"Then he's such a prig!" said Olga.
"You should never use a word you can't define," observed Nick, from the depths of the hammock in which his meagre person reposed at length.
She made a face at him, and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was wont pathetically to remark, everyone bullied him because he was small and possessed only one arm, having shed the other by inadvertence somewhere on the borders of the Indian Empire.
Certainly Olga—his half-brother's eldest child—treated him with scant respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the beginning of things, and this surely entitled her to a certain licence in her dealings with him. Nick, too, was such a darling; he never minded anything.
Having duly punished him for snubbing her, she returned with serenity to the work upon her lap.
"You see," she remarked thoughtfully, "the worst of it is he really is a bit of a genius. And one can't sit on genius—with comfort. It sort of flames out where you least expect it."
"Highly unpleasant, I should think," agreed Nick.
"Yes; and he has such a disgusting fashion of behaving as if—as if one were miles beneath his notice," proceeded Olga. "And I'm not a chicken, you know, Nick, I'm twenty."
"A vast age!" said Nick.
For which remark she gave him another jerk which set him swinging like a pendulum.
"Well, I've got a little sense anyhow," she remarked.
"But not much," said Nick. "Or you would know that that sort of treatment after muffins for tea is calculated to produce indigestion in a very acute form, peculiarly distressing to the beholder."
"Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot the muffins." Olga laid a restraining hand upon the hammock. "But do you like him, Nick? Honestly now!"
"My dear child, I never like anyone till I've seen him at his worst.
Drawing-room manners never attract me."
"But this man hasn't got any manners at all," objected Olga. "And he's so horribly satirical. It's like having a stinging-nettle in the house. I believe—just because he's clever in his own line—that he's been spoilt. As if everybody couldn't do something!"
"Ah! That's the point," said Nick sententiously. "Everybody can, but it isn't everybody who does. Now this young man apparently knows how to make the most of his opportunities. He plays a rattling hand at bridge, by the way."
"I wonder if he cheats," said Olga. "I'm sure he's quite unscrupulous."
Nick turned his head, and surveyed her from under his restless eyelids. "I begin to think you must be falling in love with the young man," he observed.
"Don't be absurd, Nick!" Olga did not even trouble to look up. She was stitching with neat rapidity.
"I'm not. That's just how my wife fell in love with me. I assure you it often begins that way." Nick shook his head wisely. "I should take steps to be nice to him if I were you, before the mischief spreads."
Olga tossed her head. She was slightly flushed. "I shall never make a fool of myself over any man, Nick," she said. "I'm quite determined on that point."
"Dear, dear!" said Nick. "How old did you say you were?"
"I am woman enough to know my own mind," said Olga.
"Heaven forbid!" said Nick. "You wouldn't be a woman at all if you did that."
"I don't think you are a good judge on that subject, Nick," remarked his niece judiciously. "In fact, even Dr. Wyndham knows better than that. I assure you the antipathy is quite mutual. He regards everyone who isn't desperately ill as superfluous and uninteresting. He was absolutely disappointed the other day because, when I slipped on the stairs, I didn't break any bones."
"What a fiend!" said Nick.
"And yet Dad likes him," said Olga. "I can't understand it. The poor people like him too in a way. Isn't it odd? They seem to have such faith in him."
"I believe Jim has faith in him," remarked Nick. "He wouldn't turn him loose on his patients if he hadn't."
"Of course, Sir Kersley Whitton recommended him," conceded Olga. "And he is an absolutely wonderful man, Dad says. He calls him the greatest medicine-man in England. He took up Max Wyndham years ago, when he was only a medical student. And he has been like a father to him ever since. In fact, I don't believe Dr. Wyndham would ever have come here if Sir Kersley hadn't made him. He was overworked and wouldn't take a rest, so Sir Kersley literally forced him to come and be Dad's assistant for a while. He told Dad that he was too brilliant a man to stay long in the country, and Dad gathered that he contemplated making him his own partner in the course of time. The sooner the better, I should say. He obviously thinks himself quite thrown away on the likes of us."
"Altogether he seems to be a very interesting young man," said Nick. "I must really cultivate his acquaintance. Is he going to be present to-night?"
"Oh, I suppose so. It's a great drawback having him living in the house. You see, being his hostess, I have to be more or less civil to him. It's very horrid," said Olga, upon whom, in consequence of her mother's death three years before, the duties of housekeeper had devolved. "And Dad is so fearfully strict too. He won't let me be the least little bit rude, though he is often quite rude himself. You know Dad."
"I know him," said Nick. "He's licked me many a time, bless his heart, and richly I deserved it. Help me to get out of this like a good kid! I see James the Second and the twins awaiting me on the tennis-court. I promised them a sett after tea."
He rolled on to his feet with careless agility, his one arm encircling his young niece's shoulders.
"I shouldn't worry if I were you," protested Olga. "It's much too hot. Don't waste your energies amusing the children! They can quite well play about by themselves."
