The Tempting of Tavernake Part 51

"Tell me about last night," Tavernake said. "I suppose I am stupid but I don't quite understand."

"How should you?" she answered. "Listen, then. Wenham, I suppose got tired of being shut up with Mathers, although I am sure I don't see what else was possible. So he waited for his opportunity, and when the man wasn't looking--well, you know what happened," she added, with a shiver.

"He got up to London somehow and made his way to Dover Street."

"Why Dover Street?"

"I suppose you know," Elizabeth explained, "that Wenham has a brother--Jerry--who is exactly like him. These two had rooms in Dover Street always, where they kept some English clothes and a servant. Jerry Gardner was over in London. I knew that, and was expecting to see him every day. Wenham found his way to the rooms, dressed himself in his brother's clothes, even wore his ring and some of his jewelry, which he knew I should recognize, and came here. I believed--yes, I believed all the time," she went on, her voice trembling, "that it was Jerry who was sitting with me. Once or twice I had a sort of terrible shiver. Then I remembered how much they were alike and it seemed to me ridiculous to be afraid. It was not till we got upstairs, till the door was closed behind me, that he turned round and I knew!"

Her head fell suddenly into her hands. It was almost the first sign of emotion. Tavernake a.n.a.lyzed it mercilessly. He knew very well that it was fear, the coward's fear of that terrible moment.

"And now?"

"Now," she went on, more cheerfully, "no one will venture to deny that Wenham is mad. He will be placed under restraint, of course, and the courts will make me an allowance. One thing is absolutely certain, and that is that he will not live a year."

Tavernake half closed his eyes. Was there no sign of his suffering, no warning note of the things which were pa.s.sing out of his life! The woman who smiled upon him seemed to see nothing. The twitching of his fingers, the slight quivering of his face, she thought was because of his fear for her.

"And now," she declared, in a suddenly altered tone, "this is all over and done with. Now you know everything. There are no more mysteries,"

she added, smiling at him delightfully. "It is all very terrible, of course, but I feel as though a great weight had pa.s.sed away. You and I are going to be friends, are we not?"

She rose slowly to her feet and came towards him. His eyes watched her slow, graceful movements as though fascinated. He remembered on that first visit of his how wonderful he had thought her walk. She was still smiling up at him; her fingers fell upon his shoulders.

"You are such a strange person," she murmured. "You aren't a little bit like any of the men I've ever known, any of the men I have ever cared to have as friends. There is something about you altogether different. I suppose that is why I rather like you. Are you glad?"

For a single wild moment Tavernake hesitated. She was so close to him that her hair touched his forehead, the breath from her upturned lips fell upon his cheeks. Her blue eyes were half pleading, half inviting.

"You are going to be my very dear friend, are you not--Leonard?" she whispered. "I do feel that I need some one strong like you to help me through these days."

Tavernake suddenly seized the hands that were upon his shoulders, and forced them back. She felt herself gripped as though by a vice, and a sudden terror seized her. He lifted her up and she caught a glimpse of his wild, set face. Then the breath came through his teeth. He shook all over but the fit had pa.s.sed. He simply thrust her away from him.

"No," he said, "we cannot be friends! You are a woman without a heart, you are a murderess!"

He tore her cheque calmly in pieces and flung them scornfully away. She stood looking at him, breathing quickly, white to the lips though the murder had gone from his eyes.

"Beatrice warned me," he went on; "Pritchard warned me. Some things I saw for myself, but I suppose I was mad. Now I know!"

He turned away. Her eyes followed him wonderingly.

"Leonard," she cried out, "you are not going like this? You don't mean it!"

Ever afterwards his restraint amazed him. He did not reply. He closed both doors firmly behind him and walked to the lift. She came even to the outside door and called down the corridor.

"Leonard, come back for one moment!"

He turned his head and looked at her, looked at her from the corner of the corridor, steadfastly and without speech. Her fingers dropped from the handle of the door. She went back into her room with shaking knees, and began to cry softly. Afterwards she wondered at herself. It was the first time she had cried for many years.

Tavernake walked to the city and in less than half an hour's time found himself in Mr. Martin's office. The lawyer welcomed him warmly.

"I'm jolly glad to see you, Tavernake," he declared. "I hope you've got the money. Sit down."

Tavernake did not sit down; he had forgotten, indeed, to take of his hat.

"Martin," he said, "I am sorry for you. I have been fooled and you have to pay as well as I have. I can't take up the option on the property.

I haven't a penny toward it except my own money, and you know how much that is. You can sell my plots, if you like, and call the money your costs. I've finished."

The lawyer looked at him with wide-open mouth.

"What on earth are you talking about, Tavernake?" he exclaimed. "Are you drunk, by any chance?"

"No, I am quite sober," Tavernake answered. "I have made one or two bad mistakes, that's all. You have a power of attorney for me. You can do what you like with my land, make any terms you please. Good-day!"

"But, Tavernake, look here!" the lawyer protested, springing to his feet. "I say, Tavernake!" he called out.

