The Island of Intrigue/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
Mr. Fordyce.
THE next morning, when I thought over that little scene, I was terribly ashamed, and disgusted with myself, too. My rudeness had been inexcusable except on the score of my own instinctive dislike of the Frenchman, and that I had displayed in the crudest, most gauche manner imaginable.
Which of the two girls was he really trying to marry? I could not decide. At times I was almost sure that it was Bijou; at others it seemed to me that some tacit understanding already existed between him and Lorna, but it was more her attitude than his which gave me that impression.
I was late to breakfast with all my cogitating. The others had almost finished when I hurried into the dining-room. Alaric drank his coffee and rose just as I entered.
"About time for us to be off, isn't it, Raoul?" he asked. "We don't want to keep Hilton waiting around in that one-horse village, and his train is due in three quarters of an hour. We'll have to take the launch, of course; I don't believe he'd trust himself in that racer."
Aunt Julie rose, also.
"I really do think that I'd better go with you," she observed anxiously. "I've got as much at stake as you, and I want to see him at once, at the earliest possible moment"
She broke off as Alaric turned to her with angry impatience, but to my unbounded astonishment it was her guest, Monsieur Pelissier, who replied to her, and the domineering authority in his tone was unmistakable.
You will do nothing of the sort!" he asserted. "You will remain here! What do you think he would say to you if you" he checked himself, his tone snapping like the lash of a whip, then went on after an almost imperceptible pause: "He would be distressed beyond measure if his hostess, avowedly unhappy on the water, should undertake the trip merely to greet him on arrival. Dear lady, can you not leave the first welcome to your son, and to me?"
Aunt Julie turned away with a little shrug.
"Very well," she said. "No doubt it would be foolish of me." She trailed out on the veranda, and Bijou remarked to me:
"Mother is worried about some investments, but it doesn't do to let these brokers think you are too anxious, does it?"
Lorna said nothing, and went on with her breakfast composedly, but I felt that she was watching me curiously, so I drank my coffee in a noncommittal silence. Evidently they were all involved in this financial issue, Monsieur Pelissier as well as the rest, for Aunt Julie's remark: "I've got as much at stake as you," had been a general one. The Frenchman's bullying manner, too, had revealed one point which had been obscure to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt. A definite understanding of some sort existed between him and either Lorna or Bijou, that was plain. He manifestly considered himself one of the family already, and it was not difficult to perceive that he meant to rule them all with no light hand, and perhaps even assume the complete control of their affairs. I felt sorry for them all, for I could imagine poor dazzled, easy-going Aunt Julie gradually relinquishing the reins to such a brilliant, astute son-in-law, and finding later, to her cost, that he was as utterly unscrupulous as I felt him to be.
When breakfast was over, we joined Aunt Julie on the veranda. The sun was shining, but through a murky, yellow haze and not a leaf stirred in the still air. The whole atmosphere seemed heavily surcharged, and even the birds twittered and chirped in a subdued fashion.
We watched the departing launch until it became a mere dot on the glassy, unnaturally smooth expanse of the water, and then Aunt Julie sank into a chair, and took up her long-suffering embroidery.
"Oh, dear," she sighed. "I'm all thumbs this morning. This visit of Mr. Hilton's upsets me. I never did have a head for business, and I hate being bothered with it."
"Uncle Dan used to say you were as good a manager as a man, Aunt Julie," I remarked.
"He meant economizer," she laughed. "I guess I was, but the Lord knows I've gotten all out of that now. I learned the value of things, but I've long since forgotten to ask the prices. As for stock quotations, they've always been a mystery to me, and it makes my head ache to try to puzzle them out. I leave all that to Fordyce and Hilton."
"Still, I should think you would keep watch in the newspapers of those you are interested in," I couldn't help saying. "It must be a very exciting game, if you do any active trading. You must know all the figures you buy them in at, and I can imagine how thrilling it would be to speculate on their going up or down."
"You're your father's daughter!" exclaimed Aunt Julie. "If he doesn't look out you will be taking a flyer yourself, before he knows it! Bijou is more fond of dress, and Lorna of books, than Wall Street and the Bourse and the London Exchange rolled into one. I never think, myself, of looking at the financial page of a newspaper."