"And get up to mischief," said Nick. "No, I'm on the job, overlooking the whole crowd of you, and I'll do it thoroughly. When old Jim comes home he'll find a model household awaiting him. By the way, I had a letter from him this afternoon. The kiddie is stronger already, and Muriel as happy as a queen. I shall hear from her to-morrow."
"Don't you wish you were with them?" questioned Olga. "It would be much more fun than staying here to chaperone me."
Nick looked quizzical. "Oh, there's plenty of fun to be had out of that too," he assured her. "I take a lively interest in you, my child; always have."
"You're a darling," said Olga, raising her face impulsively. "I shall write and tell Dad what care you are taking of us all."
She kissed him warmly and let him go, smiling at the tuneless humming that accompanied his departure. Who at a casual glance would have taken Nick Ratcliffe for one of the keenest politicians of his party, a man whom friend and foe alike regarded as too brilliant to be ignored? He had even been jestingly described as "that doughty champion of the British Empire"—an epithet that Olga cherished jealously because it had not been bestowed wholly in jest.
His general appearance was certainly the reverse of imposing, and in this particular, to her intense gratification, Olga resembled him. She had the same quick, pale eyes, with the shrewdness of observation that never needed to look twice, the same colourless brows and lashes and insignificant features; but she possessed one redeeming point which Nick lacked. What with him was an impish grin of sheer exuberance, with her was a smile of rare enchantment, very fleeting, with a fascination quite indescribable but none the less capable of imparting to her pale young face a charm that only the greatest artists have ever been able to depict. People were apt to say of Olga Ratcliffe that she had a face that lighted up well. Her ready intelligence was ardent enough to illuminate her. No one was ever dull in her society. Certainly in her temperament at least there was nothing colorless. Where she loved she loved intensely, and she hated in the same way, quite thoroughly and without dissimulation.
Maxwell Wyndham, for instance, the subject of her recent conversation with Nick, she had disliked wholeheartedly from the commencement of their acquaintance, and he was perfectly aware of the fact. He could not well have been otherwise, but he was by no means disconcerted thereby. It even seemed as if he took a malicious pleasure in developing her dislike upon every opportunity that presented itself, and since he was living in the house as her father's assistant, opportunities were by no means infrequent.
But there was no open hostility between them. Under Dr. Ratcliffe's eye, his daughter was always frigidly polite to the unwelcome outsider, and the outsider accepted her courtesy with a sarcastic smile, knowing exactly how much it was worth.
Perhaps he was a little curious to know how she meant to treat him during her father's absence, or it may have been sheer chance that actuated him on that sultry evening in August, but Nick and his three playfellows had only just settled down to a serious sett when the doctor's assistant emerged from the house with his hands deep in his pockets and a peculiarly evil-smelling cigarette between his firm lips, and strolled across to the shady corner under the walnut-trees where the doctor's daughter was sitting.
She was stitching so busily that she did not observe his approach until escape was out of the question; but she would not have retreated in any case. It was characteristic of her to display a bold front to the people she disliked.
She threw him one of her quick glances as he reached her, and noted with distaste the extreme fieriness of his red hair in the light of the sinking sun. His hair had always been an offence to her. It was so obtrusive. But she could have borne with that alone. It was the green eyes that mocked at everything from under shaggy red brows that had originally given rise to her very decided antipathy, and these Olga found it impossible to condone. People had no right to mock, whatever the colour of their eyes.
He joined her as though wholly unaware of her glance of disparagement.
"I fear I am spoiling a charming picture," he observed as he did so. "But since there was none but myself to admire it, I felt at liberty to do so."
Again momentarily Olga's eyes flashed upwards, comprehending the whole of his thick-set figure in a single sweep of the eyelids. He was exceedingly British in build, possessing in breadth what he lacked in height. There was a bull-dog strength about his neck and shoulders that imparted something of a fighting look to his general demeanour. He bore himself with astounding self-assurance.
"Have you had any tea?" Olga inquired somewhat curtly. She was inwardly wondering what he had come for. He usually had a very definite reason for all he did.
"Many thanks," he replied, balancing himself on the edge of the hammock. "I am deeply touched by your solicitude for my welfare. I partook of tea at the Campions' half an hour ago."
"At the Campions'!" There was quick surprise in Olga's voice.
It elicited no explanation however. He sat and swayed in the hammock as though he had not noticed it.
After a moment she turned and looked at him fully. The green eyes were instantly upon her, alert and critical, holding that gleam of satirical humour that she invariably found so exasperating.
"Well?" said Olga at last.
"Well, fair lady?" he responded, with bland serenity.
She frowned. He was the only person in her world who ever made her take the trouble to explain herself, and he did it upon every possible occasion, with unvarying regularity. She hated him for it very thoroughly, but she always had to yield.
"Why did you go to the Campions'?" she asked, barely restraining her irritation.
"That, fair lady," he coolly responded, "is a question which with regret
I must decline to answer."
Olga flushed. "How absurd!" she said quickly. "Dad would tell me like a shot."
"I am not Dad," said the doctor's assistant, with unruffled urbanity.
