_ PART I CHAPTER XVI. SECRETS
The rest of that day was passed in so ordinary a fashion that Olga found herself wondering now and then if she could by any chance have dreamed the events of the night.
During the whole of the morning she was occupied with her jam-making, while Violet lazed in the garden. Nick had planned a motor-ride in the afternoon, and they went for miles, returning barely in time for dinner. Violet was in excellent spirits throughout, and seemed unconscious of fatigue, though Olga was so weary that she nearly fell asleep in the drawing-room after the meal. Max was in one of his preoccupied moods, and scarcely addressed a word to anyone. Only when he bade her good-night she had a curious feeling that his hand-grip was intended to convey something more than mere convention demanded. She withdrew her own hand very quickly. For some reason she was feeling a little afraid of Max.
Yet on the following morning, so casual was his greeting that she felt oddly vexed with him as well as with herself, and was even glad when Violet sauntered down late as usual and claimed his attention. Violet, it seemed, had decided to ignore his decidedly arbitrary treatment of her. She had also apparently given up smoking, for she made no further reference to her vanished cigarettes, a piece of docility over which Olga, who had known her intimately for some years, marvelled much.
She was obliged to leave her that afternoon to go to tea with an old patient of her father's who lived at the other end of the parish, Violet firmly refusing at the last moment to accompany her thither. Nick had promised to coach the boys at cricket practice that day, and Olga departed with a slight feeling of uneasiness and a determination to return as early as possible.
It was not, however, easy to curtail her visit. The patient was a garrulous old woman, and Olga was kept standing on the point of departure for a full half-hour. In the end she almost wrenched herself free and hurried home at a pace that brought her finally to her own door so hot and breathless that she was obliged to sit down and gasp in the hall before she could summon the strength to investigate any further.
Recovering at length, she went in search of Violet, and found her lounging under the limes in luxurious coolness with a book.
She glanced up from this at Olga's approach and smiled. There was a sparkle in her eyes that made her very alluring.
"Poor child! How hot you are! People with your complexion never ought to get hot. What have you been doing?"
She stretched a lazy hand of welcome, as Olga subsided upon the grass beside her.
"I've been hurrying back," Olga explained. "I thought you would be lonely."
"Oh dear, no! Not in the least." Violet glanced down at her book, a little ruminative smile curving the corners of her red mouth.
Olga peered at the volume. "What is it? Something respectable for once?"
"Not in the least. It is French and very highly flavoured. I daresay you wouldn't understand it, dear," said Violet. "You're such an _ingenue_."
Olga made a grimace. "I'd rather not understand some things," she said bluntly.
Violet uttered a low laugh. "Dear child, you are so unsophisticated! When are you going to grow up?"
"I am grown up," said Olga. "But I don't see the use of studying the horrid side of life. I think it's a waste of time."
"There we differ," smiled Violet. "Perhaps, however, it doesn't matter so much in your case. It is only women who travel and see the world who really need to be upon their guard."
Olga smiled also at that. "Shall I tell you a secret?" she said.
"Do, dear!" Violet instantly stiffened to attention. The smile went out of her face; Olga almost fancied that she looked apprehensive.
"It's quite a selfish one," she said, seeking instinctively to reassure her. "It's only that--perhaps--when the autumn comes--I may go to India with Nick."
"Oh! Really! My dear, how thrilling!" The words came with a rush that sounded as if the speaker were wholeheartedly relieved. The smile flashed back into Violet's face. She lay back in her chair with the indolent grace that usually characterized her movements. "Really!" she said again. "Tell me all about it."
Olga told her forthwith, painting the prospect in the brilliant colours with which her vivid imagination had clothed it, while Violet listened, interested and amused.
"You'll remember it's a secret," she wound up. "We haven't heard from Dad or Muriel yet, and of course nothing can be settled till we do. If either should object, of course it won't come off."
"Oh, I won't tell a soul," Violet promised. "How exciting if you go, Allegro! I wonder if you will get married."