"I do hope Alaric brings some back with him from the mainland," I observed, as a sudden thought came to me. "Some newspapers, I mean. Just think, it is Tuesday, and we haven't seen a paper since we left town on Friday! All sorts of things may have happened, and we not know!"
Lorna laughed.
"He probably won't think to bring any," she said. "We'll tell him to order some the next time he goes. We haven't any of us got the newspaper habit, Maida. We're scandalously incurious about what goes on outside of our own little world. I doubt if we look through a paper from one week's end to another."
"They're always full of crime and wars and dreadful things, anyway," Bijou supplemented lazily. "Who wants to read about them?"
"Well, I hope my trunks have come, anyway," I remarked. I could not comprehend such a shallow, self-centered outlook, and it was useless for me to try. I think Lorna divined my bewildered mood, for she broke the pause, and chattered easily and lightly of everyday matters until an hour or more had slipped by, and the time approached for the return of the launch.
We saw it finally, a little black speck dancing over the water, and watched it grow larger and take form until we could dimly discern the three figures seated in the stern.
It disappeared into the cove, which was screened from us by the trees, and we could hear the faint chug of the engine as it slowed down.
Aunt Julie put aside her needlework, a curious, strained expression growing in her good-natured, disingenuous face.
"I hope Mr. Hilton brought some chocolates," Bijou remarked flippantly. "We're very nearly out of sweets."
Nobody replied to her, and then all at once Alaric and Monsieur Pelissier appeared on the winding path between the pines, with a third man between them.
"Why!" I exclaimed in surprise. "That's not Mr. Hilton!"
"It's Mr. Fordyce! He's come, himself!" Aunt Julie rose and advanced to the steps. "How do you do? This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Fordyce."
The newcomer bowed over her hand with ceremonious courtesy.
"I am delighted to have been able to avail myself of this opportunity of accepting your long-standing invitation, dear Mrs. Smith," he returned. "I discovered at the last moment that it would be possible for me to come, so I left Robert to attend to the office routine in my stead for a day or two. Miss Smith, I heard of the taxicab accident with great regret. I trust you were not hurt?"
"Oh, no," replied Lorna, giving him her hand. "It might have been inconvenient, though. I feared I should be held by the police as a witness."
"Ah! There was an arrest made, then? It was as serious as that?"
"I don't know!" she laughed. "I didn't wait to see. I knew mother would be anxious at my delay, as it was, so I jumped into another machine and told the chauffeur to put on all speed. I don't think they even got my number."
I was puzzled. Lorna spoke carefully, as if choosing her words because of some underlying significance. I dismissed the absurd fancy the next minute, however, as Mr. Fordyce smiled in a fatherly way at Bijou, and Aunt Julie drew me forward.
"And this," she said, "is the daughter of our old friend Larry Waring. Maida, my dear, Mr. Fordyce."
I put my hand shyly in his, and listened happily to his courtly, old-fashioned greeting. He was a towering, splendidly built man of nearly sixty, I should judge, but a man in the full prime of life. His square shoulders, his firm well-knit hands, and the keen, kindly eyes beneath the bushy white brows, all bespoke virile strength and a consciousness of his own dominance over others. His manner was utterly unlike his partner's, as I remembered Mr. Hilton. He had none of that brusque, matter-of-fact alertness which I associated in my mind with the usual broker and financier; he impressed me as being more like a college professor, or lecturer. He spoke with the urbane ease and breadth of an orator, and his voice was rich and rolling and persuasive.
He was Daddy's friend and confidant, and I was so glad to meet him that I could have thrown my arms about his neck and hugged him like a little child, and I think he must have discerned something of my feelings in my face, for he held my hand still in his as he talked.
"It is a great pleasure to me to meet the young lady of whom I have heard so much," he added, after his conventional greeting. "Your father has spoken of you so often to me as the 'Little Princess' who fills his thoughts, and for whom all these marvellous financial operations which Mr. Hilton and I have put through in his name, have been planned. Mr. Waring is a valued friend, as I trust his daughter will also be."
"Thank you, Mr. Fordyce," I managed to reply, as a lump came into my throat, 'Little Princess' was Daddy's own nickname for me, and when I heard it upon strange lips a great wave of loneliness swept over me, and I would have given anything in the world if only he had been standing there before me in place of Mr. Fordyce.