"Moreover, fair lady—"
"I prefer to be called by my name if you have no objection, Dr.
Wyndham," cut in Olga, with rising wrath.
He smiled at something over her head. "Thank you, Olga. It saves trouble certainly. Would you like to call me by mine? Max is what I generally answer to."
Olga turned a vivid scarlet. "I am Miss Ratcliffe to you," she said.
He accepted the rebuff with unimpaired equanimity. "I thought it must be too good to be true. Pardon my presumption! When you are as old as I am you will realize how little it really matters. You are genuinely angry, I suppose? Not pretending?"
Olga bit her lip in silence and returned to her work, conscious of unsteady fingers, conscious also of a scrutiny that marked and derided the fact.
"Yes," he said, after a moment, "I should think your pulse must be about a hundred. Leave off working for a minute and let it steady down!"
Olga stitched on in spite of growing discomfiture. The shakiness was increasing very perceptibly. She could feel herself becoming hotter every moment. It was maddening to feel those ironical eyes noting and ridiculing her agitation. From exasperation she had passed to something very nearly resembling fury.
"Leave off!" he said again; and then, because she would not, he laid a detaining hand upon her work.
Instantly and fiercely her needle stabbed downwards. It was done in a moment, almost before she realized the nature of the impulse that possessed her. Straight into the back of his hand the weapon drove, and there from the sheer force of the impact broke off short.
Olga exclaimed in horror, but Max Wyndham made no sound of any sort. The cigarette remained between his lips, and not a muscle of his face moved. His hand with the broken needle in it was not withdrawn. It clenched slowly, that was all.
The blood welled up under Olga's dismayed eyes, and began to trickle over the brown fist. She threw a frightened glance into his grim face. Her anger had wholly evaporated and she was keenly remorseful. But it was no matter for an apology. The thing was beyond words.
"And now," said Max Wyndham, coolly removing the ash from his cigarette, "perhaps you will come to the surgery with me and get it out."
"I?" stammered Olga, turning very white.
"Even so, fair lady. It will be a little lesson for you—in surgery. I hope the sight of blood doesn't make you feel green," said Max, with a one-sided twitch of the lips that was scarcely a smile.
He removed his hand to her relief, and stood up. Olga stood up too, but she was trembling all over.
"Oh, I can't! Indeed, I can't! Dr. Wyndham, please!" She glanced round desperately. "There's Nick! Couldn't you ask him?"
"Unfortunately this is a job that requires two hands," said Max.
"Besides, you did the mischief, remember."
Olga gasped and said no more. Meekly she laid her work on the chair by the hammock and accompanied him to the house. It was the most painful predicament she had ever been in. She knew that there was no escape for her, knew, moreover, that she richly deserved her punishment; yet, as he held open the surgery-door for her, she made one more appeal.
"I'm sure I can't do it. I shall do more harm than good, and hurt you horribly."
"Oh, but you'll enjoy that," he said.
"Indeed, I shan't!" Olga was almost in tears by this time. "Couldn't you do it yourself with—with a forceps?"
"Afraid not," said Max.
He went to a cupboard and took out a bottle containing something which he measured into a glass and filled up with water.
"Fortify yourself with this," he said, handing it to her, "while I select the instruments of torture."
Olga shuddered visibly. "I don't want it. I only want to go."
"Well, you can't go," he returned, "until you have extracted that bit of needle of yours. So drink that, and be sensible!"
He pulled out a drawer with the words, and she watched him, fascinated, as he made his selection. He glanced up after a moment.
"Olga, if you don't swallow that stuff soon, I shall be—annoyed with you."
She raised it at once to her lips, feeling as if she had no choice, and drank with shuddering distaste.
"I always have hated sal volatile," she said, as she finished the draught.
"You can't have everything you like in this world," returned Max sententiously. "Come over here by the window! Now you are to do exactly what I tell you. Understand? Put your own judgment in abeyance. Yes, I know it's bleeding; but you needn't shudder like that. Give me your hand!" She gave it, trembling. He held it firmly, looking straight into her quivering face. "We won't proceed," he said, "until you have quite recovered your self-control, or you may go and slit a large vein, which would be awkward for us both. Just stand still and pull yourself together."
She found herself obliged to obey. The shrewd green eyes watched her mercilessly, and under their unswerving regard her agitation gradually died down.
"That's better," he said at length, and released her hand. "Now see what you can do."
It seemed to Olga later that he took so keen an interest in the operation as to be quite insensible of the pain it involved. She obeyed his instructions herself with a set face and a quaking heart, suppressing a sick shudder from time to time, finally achieving the desired end with a face so ghastly that the victim of her efforts laughed outright.
"Whom are you most sorry for, yourself or me?" he wanted to know. "I say, please don't faint till you have bandaged me up! I can't attend to you properly if you do, and I shall probably spill blood over you and make a beastly mess."
Again his insistence carried the day. Olga bandaged the torn hand without a murmur.
"And now," said Dr. Max Wyndham, "tell me what you did it for!"