Olga laughed light-heartedly. "As if I should waste my precious time like that! No, no! If I go, I shall fill up every minute of the time with adventures. I shall go tiger-hunting with Nick, and pig-sticking, and riding, and--oh, scores of things. Besides, they're nearly all Indians at Sharapura, and one couldn't marry an Indian!"
"Couldn't one?" said Violet. "Wouldn't you like to be a ranee, Allegro? I would!" She looked at Olga with kindling eyes. "Just think of it, dear! The power, the magnificence, the jewels! Oh, I believe I'd do anything for riches."
"Violet! I wouldn't!"
Olga spoke with strong emphasis and Violet laughed--a short, hard laugh. "Oh, no, you wouldn't, I know! You were born to be a slave. But I wasn't. I was born to be a queen, and a queen I'll be--or die!" She suddenly glanced about her with the peculiar, furtive look that Olga had noticed the day before. "That's why I wouldn't marry Max Wyndham," she said, "for all the riches in the world! He is the One Impossible."
Olga felt her colour rising. She made response with an effort. "Don't you like him, then?"
"Like him!" Violet's eyes came down to her. They expressed a fiery chafing at restraint that made her think of a wild creature caged. "My dear, what has that to do with it? I wouldn't marry a man who didn't worship me, whatever my own feelings might be; and it isn't in him to worship any woman. No, he would only grind me under his heel, and I should probably kill him in the end and myself too." A passionate note crept into the deep voice. It seemed to quiver on the verge of tragedy; and then again quite suddenly she laughed. "But I don't feel in the least murderous," she said. "In fact, I'm at peace with all the world just now. Listen, Allegro! You've told me your secret. I'll tell you one of mine. But you must swear on your sacred honour that you will never repeat it to a soul."
Olga was in a fashion used to this form of affidavit. She had been the recipient of Violet's secrets before. She gave the required pledge with the utmost simplicity, little dreaming how soon she was to repent of it.
Violet leaned towards her and spoke in low, confidential tones. "So amusing, dear! I know you won't mind for once. It's Hunt-Goring again. He really is too ridiculous for words. He has hired a yacht, you must know--a nice little steam-yacht, Allegro. He walked over this afternoon to tell me about it. Don't look so horrified! There's much worse to come." She laughed again under her breath. "He has asked me--in fact, persuaded me--to go for a little trip in it one day next week. Of course I said No at first; and then he said you could come too to make it proper; so I consented. I'm sure you won't mind for once, and a breath of sea air will do me good."
She laid a hand of careless coaxing upon Olga's shoulder. But Olga's demeanour was very far from acquiescent.
"But, Violet!" she exclaimed, "how could you possibly accept for me? I'm not going! No; indeed, I'm not! Neither must you. It's the maddest project I ever heard of! Whatever made you imagine for one moment that I would agree to go?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Allegro!" Violet sounded quite unmoved. "Of course you'll go, unless--" she smiled a trifle maliciously--"you mean me to go alone, as I certainly shall if you are going to be tiresome about it. You wouldn't like me to do that, I suppose?"
Olga gazed at her helplessly. "Violet, what am I to say to you? How could you and I go off for a whole day with that detestable man? Why, it--it would start everyone talking!"
"My dear, no one will know," said Violet with composure. "Haven't you sworn to keep it a dead secret? He won't talk and neither shall I. So, you see, it's all perfectly safe. Not that there would be anything improper about it in any case. He is as old as you and me put together,--older I should say."
"Oh, but he's such a fiend!" burst forth Olga. "You said you were going to give him up only the other night."
"When?" said Violet sharply.
Olga hesitated. It was the first time she had made direct reference to that midnight episode.
"When did I say that?" insisted Violet.
Half-reluctantly Olga made reply, while Violet leaned forward and listened intently. "The night before last. You came to my room late, don't you remember?"
Violet's eyes had a startled look. "Yes?" she breathed. "Yes? What else?"
Olga looked straight up at her. "Dear, I don't think we need talk about it, need we? You were not yourself. I think you were half-asleep. You had been smoking those hateful cigarettes."
