_ PART I CHAPTER VII. THE PUZZLE
The visit to the Priory occupied some time, as Olga had foreseen. There were some things that Violet wanted to fetch from her own room and this entailed a search, for her possessions were always in the wildest disorder. Olga waited for her in the hall, chafing at the delay, since she knew that the car would be required by Max early in the afternoon to take him on his rounds.
Mitchel remained outside in the hot sunshine, severe disapproval in every line of him. Olga felt decidedly out of patience with him. As if it were her fault!
She sat on the old oak chest that Violet gaily called her coffin, and stared at the gruesome east window, while her thoughts dwelt upon the story she had just heard from Mrs. Briggs's lips. Had Max really intended to place freedom within the old woman's reach? For some reason wholly inexplicable she longed to know. She recalled the words he had uttered that day in the library of Redlands, his half-cynical talk of "a free pass," his reference to himself as "gaoler." Was it possible that she had formed a wrong impression of him? And if in this matter, perhaps in others also. Perhaps after all she had mistaken his attitude towards Violet. Perhaps after all he was human enough to feel the strong attraction of the girl's beauty. Perhaps after all he was beginning to care. And if so, what then? She felt her face burn in the coolness. Somehow she did not want him to be hurt, to suffer as she knew that other men had been made to suffer by the gay inconsequence of her friend. Only a week ago she had desired his ignominious downfall. To-day she wanted to save him from it. She had a desperate longing to warn him that Violet's favour was a thing of nought, that her treatment of him had all been planned between them beforehand, that it was all a game.
She could not picture him at any woman's feet. Yet undoubtedly Violet was hard to resist; their intimacy had grown apace during the past few days. And Violet knew so well how to wield her power, when to scorn and when subtly to flatter. She had never yet received a check in her triumphant career, and she boasted openly of her conquests.
No, Olga was fain to admit it. All her own private aversion notwithstanding, she did not want this man added to the list of victims. Cynical and even overbearing though he might be, she no longer desired to see him humiliated. And her face glowed more and more hotly as she remembered that it was she who had set the trap.
She fully realized, however, that an appeal to Violet at this stage would be worse than futile. Violet was too set on her mischievous course to do other than laugh and pursue it with renewed zest for her capture. Of course there remained Nick, chosen adviser and confidant; but for some reason Olga shrank from discussing Max with him. She had an uneasy dread lest Nick's intelligence should leap ahead of her and disclose to her with disconcerting suddenness facts and possibilities with which she was quite unprepared to reckon. She visualized his grin of amused comprehension over the means she had devised for her own deliverance and the unpleasant quandary in which it had placed her. Nick's sense of humour was at times almost too keen. She smiled faintly to herself over this reflection. She could not deny that there were points in the situation which appealed even to her own.
Yet she was more ashamed than amused. The discovery that Max was human had somehow altered everything, and made her own conduct appear dastardly. She had acted maliciously albeit, in self-defence; but now that it seemed that her point might pierce his armour, she wanted to withdraw it. She shrank unspeakably from seeing him vanquished. It would have hurt her to find him at her own feet, but the bare thought of him at Violet's--Violet who had no mercy upon old or young, who would trample him underfoot without a pang and pass gaily on--that thought was unbearable.
Of course she might be wrong. It was still possible that her original conception of him might be the correct one. He had a passion for his profession, she knew. It was quite possible that this had inspired his taking that awful risk the night before, quite possible also that a hopeless case did not appeal to him and that he had not therefore greatly cared how soon or in what manner Mrs. Stubbs had passed out through the prison-door which it was his work to guard. She realized vaguely that this form of callousness was not so hideous as she had at first deemed it. She also began to realize that for a man who had seen suffering and death in many forms and who found himself finally powerless to alleviate the one or avert the other, the inevitable end could not possess the tragic significance which it possessed for others.