She looked at him then with quick defiance. She had endured much in silence, mainly because she had known that she had deserved it; but there was a limit. She was not going to be brought to book as though she had been a naughty child.
"You had yourself alone to thank for it," she declared with indignation. "If—if you hadn't interfered and behaved intolerably, it wouldn't have happened."
"What a naïve way of expressing it!" said Max. "Shall I tell you how I regard the 'happening'?"
"You can do as you like," she flung back. She was longing to go, but stood her ground lest departure should look like flight.
Max took out and lighted another cigarette before he spoke again. Then: "I regard it," he said very deliberately, "as a piece of spiteful mischief for which you deserve a sound whipping—which it would give me immense pleasure to administer."
Olga's pale face flamed scarlet. Her eyes flashed up to his in fiery disdain.
"You!" she said, with withering scorn. "You!"
"Well, what about me?"
Carelessly, his hands in his pockets, Max put the question. Quite obviously he did not care in the smallest degree what answer she made. And so Olga, being stung to rage by his unbearable superiority, cast scruples to the wind.
"I'd do the same to you again—and worse," she declared vindictively, "if I got the chance!"
Max smiled at that superciliously, one corner of his mouth slightly higher than the other. "Oh, no, you wouldn't," he said. "For one thing, you wouldn't care to run the risk of having to sew me up again. And for another, you wouldn't dare!"
"Not dare! Do you think I am afraid of you?"
Olga stood in a streak of sunlight that slanted through the wire blind of the doctor's surgery and fell in chequers upon her white dress. Her pale eyes fairly blazed. No one who had ever seen her thus would have described her as colourless. She was as vivid in that moment as the flare of the sunset; and into the eyes of the man who leaned against the table coolly appraising her there came an odd little gleam of satisfaction—the gleam that comes into the eyes of the treasure-hunter at the first glint of gold.
Olga came a step towards him. She saw the gleam and took it for ridicule. The situation was intolerable. She would be mocked no longer.
"Dr. Wyndham," she said, her voice pitched rather low, "do you call yourself a gentleman?"
"I really don't know," he answered. "It's a question I've never asked myself."
"Because," she said, speaking rather quickly, "I think you a cad."
"Not really!" said Max, smiling openly. "Now I wonder why! Sit down, won't you, and tell me?"
The colour was fading from her face again. She had made a mistake in thus assailing him, and already she knew it. He only laughed at her puny efforts to hurt him, laughed and goaded her afresh.
"Why am I not a gentleman?" he asked, and drew in a mouthful of smoke which he puffed at the ceiling. "Because I said I should like to give you a whipping? But you would like to tar and feather me, I gather. Isn't that even more barbarous?" He watched the smoke ascend, with eyes screwed up, then, as she did not speak, looked down at her again.
She no longer stood in the sunlight, and the passing of the splendour seemed to have left her cold. She looked rather small and pinched—there was even a hint of forlornness about her. But she had learned her lesson.
As he looked at her, she clenched her hands, drew a deep breath, and spoke. "Dr. Wyndham, I beg your pardon for hurting you, and for being rude to you. I can't help my thoughts, of course, but I was wrong to put them into words. Please forget—all I've said!"
"Oh, I say!" said Max, opening his eyes, "that's the cruellest thing you've done yet. You've taken all the wind out of my sails, and left me stranded. What is one expected to say to an apology of that sort? It's outside my experience entirely."
Olga had turned to the door, but at his words she paused, looking back.
A glimmer of resentment still shone in her eyes.
"If I were in your place," she said, "I should apologize too."
"Oh, no, you wouldn't," said Max. "Not if you wished to achieve the desired effect. You see, I've nothing to apologize for."
"How like a man!" exclaimed Olga.
"Yes, isn't it? Thanks for the compliment! Strange to say, I am much more like a man than anything else under the sun. I say, are you really going? Well, I forgive you for being naughty, if that's what you want. And I'm sorry I can't grovel to you, but I don't feel justified in so doing, and it would be very bad for you in any case. By the way—er—Miss Ratcliffe, I think you will be interested to learn that my visit to the Campions was of a social and not of a professional character. That was all you wanted to know, I think?"
Olga, holding the door open, looked across at him with surprise that turned almost instantly to half-scornful enlightenment.
"Oh, that's it, is it?" she said.
"That's it," said Max. "Quite sure you don't want to know anything else?"
Again he puffed the smoke upwards and watched it ascend.
"Why on earth couldn't you have said so before?" said Olga.
He turned at that and surveyed her quite seriously. "Oh, that was entirely for your sake," he said.
"For my sake!" said Olga. Sheer curiosity impelled her to remain and probe this mystery.
"Yes," said Max, with a sudden twinkle in his green eyes. "You know, it isn't good for little girls to know too much."
As the door banged upon her retreat, he leaned back, holding to the edge of the table, and laughed with his chin in the air.
Life in the country, notwithstanding its many drawbacks, was turning out to be more diverting than he had anticipated.
"Ah, my dear, there you are! I was just wondering if I would come over and see you."