I murmured something further in response, and then he dropped my hand and turned to the other girls. Aunt Julie had been standing on the edge of the steps, talking to Alaric and Monsieur Pelissier, but now she came forward and took Mr. Fordyce into the house.
"Jolly old fossil, isn't he?" commented Alaric, with cheerful disrespect, adding obviously for the girls' benefit: "Mother was silly to get all worked up. He says her affairs are in bully shape, and never promised better.—Come on, Maida, let's have some tennis."
"Alaric, haven't my trunks come?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"No; they must have gone astray somehow. Are you sure they were properly labelled?"
"Absolutely. Miss Farmingdale attended to it herself, and I saw the expressman remove them," I replied. "What can have happened to them?"
"Don't know, I'm sure. I raised a rumpus with the station agent about them, and he's sent out a tracer."
"Oh, some mistake has occurred. They will be here in a few days, undoubtedly," Lorna observed. "In the meantime, Maida, if you need anything, just tell me. You and I are almost of a size, and I have everything you could want"
"Thanks, Lorna," I said, perfunctorily. "I brought enough things with me in my bags to last for a week or two, if necessary."
Alaric and I played tennis until noon, and then the heat became so intense that we were compelled to stop. There wasn't a sign of a breeze, and the heavy oppression in the atmosphere seemed to increase with the brassy haze settling over the still sea.
"I shouldn't wonder if a perfect fury of a storm blew up," observed Alaric, as we mounted the steps of the deserted veranda. "It's unusual for the time of year, but this is the way they start on the coast. If it comes, there won't be much chance of Fordyce getting away tomorrow."
"Oh, is he going back so soon?" I asked, regretfully. I had liked him tremendously at that first meeting, and hoped that he would remain, at least for a little while. "I suppose his time is very valuable, though."
"Yes. He said in the launch coming over that he must return as soon as possible. He only came to assure mother personally that everything is all right, she was so worried. I suppose that next to your father her account is the largest on his books."
Aunt Julie appeared to have regained her usual cheerful spirits at lunch, and the meal passed off very pleasantly. However, there still seemed to be a sort of constraint in the air, although it may have emanated purely from my imagination. Mr. Fordyce drew me more and more into the conversation, but I could not help feeling that I was rather in the way, as if the whole family would have liked the opportunity to talk to their new guest without my presence. After lunch I slipped away by myself.
I did not go in the direction of the lighthouse or the bungalow, however, but quite the other way. That strange young man had been very nice, but of course it wouldn't do to encounter him again.
I started up the path leading to the cove where the boathouse was, but after a hundred yards more, I perceived a narrow, winding trail branching off to the right, and decided to follow it. It led finally to the beach on the seaward side of the island, and I emerged from the wood and strolled aimlessly along the sand, watching the surf roll up over the stones.
How far I walked I haven't the least idea, but the sun's glare at length drove me again into the shelter of the trees. There wasn't any pathway, and the woods seemed more dense, and bore less evidence of cultivation than the other parts of the island where I had been. I pushed my way back through a perfect thicket of undergrowth, and came quite suddenly upon a tiny, cleared space in a semi-circle of towering oaks. It was dim and cool and restful, and I paused, looking about me. Some landscape gardening had manifestly been started there, I noticed, for almost at my feet a narrow trench had been dug and filled to form a long, straight mound.
Whether it was the stillness and solitude, the brooding storm, the state of my nerves, or all three combined to make me so morbidly fanciful, I could not have told, but it flashed over my mind that that flower bed was exactly the shape of a new-made grave, and a ridiculous sensation of panic seized me. I turned and ran just as hard as I could, not caring where my flying feet carried me, anxious only to put space between myself and that sinister mound of freshly turned earth.
My thoughts swiftly reverted to that cry which I had fancied I heard during the storm on the night of my arrival. Could one of the sailors on the Tortoise have been killed during a brawl, and secretly buried here by the murderers, without the knowledge of the Smiths or anyone? But hadn't I fancied also that I had heard stealthy footsteps passing my door an hour or so after that cry had been borne to me on the rising wind?
