Jane Oglander Part 4

The train began to slow down. The two ladies got up with an air of rather ostentatious relief. Major Biddell opened the door and jumped out. He carefully helped his companions down the high steps. As all three moved away, Lady Barking's sonorous voice could be heard saying, "I should think that man was mad!"

"Oh no, he wasn't, mother," said her daughter loudly. "He's an adorer of the lady--that's what it is. I expect he's on his way to stay there now!"

"But they never have any visitors at Rede Place except that Miss Oglander."

The train moved on. To the woman sitting in the corner the atmosphere of the railway carriage was still charged with a not unpleasing electricity.

Very deliberately she raised her veil and subjected the man sitting opposite to a long, thoughtful scrutiny. She raked her memory in vain for the strongly-drawn dark face, the large, loosely-made figure.

Suddenly he raised his eyes and met her full, considering glance. No, they had never met before. No man who had ever known Athena Maule, even for only a brief s.p.a.ce of time, would look into her lovely, mobile face, meet the peculiar glance of her large heavy-lidded violet eyes, as this stranger was now doing, coldly, unchallengingly.

Mrs. Maule reddened, and hurriedly pulled down her veil. She felt--and it was a disconcerting sensation--as if she had been snubbed.

CHAPTER III

"The world is oft to treason not unkind, But ne'er the traitor can admirers find."

It was the evening of the same day.

Two men were sitting together in what was called the Greek Room by the household of Rede Place.

The elder of the two was close to the fireplace, his stiff, thin hands held out to the blue shooting flames of a wood fire. Although he was dressed for dinner, there was that about him which suggested invalidism.

Cus.h.i.+ons were piled behind him in the deep, capacious chair in which he seemed to crouch rather than to sit, and a light rug was thrown across his knees, although it was only the 1st of October.

This was Richard Maule, whose name was known to the cosmopolitan world of scholars as a h.e.l.lenist, an authority on cla.s.sical archaeology, on the slowly excavated story of long-buried civilizations. To those who dwelt in the present, and who only cared for the things of to-day, he was enviable as the owner of a delightful and, in its way, a famous estate in Surrey.

Rede Place! The enchanting, rather artificial pleasaunce created out of what had been a primeval stretch of woodland by an early Victorian millionaire! The banker _virtuoso_, Theophilus Joy, had committed what we should now consider the crime of pulling down a fine old Tudor manor-house in order to reproduce in the keener English climate and alien English soil those Palladian harmonies of form which have their natural home only beneath southern skies.

There had been a time in the 'fifties and the 'sixties when Rede Place had been a synonym for all that was exquisite and perfect in art and life. But Richard Maule, though he shared many of the tastes, and had inherited all the wealth of his grandfather, was a recluse. Not even the possession of a singularly beautiful and attractive wife ever made him throw open Rede Place in the old, hospitable, magnificent way in which it had been thrown open during his own childhood and early youth.

As far as was possible, he lived alone--alone, that is, with the companions.h.i.+p of his wife, when she was willing to favour him with her companions.h.i.+p, and fortunate in the constant society of his kinsman, d.i.c.k Wantele, whom all the world knew to be Richard Maule's ultimate heir, that is, the future owner of Rede Place.

Each of the rooms of the long Italianate house was filled with curious, rare, and costly works of art, offering many points of interest to the collector and student, and this was specially true of the room in which now sat Richard Maule and d.i.c.k Wantele.

In 1843 Theophilus Joy, the friend rather than the patron of Turner, had persuaded that eccentric and secretive genius to accompany him from Italy to Greece. The enduring result of this journey was a remarkable series of water-colours forming the decoration of what was henceforth called the Greek Room of Rede Place. Over the mantelpiece was a copy, by the artist, of "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus." Below the Turner water-colours, and forming a latticed dado round the room, were a row of lacquered bookcases containing Richard Maule's unique collection of books and pamphlets, in every language, dealing with the Greece of the past and of the present.

d.i.c.k Wantele sat as far from the fire as was possible, close to a window which he would have preferred to have open. His long, angular figure was bent almost in two over his knee, on which there lay propped up a block of drawing paper. He was drawing busily, sketching a small house, by the side of which was a rough plan of what was evidently to be the inside of the house. A heavily-shaded lamp left in shadow his pale, lantern-jawed face, only redeemed from real ugliness by its expression of alert intelligence.

The two, unlike most men living in the difficult juxtaposition of owner and heir, were on the most excellent terms the one with the other.

Theirs indeed was the happy kind of intimacy which requires no words, no futile exchange of small talk, to prove kindliness and understanding; and when at last Richard Maule spoke, he did not even turn round, for he was used to the other's instant comprehension and sympathy.