"Ah, but tell me!" insisted Violet. "Why did I come to you? What did I say? Was--was Max there?"
"He came in," faltered Olga. "He--guessed you weren't well. He helped you back to your own room. Don't you remember?"
"Yes--yes--I remember!" Violet's brows were drawn with the effort; there was a look of dawning horror in her eyes. "I remember, Allegro!" she said, speaking rapidly. "He--he was very brutal to me, wasn't he? He made me tell him where to find the cigarettes, and then--and then--yes, he took them away. I've hated him ever since." Again that vindictive note sounded in her voice. "I won't bear brutality from any man," she said. "Do you know, if I didn't hate him, I believe I should be afraid of him? I know you are, Allegro."
"Perhaps; a little," Olga admitted.
"Ah! I knew it. He can do anything he likes with you. But I am different." She lifted her head proudly. "I am no man's slave," she said. "He thinks that he has only to speak, and I shall obey. He was never more mistaken in his life."
"But, Violet, he was only treating you as a patient," Olga protested. "And he only took the cigarettes because--"
"I know why he took them." Quickly Violet interrupted. "And remember this, Allegro! Whatever happens to me in the future you must never, never let him attend me again. I suffered more from his treatment than I have ever suffered before, and I can never go through it again. You understand?" She looked at Olga with eyes that had in them the memory of a great pain. "It was torture," she said. "He forced his will upon mine. He crushed me down, so that I was at his mercy. It was like an overpowering weight. I thought my heart would stop. I don't know--even now--how it was I didn't die."
"He gave you the pain-killer, dear," said Olga soothingly. "That was what made you well again."
"The pain-killer!" Violet gazed at her bewildered. "What is--the pain-killer?" she said.
Olga shook her head. "I don't know what it is. He wouldn't tell me. He calls it--sudden death."
Violet gave a great start. "Good heavens, Allegro! And he gave me that?"
"Only enough to make you sleep," explained Olga. "He gave me some the other day, when the heat upset me. I liked it."
Violet's eyes were glittering very strangely. "And you--came back again after it?" she said. "Allegro, are you--sure?"
"Of course," said Olga. "I don't know what you mean, dear. Of course I came back, or I shouldn't be here now."
"No--no, of course not!" Violet lay back in her chair, gazing straight up through the limes at the flawless August sky. "So that is why I didn't die," she said. "He only let me go--half-way. If I'd only had a little more--a little more--" She broke off suddenly and threw a quick side glance at Olga. "What queer creatures doctors are!" she said. "They spend their whole lives fighting, with the certainty that they are bound to be conquered in the end."
"They are splendid!" said Olga, with shining eyes.
"Oh, do you think so? I never can. If they fought suffering only, it would be a different thing. That I could admire. But to fight death--" Violet made a curious little gesture of the hands--"it seems to me like tilting at a windmill," she said. "Everyone must die sooner or later."
"But no one wants to go before his time," observed a cool voice behind them. "Or if he does, he's a shirker and deserves to be kicked."
Both girls started as Max strolled carelessly up, hands in pockets, and propped himself against a tree close by.
His eyes travelled over Olga's face as he did so. "You've been overheated," he remarked.
She pulled her hat forward with a nervous jerk. "Who can help it this weather?"
He grunted disapproval. "You never see me in that condition. Pray continue your oration, Miss Campion! It was not my intention to interrupt."
But Violet had suddenly reopened her book and buried herself therein.
Max twisted his neck and peered over. After a brief space he grunted again and relaxed against the tree.
"Do you read French?" Olga asked, feeling the silence to be slightly oppressive.
He laughed drily. "Not that sort. I have no taste for it."
"But you know the language?" Olga persisted, still striving against silence.
"I've studied it," said Max. He paused a moment; then, "The best fellow I ever knew was a Frenchman," he said.
She looked up at him, caught by something in his tone. "A friend of yours?"
He took off his hat with a reverence which she would have deemed utterly foreign to his nature. "Yes, a friend," he said. "Bertrand de Montville."