Violet Campion reined in her horse with a suddenness that made him chafe indignantly, and leaned from the saddle to greet Olga, who had just turned in at the Priory gates.
Olga was bicycling. She sprang from her machine, and reached up an impetuous hand, as regardless of the trampling animal as its rider.
"Pluto is in a tiresome mood to-day," remarked his mistress. "I know he won't be satisfied till he has had a good beating. Perhaps you will go on up to the house while I give him a lesson."
"Oh, don't beat him!" Olga pleaded. "He's only fresh."
"No, he isn't. He's vicious. He snapped at me before I mounted. It's no good postponing it. He'll have to have it." Violet spoke as if she were discussing the mechanism of a machine. "You go on up the drive, my dear, while I take him across the turf."
But Olga lingered. "Violet, really—I know he will throw you or bolt with you. I wish you wouldn't."
Violet's laugh had a ring of scorn. "My dear child, if I were afraid of that, I had better give up riding him altogether."
"I wish you would," said Olga. "He is much too strong for a woman to manage."
Violet laughed again, this time with sheer amusement, and then, with dark eyes that flashed in the sunlight, she slashed the animal's flank with her riding-whip. He uttered a snort that was like an exclamation of rage, and leaped clean off the ground. Striking it again, he reared, but received a stinging cut over the ears that brought him down. Then furiously he kicked and plunged, catching the whip all over his glossy body, till with a furious squeal he flung himself forward and galloped headlong away.
Olga stood on the drive and watched with lips slightly compressed. She knew that as an exhibition of skilled horsemanship the spectacle she had just witnessed was faultless; but it gave her no pleasure, and there was no admiration in the eyes that followed the distant galloping figure with the merciless whip that continued active as long as she could see it.
As horse and rider passed from sight beyond a clump of trees, she remounted her bicycle, and rode slowly towards the house.
Old and grey and weather-stained, the walls of Brethaven Priory shone in the hot sunlight. It had been built in Norman days a full mile and a half inland; but more than the mile had disappeared in the course of the crumbling centuries, and only a stretch of gleaming hillside now intervened between it and the sea. The wash and roar of the Channel and the crying of gulls swept over the grass-clad space as though already claim had been laid to the old grey building that had weathered so many gales. Undoubtedly the place was doomed. There was something eerily tragic about it even on that shining August afternoon, a shadow indefinable of which Olga had been conscious even in her childish days.
She looked over her shoulder several times as she rode in the direction in which her friend had disappeared, but she saw no sign of her. Finally, reaching the house, she went round to a shed at the back, in which she was accustomed to lodge her bicycle.
Here she was joined by an immense Irish wolf-hound, who came from the region of the stables to greet her.
She stopped to fondle him. She and Cork were old friends. As she finally returned to the carriage-drive in front of the house, he accompanied her.
The front door stood open, and she went in through its Gothic archway, glad to escape from the glare outside. The great hall she thus entered had been the chapel in the days of the monks, and it had the clammy atmosphere of a vault. Passing in from the brilliant sunshine, Olga felt actually cold.
It was dark also, the only light, besides that from the open door, proceeding from a stained-glass window at the farther end—a gruesome window representing in vivid colours the death of St. John the Baptist.
A carved oak chest, long and low, stood just within, and upon this the girl seated herself, with the great dog close beside her. Her ten-mile bicycle ride in the heat had tired her.
There was no sound in the house save the ticking of an invisible clock. It might have been a place bewitched, so intense and so uncanny was the silence, broken only by that grim ticking that sounded somehow as if it had gone on exactly the same for untold ages.
"What a ghostly old place it is, Cork!" Olga remarked to her companion.
"And you actually spend the night here! I can't think how you dare."
In response to which Cork smiled with a touch of superiority and gave her to understand that he was too sensible to be afraid of shadows.
They were still sitting there conversing, with their faces to the sunlit garden, when there came the sound of a careless footfall and Violet Campion, her riding-whip dangling from her wrist, strolled round the corner of the house, and in at the open door.
She was laughing as she came, evidently at some joke that clung to her memory.
"Look at me!" she said. "I'm all foam. But I've conquered his majesty King Devil for once. He's come back positively abject. My dear, do get up! You're sitting on my coffin!"
Olga got up quickly. "Violet, what extraordinary things you think of!"
The other girl laughed again, and stooping raised the oaken lid. "It's not in the least extraordinary. Look inside, and picture to yourself how comfy I shall be! You can come and see me if you like, and spread flowers—red ones, mind. I like plenty of colour."
She dropped the lid again carelessly, and took a gold cigarette-case from her pocket. The sunlight shone generously upon her at that moment, and Olga Ratcliffe told herself for the hundredth time that this friend of hers was the loveliest girl she had ever seen. Certainly her beauty was superb, of the Spanish-Irish type that is world-famous—black hair that clustered in soft ringlets about the forehead, black brows very straight and delicate, skin of olive and rose, features so exquisite as to make one marvel, long-lashed eyes that were neither black nor grey, but truest, deepest violet.
