The Keeper of the Door Part 17

"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 s.e.x. 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 b.u.t.t 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 gla.s.ses of rhubarb wine you had at 'The s.h.i.+p.'"

Carelessly he rallied her on the subject, carelessly let it pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.sionate 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.