"By Jove!" d.i.c.k felt in his breast pocket. "She's given herself away there. I've got a letter from her. She says you refused. She isn't as clever as I thought she was."

"It's all bluff," said d.i.c.k contemptuously, when the letter had been read. "I don't think she could get the Gotches over, for one thing.

And supposing she did succeed in bringing it before a court, you could tell your story in the most public way. n.o.body would have a word of blame for you, or for any of us. I'm not certain it wouldn't be the best possible thing that could happen for us."

"I shouldn't like it to come to that," said the Squire.

"Well, I don't think it will. We've got other things to face--perhaps worse things. I shan't answer her letter, though I'll take good care to keep it. When she sees that nothing is coming she'll begin to spread reports. That's when we shall have to be on the lookout."

"We have done nothing wrong," said Mrs. Clinton. "She will only be attacking poor Susan; and anybody whose opinion of us we should value will think that a wicked thing to do, now that Susan is dead."

"But ought we not to defend Susan's memory?" Virginia asked.

All three of them were silent. d.i.c.k was the first to speak.

"We have to think straight about it," he said. "You can't defend Susan, alive or dead. It was shielding her that has put us in the wrong, where we are in the wrong. All that we can do is not to admit anything, not to deny anything; let people think what they will. Keep quiet. That's a good deal to do, for if we liked to take the offensive we could clear ourselves once and for all."

"How could we do that?"

"Have her up for slander."

"But what she will say about Susan will be true."

"Do you think she will stick to that? No, she will try to blacken us in every way she can. She'll tell lies about us. It's no good saying people won't believe them. They _will_ believe them, if we don't defend ourselves. We may have to have her up for slander, after all."

"What can she get out of it all?" asked Virginia in a voice of pain.

"It will be horrible. Every right-thinking person must abhor her."

"She will have a right to try and clear herself," said Mrs. Clinton.

"It is true that she was accused of doing what Susan really did, and the accusation has never been cleared up."

"That _is_ true," said d.i.c.k, "and if she confines herself to truth, we have no right to try and stop her. Under all the circ.u.mstances--her trying to get money for her silence, and so on--I don't see that we are under the smallest obligation--of honour or anything else--to help her.

If we come out into the open we shan't be able to keep Susan's guilt dark. That's why I think she will drag us into attacking her. We shall see what Herbert Birkett says. All we have to do in the meantime is to live on quietly here as usual, and wait for what comes."

"There are the others to be thought of," said Mrs. Clinton. "Jim and Cicely, Walter and Muriel, Frank, all of them. They must be prepared."

"Yes," said d.i.c.k unwillingly. "They are bound to hear of it. We must tell them. Get them down here as soon as possible. I will go over and tell Jim and Cicely to-morrow."

The Squire had been sitting in a blessed state of quiescence. He had done his part. d.i.c.k had a clearer head than he. In his bruised state, he was only too ready to let d.i.c.k take the lead in whatever had to be done.

"There is my poor little Joan to think of," he said. "Young Inverell--I have put him off. Joan must be told why."

"I will tell her," Mrs. Clinton said. "Poor child, it is hardest for her, just now. But he will not give her up--I am sure of it."

"I don't know," said the Squire. "If the whole country is going to ring with our name---- His stands high. But I won't have him here until the worst has happened that can happen; and then only if he comes of his own accord. We stand on what honour is left to us. It won't be much. We've been talking as if we could all clear ourselves at Susan's expense, if everything comes out. We can't. She was one of us, poor girl. We suffer for her sins."

CHAPTER V

WAITING

Brummels, Carchester, Sept. 26th, 19--.

MY DEAR EDWARD,

I have to thank you for your second letter, and for your cheque for 7,000, which I cannot now refuse, but which, upon my soul, I don't know what to do with. If I buy another necklace with it, I publish to the world--or to such part of it as will see the pearls upon my wife's neck--what I intend to keep even from the partner of my joys and sorrows herself. If only a certain young woman had been able to bring herself to consent to the proposal made to her, the difficulty might have been got over by adding to _her_ stock of trinkets. But it is of no use to cry over that, and my little friend Joan will a.s.suredly have considered herself justified in her refusal by the somewhat startling suddenness with which the ill.u.s.trious Robert consoled himself for her loss. These affairs move too quickly for me in my old age. The young woman whom I now have the honour to call daughter-in-law is all that could be wished from the point of view of health and high spirits, and I have nothing against her. But I do not feel impelled to hang an extra seven thousand pounds' worth of pearls round her neck. If that is a criticism on her, so be it. But she is not Joan. She is very far from being Joan.

I have much news for you, my dear Edward, which only my inveterate habit of procrastination has caused to be left till now.

The woman fastened upon Mary at Harrogate. This must have been after she had given up all idea of getting anything out of you. No doubt she followed her to that invigorating resort, and it is unfortunate that my poor wife should not be able to drink her waters of bitterness without being frightened out of her five wits by _that_ resurrection.

