CHAPTER XXXVIII.
NEWS FROM THE CAPE.
At the Holkers' at Chetwood, one evening some days later, Cyril
Waring met Elma Clifford once more, the first time for months, and
had twenty minutes' talk in the tea-room alone with her. Contrary
to his rule, he had gone to the Holkers' party that night, for a man
can't remain a recluse all his life, no matter how hard he tries,
merely because his brother's suspected of having committed a murder.
In course of time, the attitude palls upon him. For the first year
after Guy's sudden and mysterious disappearance, indeed, Cyril
refused all invitations point-blank, except from the most intimate
friends; the shame and disgrace of that terrible episode weighed
him down so heavily that he couldn't bear to go out in the world
among unsympathetic strangers.
But the deepest sorrow wears away by degrees, and at the end of
twelve months Cyril found he could mix a little more unreservedly
at last among his fellow-men. The hang-dog air sat ill upon his
frank, free nature. This invitation to the Holkers', too, had one
special attraction: he knew it was a house where he was almost
certain of meeting Elma. And since Elma insisted now on writing
to him constantly--she was a self-willed young woman was Elma, and
would have her way--he really saw no reason on earth himself why
he shouldn't meet her. To meet is one thing, don't you know--to
marry, another. At least so fifty generations of young people have
deluded themselves under similar circumstances into believing.
Elma was in the room before him, prettier than ever, people said,
in the pale red ball-dress which exactly suited her gipsy-like
eyes and creamy complexion. As she entered she saw Sir Gilbert
Gildersleeve with his wife and Gwendoline standing in the corner
by the big piano. Gwendoline looked pale and preoccupied, as she
had always looked since Granville Kelmscott disappeared, leaving
behind him no more definite address for love-letters than simply
Africa; and Lady Gildersleeve was, as usual, quite subdued and
broken. But the judge himself, consoled by his new honours, seemed,
as time wore on, to have recovered a trifle of his old blustering
manner. A knighthood had reassured him. He was talking to Mr.
Holker in a loud voice as Elma approached him from behind.
"Yes, a very curious coincidence," he was just saying, in his noisy
fashion, with one big burly hand held demonstratively before him.
"A very curious and unexplained coincidence. They both vanished
into space about the self-same time. And nothing more has ever
since been heard of them. Quite an Arabian Nights' affair in its
way--the Enchanted Carpet sort of business, don't you know--wafted
through the air unawares, like Sinbad the Sailor, or the One-eyed
Calender, from London to Bagdad, or Timbuctoo or St. Petersburg. The
OTHER young man one understands about, of course; HE had sufficient
reasons of his own, no doubt, for leaving a country which had
grown too warm for him. But that Granville Kelmscott, a gentleman
of means, the heir to such a fine estate as Tilgate, should disappear
into infinity leaving no trace behind, like a lost comet--and at
the very moment, too, when he was just about to come into the family
property--why, I call it... I call it... I call it--"
His jaw dropped suddenly. He grew deadly pale. Words failed his
stammering tongue. Do what he would, he couldn't finish his sentence.
And yet, nothing very serious had occurred to him in any way. It
was merely that, as he uttered these words, he caught Elma Clifford's
eye, and saw lurking in it a certain gleam of deadly contempt before
which the big blustering man himself had quailed more than once
in many a Surrey drawing-room.
For Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve knew, as well as if she had told him
the truth in so many words, that Elma Clifford suspected him of
being Montague Nevitt's murderer.
Elma came forward, just to break the awkward pause, and shook hands
with the party by the piano coldly. Sir Gilbert tried to avoid
her; but, with the inherited instinct of her race, Elma cut off
his retreat. She boxed him in the corner between the piano and the
wall.
"I heard what you were saying just now, Sir Gilbert," she murmured
low, but with marked emphasis, after a few polite commonplaces of
conversation had first passed between them; "and I want to ask you
one question only about the matter. ARE you so sure as you seem
of what you said this minute? Are you so sure that Mr. Guy Waring
HAD sufficient reasons of his own for wishing to leave the country?"