Either point of view of his character was possible. She did not know him well enough to decide to her own satisfaction which was actually the true one. But the fact remained that she had delivered him to Violet to be tormented, and that before he had given any sign of suffering she had repented the rash act. He might be capable of suffering or he might not; but she had a passionate desire to know him safe before the fire had begun to kindle.
Violet's return at length broke up her reflections. She awoke from her reverie with a start to exclaim upon the lateness of the hour. It was already close upon luncheon-time.
"We shall have to scorch," laughed Violet.
And scorch they did at a rate that made the sober Mitchel swear inarticulately almost throughout the journey. They met with no mishap, however, and finally reached Weir flushed, dishevelled, but exultant.
Max came from the direction of the surgery as they entered.
"Can I speak to you a moment?" he said to Olga and drew her into her father's little smoking-room at the side of the hall almost before the words were uttered.
Olga faced him with a racing heart, burningly reminiscent of the note she had left in his hat, the note she had asked him to ignore.
He must have seen her embarrassment, for his green eyes studied her without mercy; but when he spoke it was not upon the subject of her overture.
"Look here!" he said. "Hunt-Goring is here. Do you mind if I ask him to luncheon?"
The news was unexpected. Olga gave a sharp, involuntary start. "Major Hunt-Goring!" she stammered. "Why--what is he doing here?"
"He walked over with a broken thumb for me to mend," said Max, still grimly watching her. "It's some way back to The Warren, and he's a bit used up. I fancy your father would make him lunch here under the circumstances, but you must do as you think best. It's not my house."
The colour sank rapidly from Olga's face under his look. "Oh, Dr. Wyndham," she said breathlessly, "do you think we need?"
He frowned at her agitation. "Of course, we needn't," he said. "If you don't want him, he can go to 'The Swan.' He is in the surgery at the present moment. I must go back and see how he is getting on."
"Wait a moment!" Olga broke in rapidly. "I--I'm afraid you're right. Dad would certainly keep him. Oh, why isn't Nick here? He needn't have chosen to-day to break this thumb."
"Kismet!" said Max, with a cynical lift of the shoulders. "I gather you don't like the man?"
She shrank at the question: it was almost a shudder. "No!"
He turned to the door. "Well, pull yourself together. I daresay he won't eat you. And you'll have Miss Campion to protect you. She would be proof against a dozen monsters."
He cast her a glance with the words that made her aware of a certain not very abstruse meaning behind them. Olga's cheeks burned again. Did he know, then? Had he guessed why Violet was in the house? Was that the reason of his curious vigilance, his guarded acceptance of her favours? She was possessed by an almost overwhelming desire to know, and yet no words could she find in which to ask.
"Well?" said Max, pausing in the act of opening the door. "You were going to say--"
She raised her eyes with a conscious effort, and nerved herself to speak.
"Max," she said desperately, "please don't mind my asking! It isn't from idle curiosity. Do you like her?" She saw the rough red brows go up, and swiftly repented her temerity. "I only asked," she faltered, "because--"
"Well?" Max said again. "It would be interesting to know why you asked."
She compelled herself to answer him, or perhaps it was he who compelled. In any case, with her head bent, her answer came.
"I had been thinking that perhaps you were getting fond of her, and--and--I should be sorry if that happened, because I know she isn't in earnest. I know she is only playing with you."
The words ran cut in a whisper. She dared not look at him. She could only watch with fascinated eyes the brown fingers that gripped the door-knob.
"She has told you that?" asked Max.
She quivered at the question. It was horribly difficult to answer. "I know it is so," she murmured.
She was thankful that he did not press her to be more explicit. He stood for a moment in silence; then: "Isn't it possible," he said in a very level tone, "for a woman to set out to catch a man and to end by being caught herself?"
"Not for Violet," said Olga.
"I wonder," said Max.
She looked up at him quickly, caught by something in his tone. His eyes, alert and green, looked straight into hers.
"Did you really think I was falling in love with her?" he said.
Olga hesitated.
"She thinks so?" he questioned.
"Yes." Against her will she answered. It was as if he wrung the word from her.