But Tavernake heard nothing, or, if he heard, he took no notice. He walked out into the street and was lost among the hurrying throngs upon the pavements.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I. NEW HORIZONS

Towards the sky-line, across the level country, stumbling and crawling over the deep-hewn dikes, wading sometimes through the mud-oozing swamp, Tavernake, who had left the small railway terminus on foot, made his way that night steadily seawards, as one pursued by some relentless and indefatigable enemy. Twilight had fallen like a mantle around him, fallen over that great flat region of fens and pastureland and bog.

Little patches of mist, harbingers of the coming obscurity, were being drawn now into the gradual darkness. Lights twinkled out from the far-scattered homesteads. Here and there a dog barked, some lonely bird seeking shelter called to its mate, but of human beings there seemed to be no one in sight save the solitary traveler.

Tavernake was in grievous straits. His clothes were caked with mud, his hair tossed with the wind, his cheeks pale, his eyes set with the despair of that fierce upheaval through which he had pa.s.sed. For many hours the torture which had driven him back towards his birthplace had triumphed over his physical exhaustion. Now came the time, however, when the latter a.s.serted itself. With a half-stifled moan he collapsed. Sheer fatigue induced a brief but merciful spell of uneasy slumber. He lay upon his back near one of the broader dikes, his arms outstretched, his unseeing eyes turned toward the sky. The darkness deepened and pa.s.sed away again before the light of the moon. When at last he sat up, it was a new world upon which he looked, a strange land, moonlit in places, yet full of shadowy somberness. He gazed wonderingly around--for the moment he had forgotten. Then memory came, and with memory once more the stab at his heart. He rose to his feet and went resolutely on his way.

Almost until the dawn he walked, keeping as near as he could to that long monotonous line of telegraph posts, yet avoiding the road as much as possible. With the rising of the sun, he crept into a wayside hovel and lay there hidden for hours. Hunger and thirst seemed like things which had pa.s.sed him by. It was sleep only which he craved, sleep and forgetfulness.

Dusk was falling again before he found himself upon his feet, starting out once more upon this strangely thought-of pilgrimage. This time he kept to the road, plodding along with tired, dejected footsteps, which had in them still something of that restless haste which drove him ceaselessly onward as though he were indeed possessed of some unquiet spirit. He was recovering now, however, a little of his natural common sense. He remembered that he must have food and drink, and he sought them from the wayside public-house like an ordinary traveler, conquering without any apparent effort that first invincible repugnance of his toward the face of any human being. Then on again across this strange land of windmills and spreading plains, until the darkness forced him to take shelter once more. That night he slept like a child. With the morning, the fever had pa.s.sed from his blood. A great wind blew in his face even as he opened his eyes, touched to wakefulness by the morning sun, a wind that came booming over the level places, salt with the touch of the ocean and fragrant with the perfume of many marsh plants. He was coming toward the sea now, and within a very short distance from where he had spent the night, he found a broad, shining river stealing into the land. With eager fingers he stripped himself and plunged in, diving again and again below the surface, swimming with long, lazy strokes backwards and forwards. Afterwards he lay down in the warm, dry gra.s.s, dressed himself slowly, and went on his way. The wind, which had increased now since the early morning, came thundering across the level land, bending the tops of the few scattered trees, sending the sails of the windmills spinning, bringing on its bosom now stronger than ever the flavor of the sea itself, salt and stimulating. Tavernake told himself that this was a new world into which he was coming. He would pa.s.s into its embrace and life would become a new thing.

Towards evening with many a thrill of reminiscence, he descended a steep hill and walked into a queer time-forgotten village, whose scattered red-tiled cottages were built around an arm of the sea. Boldly enough now he entered the one inn which flaunted its sign upon the cobbled street, and, taking a seat in the stone-floored kitchen, ate and drank and bespoke a bed. Later on, he strolled down to the quay and made friends with the few fishermen who were loitering there. They answered his questions readily, although he found it hard at first to pick up again the dialect of which he himself had once made use. The little place was scarcely changed. All progress, indeed, seemed to have pa.s.sed it by. There were a handful of fishermen, a boat-builder and a fish-curer in the village. There was no other industry save a couple of small farmhouses on the outskirts of the place, no railway within twelve miles. Tourists came seldom, excursionists never. In the half contented, half animal-like expression which seemed common to all the inhabitants, Tavernake read easily enough the history of their uneventful days. It was such a shelter as this, indeed, for which he had been searching.

On the second night after his arrival, he walked with the boatbuilder upon the wooden quay. The boatbuilder's name was Nicholls, and he was a man of some means, deacon of the chapel, with a fair connection as a jobbing carpenter, and possessor of the only horse and cart in the place.

"Nicholls," Tavernake said, "you don't remember me, do you?"

The boat-builder shook his head slowly and ponderously.

"There was Richard Tavernake who farmed the low fields," he remarked, reminiscently. "Maybe you're a son of his. Now I come to think of it, he had a boy apprenticed to the carpentering."

"I was the boy," Tavernake answered. "I soon had enough of it and went to London."

"You'm grown out of all knowledge," Nicholls declared, "but I mind you now. So you've been in London all these years?"