Before that unflinching eye, the great lawyer trembled, as many
a witness had trembled of old under his own cross-examination. But
he tried to pass it off just at first with a little society banter.
He bowed, and smiled, and pretended to look arch--look arch, indeed,
with that ashen, white face of his!--as he answered, with forced
humour--
"My dear young lady, Mr. Guy Waring, as I understand, is Mr. Cyril
Waring's brother, and as by the law of England the king can do no
wrong, so I suppose--"
Elma cut him short in the middle of his sentence with an imperious
gesture. He had never cut short an obnoxious and intruding barrister
himself with more crushing dignity.
"Mr. Cyril Waring has nothing at all to do with the point, one way
or the other," the girl said severely. "Attend to my question.
What I ask is this: Why do you, a judge who may one day be called
upon to try the case, venture to say, on such partial evidence,
that Mr. Guy Waring had sufficient reasons of his own for leaving
the country?"
Called upon to try Guy Waring's case! The judge paused abashed.
He was very much afraid of her. This girl had such a strange look
about the eyes, she made him tremble. People said the Ewes women
were the descendants of a witch. And there was something truly
witch-like in the way Elma Clifford looked straight down into his
eyes. She seemed to see into his very soul. He knew she suspected
him.
He shuffled and temporized. "Well, everybody says so, you know," he
answered, shrugging his shoulders carelessly. "And what everybody
says MUST be true. ... Besides, if HE, didn't do it, who did, I
wonder?"
Elma pounced upon her opportunity with a woman's quickness. "Somebody
else who was at Mambury that day, no doubt," she replied, with a
meaning look. "It MUST have been somebody out of the few who were
at Mambury."
That home-thrust told. The judge's colour was livid to look upon.
What could this girl mean? How on earth could she know? How had she
even found out he was at Mambury at all? A terrible doubt oppressed
his soul. Had Gwendoline confided his movements to Elma? He had
warned his daughter time and again not to mention the fact, "for
fear of misapprehension," he said, with shuffling eyes askance. It
was better nobody should know he had been anywhere near Dartmoor
on the day of the accident.
However, there was one consolation; the law! the law! She could
have no legal proof, and intuition goes for nothing in a court
of justice. All the suspicion went against Guy Waring, and Guy
Waring--well, Guy Waring had fled the kingdom in the very nick of
time, and was skulking now, Heaven alone knew where or why, in the
remotest depths of some far African diggings.
And even as he thought it, the servant opened the door, and, in
the regulation footman's voice, announced "Mr. Waring."
The judge started afresh. For one moment his senses deceived him
sadly. His mind was naturally full of Guy, just now; and as the
servant spoke, he saw a handsome young man in evening dress coming
up the long drawing-room with the very air and walk of the man
he had met that eventful afternoon at the "Duke of Devonshire"
at Plymouth. Of course, it was only Cyril; and a minute later the
judge saw his mistake, and remembered, with a bitter smile, how
conscience makes cowards of us all, as he had often remarked about
shaky witnesses in his admirable perorations. But Elma hadn't failed
to notice either the start or its reason.
"It's only Mr. Cyril," she said pointedly; "not Mr. Guy, Sir Gilbert.
The name came very pat, though. I don't wonder it startled you."
She was crimson herself. The judge moved away with a stealthy
uncomfortable air. He didn't half care for this uncanny young
woman. A girl who can read people's thoughts like that, a girl who
can play with you like a cat with a mouse, oughtn't to be allowed
at large in society. She should be shut up in a cage at home like
a dangerous animal, and prevented from spying out the inmost history
of families.
A little later, Elma had twenty minutes' talk with Cyril alone. It
was in the tea-room behind, where the light refreshments were laid
out before supper. She spoke low and seriously.
