Notwithstanding Part 36

"What is it? What is it?" she gasped, and as she said the words the cook entered slowly, bearing a yellow mould and some stewed fruit upon a tray.

Roger repeated the words "cracked tiles," and presently they were in the hall again.

"I must speak to you alone," he said desperately; "I came on purpose."

She considered a moment. She had no refuge of her own except her bedroom, that agreeable attic with the extended view which had been apportioned to Aunt Catherine, and which she had inhabited for so short a time. The little hall where they were standing was the pa.s.sage-room of the house. She took up a garden hat, and they went into the garden to the round seat under the apple tree, now ruddy with little contorted red apples. The gardener was scything the gra.s.s between the trees, whistling softly to himself.

Roger looked at him vindictively.

"I will walk part of the way home with you," said Annette, her voice shaking a little in spite of herself, "if you are going through the park."

"Yes, I have the keys."

"He has found out about d.i.c.k and me," she said to herself, "and is going to ask me if it is true."

They walked in silence across the empty cornfield, and Roger unlocked the little door in the high park wall.

Once there had been a broad drive to the house where that door stood, and you could still see where it had lain between an avenue of old oaks.

But the oaks had all been swept away. The ranks of gigantic boles showed the glory that had been.

"Uncle John was so fond of the oak avenue," said Roger. "He used to walk in it every day. There wasn't its equal in Lows.h.i.+re. Anne de la Pole planted it. I never thought d.i.c.k would have touched it."

And in the devastated avenue, the scene of d.i.c.k's recklessness, Roger told Annette of the catastrophe of Harry's marriage with the nurse, and how he had already seen a lawyer about it, and the lawyer was of opinion that it would almost certainly be legal.

"That means," said Roger, standing still in the mossy track, "that now d.i.c.k's gone, Harry, or rather his wife, for he is entirely under her thumb, will have possession of everything, Welmesley and Swale and Bulchamp, not that Bulchamp is worth much now that d.i.c.k has put a second mortgage on it, and s...o...b..--and _Hulver_."

He pointed with his stick at the old house with its twisted chimneys, partly visible through the trees, the only home that he had ever known, and his set mouth trembled a little.

"And that woman can turn me out to-morrow," he said. "And she will.

She's always disliked me. I shan't even have the agency. It was a bare living, but I shan't even have that. I shall only have Noyes. I've always done Noyes for eighty pounds a year, because Aunt Louisa wouldn't give more, and she can't now even if she was willing. And I'm not one of your new-fangled agents, been through Cirencester, or anything like that, educated up to it, scientific and all that sort of thing. Uncle John was his own agent, and I picked it up from him. When I lose this I don't suppose I shall get another job."

With a sinking heart, and yet with a sense of relief, Annette realized that Roger had heard nothing against her, and that she was reprieved for the moment. It was about all she did realize.

He saw the bewilderment in her face, and stuck his stick into the ground. He must speak more plainly.

"This all means," he said, becoming first darkly red and then ashen colour, "that I am not in a position to marry, Annette. I ought not to have said anything about it. I can't think how I could have forgotten as I did. But--but----"

He could say no more.

"I am glad you love me," said Annette faintly. "I am glad you said--something about it."

"But we can't marry," said Roger harshly. "What's the good if we can't be married?"

He made several attempts to speak, and then went on: "I suppose the truth is I counted on d.i.c.k doing something for me. He always said he would, and he was very generous. He's often said I'd done a lot for him.

Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I did it for the sake of the people and the place. Hulver's more to me than most things. But he told me over and over again he wouldn't forget me. Poor old d.i.c.k! After all, he couldn't tell he was going to fall on his head! There is no will, Annette. That's the long and the short of it. And so, of course, nearly everything goes to Harry."

"No will!" said Annette, drawing in a deep breath.

"d.i.c.k hasn't left a will," said Roger, and there was a subdued bitterness in his voice. "He has forgotten everybody who had a claim on him: a woman whom he ought to have provided for before every one else in the world, and Jones, Jones who stuck to him through thick and thin and nursed him so faithfully, and--and me. It doesn't do to depend on people like d.i.c.k, who won't take any trouble about anything."

The words seemed to sink into the silence of the September evening. A dim river mist, faintly flushed by the low sun, was creeping among the farther trees.

"But he did take trouble. There is a will," she said.

Her voice was so low that he did not hear what she said.

"d.i.c.k made a will," she said again. This time he heard.

He had been looking steadfastly at the old house among the trees, and there were tears in his eyes as he slowly turned to blink through them at her.

"How can you tell?" he said apathetically. And as he looked dully at her the colour ebbed away from her face, leaving it whiter than he had ever seen a living face.

"Because I was in the room when he made it--at Fontainebleau."

Roger's face became overcast, perplexed.

"When he was ill there?"

"Yes."

Dead silence.

"How did you come to be with d.i.c.k?"

It was plain that though he was perplexed the sinister presumption implied by her presence there had not yet struck him.

"Roger, I was staying with d.i.c.k at Fontainebleau. I nursed him--Mrs.

Stoddart and I together. She made me promise never to speak of it to anyone."

"Mrs. Stoddart made you promise! What was the sense of that? You were travelling with her, I suppose?"

"No. I had never seen her till the morning I called her in, when d.i.c.k fell ill."

"Then that Mrs. Stoddart I met at Noyes was the older woman whom Lady Jane found looking after him when she and Jones came down?"

"Yes."

Silence again. He frowned, and looked apprehensively at her, as if he were warding something off.

"And I was the younger woman," said Annette, "who left before Lady Jane arrived."

The colour rushed to his face.

"No," he said, with sudden violence, "not you. I always knew there was another woman, a young one, but--but--it wasn't you, Annette."

She was silent.

"It _couldn't_ be you!"--with a groan.