"Don't look at me like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that he rushes in where angels fear to tread? It's rather an apt description. How is he, by the way? And why didn't you bring him too?"
She stood on the step, with the sunlight pouring over her, and daintily smoked her cigarette. Olga came and stood beside her. They formed a wonderful contrast—a contrast that might have seemed cruel but for the keen intelligence that gave such vitality to the face of the doctor's daughter.
"Oh, Nick is playing cricket with the boys," she said. "He is wonderfully good, you know, and takes immense care of us all."
"A positive paragon, my dear! Don't I know it? A pity he saw fit to throw himself away upon that very lethargic young woman! I should have made him a much more suitable wife—if he had only had the sense to wait a few years instead of snatching the first dark-eyed damsel who came his way!"
"Oh, really, Violet! And fancy calling Muriel lethargic! She is one of the deepest people I know, and absolutely devoted to Nick—and he to her."
"Doubtless! doubtless!" Violet flicked the ash delicately from her cigarette. "I am sure he is the soul of virtue. But how comes it that the devoted Muriel can tear herself from his side to go a-larking on the Continent with the grim and masterful Dr. Jim?"
"Oh, I thought you knew that. It is for the child's benefit. Poor little Reggie has a delicate chest, and Redlands doesn't altogether suit him. Dad positively ordered him abroad, and when Muriel demurred about taking him out of Dad's reach (she has such faith in him, you know), he arranged to go too if Nick would leave Redlands and come and help me keep house. You see, Dad couldn't very well leave me to look after Dr. Wyndham singlehanded."
"My dear, of course not!" Up went the violet eyes in horror at the bare suggestion. "You scandalize me. An innocent child like you! Not to be thought of for a moment! Rather than that, I would have come and shared the burden with you myself!"
"That's exactly what I have come to ask you to do," said Olga eagerly.
"Do say you can! You can't think how welcome you will be!"
"My dear, you're so impetuous!" Violet was just a year her junior, but this fact was never recognized. "Pray give me time to deliberate. You forget that I also have a family to consider. What will Bruce say if I desert him at a moment's notice?"
"I'm sure Bruce won't mind. Can't we go and ask him?"
"Presently, my child. He is not at home just at present. Neither is Mrs. Bruce." The daintiest grimace in the world testified to the opinion entertained by the speaker for the latter. "Moreover, Bruce and I had a difference of opinion this morning and are not upon speaking terms. So unfortunate that he is so difficile. By the way, he is hand and glove with the new assistant. Were you aware of that?"
"I knew that he came to tea here yesterday," said Olga.
"Oh! And how did you find that out?"
"He told me."
"You mean you asked him!"
"Indeed, I didn't!" Olga refuted the charge with indignation. "I don't take the smallest interest in his doings."
"Not really?" Her friend looked at her with a comprehending smile.
"Don't you like the young man?" she enquired.
"I detest him!" Olga declared with vehemence.
Again the slender little finger flicked the ash from the cigarette. "But what a mistake, dear!" murmured the owner thereof. "Young men don't grow on every gooseberry bush. Besides, one can never tell! The object of one's detestation might turn out to be the one and only, and it's so humiliating to have to change one's mind."
"I shall never change mine with regard to Dr. Wyndham," Olga said with great determination. "I should hate him quite as badly even if he were the only man in the world."
But at that the cigarette was suddenly whisked from the soft lips and pointed full at her. "Allegro,"—it was Violet Campion's special name for her, and she uttered it weightily—"mark my words and ponder them well! You have met your fate!"
"Violet! How dare you say such a thing?" Olga turned crimson with indignant protest. "I haven't! I wouldn't! It's horrid of you to talk like that!"
"Quite indecent, dear, I admit. But have you never noticed how indecent the truth can be? What a pity to waste such a lovely blush on me! I presume he hasn't begun to make love to you yet?"
"Of course he hasn't! No man would be such a fool with you within reach!" thrust back Olga, goaded to self-defence.
"But I am not within reach," said Violet, with a twirl of the cigarette.
"Far more so than I," returned Olga with spirit. "Anyhow, he never went out of his way to have tea with me."
A peal of laughter from her companion put a swift end to her indignation. Violet was absolutely irresistible when she laughed. It was utterly impossible to be indignant with her.
"Then you think if I am there perhaps he will be persuaded to stay at home to tea?" she chuckled mischievously. "Well, my dear, I'll come, and we will play at battledore and shuttlecock to your heart's content. But if the young man turns and rends us for our pains—and I have a shrewd notion that that's the sort of young man he is—you mustn't blame me."
She tossed away her cigarette with the words, and turned inwards, sweeping Olga with her with characteristic energy. She was never still for long in this mood.
They passed through the great hall to a Gothic archway in the south wall, close to the wonderful stained window. Olga glanced up at it with a slight shiver as she passed below.
"Isn't it horribly realistic?" she said.
