The Golden Web Part 19

CHAPTER XX

IN DOUBT

Punctually at seven o'clock next morning Deane rang his bell. Once more the fat old lady entered, with her amiable smile and slow movements.

"Some tea, sir?" she asked.

Deane looked at her for a moment without speaking. "When does the other chambermaid come on duty?" he asked.

"She ought to be on now," was the answer, "but she hasn't come. I've just sent the 'boots' up to her room."

Deane ordered some hot water and lay still for half-an-hour. Then he rang the bell again. The same woman came.

"Would you like your tea, sir?" she asked.

"If you please," he answered.

She was already half-way out of the door before he stopped her.

"You are still on duty, then?" he said.

"The other chambermaid can't be found, sir," she answered. "Her bed hasn't been slept in, and she doesn't seem to be anywhere about the place."

Deane nodded. It was, after all, perhaps the most sensible thing she could do to get clear away! "Send me my tea at eight o'clock," he ordered, "and let me have a bath at once."

"The valet shall come and tell you when it is ready, sir," she answered.

He pa.s.sed a tip across to the woman, who accepted it. "Tell the waiter when he brings the tea to give me my bill," he said.

In an hour's time Deane had left the hotel. He had seen nothing more of Winifred Rowan, and on the whole he was disposed to applaud her precaution. He drove at once to his rooms, where Grant, his man, was already installed.

"I shall catch the mid-day train to Scotland, Grant," he announced.

"Telephone up for seats and sleeping-berths. Also telephone to the office, and tell them to ring up here at once if a young lady should make any inquiries for me. Perhaps they had better send her on here."

He went out and did some shopping. The sun was s.h.i.+ning, and a soft west wind blowing. London, which seems to hold its populace longer than any other great city, was gay, almost joyous. He had to elbow his way through crowds as he pa.s.sed along Piccadilly. The streets and shops were thronged. The sky above was blue. The rare suns.h.i.+ne seemed to make cheerful even this most sombre of cities.

Deane had the feeling of a man who has escaped from a great danger,--who has been able to throw off a heavy weight. This miserable doc.u.ment of Sinclair's was as good as in his possession! After all, Basil Rowan was not suffering in vain. The girl should have every penny that he had promised her brother! Her way in life should be made easy! It was a very small price, indeed, to be free from such torture as he had suffered during the last few weeks. He bought presents a little recklessly--presents for Olive--something, too, for Winifred Rowan, a gold cigarette-case for himself. He ordered a great basket of flowers to take with him to Scotland, and paid a visit to his gunmaker's. Then he returned to his chambers, fully expecting to have some news of Winifred Rowan.

"Any one rung up?" he asked his man.

"No one, sir, of any importance," was the answer.

"Did you ask the office about Miss Rowan?"

"No young lady at all has inquired for you there, sir," Grant answered.

Deane was a little surprised, but after all what did it matter? He travelled up to Scotland with a lighter heart than he had carried for months. Lady Olive, who met him early in the morning at the small wayside station which was nearest to her father's seat, was amazed at his vivacity.

"I expected to find you a pale, worn-out thing," she remarked, as their motor-car climbed the white, stone-bordered road which crossed the heather-covered mountain. "You don't look as though you needed a change at all."

"I've found so swift a tonic, you see," he answered, pressing her hand.

She laughed gayly. This was more the man as he had been before the days of their engagement! "I think it is the smell of the powder," she said.

"You men are all like schoolboys for your holidays. Father says that the birds are much too wild, and that it will be all even you can do to hit them."

Deane smiled. "There is nothing in the world," he answered, "which I want to do so much as to lie up there in the heather and close my eyes, and feel the sun and the wind."

"In other words," she said, "you are lazy!"

"Is that laziness?" he asked. "I don't think so."

"Rest, then," she said.

"Ah! That is a very different thing!" he replied. "We all need rest."

"Especially you," she said, "who carry about with you always the memory of some things from which you can never escape."

He looked at her quickly, but it was obvious that her speech was wholly unpremeditated.

"I often wonder," she said calmly, "when I see you in the evenings, how you manage to shake off all your anxieties so easily, for I suppose,"

she continued, "that success, like everything else, carries always its anxieties."

"Sometimes more than failure," he answered.

"Well," she continued, "it doesn't seem possible to a.s.sociate the word 'failure' with you. Some day you must tell me the whole story of your life. I can scarcely believe that there has ever been a time when you haven't succeeded in anything you undertook."

He laughed grimly. "You should have been with me in Africa," he said, "after the fighting was over. We expected to go about picking up gold almost on the streets."

"You were too sanguine," she laughed.

"It was hard enough work to live," he answered. "I tried many things,--failures, all of them!"

"Until the Little Anna Gold-Mine," she remarked.

"Until the Little Anna Gold-Mine," he a.s.sented, "and that, at first, seemed hopeless enough. The mine had been deserted twice. The natives there had a name for it which means the Grave of Dead Hopes!"

They turned into the avenue, and the house was at once visible, standing on the edge of a lake, large and a little bare. The lawns and gardens were brilliant with color, and the hills on the other side of the water were purple with heather.

"Well, here is all the rest you want," she said. "We haven't a neighbor within six miles, and a most harmless lot of guests."

He drew a long sigh of content. The tragedy, indeed, of the last few weeks seemed to lie far behind in some other world!

CHAPTER XXI