He smiled a grim smile. "Many thanks for your warning!" he said. "I take a deep interest in Miss Campion, as you seem to have divined. But the danger of my falling a victim to her charms is very remote. You need harbour no further anxieties on my account."
He opened the door as he spoke, and Olga passed out, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry that she had brought herself to speak.
She went upstairs to Violet and acquainted her with the fact of Major Hunt-Goring's presence and its cause.
"I do wish Nick had been here," she said in conclusion.
"He may elect to stay for ever so long. I don't know what we shall do with him."
Violet, however, was by no means dismayed by the prospect. "Oh, I enjoy Major Hunt-Goring," she said. "You leave him to me. I'll entertain him."
"Hateful man!" said Olga.
Whereat Violet laughed and pinched her cheek. "You know you like him!"
"I detest him!" said Olga quickly.
It was certainly with no excess of cordiality that a few minutes later she greeted her guest. He was standing in the hall with one arm in a sling when she and Violet descended the stairs, an immense man of about five-and-forty with a very decided military bearing and dark eyes of covert insolence.
Max was with him, and Olga experienced a very novel feeling of relief to see him there. She advanced and shook hands with extreme frigidity.
"I am sorry you have had an accident," she said.
"Very good of you," said Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were yachting in the Atlantic."
"Heaven forbid!" said Violet. "Yachting is simply another word for imprisonment to me. I told Bruce I should certainly drown myself if I went with them."
"I should like to introduce you to a form of yachting that is not imprisonment," said Hunt-Goring.
Violet laughed. "Oh, I should have to be mistress of the yacht for that."
"Even so," he rejoined significantly.
"And I shouldn't have any men on board with the exception of the sailors," she went on.
"And the captain," said Hunt-Goring.
"Oh, dear me, no! I would be my own captain."
"You'd be horribly bored before the first week was out," observed the major, as he followed her into the dining-room.
She laughed gaily. "There isn't a single man of my acquaintance in whose company I shouldn't be bored to extinction long before that."
"Oh, come!" he protested. "You don't speak from experience. You condemn us untried."
"I know you all too well," laughed Violet.
"You know me not at all," declared Hunt-Goring. "I appeal to Miss Ratcliffe. Am I the sort of man to bore a woman?"
"I am no judge," said Olga somewhat hastily. "I never have time to be bored with anyone. Will you sit here, please? I am sorry to say my uncle is in town to-day."
"Where are the three boys?" asked Max.
Olga turned to him with relief. "They have gone for an all-day paper-chase with the Rectory crowd and taken lunch with them."
"Why didn't you go too?" he asked. "Too lazy?"
"Too busy," she returned briefly.
"That's only an excuse," said Max.
She glanced at him. "It's a sound one anyhow."
"What are you going to do this afternoon?" he asked.
"Mend."
"Mend what?"
"Stockings," said Olga.
"Great Scot!" said Max. "Do you mend the stockings of the entire family?"
"Including yours," said Olga.
"Oh, I say!" he protested. "That wasn't in the contract, was it? Pitch 'em into my room. I'll mend them myself or do without."
"One pair more or less doesn't make much difference," said Olga. "As to doing without,--well, of course, you're a man or you wouldn't make such a suggestion."
"You've thrown that in my teeth before," he observed. "I think you might remember that I am hardly responsible for my sex. It's my misfortune, not my fault."
She smiled, her sudden brief smile, but made no rejoinder.
Major Hunt-Goring and Violet, who had undertaken to cut up his meal for him, were engrossed in a frothy conversation which it was obvious that neither desired to have interrupted.
Max glanced towards them before he abruptly started another subject with Olga.
"How is Mrs. Briggs?"
Olga coloured hotly. "Oh, she seemed all right."
Max surveyed her rather pointedly. "Well? What had she got to say about me?"
"About you?" said Olga.
He laughed and looked away. "Even so, fair lady. I conclude it was something you would rather not repeat. I had already fathomed the fact that I was not beloved by Mrs. Briggs."
