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 deluded5 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 complexion6. As she entered she saw Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve with his wife and Gwendoline standing7 in the corner by the big piano. Gwendoline looked pale and preoccupied8, 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 subdued9 and broken. But the judge himself, consoled by his new honours, seemed, as time wore on, to have recovered a trifle of his old blustering10 manner. A knighthood had reassured11 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 Enchanted12 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 infinity13 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 jaw14 dropped suddenly. He grew deadly pale. Words failed his stammering15 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 lurking16 in it a certain gleam of deadly contempt before which the big blustering man himself had quailed17 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 banter19. He bowed, and smiled, and pretended to look arch—look arch, indeed, with that ashen20, 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 obnoxious21 and intruding22 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 severely23. “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 abashed24. 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 shuffled25 and temporized26. “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 pounced27 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 confided28 his movements to Elma? He had warned his daughter time and again not to mention the fact, “for fear of misapprehension,” he said, with shuffling29 eyes askance. It was better nobody should know he had been anywhere near Dartmoor on the day of the accident.
However, there was one consolation30; 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 skulking31 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 spoke32, 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 perorations33. But Elma hadn’t failed to notice either the start or its reason.
“It’s only Mr. Cyril,” she said pointedly34; “not Mr. Guy, Sir Gilbert. The name came very pat, though. I don’t wonder it startled you.”
She was crimson35 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 refreshments36 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 perfectly37 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 confession38 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 mere2 positive evidence. “Perhaps Sir Gilbert made him do it somehow—compelled him, or coerced39 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 manliness40 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 ominously41. Sir Gilbert looked in with a lady on his arm—the inevitable42 dowager who refreshes herself continuously at frequent intervals43 through six hours of entertainment. When he saw those two tête-à-tête, 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 wont44 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 gasp45, 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 murmur18 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 astonishment46. 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 flustered47, called for water in haste, and revived the fainting girl by bathing her temples. At last he took up the cause of the mischief48 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.—GRANVILLE KELMSCOTT.”
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1
recluse
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| n.隐居者 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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palls
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| n.柩衣( pall的名词复数 )；墓衣；棺罩；深色或厚重的覆盖物v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的第三人称单数 ) | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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8
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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9
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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10
blustering
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| adj.狂风大作的，狂暴的v.外强中干的威吓( bluster的现在分词 )；咆哮；（风）呼啸；狂吹 | |
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11
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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12
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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13
infinity
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| n.无限，无穷，大量 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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15
stammering
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的现在分词 ) | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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quailed
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| 害怕，发抖，畏缩( quail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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20
ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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obnoxious
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| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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intruding
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| v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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24
abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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25
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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26
temporized
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| v.敷衍( temporize的过去式和过去分词 )；拖延；顺应时势；暂时同意 | |
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27
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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28
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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29
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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30
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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31
skulking
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| v.潜伏，偷偷摸摸地走动，鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的现在分词 ) | |
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32
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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33
perorations
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| n.（演说等的）结束语，结论( peroration的名词复数 )；夸夸其谈的演说 | |
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34
pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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35
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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36
refreshments
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| n.点心,便餐;(会议后的)简单茶点招 待 | |
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37
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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38
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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39
coerced
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| v.迫使做( coerce的过去式和过去分词 )；强迫；（以武力、惩罚、威胁等手段）控制；支配 | |
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40
manliness
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| 刚毅 | |
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41
ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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42
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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43
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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44
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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45
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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46
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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47
flustered
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| adj.慌张的；激动不安的v.使慌乱，使不安( fluster的过去式和过去分词) | |
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48
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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