooting this morning?” cried Olivia. Her fears were assuaged, even if her scorn of an utterly pachydermatous and insensible world was increased.
Derek nodded.
“You didn’t think that he would just sit at home grousing, did you, Olivia?”
“I didn’t anyway think that he would just go out pheasanting,” said Olivia, and Derek smiled with a smile of patronage.
“A play upon words! A conceit! Capital, Olivia—”
“Don’t be such an ass, Derek!” Olivia broke in.
Derek pointed to the window. Across the snow from the wood at the edge of which the laboratory stood, Mark, with his gun in the crook of his arm and his Labrador at his heels, was approaching the house, and behind him walked the keeper with a couple of pheasants dangling from his hand.
“Bad man!” said Derek.
“Why?”
“Two hens.”
“They’re his, anyway.”
Derek groaned aloud.
“And the Greeks made a woman the deity of sport!” he cried. He was incredulous. He was amazed.
There was amazement, too, in the look Olivia stole at him across the table. His flippancy actually disturbed her.
“I thought—” she began, and stopped.
“Tell me your thought, Olivia?”
Derek retained the mock pomposity of manner, but his voice was suddenly wary.
“I thought you were rather fond of that wicked girl.” She had dropped in the epithet in order to stir him into some revelation, but she failed completely of her object.
“When the proper time comes, Olivia,” he said easily, “I shall leave you in no doubt as to whether I am or whether I am not. Hallo!”
He looked towards the window. For he heard the whirr of an engine and a moment later, a motor-car passed the window and drew up at the door. It was precisely at that moment that M
ark Thewliss entered the room and poured himself out a cup of coffee.
“I thought they had all gone,” said Derek.
“So they have,” Olivia returned, and Mark explained.
“That car has come for Lois. She telephoned to Newbury for it early this morning,” he said.
“She is going?” Derek asked.
An intense relief suddenly possessed Olivia. Lois was going of her own accord, and these men of Olivia’s were taking her departure very sensibly with their quiet voices and placid words. She had probably troubled herself needlessly. Upper Theign might again become the comfortable, smooth place it once had been.
But Mark did not answer Derek’s question.
“I have asked her to see me,” he said, and Olivia interrupted quickly:
“Is that worth while?”
“It’s necessary if I am to have one untormented hour from now on until the day I die,” Mark returned with a quiet simplicity of manner which stamped his unusual words with the very seal of truth. “I haven’t slept at all. I have been going over and over again all the words which were spoken in the library last night, and all the looks which went with them.”
“Her words! Her looks!” cried Olivia on the edge of despair. Mark was still then under the spell!
“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Her words, her looks,” and Olivia was spurred to a sudden burst of violence.
“She stole, Mark. That’s the simple truth. There was some high-flown talk about her birthright—” The word “rubbish!” was on Olivia’s lips as her comment, but she substituted a milder one. “Excuses! She stole, and for money.”
Mark winced visibly, but his sleepless night had not been wasted in cozening himself.
“No doubt,” he said, “but from an enemy. It was an act of war. And I have got to know why. I am the enemy. Ever since I have known that I had a daughter, Lois, I have tried to make her what amends I could. She had no reason to think she wasn’t safe. Of course Perriton’s disclosure — it’s clear that he broke his word in a fit of anger — must have been a shock, may well have made her feel — what shall I say? A little — to put it at the worst — a little tainted compared with her friends. But she’s not the weak kind which would let that prey on her for long. She hasn’t got what we call nowadays an inferiority complex. Not a bit of it,” and even in that hour of his distress there was the shadow of a smile of pride upon his face. “The knowledge that she was really my daughter, and that I was doing my best after I had found it out, to make what reparation was possible wouldn’t turn me into the enemy I am, the enemy against whom all tactics are justified, the enemy outside the pale. No, there’s something more which I don’t know, and I’ve got to know it.”
He reached out his hand to the bell-button upon the table as Derek, having finished his breakfast, lit a cigarette.
“I’ll see her now, I think.”
“In the library?” Derek asked`
“Yes.
But before he could ring the bell the door was opened. Both Olivia and Mark were sitting with their backs to it. But Derek across the table laid his cigarette down and the odd look of suspense which showed in his face made the other two turn round. Lois had not waited for the summons. She was there in the room, now. She was dressed in a warm brown jacket and skirt with a jumper, but she had left her coat and hat in the hall. She had put a little colour on her cheeks and lips and she was trying to carry off her humiliation with a rather pitiful bravado.
“My judges!” she said, and she made a foolish little mock obeisance and sought to produce a jaunty smile. But as a performance it was lamentably a failure.
“Judges,” Derek repeated. “Speaking for myself, I’ll show you about that.”
No one in the room had a notion of what he meant to do, not even Lois. Indeed, she braced herself against an attack. He rose from his chair very deliberately, walked round the corner of the table straight to her, and taking her face between his hands, kissed her upon the mouth. It made an end of Lois’ jauntiness and bravado. She uttered a sharp cry of pain and dropping on to a chair beside the door as though her knees gave under her, she covered her face with her hands. There she sat for a little while. Then she stood up and, turning to Mark, said, and now very quietly:
“You wanted to see me before I went away.”