"It's your own fault," said Olga, speaking on the impulse to escape from a difficult subject. "You have such a knack of making all your patients afraid of you."
"Really?" said Max.
"Oh, don't be supercilious!" she said quickly. "You know it's true."
"It must be if you say so," he rejoined, "though there again it is more my misfortune than my fault. If my patients elect to make me the butt of their neurotic imagination, surely I am more to be pitied than blamed."
"No, I don't pity you at all," Olga said. "It's want of sympathy, you know. You go and do a splendid thing like--like--" She stopped suddenly.
"Please go on!" said Max. "Let's hear my good points, by all means!"
But Olga was in obvious confusion. "I didn't mean to mention it," she said. "It just slipped out. I was really thinking of--what happened last night."
He frowned instantly. "Who told you anything about it?"
"Nick."
"I should like to wring his skinny little neck," said Max.
"How dare you?" said Olga indignantly.
"You don't think I'm afraid of you, do you?" he said, with a smile.
"No," she admitted rather grudgingly. "I don't think you are afraid of anyone or anything. But it is a pity you spoil things by being so--unfriendly."
"Are you speaking on Mrs. Briggs's behalf or your own?" asked Max.
She met his eyes with a feeling of reluctance. "Well, I do hate quarrelling," she said.
"I never quarrel," said Max placidly.
"Oh, but you do!" she exclaimed. "How can you say such a thing?"
"No, I don't!" said Max. "I go my own way, that's all. If anyone tries to stop me, well, they get knocked down and trampled on. I don't call that quarrelling. It simply happens in the natural course of things."
"No wonder people don't like you!" said Olga.
"Don't you like me?" said Max.
He put the question with obvious indifference, yet his green eyes still studied her critically. Olga poured out some water with a hand so shaky that it splashed over. He reached forward and dabbed it up with his table-napkin.
"Well?" he said.
"I don't know," she murmured somewhat incoherently.
"Don't know! But you knew this morning!" The green eyes suddenly laughed at her. "I say, don't try to drink that yet!" he said. "You'll choke if you do. Go on! Tell me some more about Mrs. Briggs! Did she give you any of that filthy concoction she calls rhubarb wine?"
"It isn't filthy! It's delicious," declared Olga. "You can't have tasted it."
"Oh, yes, I had some the day the old woman died. In fact, I was trying to sleep off the effects that afternoon, when you caught me in Uncle Nick's library. It's horribly strong stuff. I suppose that is what made you so late for luncheon?"
"Indeed, it wasn't! We went to the Priory before coming home."
"Oh! What for?"
"Some things Violet wanted."
"What things?" said Max.
She looked at him in surprise. "I'm sure I don't know. I'm not so inquisitive as you are. You had better ask Violet."
"Ask me what?" said Violet, detaching her attention from Major Hunt-Goring for a moment.
"Nothing," said Max. "I was only wondering how many glasses of rhubarb wine you had at 'The Ship.'"
Carelessly he rallied her on the subject, carelessly let it pass. And Olga was left with a newly-awakened doubt at her heart. What was the reason for the keen interest he took in her friend? Had he really told her the truth when repudiating the possibility of his falling in love with her? She fancied he had; and if so, why was he so anxious to inform himself of her most trivial doings? It was a puzzle to Olga--a puzzle that for some reason gave her considerable uneasiness. Against her will and very deep down within her, she was aware of a lurking distrust that made her afraid of Max Wyndham. She felt as if he were watching to catch her off her guard, ready at a moment's notice to turn to his own purposes any rash confidence into which she might be betrayed. And she told herself with passionate self-reproach that she had already been guilty of disloyalty to her friend.
During the rest of luncheon she exerted herself to keep the conversation general, Max seconding her efforts as though unconscious of her desire to avoid him. In fact, he seemed wholly unaware of any change in her demeanour, and Olga noted the fact with relief, the while she determined to exclude him rigidly for the future from anything even remotely approaching to intimacy. Watch as they might, the shrewd green eyes should never again catch her off her guard. _