I clapped my hands over my ears as if to shut out the sound of that inner voice which suggested such frightful, preposterous, vague horrors, and ran faster to outdistance them. Suddenly something moved in the massed bushes just ahead and in my overwrought state fresh terror seized me and I swerved sharply. But I had been rushing on at too mad a pace to stop myself; my foot caught in the upstanding root of a tree and I was flung forward, crashing through the hedge-like undergrowth, straight into the arms of a man.
They were strong arms, and held me firmly, but I was too breathless to cry out. I steadied myself and looked up into a pair of eyes which I knew; the eyes of the strange young man.
"Oh!" I gasped. "It's you."
"What is it?" he asked. "What has frightened you?"
His voice sounded steady and reassuring and sane, and my scattered wits began to come back to me. I realized that I was clinging to him in a most absurd fashion, and I loosened my grasp quickly, and stepped back. I began to laugh, I don't know why, for there certainly wasn't anything funny in the situation. The worst of it was I couldn't stop! I laughed and laughed, with little catching sobs between, which seemed to tear me apart, inside, and I could feel myself swaying.
"Stop it!" he commanded, in a very stern voice. "Stop it at once!"
He sat me down on a fallen log as if I had been a child, and held something to my lips.
"Here, drink this, and try to control yourself."
It was a traveling cup, filled with clear, ice-cold spring water, and I drank it thankfully. I felt better almost at once, and more calm, but queer and dazed.
"You—you shook me!" I murmured accusingly, as I handed him back the cup.
"I should have done more than that; I would have slapped you, if you hadn't stopped," he remarked, in the coolest way imaginable. "I had to bring you to yourself, you know. You were hysterical. You feel better now?"
"Yes," I answered weakly. "I can't think what made me laugh like that. I never was so silly before in all my life."
"Suppose you tell me what was the matter?" he suggested, very gently.
"N-nothing." It was a very lame answer, but how could I tell him I had been frightened by a flowerbed? "I saw something that—that scared me, and I started to run, and then you moved, here in the bushes just ahead of me, and I didn't know what it was, and that frightened me more. I tried to turn, but I tripped and fell right in upon you."
"What was it you saw that frightened you?" he persisted.
"It wasn't anything!" I heard myself protesting. "It was just my nerves, I think. I fancied the thing I saw looked like something else, and it startled me."
"Was it alive?"
"No!" I shuddered. "Don't let's talk about it, please. It's really too silly of me. I want to forget it."
"You mean that you don't want to tell me," he said, quietly. "I beg your pardon. I did not wish to seem curious, I thought I might help you."
"I know that," I replied quickly. "You are very kind, but it was just imagination on my part. I must have startled you when I crashed through the bushes."
"Your appearance was a little sudden," he smiled, and stooping, began to gather up some large sheets of paper which were scattered about. A writing case lay overturned on the mossy bank of the spring, and Laddie was guarding it zealously. A picnic hamper, with a huge vacuum bottle beside it, was under a nearby tree.
I saw as he picked them up, that the sheets of paper were covered with writing, and the young man smiled as he answered my enquiring glance.
"My work. Laddie and I have loafed shamelessly since we came, and today we were making up for lost time."
"And I disturbed you," I supplemented. "I'm dreadfully sorry "
"We aren't. The interruption was a very welcome one, wasn't it Laddie, old man?"
Laddie's abbreviated tail wiggled a joyous assent.
"You write books?" I asked in surprise.
The young man patted the papers into a neat even little pile and thrust them into the writing case before he replied.
"My first, and from the amount of work it has been I'm inclined to believe that it will be my last."
"What is it about?" I was quite unconscious until afterwards of my shameless curiosity.
"Oh, not fiction!" he assured me hastily. "A treatise—an account, if you like—on big game hunting in Upper India."
"Goodness!" I exclaimed, "Is that what you've been doing?"
He nodded.
"Just returned from there. It's a wonderful country, India, and there's no game in the world so exciting as tiger stalking in the Hills!"
"Oh-h!" I shuddered again. "I shouldn't like to stalk anything! I should be more likely to run!"
"As you did just now?" he laughed. "It's great sport, really, but it's awfully tedious to try to write it up afterwards. I promised a chap I know, a publisher, that I'd do it for him, or I would have funked it long ago. I came up here to finish it."
"And is it almost completed?" I asked. He would be going away when it was. Not that it made a difference to me, of course, for I shouldn't ever see him again, in any event. It was sheer accident which led to the fact that I was sitting there talking to him at that moment.