"Oh, did you know him?" exclaimed Olga. "Why did you never tell me before? I shall never forget how miserable I was because he didn't live to be reinstated in the French Army. But it's years ago now, isn't it?"
"Six years," said Max.
"Yes, I remember. How I should like to have known him! But I was at school then. And you knew him well?"
"I was with him when he died," he said.
"Oh!" said Olga, and then with a touch of shyness, "I'm sorry, Max."
"No," he said. "You needn't be sorry. He was no shirker. His time was up."
"But wasn't it a pity?" she said.
He smiled a little. "I don't think he thought so. He was happy enough--at the last."
"But if he had only been vindicated first!" she said.
"Do you think that matters?" Max's smile became cynical.
"Surely it would have made a difference to him?" she protested. "Surely he cared!"
He snapped his fingers in the air. "He cared just that."
Violet looked up suddenly from her book. "And you--did you care--just that too?"
He seemed to Olga to contract at the question. "I?" he said. "I had other things to think about. Life is too short for grizzling in any case. And I chanced to have my sister to attend to at the same time."
"You have a sister?" said Olga, swift to intervene once more.
He nodded. "Did I never tell you? She is married to Trevor Mordaunt the writer. Ever heard of him?"
"Why, yes! Nick knows him, I believe."
"Very likely. He has an immense circle of friends. He's quite a good sort," said Max.
"And where do they live?" asked Olga, with interest.
"In Suffolk chiefly. Mordaunt bought our old home and gave it to Chris--my sister--when they married. My elder brother manages the estate for him."
"How nice!" said Olga. "And what is your sister like?"
Max smiled. "She is my twin," he said.
"Oh! Like you then?" Olga looked slightly disappointed.
Max laughed. "Not in the least. Can you imagine a woman like me? I can't. She has red hair or something very near it. And there the resemblance stops. I'll take you to see her some day--if you'll come."
"Thank you," said Olga guardedly.
"Don't mention it!" said Max. "There are two kiddies also--a boy and a girl. It's quite a domestic establishment. I often go there when I want a rest. My brother-in-law is good enough to keep special rooms for the three of us."
"Is there another of you then?" asked Olga.
"Yes, another brother--Noel. By the way, he won't be going there again at present, for he sailed for Bombay to join his regiment a year ago. That's the sum complete of us." Max straightened himself with a faintly ironical smile. "We are a fairly respectable family nowadays," he observed, "thanks to Mordaunt who has a reputation to think of. But we are boring Miss Campion to extinction. Can't we talk of something more amusing?"
Violet threw back her head with a restless movement, but she did not meet his eyes. "I am accustomed to amusing myself," she said.
He stooped to pick up a marker that had fallen from her book. "It is a useful accomplishment," he observed, as he handed it to her, "for those who have time to cultivate it."
She raised her arms with the careless, unstudied grace of a wild creature. Her eyes were veiled.
"I assure you it is far more satisfying than tilting at windmills," she said.
Max straightened himself. There seemed to Olga something pitiless about him, a deadliness of purpose that made him cruel. And in that moment she became aware of a strong antagonism between these two that almost amounted to open hostility.
"A matter of opinion," said Max. "I suppose we each of us have our patent method of killing time."
Violet uttered an indolent laugh. "Yours is a very strenuous one," she observed. "I believe you imagine yourself invincible in your own particular line, don't you?"
"Not at present," said Max, with his twisted smile.
She laughed again, mockingly. "Irresistible then, shall we say?"
He had turned to go, but he paused at the question and looked back at her, grimly ironical. Olga had a feeling that the green eyes comprehended her also.
"No," he said, with extreme deliberation. "Not even that. But--since you ask me--the odds are certainly very greatly in my favour."
And with that he turned on his heel, still smiling, and sauntered away.
As he went, Violet stooped towards Olga with a face gone suddenly white, and grasped her arm.
"Remember, Allegro!" she said. "Not a word about Hunt-Goring--to anyone! Not one single tiny suspicion of a hint!"
And Olga, looking into her eyes, read terror in her soul. _