The Secret of Greylands (26 page)

As soon as her resolution was taken she sprang off the bed and began to put her things together. She found on consulting a time-table that it was already too late to dream of getting the last train from Glastwick that night, but there was an express which stopped at Clastor at nine o'clock the next morning, and she determined that at all hazards she must catch that.

At length, having made what preparations she could, she opened her door and turned towards the staircase. Farther down the passage the door of the room which Cynthia had become accustomed to think of as Lady Hannah's stood ajar, and she glanced at it with shuddering aversion. As she went down the stairs she heard voices in the dining-room, and the sound of her own name caught her ear.

“I do not think Cynthia would—” It was Sybil who was speaking.

“I tell you thinking will not serve my purpose— there is too much at stake. I mean to make sure.” The remark was Gillman's, and so curt and savage was the tone that Cynthia stopped involuntarily. “You have got to do your share, mind that!”

“No, no!” Sybil's voice had an accent of pain. “I cannot! I dare not! Sometimes I am frightened—”

“Pshaw!” Gillman ejaculated contemptuously. “You must get over that. It will not hurt the girl, and what need have you to concern yourself about her? You have not”—with a certain meaning emphasis—“always been so particular.”

“Ah!” the exclamation was almost a sob. “Perhaps—perhaps that is why I do not want—this!”

There was a long pause; only the sound of the wind rustling through the pines broke the silence. It seemed to Cynthia, as her heart beat with great suffocating throbs and her breath came faster, that surely the pair in the dining-room must hear, that they would come out and discover her; but presently Gillman went on:

“There is nothing to be so squeamish about; it will do the girl no harm to be shut up for a day or two.”

“Oh, no! If that is all—but I don't know—and I am afraid—” Sybil's speech ended in a burst of tears. “Oh, don't look at me like that! Indeed, indeed, I cannot bear it!”

Cynthia could not catch the purport of the whispered words that followed, but at length Gillman spoke in a louder key:

“That is my own good girl! I knew you would not fail me, Sybil!”

“Yes, I shall do as you want me to the end.” There was a note of passion in the trembling tones.

“Hush! Hush!” Gillman's tone was very impatient. “Now do what I tell you. Go up to the girl's room and see what you can manage.”

Cynthia started; she heard Sybil move to the door and then pause as if for a last word, and then in a moment the sudden realization of her own peril dawned upon her. It was perfectly evident that the discovery of Sybil's impersonation had upset Gillman's plans, and she now knew enough of his character to be certain that he would be utterly unscrupulous in his method of getting her out of his path.

A very real fear for her own safety took possession of her. Whatever scheme it might be that Gillman had proposed for ensuring her silence, she now knew that Sybil would interpose no obstacle in the way of its fulfilment. She could not look to her for help or protection. Her only hope lay in getting away from Greylands as quickly as possible, but she saw plainly that it would have to be accomplished without Gillman's knowledge. She knew too much to be allowed to carry her story to Lady Hannah's friends.

Fearing that Sybil should find out how much she had overheard, the girl turned and with tottering steps made her way back to the room she had left.

Then, as she waited, expecting every moment to hear Sybil's step upon the stairs, the recollection of the figure she had seen in her cousin's bed when she and Sybil were upon the penthouse roof recurred to her. She roused herself and tried to think clearly. That Sybil was no party to the impersonation on that occasion was certain; she asked herself who could have been in the bed—whether Lady Hannah had for once taken her rightful place, and whether, instead of being at Biarritz, as Sybil had explained, she was either kept in confinement or hiding of her own free will in the neighbourhood of Greylands.

Think as she would she could discover no solution to the problem that appeared either satisfactory or probable, and her thoughts would keep going back to that figure in the bed—to the large brown hand that had lain on the counterpane.

It seemed to her now that there had been in her mind the haunting consciousness that the hand was not utterly unknown to her, that somewhere, in different circumstances, she had seen it before.

“Y
OU WILL
remember, Gleeson, the gun-case is to be sent to the Court, and you are to stay as long as you like; and when you are tired lock the place up and let Bolt & Barsly have the key. That is all, I think!”

