Jane Oglander Part 10

"Oh, but, Mrs. Maule, do stretch a point"--Patty's voice was full of earnest entreaty. "They are so anxious to know you! They have heard so much about Rede Place!" She turned appealingly to Wantele, but he looked, as those about him so often saw him look, irritatingly indifferent, almost bored.

Again Mrs. Maule smilingly shook her head.

"If they entertain as much as they are going to do, I'm sure that friends of yours will often be staying with them," Patty said defiantly.

"I do not think that very likely." Mrs. Maule spoke with a touch of scorn in her voice, and Patty Pache felt a wave of anger sweep through her. She had _promised_ her new friends that Mrs. Maule should call at Halnaver House.

"Then you'll be rather surprised to hear that even now there is a man there, that Major Biddell--such an amusing, delightful man--who _does_ know you! Lady Barking wanted to send him over to call. He seemed rather shy about it, but I told him that you and d.i.c.k were always pleased to see people, even when Mr. Maule did not feel up to the exertion."

"I hope, Miss Patty, that you do not often take my name in vain"--there was a touch of severity in d.i.c.k Wantele's voice.

She blushed uncomfortably. "Oh, but it's true!" she cried. "You and Mrs.

Maule often see people when Mr. Maule isn't well!"

As the ladies walked out of the room, Athena lingered a moment at the door. "Please bring them all back to the drawing-room," she whispered hurriedly to Wantele. "I wish to take General Lingard in to Richard myself. Jane asked me to do so in her last letter."

Wantele looked at her musingly. He felt certain Jane had done nothing of the kind. Athena was fond of telling little useful lies. It was a matter of no importance.

Twenty minutes later Athena Maule and Hew Lingard pa.s.sed slowly across the square atrium, which formed the centre of Rede Place.

Save for the white marble presences about them they were alone, alone for the first time since that brief moment of dual solitude in the railway carriage when Lingard had looked at her in cold, mute apology for the scene he had provoked, and which she had perforce witnessed.

The door of the room they were approaching opened, and a man-servant came out with a covered dish in his hand.

"My husband is not quite ready for us," Athena spoke a little breathlessly. She felt excited, wrought up to a high pitch of emotion.

For once Chance, the fickle G.o.ddess, was on her side. "Shall we wait here a few moments?" She led him aside into a deep recess.

Then, when the servant's footsteps had died away, she turned her face up to him and Lingard saw that her beautiful mouth was quivering with feeling, her eyes suffused with tears. So might Andromeda have stood before Perseus when at last unloosened from the cruel rock, the living, eloquent embodiment of pa.s.sionate and innocent shame.

"I want to thank you----" she whispered. "And--and--let me tell you this. Simply to know that there is in this base, hateful world a man who could do what you did for a woman unknown to him, has altered my life, given me courage to go on!"

Mrs. Maule spoke the truth as far as the truth was in her to speak. The incident in the railway carriage had powerfully moved and excited her; she had thought of little else even after Jane Oglander's letter announcing her engagement had come to divert the current of her life.

Nay, the news conveyed in Jane's letter had brought with it the explanation of what had happened. Athena had leapt instinctively on the truth. Her unknown friend--her n.o.ble defender--could have been no other than General Lingard himself, on his way to stay with the Paches.

It was Athena Maule, in her character of Jane Oglander's dearest friend, who had made the quixotic stranger's sword spring from its scabbard. The knowledge had stung; but she was now engaged in drawing the venom out of the sting. It was surely her right to make this remarkable, this famous man value and respect her for herself--not simply for Jane's sake.

"I wish I could have killed the cur!" Lingard's voice was low, but his face had become fierce, tense--the face of a fighter in the thick of battle.

Mrs. Maule was filled with a feeling of exquisite satisfaction. Once more she found life worth living....

But General Lingard must not be allowed to forget Jane Oglander, Athena's friend--Athena's almost sister--the one woman who loved and admired her whole-heartedly, unquestioningly.

"Because of what you did the other day, and--and because of Jane"--her voice shook with excitement--"we must be friends, General Lingard." She held out her hand, and Lingard, taking the slender fingers in his, wrung Athena's hand, and then with a sudden, rather awkward movement he raised it to his lips.

"And now we must go on," she said quietly. "Richard is waiting for us."

