The Black Abbot
word “devour” applied to an intensity of gaze, and she thought that
fictional characters must look somehow as Mr. Gilder was looking. He
was not staring; it was the concentration, the probing investigation
of those bright gray eyes, that made her writhe inside. If he had been
impertinent it would have been an easy matter to deal with him, but he
was respect itself. His attitude was deferential, his general manner
was friendly. He was dressed very well and carefully, she thought, and
wondered whether Arthur’s preciosity in the matter of clothing
influenced his staff. The gray homespun, the rather solid shoes, were
set off by the expensiveness of his linen. With a woman’s eye she saw
that in his way this man was something of a dandy too.
“I hear you are going to live near us, Mr. Gilder?” she said, and he
was obviously taken aback.
“Why--yes,” he said awkwardly. “I’ve bought a little place near your
house. I love that part of the country.”
“We shall be neighbours,” she said with a smile, but felt no pleasure
in the prospect.
“Er--yes. I suppose we shall be, Miss Gwyn,” he agreed.
“It will be very nice for Arthur. I suppose it was his suggestion that
you should come down?”
He had a nervous little trick of stroking an invisible moustache, for
he was clean-shaven.
“Well… no,” he said. “I haven’t told Mr. Gwyn yet that I have bought
the property. I thought another time would be more opportune. I bought
it for a song--thirty-five hundred pounds.”
She looked up quickly.
“That is an expensive song,” she said, before she realized an error of
taste.
This time he was visibly disconcerted.
“Yes; I--er, I borrowed the money,” he said.
She had a feeling that he was going to ask her a favour, and guessed
what the favour would be: Leslie had the uncanny gift of reading
people’s minds and gathering their surface thoughts, and in those
moments when Fabrian Gilder dropped his mask he was rather easy. He
opened his lips to speak, thought better of it, meeting, perhaps, the
chill atmosphere of a refusal before it was given, and then:
“I’ll see if your brother is disengaged,” he said, and went into the
room to Arthur Gwyn, his head reeling with the vision which had
emerged through the gray fog of his drab life.
Day after day he had watched her, and she had never known. He had left
his rod and line to steal behind trees that he might see her pass. She
was romance in excelsis--the perfect realization of thirty years of
dreaming.
It took him a second to compose himself before he turned the handle
and walked in, and then he stood stricken dumb by the words that came
to him.
XI
“My sister?” said Arthur quickly. He looked from Gilder to Mary
Wenner. “Come and see me later,” he said in a lower voice. “Gilder,
show Miss Wenner out through the side door.”
Gilder opened the private door and followed the girl into the
corridor.
“Where are you living?” he asked.
There was such a note of authority in his voice that for the moment
the girl was taken off her guard.
“57 Cranston Mansions. Why?” she asked, with a certain archness that
indicated resentment but invited a further offence.
“Because I want to see you,” said Gilder. “Can I come round to your
flat some evening?”
Miss Wenner was shocked a little at this. There were moments when her
sense of propriety was easily outraged. She was curious too; so far
from resenting his commanding address, she rather liked it.
“Yes, any evening you wish, if you will let me know that you are
coming. I will ask a young lady friend to keep me company.”
Gilder’s hard lips curled.
“Unless you particularly want a chaperon, don’t get one,” he said. “I
have much to say to you that I don’t want anybody else to hear.”
He accompanied her to the elevator and on the way extracted a promise
to receive him alone. Miss Wenner was almost as curious to know the
object of that visit as Mr. Gilder was to discover what was behind the
amazing statement he had heard. He passed the closed door of Arthur’s
room and heard voices. He would have given a lot for an excuse to
interrupt brother and sister, but something told him that it would be
wiser if he kept out of his employer’s way until he was absolutely
certain that the girl had not betrayed the very carefully hidden
transaction which had made him the proprietor of Red Farm.
* * *
“You’re a little goose to come up to town without money,” said Arthur,
as he skinned three notes from his pocketbook. “Here is enough to keep
you happy for the rest of your life.”
“Would fifteen pounds do that?” she laughed, and was going, when she
remembered.…
Arthur listened in amazement to the news she had to give.
“Gilder has bought a house at Chelfordbury? Impossible!” he said. “He
would have told me. Why the dickens does he want a house?--besides, he
has no money.”
“Hasn’t he?” she asked, in surprise.
Arthur scratched his chin irritably.
“I suppose the beggar has; but a house at Chelfordbury--that is
extraordinary! I wasn’t even aware that he knew the place.”
“He is the man who has been staying at Ravensrill Cottage all the
summer,” she said.
“The fisherman!” He whistled. “What a close bird he is! Of course,” he
went on quickly, “there is nothing wrong in a man wanting to live at
Chelfordbury, and there’s no reason in life why he shouldn’t buy a
house. But what a sly old fox!”
He was troubled; she saw that he was trying to hide it behind a
flippancy that was transparent to her.
“I knew, of course, that somebody had rented the fisherman’s cottage,
as they call it, and to think that he’s been down all these months and
never once given himself away!”
“He has a car, if he’s the same man who was living at the cottage,”
she nodded. “Dick Alford is furious!”
Arthur chuckled.
