The Blotting Book Part 8

Mr. Taynton changed his wet clothes and half an hour afterwards he sat down to his simple and excellent supper. Mrs. Otter had provided an admirable vegetable soup for him, and some cold lamb with asparagus and endive salad. A macedoine of strawberries followed and a scoop of cheese.

Simple as his fare was, it just suited Mr. Taynton's tastes, and he was indulging himself with the rather rare luxury of a third gla.s.s of port when Williams entered again.

"Mr. a.s.sheton," he said, and held the door open.

Morris came in; he was dressed in evening clothes with a dinner jacket, and gave no salutation to his host.

"He's not come yet?" he asked.

But his host sprang up.

"Dear boy," he said, "what a relief it is to see you. Ever since you left this afternoon I have had you on my mind. You will have a gla.s.s of port?"

Morris laughed, a curious jangling laugh.

"Oh yes, to drink his health," he said.

He sat down with a jerk, and leaned his elbows on the table.

"He'll want a lot of health to carry him through this, won't he?" he asked.

He drank his gla.s.s of port like water, and Mr. Taynton instantly filled it up again for him.

"Ah, I remember you don't like port," he said. "What else can I offer you?"

"Oh, this will do very well," said Morris. "I am so thirsty."

"You have dined?" asked his host quietly.

"No; I don't think I did. I wasn't hungry."

The Cromwellian clock chimed a remnant half hour.

"Half-past," said Morris, filling his gla.s.s again. "You expect him then, don't you?"

"Mills is not always very punctual," said Mr. Taynton.

For the next quarter of an hour the two sat with hardly the interchange of a word. From outside came the swift steady hiss of the rain on to the shrubs in the garden, and again the clock chimed. Morris who at first had sat very quiet had begun to fidget and stir in his chair; occasionally when he happened to notice it, he drank off the port with which Mr. Taynton hospitably kept his gla.s.s supplied. Sometimes he relit a cigarette only to let it go out again. But when the clock struck he got up.

"I wonder what has happened," he said. "Can he have missed his train?

What time ought he to have got in?"

"He was to have got to Falmer," said Mr. Taynton with a little emphasis on the last word, "at a quarter to seven. He spoke of walking from there."

Morris looked at him with a furtive sidelong glance.

"Why, I--I might have met him there," he said. "I went up there again after I left you to tell Sir Richard you would call to-morrow."

"You saw nothing of him?" asked the lawyer.

"No, of course not. Otherwise--There was scarcely a soul on the road; the storm was coming up. But he would go by the downs, would he not?"

"The path over the downs doesn't branch off for a quarter of a mile below Falmer station," said Mr. Taynton.

The minutes ticked on till ten. Then Morris went to the door.

"I shall go round to his rooms to see if he is there," he said.

"There is no need," said his host, "I will telephone."

The instrument hung in a corner of the room, and with very little delay, Mills's servant was rung up. His master had not yet returned, but he had said that he should very likely be late.

"And he made an appointment with you for half-past nine?" asked Morris again.

"Yes. I cannot think what has happened to detain him."

Morris went quickly to the door again.

"I believe it is all a trick," he said, "and you don't want me to meet him. I believe he is in his rooms the whole time. I shall go and see."

Before Mr. Taynton could stop him he had opened the front-door and banged it behind him, and was off hatless and coatless through the pouring perpendicular rain.

Mr. Taynton ran to the door, as if to stop him, but Morris was already halfway down the street, and he went upstairs to the drawing-room. Morris was altogether unlike himself; this discovery of Mills's treachery seemed to have changed his nature. Violent and quick he always was, but to-night he was suspicious, he seemed to distrust Mr. Taynton himself. And, a thing which his host had never known him do before, he had drunk in that half hour when they sat waiting, close on a bottle of port.

