The Swindler and Other Stories Part 49

Having furnished his guest with everything he could think of to ensure his comfort, he proceeded deliberately to provide for his own.

Jerry was not quite at his ease. He sat with the unlighted cigar between his fingers, considering with bent brows. Kenyon looked at him at last with a faint smile.

"If I didn't know it to be an impossibility," he said, "I should say you were shying at something."

Jerry turned towards him with an air of resolution.

"Look here, Kenyon," he said, in his slightly superior tones, "I have really come to talk to you about your engagement to my sister."

He paused, aware of a change in Kenyon's expression, but wholly unable to discover of what it consisted.

"What about it?" said Kenyon.

He was on his feet, searching the mantelpiece for an ash-tray. His face was turned from Jerry, but could he have seen it fully, it would have told him nothing.

Jerry went on, with a strong effort to maintain his ease of manner:

"We've been thinking it over, and we have come to the conclusion that perhaps, after all, it was a mistake. In short, my sister has thought better of it; and, as she is naturally sensitive on the subject, I undertook to tell you so, I don't suppose it will make any particular difference to you. There are plenty of girls who would jump at the chance of marrying your millions. But, of course, if you wish it, some compensation could be made."

Jerry paused again. He had placed the matter on the most businesslike footing that had occurred to him. Of course, the man must realise that he was a rank outsider, and would understand that it was the best method.

Kenyon heard him out in dead silence. He had found the ash-tray, but he did not turn his head. After several dumb seconds, he walked across the room to the window, and stood there. Finally he spoke.

"I don't suppose," he said, in his calm, expressionless drawl, "that you have ever had a cowhiding in your life, have you?"

"What?" said Jerry.

He stared at Kenyon in frank amazement. Was the man mad?

"Never had a cowhiding in your life, eh?" repeated Kenyon, without moving.

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Jerry.

Kenyon remained motionless.

"I mean," he said calmly, "that I've thrashed a man to a pulp before now for a good deal less than you have just offered me. It's my special treatment for curs. Suits 'em wonderfully. And suits me, too."

Jerry sprang to his feet in a whirl of wrath, but before he could utter a word Kenyon suddenly turned.

"Go back to your sister," he said, in curt, stern tones, "and tell her from me that I will discuss this matter with her alone. If she intends to throw me over, she must come to me herself and tell me so. Go now!"

But Jerry stood halting between an open blaze of pa.s.sion and equally open discomfiture. He longed to hurl defiance in Kenyon's face, but some hidden force restrained him. There was that about the man at that moment which compelled submission. And so, at length, he turned without another word, and walked straight from the room with as fine a dignity as he could muster. By some remarkable means, d.i.c.k Kenyon had managed to get the best of the encounter.

V

Not the next day, nor the next, did Violet Trelevan summon up courage to face her outraged lover, and ask for her freedom. Jerry did not tell her precisely what had pa.s.sed, but she gathered from the information he vouchsafed that Kenyon had not treated the matter peaceably. She wondered a little how Jerry had approached it, and told herself with a beating heart that she would have to take her own line of action.

Nevertheless, for a full week she did nothing, and at the end of that week the flutter in the Winhalla Railway shares had subsided completely, and all Jerry's high hopes were dead. From day to day he had tried to console himself and her with the reflection that a speculation of that sort was bound to fluctuate, but, in the end, when the shares went down to zero, he was forced to own that he had been too sanguine. It had been but the last flicker before extinction. The capitalist had evidently thought better of risking his money on such a venture.

"And I was a gaping, weak-kneed idiot not to sell for what I could get!"

he told his sister. "But it's just our luck. I might have known nothing decent could ever happen to us!"

It was on that evening, when the outlook was at its blackest, that Violet wrote at last, without consulting Jerry, to the man in whose hands lay her freedom.

It was a short epistle, and humbly worded, for she realised that this, at least, was his due.

"I want you," she wrote, "to forgive me, if you can, for the wrong I have done you, and to set me free. I accepted you upon impulse, I am ashamed to say, for the sake of your money. But the shame would be even greater if I did not tell you so. I do not know what view you will take, but my own is that, in releasing me, you will not lose anything that is worth having."

The answer to this appeal came the next day by hand:

"May I see you alone at your flat at five o'clock?"

She had not expected it, and she felt for an instant as if a master hand had touched her, sending the blood tingling through her veins like fire.

She sent a reply in the affirmative; and then set herself to face the longest day she had ever lived through.

She sat alone during the afternoon, striving desperately to nerve herself for the ordeal. But strive as she might, the fact remained that she was horribly, painfully frightened. There was something about this man which it seemed futile to resist, something that dominated her, something against which it hurt her to fight.

She heard his ring punctually upon the stroke of five, and she went herself to answer it.

He greeted her with his usual serenity of manner.

"All alone?" he asked, as he followed her into the little drawing-room in which he had proposed to her so short a time before.

She a.s.sented nervously.

"Jerry went into the city. He won't be back yet."

"That's kind of you," said Kenyon quietly.

She did not ask him to sit down. They faced each other on the hearthrug.

The strong glare of the electric light showed him that she was very pale.

Abruptly he thrust out his hand to her.

"You must forgive me for bullying your brother the other day," he said.

"Really, he deserved it."

She glanced up quickly.

"Jerry doesn't understand," she said.

He kept his hand outstretched though she did not take it.

"I don't understand, either," he said.