The Black Abbot
easily, Leslie Gwyn in rags would have been unmistakably a beautiful
lady.
Dick had seen her riding; she gripped the withers with her knees,
jockey fashion, and was part of the horse. He had seen her on the
polished dancing floor; there was lissom grace in every line. When he
danced with her, he held in his arms a fragrant something that had
more substance and character than he had thought. The hand on his
shoulder was definitely placed, the body which his arm encircled was
firm; he could feel the tiny muscles ripple under his hand.
She stood now, her little black riding hat askew, her figure clad in
neat black relieved by the lawn collar. Her neatly booted legs were
planted stubbornly apart, one gloved hand holding her waist, the other
swinging the crop. In her gray eyes was an imp of mischief that
gleamed and danced all the merrier for the studied solemnity of every
other feature.
Dick Alford, from his vantage place on the top rail of the stile,
chewed a blade of toddy grass between his white teeth and surveyed her
approvingly.
“Been riding, Leslie?”
“I have been riding,” she said gravely, and added: “a horse.”
He looked round innocently.
“Where is the favoured animal?” he demanded.
She looked at him suspiciously, but not a muscle of the tanned, lean
face so much as twitched.
“I dismounted to pick wild flowers and the beastie ran away. You saw
him!” she accused.
“I saw something that looked like a horse running toward Willow
House,” he confessed calmly. “I thought he had thrown you.”
She nodded.
“For that prevarication you can go and find him--I’ll wait here,” she
said, and, when he got down from the stile with a groan: “I meant you
to do that, anyway. The moment I saw you I said to myself: ‘There’s a
lazy man who wants exercise!’ Sisters-in-law-to-be have privileges.”
He winced a little at this. She may have noticed the cloud that came
momentarily to his face, for she put out her hand and checked him.
“One of the grooms can find him, Dick. He is such a hungry pig that he
is certain to make for his stable… no, I _don’t_ mean the groom. Sit
down; I want to talk to you.”
She swung up to the stile and took the place he had vacated.
“Richard Alford, I don’t think you are enjoying the prospect of my
being the mistress of Fossaway House?”
“Manor,” he corrected.
“Don’t quibble--are you?”
“I count the days,” he said lightly.
“Do you?”
He took a battered silver case from his hip pocket, selected a
cigarette and lit it.
“My dear Leslie----” he began, but she shook her head. She was very
serious now.
“You think I will--interfere with things? With the management of the
estate--I know poor Harry couldn’t manage a small holding--with--oh,
with all sorts of things, but I think you are wrong.”
He blew three smoke rings into the air before he answered.
“I wish you would manage the estate,” he said quietly. “It would be a
blessing to me. No, I’m not worried about that. With your
money--forgive the brutality--the estate will not count. A bailiff
could manage it as well as any second son!”
III
He spoke without bitterness, without a hint of self-pity, and she
was silent. He was the child of a second marriage, and that had made
it worse for him. When old Lord Chelford followed Dick’s mother to the
grave, the second son’s portion was his. The estate, the title, the
very car he had used as his own, passed from him. A tiny estate in
Hertfordshire that brought two hundred a year, some old jewellery of
his mother’s and a thousand pounds came the way of the second son. And
the thousand pounds had never been paid. In some mysterious fashion it
had been swallowed up.
Mr. Arthur Gwyn had settled the estate. In all the circumstances Dick
felt happier when he did not think of that thousand pounds. Yet, for
some reason or other, he thought of it now, and as though she read his
thoughts dimly, and associated his reserve with her brother, she
asked:
“You don’t like Arthur, do you?”
“What makes you say that?” he said, in genuine surprise. He had never
betrayed his aversion to the dandified lawyer.
“I know,” she nodded wisely. “He exasperates me sometimes, and I can
well imagine that a man like you would hate him.”
Dick smiled.
“Harry doesn’t hate him anyway, and he is the person who counts.”
She looked round at him, swinging the crop idly.
“It doesn’t seem real to me that I’m to be married at all--it was such
a funny proposal, Dick, so polite, so formal, so--unreal! I think if
it had come in any other way----” She shook her head.
Dick wondered a little drearily how his brother would propose. Harry
was something of a novice at the love game; once he had had a pretty
secretary, and on a warm June afternoon Dick had interrupted what was
tantamount to a proposal from the enterprising young lady. And the
flustered Harry would have agreed to her matrimonial suggestions, only
Dick had happened along--and the calculating Miss Wenner had left
Fossaway Manor rather hurriedly. He remembered this happening.
“I suppose if he had proposed in the conventional way you wouldn’t
have accepted him?”
“I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “But it was quaint and--queer. I
like Harry awfully. I have often wondered if he would like me if----”
She did not finish her sentence.
“If you weren’t so horribly rich?” smiled Dick. “You’re not paying him
a very high compliment.”
She held out her arms and he lifted her down, though there seemed no
necessity for it, as she was a very agile young person as a rule.
“Dick,” she said, as he crossed the stile and they walked side by side
toward the main road, “what am I to do?”
“About what?” he asked.
“About Harry and everything.”
He had no answer to this.
“Arthur is very keen on my marrying him,” she said. “And really, I’m
not averse--at least, I don’t think so.”
