The Red Derelict Part 16

"The young lady's in the morning room, sir," said the footman. "I put her in there, sir, because she said she'd come on a matter of business, and hoped no one else would come in."

"Quite right," said Wagram.

Delia rose as he entered. She did not put forth her hand, and did not seem to expect him to. She was busying herself extracting something from an envelope, and he noticed that her hands shook.

"I would have been over about this the first thing this morning," she began, speaking quickly, "but my tyres were punctured. I did not want to lose a moment. But"--looking up--"it was not you I came to see, it was your father."

"Won't I do as well, Miss Calmour? Any matter of business is all within my province."

"Well, then, it is about this," exhibiting the letter of demand and the cheque. Wagram felt himself growing grim.

"Has any mistake been made in the drawing of it?" he asked, bending over to look at it. She caught at the word.

"Mistake? The whole thing is a mistake, and worse. Mr Wagram, will you believe me when I a.s.sure you upon my honour that until I received these two enclosures this morning I knew no more about this than--than, well-- than if I had never been born?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"Don't you? Oh, you do make it hard," with a little stamp of the foot.

"Well, then, this claim was never made by me--never--and until this morning I did not know it had been made at all."

"Well, but--if you were hurt that time why not accept a little--er-- compensation?"

"Hurt that time? I would be hurt now, if I were not too ashamed, that you should think me capable of such a thing. Even if I had been half killed I would not have--have--done--what has been done. Compensation!

Look!"

She tore the cheque twice across, and laid the fragments on the table before him, together with the letter of demand.

"Now, will you believe that my hands are entirely clean in the matter?

The moment I received this I never had a moment's doubt as to the course I should pursue. That is the outcome." And she pointed to the torn cheque.

She looked very pretty standing there--her breast heaving in her excitement, her eyes brightened, and the colour coming and going in her face--very pretty and appealing.

"Certainly I believe you," said Wagram, who now, as by an inspiration, saw through the whole sordid affair; "and I don't think you need go to the trouble of explaining it any further, for I can quite see how it happened."

"But I must explain a little. Oh, Mr Wagram, my father is not well, not always quite responsible. His health is weak, and he has had a great deal of trouble, and might do what he would never have dreamed of doing when he was a younger and stronger man; and the temptation, I suppose, was too great."

Her voice tailed off into a sob, and Wagram felt a great wave of pity overwhelm him as he looked at this girl, who now more than ever struck him as far too good for her sordid surroundings. Her laboured apology for her rascally old parent, too, had sent her up a hundred per cent, in his estimation, but as an excuse for the old sot it weighed not with him at all. The attempted blackmailing had been too flagrant, too outrageous, but to find that Delia was entirely innocent of it afforded him more satisfaction than he could have believed.

"Sit down, sit down. Why have you been standing all this time?" he said gently; and the tone was too much for poor Delia, who broke down utterly, and wept.

"There, there, now. Don't give way over nothing," he went on. "A mistake has been made, and put right again, that's all. Meanwhile you must accept my sincere apologies for my side of it."

"Apologies! Mr Wagram, don't. Apologies! Why, I have been feeling as if I could never look you in the face again."

"But you don't feel that any more, of course not. Now, I know my father would like to see you, so I will let him know you are here, if you will excuse me for a minute or two."

As the door closed on him Delia brushed away her tears, and then did an inexplicable, a foolish thing. She rose and pressed her lips to the table, on the spot where his hand had rested during the interview.

"And they would have had me extort money from him, blackmail him!" she said to herself. "Faugh! what a horrible word. But the whole thing was horrible, shameful. Oh, but the tactfulness of him! It was wonderful.

No wonder such people seem to reckon themselves a separate order of being. They are."

Meanwhile Wagram had found the old Squire in the library.

"The poor girl had no hand in it after all," he said. "It appears she knew nothing about it until this morning, when she received the cheque.

The whole thing was got up by her rascally father without her knowledge."

"Of course. But now that it's within her knowledge she won't find a thousand pounds come in badly," was the somewhat testy answer.

"She tore up the cheque of her own accord under my eyes."

"What? Did she? That looks genuine, Wagram. By George, that looks genuine. Fancy anything Calmour refusing a thousand pounds--or even a hundred! Good heavens! is the world coming to an end?"

"Well, she's done it anyhow. I want you to come in and see her, father, and put her at her ease. She's genuinely distressed that we should have thought so badly of her, and all that."

"By the way, does she know of the trouncing you gave that precious blackguard of a brother of hers?"

"I haven't told her. If she knows I expect she thinks he richly deserved it. I fancy she's that sort of girl."

The blend of the courtly and the paternal in the old Squire's manner was charming, and soon Delia was quite at ease with herself and her surroundings. Then they showed her over the historic parts of the house, and she gazed with awed delight at the great staircase with its twisted stone banister and the gallery hung with family portraits and old war trophies.

"Oh, but this is perfection," cried the girl as she leaned out of one of the high windows to gaze upon the panorama unfolded beneath. Miles and miles of it lay outspread in the sunlight--green meadow and dark fir covert, cloud-like ma.s.ses of feathery elms and hawthorn hedgerows, with here and there a gleam of silver, as a winding of the river broke into view. Then, from far and near, a chorus of song thrushes and the joyous sound of a cuckoo lent the finishing touch to this fairest of English landscapes.

"That spire away there beyond the dark line is Fulkston, near Haldane's place," went on Wagram, in the course of pointing out to her the various landmarks.

"Is it? What a delightful day that was. Isn't Miss Haldane perfectly sweet? By the way, Mr Wagram, I enjoyed hearing how you thrashed a cad for insulting her."

If the faintest gleam of mirth came into the other's eyes Delia missed its point.

"Oh, I'm not proud of it, I a.s.sure you. If he had been impudent only to me I wouldn't have touched him, for he was no match for me. If it had been any other girl I should have thought I had given the poor devil too much, but it being Yvonne Haldane he insulted it seemed as if he couldn't have enough."

"I most heartily agree," said Delia, and again that curious gleam pa.s.sed across Wagram's face.

"Would you like to see a secret chamber?" he said.

"Wouldn't I? Is it a real secret chamber, opening with a sliding panel, and all that sort of thing?"

"You shall see."

He led the way to a high gallery in an unused part of the house, a trifle gloomy by reason of the few and narrow windows that lighted it from one side. The old Squire had left them early in the investigation, declaring that he did not feel equal to going up and down so many stairs. The girl's nerves were athrill with the delightful air of mystery suggested by the surroundings.

"You haven't asked as to the family ghosts yet," he said, "and it seems strange."

"Strange? Why?"

"Because you are the first within my knowledge to be shown over the house who has not asked about them long before this. Were you keeping it till we got down again?"

"No. I wouldn't have asked such a question. How could I tell but that it might be an unwelcome one?"

It was a small thing, but somehow it seemed to Wagram to argue an uncommon thoughtfulness and delicacy of mind on the part of this girl-- this daughter of a drunken, blackmailing, old ex-army vet.