"Then the Paches are bringing over General Lingard to dinner next Tuesday?"

The younger man looked up quickly. "Yes, on Tuesday," he said. "Athena seems to think that will be the best day for them to come. You see, Jane Oglander will be here then."

"I'm glad of that," said Richard Maule.

"I hope their coming won't bore you, Richard. Athena couldn't get out of it. You see Pache practically asked her to ask them over. They want to show their lion, and they also want to entertain their lion! I confess I'm rather looking forward to seeing Lingard."

"I've seen so many lions." Mr. Maule spoke with a touch of weary irritation. And then he added, after a rather long pause, "I never cared for soldiers, at any rate not for your modern man of war who goes out with a Gatling gun to kill a lot of poor n.i.g.g.e.rs."

"Lingard has done more than that, Richard. He succeeded where three other men had failed, and what is really wonderful, he did it on the cheap."

"That I admit _is_ wonderful," said Richard Maule dryly, "but I don't suppose the people who are now feting him are doing it as a reward for his economy. However, no matter, we'll entertain the Pachian hero."

The mahogany door at the end of the long room opened, then it was closed quietly, and a woman came in, bringing with her a sudden impression of vitality, of youth, of buoyant strength into the shadowed, over-heated room.

Athena Maule advanced with easy, graceful steps till she stood, a radiant figure, in the circle of warring light cast by the fire and by the shaded lamps. Her cheeks were flushed, tinted to an exquisite carmine that seemed to leave more white her low forehead and now heaving bosom.

She stopped just between the two men, glancing quickly first at one and then at the other. And then at last, after a perceptible pause, she spoke, her clear accents, slightly foreign in their intonation, falling ominously on the ears of her small audience of two.

"I've just had a letter from Jane Oglander."

The younger of the two men wondered with a certain lazy amus.e.m.e.nt whether Athena was aware of how dramatic had been her announcement of a singularly insignificant fact. As to the older man--he who sat by the fireplace--he had turned and deliberately looked away as the door opened. But now it was he who spoke, and this to d.i.c.k Wantele was significant, for Richard Maule very seldom spoke of his own accord, to his wife.

"Then isn't she coming to-morrow? It seems a long time since Jane left us--in August, wasn't it?"

"Jane Oglander," said Mrs. Maule, her left hand playing with the ta.s.sel terminating the Algerian scarf which slipped below her bare dimpled shoulders, "Jane Oglander wishes me to tell you both that--that she is going to be married."

Richard Maule fixed his stern, sunken eyes on his wife. It was a terrible look--a look of mingled contempt and hatred.

"Anyone we know?" asked d.i.c.k Wantele quietly.

Athena Maule looked at him with a grudging admiration. d.i.c.k was certainly what some of her English friends called "game," and her French friends "_crane_." She had now lived in England for some eight years, but she did not yet understand Englishmen and their ways; and of all the strange Englishmen she had come across, there were few that struck her as so queer--queer was the word--as her husband's cousin, d.i.c.k Wantele.

But he had long ceased really to interest her.

Walking slowly down the long gallery upstairs, Mrs. Maule had thought deeply how she should make her startling announcement, how reveal the news which had hurt her so shrewdly as to make her wish--such being her nature--that others should share her pain.

She had thought of coming in with Jane Oglander's letter open in her hand, but no, this she decided would be rather cheap, and would also in a measure prepare d.i.c.k--it was d.i.c.k whom she wished to hurt, whom she knew she would hurt. Richard Maule was incapable of being hurt by anything. But still it was very pleasant to know that even Richard would be irritated at the thought that Jane Oglander, who had now been for so long the one healing, soothing presence in their sombre household, and whom he had stupidly believed would end by marrying d.i.c.k Wantele was now going to disappear into the mora.s.s of British matronhood.

"Anyone we know?" she repeated consideringly. "No, not exactly, but someone who is quite famous and whom we shall know very soon."

d.i.c.k Wantele shrugged his shoulders with a nervous movement. His cousin's wife was fond of talking in enigmas, especially to him, and especially when she knew he desired to be told a simple fact simply and quickly.

Then something unexpected happened. Richard Maule again spoke, and again addressed his wife.

"I suppose," he said, "you mean General Lingard?"

"How did you know? Has Jane written to you?" Mrs. Maule flashed the questions out.

The one who looked on was vividly aware that this was the first time, so far as he knew, for years, that Athena Maule had asked direct questions of her husband, questions demanding answers.

Even now Richard Maule did not vouchsafe his wife the courtesy of a reply. It seemed to him that her questions answered themselves, and in the negative.