The girl beside her laughed lightly. "I rather like it myself; but then I have an appetite for the horrors. And they've made the poor man so revoltingly sanctimonious that one really can't feel sorry for him. I'd cut off the head of anybody with a face like that. It's a species that still exists, but ought to have been exterminated long ago."
With her hand upon Olga's arm, she led her through the Gothic archway to a second smaller hall, and on up a wide oak staircase with a carved balustrade that was lighted half-way up by another great window of monastic design but clear glass.
Olga always liked to pause by this window, for the view from it was magnificent. Straight out to the open sea it looked, and the width of the outlook was superb.
"Oh, it's better than Redlands," she said.
"I don't think so," returned Violet. "Redlands is civilized. This isn't. Picture to yourself the cruelty of bottling up a herd of monks here in full view of their renounced liberty. Imagine being condemned to pass this window a dozen times in the day, on the way to that dreary chapel of theirs. A refinement of torture with which the window downstairs simply can't compete. How they must have hated the smell of the sea, poor dears! But I daresay they didn't open their windows very often. It wasn't the fashion in those days."
She drew Olga on to the corridor above, and so to her own room, a cheerful apartment that faced the Priory grounds.
"If I am really coming to stay with you, I suppose I must pack some clothes. Does the young man dress for dinner, by the way?"
"Oh, yes. It's very ridiculous. We all do it now. It's such a waste of time," said the practical Olga. "And I never have anything to wear."
"Poor child! That is a drawback certainly. I wonder if you could wear any of my things. I shouldn't like to eclipse you."
"I'm sure I couldn't, thank you all the same." Olga's reply was very prompt. "As to eclipsing me, you'll do that in any case, whatever you wear."
Violet looked at her with dancing eyes. "I believe you actually want to be eclipsed! What on earth has the young man been doing? He seems to have scared you very effectually."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of him!" Olga spoke with her chin in the air. "But I detest him with all my heart, and he detests me."
"In fact, you are at daggers drawn," commented Violet. "And you want me to come and divert the enemy's attention while you strengthen your defences. Well, my dear, as I said before, I'll come. But—from what I have seen of Dr. Maxwell Wyndham—I don't think I shall make much impression. If he means to gobble you up, he certainly will do so, whether I interfere or not. I've a notion you might do worse, green eyes and red hair notwithstanding. He will probably whip you soundly now and then and put you in the corner till you are good. But you will get to like that in time. And I daresay he will be kind enough to let you lace up his boots for a treat in between whiles."
Olga's pale eyes flashed. "You are positively mad this afternoon,
Violet!"
"Oh, no, I'm not. I haven't had a mad spell for a long time. I am only extraordinarily shrewd and far-seeing. Well, dear, what shall I bring to wear? Do you think I shall be appreciated in my red silk? Or will that offend the eye of the virtuous Nick?"
"No, you are not to wear that red thing. Wear white. I like you best in white."
"And black?"
"Yes, black too. But not colours. You are too beautiful for colours."
"Ridiculous child! That red thing, as you call it, suits me to perfection."
"I know it does. But I don't like it. You make me think of Lady Macbeth in that. Besides, it's much too splendid for ordinary occasions. Yes, that pale mauve is exquisite. You will look lovely in that. And this maize suits you too. But you look positively dangerous in red."
"I must leave the business of selection to you, it seems," laughed Violet. "Well, I am to be your guest, so you shall make your own choice. By the way, how shall I get to Weir? Mrs. Bruce has the car, and will probably not return till late. And Bruce is using the dog-cart. That only leaves the luggage-cart for me."
"I'll fly round to Redlands for the motor. Nick won't mind. You get your things packed while I'm gone."
Olga deposited an armful of her friend's belongings upon the bed, and turned to go.
Nick's property of Redlands was less than a mile away, and all that Nick possessed was at her disposal. In fact, she had almost come to look upon Redlands as a second home. It would not take her long to run across to the garage and fetch the little motor which Nick himself had taught her years ago to drive. Lightly she ran down the oak stairs and through the echoing hall once more. The vault-like chill of the place struck her afresh as she passed to the open door. And again involuntarily she shivered, quickening her steps, eager to leave the clammy atmosphere behind.
Passing into the hot sunshine beyond the great nail-studded door was like entering another world. She turned her face up to the brightness and rejoiced.
Redlands had always been a bower of delight to Olga's vivid fancy. The house, long, low, and rambling, stood well back from the cliffs in the midst of a garden which to her childhood's mind had always been the earthly presentment of Paradise. Not the owner of it himself loved it as did Olga. Many were the hours she had spent there, and not one of them but held a treasured place in her memory.
As she turned in at the iron gate, the music of the stream that ran through the glen rose refreshingly through the August stillness. She wished Nick were with her to enjoy it too.
The temptation to run down to the edge of the water was irresistible. It babbled with such delicious coolness between its ferns. The mossy pathway gleamed emerald green. Surely there was no need for haste! She could afford to give herself five minutes in her paradise. Violet certainly would not be ready yet.