“That is the worst of being a great heiress,” he bantered.
“I wonder?” Her brow wrinkled in a frown. “And am I a great heiress?”
He stopped and looked at her in surprise.
“Aren’t you?”
He seemed so shocked that she laughed.
“I don’t know; my uncle left me a lot of money years and years ago. I
don’t know how much--Arthur has managed my estate for years. I have
all the money I need.”
“Then don’t grouse!” he said crudely, and she laughed again.
“I suppose most girls in my position have their marriages arranged in
the way mine has been arranged, and until quite recently I have
accepted the idea as part of the inevitable.”
“And why have you changed your mind now?” he asked bluntly, and saw
the pink come into her face.
“I don’t know.” Her answer was very short, almost brusque.
And then she saw the look in his eyes--the infinite yearning, the
hopelessness of them. And in a flash there came to her a knowledge of
herself.
For some reason which she could not understand she became of a sudden
breathless, and almost found a difficulty in speaking. She felt that
the thump and thud of her heart must be audible to his ears and strove
desperately to recover her balance. Vividly before her eyes came the
picture of her fiancé, the thin, irritable young man--the weakling
with all that man needed in his hands, save manhood. A pitiable,
nerve-racked creature, now pleading, now bullying--oblivious of the
impression he made on the woman who was to share his life. And from
this mental figure of him, her eyes moved mechanically to the man by
her side; calm, serene, radiant in his strength and self-reliance.
Ten minutes later she was walking back to Willow House, and in her
heart she struggled with a problem that seemed well-nigh insoluble.
Dick Alford, making his slow progress homeward, saw the lank figure of
his brother waiting at the end of the elm drive.
The wind flapped the skirts of his long frock coat; standing, he
stooped slightly and had a trick of thrusting forward his head, which
gave him the appearance of a big, ungainly bird. His face was dark
with anger, Dick saw, as he came up with him.
“I deputize many duties to you, Richard, but I’ll do my own
love-making, understand that!”
The blood came into Dick Alford’s face, but he showed no other sign of
his hurt or anger.
“I will not have it--you understand?” Lord Chelford’s voice was shrill
with childish fury. “I will not have you interfering in my private
affairs. You sent one girl away from me, you shall not take Leslie!”
“I am not----” began his brother hotly.
“You are--you are! You don’t want me to marry! I am not a fool, Dick!
You stand next in the line of succession! I am going to marry Leslie
Gwyn--understand that! You shall not break that engagement.”
For a moment the brutality, the injustice of the accusation, left the
younger man white and shaking, and then, with a supreme effort, he
laughed. Scenes such as this were of almost daily occurrence, but
never before had Harry Chelford gone so far. In ten minutes the storm
would pass, and Harry would be his old lovable self, but for the
moment it was bitterly hard to bear.
“Why do you say such horrible things?” he said. “I got rid of Wenner
because she was not the wife for you----”
“You didn’t want me to marry! You are waiting for my shoes, a dead
man’s shoes!” almost screamed the elder son. “The last thing in the
world you want to see is a new Countess of Chelford. You know it, you
know it!”
Dick Alford was silent. God knew his brother spoke the truth! It would
be a woeful day for him when Harry Chelford brought a wife to this
great house to share the dreadful secret which hung like a cloud over
Fossaway Manor.
IV
Dick Alford was in the little study where he usually worked, a
businesslike room filled with filing cabinets and deed boxes. The
French windows giving to the lawn were open, for though it was
September the night was warm, and he was working in his shirt-sleeves,
a pipe gripped between his teeth, his eyes protected from the overhead
light by a big green shade that he wore affixed by a band to his head.
If there was a resemblance between Lord Chelford and his mother, not
even the keenest observer could trace in Dick Alford the slightest
likeness to his half-brother. He was a creature of the open, a
six-foot athlete, broad of shoulder and slim of flank, and his tanned
face spoke of a life spent on the windy downs. His blue eyes surveyed
the footman with a quizzical smile, as he pushed his battered old
typewriter aside, relit his pipe, and stretched himself.
“Black Abbot? Good Lord! Have you seen him, Thomas?”
“No, sir, I have not seen him. But Mr. Cartwright, the grocer down in
Chelford village…”
He gave a graphic narrative of Mr. Cartwright’s horror, amazement, and
confusion.
“They telephoned up from the Red Lion to ask if his lordship had heard
anything about it.” Even Thomas, who believed in nothing except
Thomas, shivered. “It is the first time he has been seen for years
according to all accounts, though he has been heard howling and
moaning. Nobody knows who set fire to the vicarage when the parson was
away at the seaside----”
“That will do, Thomas. As to Cartwright, he was drunk,” said Dick
cheerily, “or else he saw a shadow.”
He glanced out at the lawn, bathed in the blue-white rays of a full
moon.
“You can see things in the moonlight that never were on land or sea. I
understood that his lordship said that the Black Abbot was not to be
discussed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then shut up!” said Dick.
Pipe in mouth, he strolled across the hall into the dimly lit library.
The three electroliers that hung from the roof were dark. Only the two
green-shaded reading lamps that flanked each side of the desk were
alight, and these intensified the gloom. Dick closed the door behind
him and lounged over toward the desk, pulling a chair behind him.