“Poor old Dick!” he said good-humouredly. “He loathes this residential
idea, and when I put forward a scheme to cut up one of his northern
estates into residential properties, he nearly bit my head off. Harry
would have done it like a shot, and I hope, my dear, when you’re
married you’ll persuade him…”
He waited expectantly.
“Yes--when I am married,” she said, and her tone made him glance at
her keenly. But he was wise enough to skim over that subject.
“Dick, of course, is a fool,” he said, with good-natured contempt. “He
has a blind faith in the future of agriculture in this country, and
grudges every acre that’s taken out of cultivation. And yet, if you
were to put up a scheme to build huge blocks of cottages to relieve
the slum congestion, or something equally quixotic and unprofitable,
he would jump at the idea. I can well understand that the mere thought
of a successful lawyer’s clerk setting himself up as a country
gentleman would make Dick foam at the mouth!”
“He wasn’t foaming when I left him,” she said drily.
“When you left him?” He was quick to take a point.
“Yes, he came down to the station with me.” And she could not account
for her momentary feeling of embarrassment.
He was still searching her face, and then, laying his hands on her
shoulders, he shook her gently.
“Old girl,” he said, “keep your mind off the Second Son! He’s a
good-looking fellow, and side by side with his brother there’s no
question of choice! But he’s a second son, which means that he’s next
door to being broke. And you can’t live on good looks or----”
She raised her eyes slowly to his.
“What do you mean--I can’t live on good looks?” she said deliberately.
“Why do you emphasize the fact that Dick Alford is poor? Amn’t I an
heiress?”
He did not speak, and then, with a little laugh, dropped his hands.
“Why, of course, chick!” he said lightly. “Only--well, I want you to
do something for yourself. Make a name in the country. It will be
something to have the position which Harry can offer you. Dick is
quite a good fellow--one of the best, although he doesn’t get on very
well with me. But there’s nothing to it with him, Leslie. You might as
well marry some poverty-stricken gentleman farmer----”
He stopped under the steady gaze that met him.
“‘Poverty-stricken’ again, Arthur--without suggesting that I would
rather marry Dick Alford, I wonder why the question of his poverty
interests you so much. If you had called him a commoner and a nobody,
I could have understood, but you insist upon the question of my
possible fiancé’s wealth, and that seems strange to me.”
He laughed long and loudly, but his merriment seemed, to her sensitive
ear, lacking in sincerity.
“You ought to be a lawyer, Leslie! Upon my word, I’ve a good mind to
have you coached for an examination! You’d look simply topping in a
wig and gown! And now, my little girl, you must run away, because I’ve
a tremendous lot of work.”
He put his arm round her shoulders and walked with her to the door,
and breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the whine of the elevator
carrying her down. Closing the door behind him, he rang the bell, and,
to the clerk who came:
“Ask Mr. Gilder to come in, will you, please?”
XII
When Gilder had this message he knew that the girl had told her
brother; and although he had his fair share of moral courage, it
needed a conscious effort on his part to answer the summons.
“Gilder, what is this story of you buying Red Farm?” asked Arthur
sharply.
“Why should I not buy Red Farm?” replied Gilder coolly.
“There is no reason in the world why you shouldn’t,” said Arthur,
after a moment’s thought; “but it is rather curious you never told
me.”
“I thought you might object,” said Gilder. “Business men hate their
workaday associates living anywhere near them. It was stupid of me not
to tell you. I’ve been living in a cottage at Chelfordbury for three
months--was that in itself objectionable? You will forgive me for
saying so, but although I have always regarded you with the respect
that is due to an employer, I have never quite looked upon you as my
feudal lord!”
Arthur grinned for a second.
“Once or twice I thought of coming over to see you,” Gilder went on,
“but I’ve always had what I think to be a natural reluctance to
intrude myself in a social capacity upon my chief. If you had ever
invited me to come and stay a week-end at your place I would have
come, and you would have known all about my presence in the
neighbourhood. As it was, I felt very much in the position of a
servant enjoying himself in his own independent way and feeling no
need to consult his employer as to how he should employ his spare
time--and money.”
“And money,” repeated Arthur. “I didn’t know you were so well off,
Gilder.”
Mr. Gilder inclined his head.
“I have already hinted to you that I have made considerable sums.
There, again, it has never seemed necessary that I should keep you
acquainted with my bank balance.”
“You have had a moderate salary,” said Arthur significantly. “Not a
generous amount, I agree; certainly not an amount from which a man
could save a sum sufficient to buy and rebuild Red Farm and maintain
it.”
For answer Gilder put his hand in his pocket and, taking out a little
Russian-leather note case, laid it on the table. The name in gold
letters upon the cover was that of a bookmaker who carried one of his
employer’s biggest accounts. With this firm Arthur had lost his
largest bets, for Truman’s had offered him facilities which other
houses had denied to him.
“Truman?” He frowned. “What has that to do with it? Have you been
backing horses?”
Gilder shook his head.
“No,” he said simply. “I am Truman.”
Arthur Gwyn gaped at him. Truman! The bookmaker to whom for weeks in
succession he had been paying thousands upon thousands of pounds!
“Then the money you have--is my money!” he gasped.
“Your money?” said the other quietly. “If Truman’s had not taken it,