She sat down therefore on the edge of the stream, and gave herself up to the full enjoyment of her surroundings. An immense green dragon-fly whirred past her and shot away into the shadows. She watched its flight with fascinated eyes, so sudden was it, so swift, and so unerringly direct. It reminded her of something, she could not remember what. She wrestled with her memory vainly, and finally dismissed the matter with slight annoyance, turning her attention to a wonderful coloured moth that here flitted across her line of vision. It was an exquisite thing, small, but red as coral. Only in this fairyland of Nick's had she ever seen its like. Lightly it fluttered through the chequered light and shade above the water, shining like a jewel above the shallows, the loveliest thing in sight. And then, even under her watching eyes came tragedy. Swift as an arrow, the green dragon-fly darted back again, and in an instant flashed away. In that instant the coral butterfly vanished also.
Olga exclaimed in incredulous horror. The happening had been too quick for her eyes to follow, but her comprehension leaped to the truth. And in that moment she realized what it was of which the dragon-fly reminded her. It was of Max Wyndham sitting on the surgery-table watching her with that mocking gleam in his green eyes, as though he knew her to be at his mercy whether she stayed or fled.
It was unreasonable of course, but that fairy tragedy in the glen increased her dislike of the man a hundredfold. She felt as if he had darted into her life, armed in some fashion with the power to destroy. And she longed almost passionately to turn him out; for no disturbing force had ever entered there before. But she knew that she could not.
She went on up to the house in sober mood. It had been left to the care of the servants since Nick's departure. She found a French window standing open, and entered. It was the drawing-room, all swathed in brown holland. Its dim coolness was very different from the stony chill of the Priory. She looked around her with a restful feeling of being at home, despite the brown coverings. Many were the happy hours she had spent here both before and after Nick's marriage. It had always been her palace of delight.
As she paused in the room, she remembered that there was a book Nick had said he wanted out of the library. This room was a somewhat recent addition to the house and shut away from the rest of the building by a long passage. She passed from the drawing-room, and made her way thither.
It surprised her a little to find the door standing open, but it was only a passing wonder. The light that came in through green sun-blinds made her liken it in her own mind to a chamber under the sea. She went to a book-shelf in a dark corner, and commenced her hunt.
"If you are looking for Farrow's Treatise on Party Government," remarked a casual voice behind her, "I've got it here."
Olga started violently. Any voice would have given her a surprise at that moment, but the voice of Max Wyndham was an absolute shock that set every nerve on edge.
He laughed at her from the sofa, on which he sprawled at length. "My good child, your nerves are like fiddle-strings after a frost. Remind me to make you up a tonic when we get back! Did you bicycle over?"
Olga ignored the question. She was for the moment too angry to speak.
"Sit down," he said. "You ought to know better than to scorch on a day like this. You deserve a sunstroke."
"I didn't scorch," declared Olga, stung by this injustice. "I'm not such an idiot. You seem to think I haven't any sense at all!"
"My thoughts are my own," said Max. "Why didn't you say you were coming?
You could have motored over with me."
"I didn't so much as know you would be in this direction. How could I?" said Olga. "And even if I had known—" she, paused.
"You would have preferred sunstroke?" he suggested.
"That I can quite believe. Well, here is the book!" He swung his legs off the sofa. "I dropped in to fetch it myself, as your good uncle seemed to want it, and then became so absorbed in its pages that I couldn't put it down. We seem to have a rotten Constitution altogether. Wonder whose fault it is."
Olga took the book with a slight, contemptuous glance. That he had been interested in the subject for a single moment she did not believe. She wondered that he deemed it worth his while to feign interest.
"Are you taking a holiday to-day?" she enquired bluntly.
He smiled at that. "I cut off an old man's toe at the cottage hospital this morning, vaccinated four babies, pulled out a tooth, and dressed a scald. What more would you have? I suppose you don't want to be vaccinated by any chance?"
Olga passed the flippant question over. "It's a half-holiday then, is it?" she said.
"Well, as it happens, fair lady, it is, all thanks to Dame Stubbs of 'The Ship Inn' who summoned me hither with great urgency and then was ungrateful enough to die before I reached her."
"Oh!" exclaimed Olga. "Is old Mrs. Stubbs dead?"
"She is," said Max.
She turned upon him. "And you've just come—from her death-bed?"
He arose and stretched himself. "Even so, fair lady."
Olga stared at him incredulously. "You actually—don't care?" she asked slowly.
"Not much good caring," said Max.
"What did she die of?" questioned Olga.
He hesitated for a second. Then, "cancer," he said briefly.
"Did she suffer much?" She asked the question nervously as if she feared the answer.
"It doesn't matter, does it?" said Max, thrusting his hands into his pockets.
"I don't see why you shouldn't tell me that." Olga spoke with a flash of indignation. "It does matter in my opinion."
"Nothing that's past matters," said Max.
"I don't agree with you!" Hotly she made answer, inexplicably hurt by his callous tone. "It matters a lot to me. She was a friend of mine. If I had known she was seriously ill, I'd have gone to see her. You—I think you might have told me."