The Tempting of Tavernake Part 12

"Do you really mean that this Mrs. Wenham Gardner is not a person of substance?" he inquired.

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders.

"She is the wife of a man who had the reputation of being very wealthy,"

she replied. "She has no money of her own, I am sure."

"She still lives with her husband, I suppose?" Tavernake asked.

Beatrice closed her eyes.

"I know very little about her," she declared. "Last time I heard, he had disappeared, gone away, or something of the sort."

"And she has no money," Tavernake persisted, "except what she gets from him? No settlement, even, or anything of that sort?"

"Nothing at all," Beatrice answered.

"This is very bad news," Tavernake remarked, thinking gloomily of his wasted day. "It will be a great disappointment to Mr. Dowling. Why, her motor-car was magnificent, and she talked as though money were no object at all. I suppose you are quite sure of what you are saying?"

Beatrice shrugged her shoulders.

"I ought to know," she answered, grimly, "for she is my sister."

Tavernake remained quite motionless for a minute, without speech; it was his way of showing surprise. When he was sure that he had grasped the import of her words, he spoke again.

"Your sister!" he repeated. "There is a likeness, of course. You are dark and she is fair, but there is a likeness. That would account," he continued, "for her anxiety to find you."

"It also accounts," Beatrice replied, with a little break of the lips, "for my anxiety that she should not find me. Leonard," she added, touching his hand for a moment with hers, "I wish that I could tell you everything, but there are things behind, things so terrible, that even to you, my dear brother, I could not speak of them."

Tavernake rose to his feet and lit a cigarette--a new habit with him, while Beatrice busied herself with a small coffee-making machine. He sat in an easy-chair and smoked slowly. He was still wearing his ready-made clothes, but his collar was of the fashionable shape, his tie well chosen and neatly adjusted. He seemed somehow to have developed.

"Beatrice," he asked, "what am I to tell your sister to-morrow?"

She shivered as she set his coffee-cup down by his side.

"Tell her, if you will, that I am well and not in want," she answered.

"Tell her, too, that I refuse to send my address. Tell her that the one aim of my life is to keep the knowledge of my whereabouts a secret from her."

Tavernake relapsed into silence. He was thinking. Mysteries had no attraction for him--he loathed them. Against this one especially he felt a distinct grudge. Nevertheless, some instinct forbade his questioning the girl.

"Apart from more personal matters, then," he asked after some time, "you would not advise me to enter into any business negotiations with this lady?"

"You must not think of it," Beatrice replied, firmly. "So far as money is concerned, Elizabeth has no conscience whatever. The things she wants in life she will have somehow, but it is all the time at other people's expense. Some day she will have to pay for it."

Tavernake sighed.

"It is very unfortunate," he declared. "The commission on the letting of Grantham House would have been worth having."

"After all, it is only your firm's loss," she reminded him.

"It does not appeal to me like that," he continued. "So long as I am manager for Dowling & Spence, I feel these things personally. However, that does not matter. I am afraid it is a disagreeable subject for you, and we will not talk about it any longer."

She lit a cigarette with a little gesture of relief. She came once more to his side.

"Leonard," she said, "I know that I am treating you badly in telling you nothing, but it is simply because I do not want to descend to half truths. I should like to tell you all or nothing. At present I cannot tell you all."

"Very well," he replied, "I am quite content to leave it with you to do as you think best."

"Leonard," she continued, "of course you think me unreasonable. I can't help it. There are things between my sister and myself the knowledge of which is a constant nightmare to me. During the last few months of my life it has grown to be a perfect terror. It sent me into hiding at Blenheim House, it reconciled me even to the decision I came to that night on the Embankment. I had decided that sooner than go back, sooner than ask help from her or any one connected with her, I would do what I tried to do the time when you saved my life."

Tavernake looked at her wonderingly. She was, indeed, under the spell of some deep emotion. Her memory seemed to have carried her back into another world, somewhere far away from this dingy little sitting-room which they two were sharing together, back into a world where life and death were matters of small moment, where the great pa.s.sions were unchained, and men and women moved among the naked things of life.

Almost he felt the thrill of it. It was something new to him, the touch of a magic finger upon his eyelids. Then the moment pa.s.sed and he was himself again, matter-of-fact, prosaic.

"Let us dismiss the subject finally," he said. "I must see your sister on business to-morrow, but it shall be for the last time."

"I think," she murmured, "that you will be wise."

He crossed the room and returned with a newspaper.

"I saw your music in the hall as I came in," he remarked. "Are you singing to-night?"

The question was entirely in his ordinary tone. It brought her back to the world of every-day things as nothing else could have done.

"Yes; isn't it luck?" she told him. "Three in one week. I only heard an hour ago."

"A city dinner?" he inquired.

"Something of the sort," she replied. "I am to be at the Whitehall Rooms at ten o'clock. If you are tired, Leonard, please let me go alone. I really do not mind. I can get a 'bus to the door, there and back again."

"I am not tired," he declared. "To tell you the truth, I scarcely know what it is to be tired. I shall go with you, of course."

She looked at him with a momentary admiration of his powerful frame, his strong, forceful face.

"It seems too bad," she remarked, "after a long day's work to drag you out again."

He smiled.

"I really like to come," he a.s.sured her. "Besides," he added, after a moment's pause, "I like to hear you sing."

"I wonder if you mean that?" she asked, looking at him curiously. "I have watched you once or twice when I have been singing to you. Do you really care for it?"

"Certainly I do. How can you doubt it? I do not," he continued, slowly, "understand music, or anything of that sort, of course, any more than I do the pictures you take me to see, and some of the books you talk about. There are lots of things I can't get the hang of entirely, but they all leave a sort of pleasure behind. One feels it even if one only half appreciates."

She came over to his chair.

"I am glad," she said, a little wistfully, "that there is one thing I do which you like."

He looked at her reprovingly.