"Cyril," she said, in a tone of absolute confidence--they were
not engaged, of course, but still, it had got to plain "Cyril" and
"Elma" by this time--"I'm surer of it than ever, no matter what you
say. Guy's perfectly innocent. I know it as certainly as I know my
own name. I can't be mistaken. And the man who really did it is,
as I told you, Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve."
"My dear child," Cyril answered--you call the girl you are in love
with "my dear child," when you mean to differ from her, with an
air of masculine superiority--"how on earth can that be, when, as
I told you, I have Guy's confession in writing, under his own very
hand, that he really did it?"
"I don't care a pin for that," Elma cried, with a true woman's
contempt for anything so unimportant as mere positive evidence.
"Perhaps Sir Gilbert made him do it somehow--compelled him, or
coerced him, or willed him, or something--I don't understand these
new notions--or perhaps he got him into a scrape and then hadn't
the courage or the manliness to get him out of it. But at any rate,
I can answer for one thing, I were to go to the stake for it--Sir
Gilbert Gildersleeve is the man who's really guilty."
As she spoke, a great shadow darkened the door of the room for a
moment ominously. Sir Gilbert looked in with a lady on his arm--the
inevitable dowager who refreshes herself continuously at frequent
intervals through six hours of entertainment. When he saw those
two tete-a-tete, he drew back, somewhat disconcerted.
"Don't let's go in there, Lady Knowles," he whispered to the dowager
by his side. "A pair of young people discussing their hearts. We
were once young ourselves. It's a pity to disturb them."
And he passed on across the hall towards the great refreshment-room
opposite.
"Well, I don't know," Cyril said bitterly, as the judge disappeared
through the opposite door. "I wish I could agree with you. But I
can't, I can't. The burden of it's heavier than my shoulders can
bear. Guy's weak, I know, and might be led half unawares into
certain sorts of crime; yet I only knew one man ever likely to lead
him--and that was poor Nevitt himself, not Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve,
whom he hardly even knew to speak to."
As he paused and reflected, a servant with a salver came up and
looked into Cyril's face inquiringly.
"Beg your pardon, sir," he said, hesitating, "but I think you're
Mr. Waring."
"That's my name," Cyril answered, with a faint blush on his cheek.
"Do you want to speak to me?"
"Yes, sir; there's half-a-crown to pay for porterage, if you please.
A telegram for you, sir."
Cyril pulled out the half-a-crown, and tore open the telegram.
Its contents were indeed enough to startle him. It was dated "Cape
Town," and was as brief as is the wont of cable messages at nine
shillings a word--
"Coming home immediately to repay everything and stand my trial.
Kelmscott accompanies me. All well.--GUY WARING."
Cyril looked at it with a gasp, and handed it on to Elma. Elma took
it in her dainty gloved fingers, and read it through with keen eyes
of absorbing interest. Cyril sighed a profound sigh. Elma glanced
back at him all triumph. "I told you so," she said, in a very jubilant
voice. "He wouldn't do that if he didn't KNOW he was innocent."
At the very same second, a blustering voice was heard above the
murmur in the hall without.
"What, half-a-crown for porterage!" it exclaimed in indignant tones.
"Why, that's a clear imposition. The people at my house ought
never to have sent it on. It's addressed to Woodlands. Unimportant,
unimportant! Here, Gwendoline, take your message--some milliner's
or dressmaker's appointment for to-morrow, I suppose. Half-a-crown
for porterage! They'd no right to bring it."
Gwendoline took the telegram with trembling hands, tore it open
all quivers, and broke into a cry of astonishment. Then she fell
all at once into her father's arms. Elma understood it all. It was
a similar message from Granville Kelmscott to tell the lady of his
heart he was coming home to marry her.
Sir Gilbert, somewhat flustered, called for water in haste, and
revived the fainting girl by bathing her temples. At last he took
up the cause of the mischief himself. As he read it his own face
turned white as death. Elma noticed that, too. And no wonder it
did--for these were the words of that unexpected message--
"Coming home to claim you by the next mail. Guy Waring accompanies
me.--GKANVILLE KELMSCOTT."