“We’ll go into the library,” said Mark, as he got up from his chair; and Lois opened the door again.
“I, too,” said Derek.
The girl paused. She did not look at Derek. She looked anywhere except at him. But she stood quite still. In the end, however, she uttered no objection, and she followed Mark into the hall. Olivia was left alone with her dream that the old life would be resumed at Upper Theign and this nightmare interval forgotten, splintered to fragments.
XXVII. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
DEREK CRAYLE WAS well aware that both Mark and Olivia would have liked to have brained him with an iron mace, if any such weapon had been handy at the moment. He had sought to lighten the tension by a display of humour, but he had been too facetious for the occasion; and had he been concerned to analyse himself, he would have been quick enough to understand that he himself was labouring under that very stress which he was seeking to alleviate.
But he was not concerned with himself. Lois’ statement of her relationship to Mark had explained to Derek the secret of Mark’s devotion to the girl, and he understood that unless the tangle was unravelled, Mark would really be crippled for the rest of his life. He would be hampered like a soldier in the early days of surgery by a wound which would not heal. Lois herself too was in no better case. He was certain that hers was not an ordinary crime of theft which could be settled out of hand by a magistrate’s court. She had been warped by Henry Perriton’s disclosure; it had preyed upon her, distorting her vision, impairing her standards. Possibly there was something more which he did not yet know, as he intended to. He was undoubtedly very unpopular, but he followed Mark and Lois into the library with an undaunted step.
For if Lois had her luggage hoisted upon the hired car and drove off into mists and emptiness, he too was crippled. It was odd and rather hatefully odd that a slip of a girl one had never heard of should just be about the house for a month or two and leave two quite valuable people crippled if she went away again. But since the fact was so he must put a stop to it. He was confident that he could. He was of his day, not over-much hampered by tradition, and certainly not the spineless idler supposed to be typical of his generation. But he lived on a very mountain of self-confidence. He would encourage Mark to have his say and Lois to have hers and then he would step in and sort all out in its due proportions.
He took a seat apart therefore by one of the bays of the library, whilst Mark stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece and his eyes looking into the fire, and Lois a few steps away from him upon the hearthrug.
“I want you to sit down, Lois,” said Mark gently. “I don’t want you to go away like this to somewhere where I shall never know what’s happening to you.”
“Will that matter?” Lois asked.
“Very much.”
Mark spoke almost in a whisper, for he feared that if he raised his voice, it would break upon his words.
“I have no plans beyond going,” Lois replied and she looked over to the window eager to end this ordeal, to sever herself altogether from this house and its associations and disappear across the white carpet of snow into the frosty mist of December.
“Still stay for a moment,” Mark urged and he raised his face towards her. It was so ravaged by pain and distress, it deepened his request into so urgent a prayer that Lois could not but yield to it. But she yielded very reluctantly and with a great perplexity in her eyes.
“I don’t see why you should wish to say one word more to me as long as you live,” she returned quietly, and she sat down in one of the great chairs by the fire. But she balanced herself upon the edge of it, leaning a little forward, like one who has no right to be seated there at all.
Though he spoke with a sincerity so unforced and simple that only one out of a thousand could have doubted it, that one was there opposite to him. Lois disbelieved and her face hardened.
“Torture is a big word,” she answered.
“A true one,” said Mark.
“But there can’t be a misunderstanding,” Lois cried. “It’s all as clear as daylight. I tried to steal from you and you caught me. You can send me to prison, or you can let me go.”
A little cry broke from Mark Thewliss as the hard young voice spoke of prison and Derek moved suddenly in his chair. He was sitting behind Lois, and though she could not see him she heard the movement, and lifting up a hand she said in a low voice,
“Oh! Don’t, don’t!”
She must keep Derek altogether out of her thoughts, until she was free of the house, and no one could see the tears fall from her eyes. Otherwise her endurance would break. He must be very silent, very still. But she had betrayed herself. For both the men the hard crust of her manner was shown to be nothing more than the film with which nature covers a wound. Mark took a little comfort from the cry.
“You tried to steal from me?” he said.
“Yes.”
“For yourself?”
“Partly. I mean — of course.” Lois threw up her hands as she caught her first word back. “What’s the use? We just hurt one another more and more.”
“We’ve got to do that, Lois,” said Mark. He seated himself in a chair on the other side of the hearth. “It will make it easier for you to tell me about yourself, if I set you the example. We are neither of us of course free from blame. Neither of us perhaps quite so blamable as we should appear to people who don’t know anything about us.”
And Derek in his corner thought that Mark showed a very pretty dignity in thus putting himself at once on the same level as Lois.
“That you reproach me,” Mark continued, “was last night, to use your own words, clear as daylight. That you have reason to reproach me I don’t deny. You used some words last night. Your stolen birthright. I must plead guilty,” and there was heard a little protest from the girl, as though she regretted in the face of this confession the unclothed words which she had used. “Yes, but since I am in the dock,” Mark resumed with the ghost of a smile, “I plead one thing in extenuation. I have tried to make amends ever since I knew you were my daughter.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 610