“I'll take care it is all done as you say, Sir Donald.” Gleeson's comely, wrinkled face was puckered up; her eyes were dim with tears behind their spectacles. Her young master had been the apple of her eye in the old days when she had been Lady Hannah's maid. It sometimes seemed to her that he was even dearer to her now that they had gone through these weeks of anxiety with regard to her beloved mistress together. And he was going with his purpose all unaccomplished—the reconciliation with his aunt upon which he had set his heart apparently as far off as ever.

No wonder that Gleeson felt dull and miserable, and that all the morning she had been furtively bringing out her handkerchief to wipe away her tears.

Farquhar's face was unmistakably gloomy as he picked up the handbag that stood at the foot of the stairs.

“Good-bye, then, Glee!” he said, going back to his old boyish name for her; and then, moved by some sudden impulse, he stooped and touched the old woman's cheek with his lips. “Mind you don't stay a day longer than you like. You know there is always a home for you at the Court. I don't like your being here all alone.”

“You are very kind, Sir Donald!” Gleeson responded, much touched, “I shall do very well. I have come to that time of life when it is pleasant to sit still and think over the days that have passed and the faces that we shall see no more; and it is borne in upon me sometimes that perhaps my lady is wanting me, and I feel happier like near her.”

“You are a good woman!” Sir Donald paused a moment irresolutely; then he caught up his bag. “Good-bye, take care of yourself, Glee! And”— keeping his face resolutely from her as he went through the porch—“if that young lady who came here should want any help, you will do what you can for her, I know.”

“Miss Hammond? Why, certainly I will, Sir Donald!” Gleeson's tone was full of comfortable assurance. “A sweet young thing like that, and the very image of my lady as she used to be!”

“That is all right, then.” Sir Donald walked quickly down the garden-path, turning at the gate to wave a farewell.

Gleeson stood in the porch, shading her eyes with her hand as she watched his tall figure striding away into the distance.

“I misdoubt me there is something wrong with the lad,” she muttered to herself. “I misdoubt me there is something wrong.”

Long after Farquhar had become a mere speck on the horizon and finally disappeared from her vision, she still stood, her eyes mechanically turned towards Glastwick, her lips silently moving.

Farquhar, meanwhile, was rapidly nearing Glastwick. His thoughts, to judge by his expression, were none of the pleasantest, his eyes looked gloomy and absorbed, his lips were pressed tightly together. He was not one of those natures that take things lightly, and beyond all doubt his discovery of the deception that Cynthia had practised upon him had hit him hard.

There had been something about her unprotected position, about her isolation at Greylands that had appealed to him from the first. Her brown eyes, with their long upcurled lashes, and her pretty, plaintive smile had done the rest. He was surprised to find how strong was her hold upon him, how difficult, nay, how impossible it was to put her image out of his heart.

In vain he reminded himself of all her sins against him, of her marriage and her refusal to live with her husband; he found his thoughts dwelling on the little tendrils of hair that curled so prettily round her ears, on the soft delicious curve of her cheek.

The express was due in five minutes when he reached Glastwick; he had allowed himself no margin of time for accidents. As he took his ticket a trunk with “
C.H.
” painted conspicuously upon it in white caught his eye. As he was looking at them the station-master strolled up.

“Good morning, sir!”

“Good morning, Mr King!” Farquhar responded with the pleasant smile that made him a general favourite. “You got my note in time to have the express stopped, I hope?”

“Oh, yes, sir! But as a matter of fact I had telegraphed up to Alnwick before it came. Mr Gillman he wrote last night; his niece is going up to town to-day. Leastways if she is in time. They are drawing it rather fine. Ah, there they are!” as a dog-cart dashed into the station yard.

Farquhar waited to recognize the slim, brown-clad figure by Gillman's side; then he turned and fled.