All emotion has a common denominator. The last time Lingard had been as moved as he was now was when he had parted from Jane Oglander in the little sitting-room in that shabby house on the south side of the Thames.

There was in Jane a certain austerity, a delicate reserve of manner, which had made him feel that she was a creature to be wors.h.i.+pped from afar, rather than a woman responsive to the man she loves.

Each happy day of the week they had spent together practically alone in London, Lingard had had to woo her afresh. But that, to a man of the great soldier's temperament, had been no matter for complaining. Her scruples and delicacies had been met by him with infinite indulgence and tenderness.

Then on the last day, they had had their first lovers' quarrel. He had entreated her to come away with him, to accept, that is, the Maules'

eager invitation. Was he not going to the Paches' simply because they lived near Rede Place? But Jane had promised to stay a week with a friend who was ill--and she would not break her word. Lingard had become suddenly angry, and in his anger had turned cold.

For the first time in his knowledge of her, tears had sprung to Jane's eyes. Where is the man who does not early make the woman who loves him weep? But these tears, or so it had seemed to him, had unlocked a deep spring of poignant feeling in her heart, or perchance had made it possible for her to allow her lover to know that it was there.

He had moved away from her side, and then, in a moment, had come from her a smothered cry, a calling of her whole being for and to him. She had thrown out her hands with the instinctive gesture of a child who wishes to turn one who has been unkind, kind. And when she was in his arms, there had come to her that sense of spiritual and physical response which had brought to him the moment of exultant triumph he had thought would never be his.

How strange that after that she should still have held out, still have kept her word to the sick woman who needed her! It was of Jane Oglander--of Jane as she had been, all tenderness and fire, on that day when they had parted, that Lingard thought as he followed the woman whom he now called friend into the room where Richard Maule sat waiting for him.

The Paches' horseless carriage was proceeding through the park at a pace which two of the five sitting in it felt to be, if delightful, then rather dangerous.

"Athena grows more beautiful every time I see her," said Tom Pache suddenly. He and Hew Lingard were sitting side by side opposite Mr. and Mrs. Pache. Patty was wedged in between her parents.

"I thought her gown very odd and unsuitable," said his mother sharply.

"It isn't as if she had a cold. I suppose she keeps her smart evening gowns for her smart visits."

"Yes, I thought it a pity she should hide anything so good as her shoulders," answered her son thoughtfully.

The man by his side made a restless movement, and increased the distance between himself and his young cousin.

"I told you the Barkings had heard all about Athena Maule and Bayworth Kaye, mother," said Patty eagerly.

"They probably know a great deal more than there is to know," said her father gruffly. "People talk of London as the home of scandal. I say I never heard as much scandal in my life as since we came to live in this neighbourhood."

"But, father, you must admit Bayworth Kaye was quite cracked about Athena? I don't think anyone could deny that who ever saw them together.

Why it made one feel quite uncomfortable!"

Lingard felt as if he must get out, away from these horrible people.

When he had last seen the Paches, Patty had been a pretty little girl, pert perhaps, but not too much so in the eyes of the young, indulgent soldier. He now judged her with scant mercy.

"I don't think Athena could very well help what happened," said Tom Pache judicially. He and his father generally took the same side.

"Bayworth Kaye had the run of Rede Place since he was born. And so--well, I don't suppose it took very long for the mischief to be done--so far as he was concerned, I mean."

"Oh, but, Tom, it was much more than that! Athena could have helped it--of course she could!" Patty's voice rose. "Why, she got him asked to a lot of houses where she was staying herself, and they say in the village that she gave him her key of the Garden Room. He used to stay there fearfully late--long after Mr. Maule and d.i.c.k Wantele had gone to bed!"

"It was very hard on Mabel Digby," said Mrs. Pache irrelevantly. She had a tepid liking for her young neighbour.

"I don't think Mabel really cared for him, mother." There was a streak of thin loyalty in Patty Pache's nature. "You know she was almost a child when Bayworth Kaye first went to India."

"She was seventeen," said Mrs. Pache, "very nearly eighteen. And I know they wrote to one another by every mail--his mother told me so."

"It's rather hard on the women of the neighbourhood, when one comes to think of it," said Tom Pache, smiling in the darkness. "Athena's a formidable rival." His mother and his sister felt that he spoke more truly than he knew.