"Oh, there's two or three weeks of solid work before me still," he replied with unnecessary haste. "I'm not nearly through."
Laddie had been sniffing suggestively about the hamper and now he came and sat at his master's feet, his little wrinkled black nose lifted appealingly.
"By Jove! I forgot!" the young man rose. "I apologize, old man! Miss Smith, do you know what we're going to do now? We three will have a picnic—you and Laddie and I."
"I'm not" I began, but he interrupted me in the most irresistible light-hearted way.
"Yes you are! You really invited yourself, you know, by joining us so precipitately. The least you can do is to play hostess for us. Laddie is a perfectly reliable chaperone, if you are thinking of that, and the tea is genuine rare orange pekoe; I brought it from China myself."
When he interrupted me, I was going to tell him that I was not Miss Smith, but since I would never talk with him again, anyway, it did not matter. Besides, I didn't know his name. I took it for granted that he must be young Mr. Barford, but he hadn't told me, and I couldn't be sure.
Before I could remonstrate he had the vacuum bottle uncorked, and the steaming fragrance of that tea decided me. I was doing a parfectly unpardonable thing of course, but I had no business to have scraped acquaintance with him in the first place, and I might as well see the adventure through, as long as I was in for it.
The hamper contained biscuits for Laddie, and a very substantial, masculine sort of a meal; thick meat sandwiches, and hard boiled eggs, and crackers and cheese.
"It isn't very dainty, I'm afraid," my host observed regretfully, as he sat back on his heels and surveyed the repast. "We subsist chiefly on the provisions obtainable in the village grocery store over on the mainland, but we would have made an extra effort, Laddie and I, if we had anticipated your coming."
"It looks very good," I said. "I believe I'm awfully hungry."
I was. The tea was simply delicious, and we ate every scrap of food, Laddie helping obligingly. When we had finished, I washed the tea things at the spring and my host dried them with the paper napkins and repacked the hamper. I noticed all at once that it had grown very dark.
"Why, the sun must have gone down!" I remembered, with a guilty pang, how the previous afternoon had flown. "It can't be twilight already!"
"It isn't later than five," he returned. "I'm afraid there's a storm coming."
"Oh, there is!" I exclaimed in alarm. "The wind is rising. We must go back as quickly as we can I You have much farther to go than I."
"I'll walk back with you" he began, but I interrupted him confusedly.
"Oh, no, please! I—I won't be frightened again!"
"You are sure?" He smiled, adding. "Then cut straight across to the other side of the island, and go home along the beach; it is the most direct way."
I held out my hand, with a little pang of regret that it was all over.
"Goodbye," my voice was scarcely audible. "And thank you for asking me to stay for your party. I enjoyed it very much, Mr. Barford."
He looked up quickly, and opened his lips to speak, but hesitated, oddly. Then, as he took my hand, he said: "Goodbye. Laddie and I appreciate the honor you have done us, and we hope you will come again."
I shook my head laughingly, and he parted the bushes for me to pass. He was still standing there, looking after me, and he smiled, and waved his hand. I waved in return, and hastened on. I could feel myself blushing stupidly, and I would have given worlds if he had not seen me stop and look back. A nice opinion he must have of me, anyway, talking and picnicing with a man I'd never met properly. It wasn't at all the sort of a thing a nice girl would have done, but it's awfully hard to be a nice girl all the time!
I was so busy with my thoughts as I scurried through the woods that I quite forgot my panic of the early afternoon, and the object that had caused it. The wind was thrashing the branches of the trees about angrily, and the first drops of rain fell as I reached the beach.
I ran as quickly as I could along the hard, sun-baked sand, and as I neared the house it seemed to me that I heard subdued shouting. I tried to go faster, but I was breathless. The rain was coming down in torrents and the gale buffeted me unmercifully.
As I staggered on, I heard Aunt Julie's voice from the veranda calling excitedly for Lucie, and wondered what could be the matter. Then, as I passed a clump of sumac bushes, someone leaped from behind them and caught my arm roughly, and a harsh voice shouted in my ear: "Imbecile! Where have you been! Mon Dieu, how dared you frighten us so!"
It was Monsieur Pelissier.