The evening paper lay ready cut for him in its accustomed place, but for some five minutes Mr. Taynton did not appear to notice it, though evening papers, on the money-market page, might contain news so frightfully momentous to him. But something, this strangeness in Morris, no doubt, and his general anxiety and suspense as to how this dreadful knot could unravel itself, preoccupied him now, and even when he did take up the paper and turn to the reports of Stock Exchange dealings, he was conscious of no more than a sort of subaqueous thrill of satisfaction.

For Boston Copper had gone up nearly a point since the closing price of last night.

It was not many minutes, however before Morris returned with matted and streaming hair and drenched clothes.

"He has not come back," he said. "I went to his rooms and satisfied myself of that, though I think they thought I was mad. I searched them you understand; I insisted. I shall go round there again first thing to-morrow morning, and if he is not there, I shall go up to find him in town. I can't wait; I simply can't wait."

Mr. Taynton looked at him gravely, then nodded.

"No, I guess how you are feeling," he said, "I cannot understand what has happened to Mills; I hope nothing is wrong. And now, my dear boy, let me implore you to go straight home, get off your wet things and go to bed. You will pay heavily for your excitement, if you are not careful."

"I'll get it out of him." said Morris.

CHAPTER VI

Morris, as Mr. Taynton had advised, though not because he advised it, had gone straight home to the house in Suss.e.x Square. He had stripped off his dripping clothes, and then, since this was the line of least resistance he had gone to bed. He did not feel tired, and he longed with that aching longing of the son for the mother, that Mrs. a.s.sheton had been here, so that he could just be in her presence and if he found himself unable to speak and tell her all the hideous happenings of those last days, let her presence bring a sort of healing to his tortured mind. But though he was conscious of no tiredness, he was tired to the point of exhaustion, and he had hardly got into bed, when he fell fast asleep. Outside, hus.h.i.+ng him to rest, there sounded the sibilant rain, and from the sea below ripples broke gently and rhythmically on the pebbly beach. Nature, too, it seemed, was exhausted by that convulsion of the elements that had turned the evening into a clamorous h.e.l.l of fire and riot, and now from very weariness she was weeping herself asleep.

It was not yet eleven when Morris had got home, and he slept dreamlessly with that recuperative sleep of youth for some six hours. Then, as within the secret economy of the brain the refreshment of slumber repaired the exhaustion of the day before, he began to dream with strange lurid distinctness, a sort of resurrection dream of which the events of the two days before supplied the bones and skeleton outline. As in all very vivid and dreadful dreams the whole vision was connected and coherent, there were no ludicrous and inconsequent interludes, none of those breakings of one thread and hurried seizures of another, which though one is dreaming very distinctly, supply some vague mental comfort, since even to the sleeper they are reminders that his experiences are not solid but mere phantasies woven by imperfect consciousness and incomplete control of thought. It was not thus that Morris dreamed; his dream was of the solid and sober texture of life.

He was driving in his motor, he thought, down the road from the house at Falmer Park, which through the gate of a disused lodge joins the main road, that leads from Falmer Station to Brighton. He had just heard from Sir Richard's own lips who it was who had slandered and blackened him, but, in his dream, he was conscious of no anger. The case had been referred to some higher power, some august court of supreme authority, which would certainly use its own instruments for its own vengeance. He felt he was concerned in the affair no longer; he was but a spectator of what would be. And, in obedience to some inward dictation, he drove his motor on to the gra.s.s behind the lodge, so that it was concealed from the road outside, and walked along the inside of the park-palings, which ran parallel with it.

The afternoon, it seemed, was very dark, though the atmosphere was extraordinarily clear, and after walking along the springy gra.s.s inside the railings for some three hundred yards, where was the southeastern corner of the park enclosure, he stopped at the angle and standing on tip-toe peered over them, for they were nearly six feet high, and looked into the road below. It ran straight as a billiard-cue just here, and was visible for a long distance, but at the corner, just outside the palings, the footpath over the downs to Brighton left the road, and struck upward. On the other side of the road ran the railway, and in this clear dark air, Morris could see with great distinctness Falmer Station some four hundred yards away, along a stretch of the line on the other side of it.