When the train came in he hurriedly ensconced himself in an empty first-class smoking carriage, and, keeping himself well in the shadow, carefully watched the platform. Though he was anxious above all things that Cynthia should not recognize him, and though he told himself that his greatest wish was that they might never meet again, yet he could not deny himself one last look at her face, but in spite of his efforts he was destined not to obtain it. At the last moment Gillman came quickly out of the booking-office and opened the door of the very next compartment to that in which he was sitting, and Farquhar, to his intense disappointment, saw that the girl behind him had swathed her head and hat in a thick veil. As she stood back while her escort opened the carriage-door Farquhar from his post could almost have touched her coat, she was so near him. There was a mark on one sleeve that had been made when they were walking in the wood and she had brushed against a tree-trunk. The sight of it recalled a thousand memories and associations. He would have given much for just one last glance, but the veil defied his efforts.

When the train started he told himself that that chapter of his life was closed for ever, but as he leaned back in his corner he found the knowledge that only the wooden partition separated him from Cynthia singularly disquieting. In vain he tried to turn his mind to other subjects—her pleading voice, her sweet, beseeching eyes, haunted him; her words, “Forgive me, Donald; indeed I did not know!” seemed to ring in his ears with a maddening iteration.

The first stop was at Derby, and, in spite of his resolution, Farquhar was at the window as the train began to slow down. It was possible that Cynthia might need some refreshment; at any rate the probabilities were that she would want a paper or periodical and he might be fortunate enough to get a glimpse of her. As they stopped, the door of the next compartment opened, and he caught sight of a slim brown figure. She was getting out, then? He drew back in his corner; his eyes as he watched were very bright and eager. Then he started forward with a smothered exclamation. The girl who stood on the platform wore a brown dress, certainly, but the veil had been discarded in the train, and as she stopped a moment before the window, instead of Cynthia's chestnut hair, he saw Sybil's gleaming golden tresses. Yet from where he sat he could see plainly the mark on the sleeve which he remembered; undoubtedly she was wearing Cynthia's gown, and the trunk at the station had been marked “
C.H.
” As he wondered what could be the meaning of it she accosted a porter.

“I think there is a train to Clastor in a few minutes?”

“At 1.10, miss,” the man responded. “That is in a quarter of an hour. It goes from platform Number Two. You will have to cross.”

“Thank you!” She hurried down the platform. Farquhar got out and stood looking after her with an expression of absolute bewilderment. Clastor was a station a few miles from Glastwick on a different line. What could be the girl's motive, he wondered, in coming down to Derby, evidently only to hurry back again at her earliest opportunity? And why was she masquerading in Cynthia's dress? He could not help fancying that the veil had been assumed as a disguise, that both she and Gillman had intended her to be taken for Cynthia. Why? He could not see daylight in the matter at all. A porter touched his arm impatiently.

“Now, sir, time's up! Are you going on?”

Farquhar took a sudden resolution. He reached for his handbag.

“No,” he said curtly. “Which is the platform for Clastor?”

“Number Two, sir!” The man banged the door, and the next moment the train was off.

Farquhar, walking down the platform, wondered whether he had done a silly thing. It was quite possible, he told himself, that the events that had puzzled him were capable of a perfectly innocent explanation. Very probably Cynthia had lent her dress and trunk to her cousin; it was quite possible that the other had forgotten something that rendered her return necessary, and it might be that she knew of some reason that made it easier to get to Greylands from Clastor than from Glastwick.

Reason as he would he could not rid himself of an uneasy sense that there was something wrong, that Cynthia was in some peril. When he reached the platform he saw that Sybil was walking briskly up and down; with a shamed feeling that he was in some sense a spy he betook himself to the waiting- room until the train came in; then, carefully keeping out of her sight, he made his way to a smoking compartment as far away from her as possible.

It was a slow train. Though Farquhar kept a careful look-out at the various stations he saw nothing of Sybil until they reached Clastor. There he waited until she had alighted and passed quickly through the booking-office. As he followed more quietly, he saw that Gillman was waiting outside in his dog-cart. Evidently Sybil was expected, and Farquhar asked himself again what could possibly be the reason of this extraordinary journey and how far Cynthia's connexion with it went.