Fortunately I was within hail, and arrived on the scene in time to deal with the situation. I gathered from her account of her interview with you--my poor friend, what you must have gone through!--that you had very loyally exonerated me from all possibility of blame or misunderstanding, and I was pleased to be able in some sort to repay that loyalty. I did not lie, Edward--at least not to her. What fine adjustments of veracity one may have made later, in connubial intimacy, let no man presume to sit in judgment upon. I had received your first letter. I said neither yea nor nay, but rang the changes upon a monotonous charge of her having tried to extort money from you. It was the first line of defence, and I had no other. But she never got behind it. There is a bland but dogged persistency in my nature which ought to have carried me far. It carried me to the point of driving her to uncontrollable rage, which is something of a triumph in itself.

To Mary I said before her, "This lady may not have stolen your necklace. You have her word for it. I have the word of my friend, Edward Clinton, that she asked him for money to stop her from spreading the report that his daughter-in-law stole it. She is dead and cannot defend herself. Also, Edward Clinton refused to give her any money.

These two facts are enough for me. I recognise this lady's existence for the last time. I do not presume to dictate your actions, but if you are wise I think you will do the same."

We got rid of her, and she left Harrogate the next morning. I let her know, by the bye, that you held a letter from her admitting the fact that she had made demands on you and that you had refused them; and you may tell your son that she probably regrets having written that letter as much as any she ever wrote. It is a master weapon.

Well, that is the att.i.tude I shall take up--my wife too, although she will talk a great deal, and be swayed by whatever opinion may be held by whatever person she talks to. There is _bound_ to be talk, and a great deal of talk. You cannot help that. But it will die down. Deny nothing, admit nothing, except that you refused to pay her money. That is my advice to you.

They say that Colne is going to marry her. Birds of a feather! He is, at any rate, hot--spirituously so--in his defence of her, and in his offence against you and yours. I met him pa.s.sing through London; for the sins of my youth I still belong to the Bit and Bridle Club, and I went there for the first time for I should think twenty years, and fell upon him imbibing. Rather, he fell upon me, and _I_ fell upon my parrot-cry. "If you have any influence over that lady," I said to him, "I should advise you to advise her to keep quiet. She _would_ have kept quiet--for money. It is known that she asked for it, and the less it has cause to be stated, the better for what reputation she has."

I left my lord in the maudlin stage, crying out upon the world's iniquity, of which he has considerable first-hand knowledge; but when he comes to what senses he still possesses he will, I hope, remember my advice. Let him marry the lady, by all means. She will have what protection she deserves, and there will be some who will accept her.

They will cross neither my path nor yours, for our orbits and those of Colne do not intersect.

Finally, my old friend, set your teeth against what must come, and never lose sight of the fact that it will pa.s.s. You have been remarkably tried, and have escaped more pit-falls than could have been expected of any fallible mortal. There are no more in front of you, and all you have to do is to walk straight on with your usual stride.

Ever very sincerely yours, SEDBERGH.

This letter gave the Squire some comfort. It contained almost the first definite news he had had. He had been living in that uncomfortable state in which the mind is wrought up to meet trouble which is bound to come, and the trouble tarries. Every morning he had arisen with the antic.i.p.ation of the storm breaking; every night he had lain down, having lived through such a day as he might have lived at this season of the year for the last forty years. The storm had not broken yet.

Was it too much to hope that it would, after all, pa.s.s over?

He looked up from the letter with that enquiry in his mind. But his face soon clouded again. Though not in the full downpour, he was already caught by it.

Poor little Joan! She knew. She was going about the house, trying hard to be as bright as usual. Sometimes he heard her singing. That was when she pa.s.sed the door behind which he was sitting. She came in to him much more freely than she had ever done, and sat and talked to him. His daughters had never done that, nor his sons very frequently, with the exception of d.i.c.k. It was an empty house now. He and Joan and Mrs. Clinton were a good deal together. Joan had even persuaded him to take her out cubbing. None of the Clinton girls had ever been allowed to ride to hounds; but there were so many horses in the stable, and so few people to ride them now, that he had given way. But he had only been out cubbing twice himself this season. He was getting too old, he said. He had never said that of himself before, about anything, which was why Joan had pressed him to take her. But three times it had happened that she had risen at dawn, and Mrs. Clinton had come in to her and said that her father had not slept all night, but was sleeping now, and had better be allowed to sleep on.

Joan had heard nothing from her young lover since the letter had been written asking him to postpone his visit. She said nothing to anybody about him, but went about the house as usual, singing sometimes.

There had been one day amongst the young birds, in which Sir Herbert Birkett, Jim Graham, and Walter only had a.s.sisted from outside Kencote.

The Squire could not bring himself to ask his neighbours to shoot, nor to shoot with them. The strain was too great. On his tall horse by the covert-side, in those early meets of the hounds, he had always been on the look-out for suspicion and avoidance, and fancied them when they had not been there. But the news might come at any moment, filtering through any one of a score of channels to this retired backwater of meadow and wood and stream, and darkening it, to him whose whole life had been spent in its pleasant ways, with shameful rumour.

It had been settled that life was to go on as usual at Kencote. But he had lost the spring of his courage. Even if no one outside knew of his dishonour, he knew of it himself. When the trouble came he would face it with what courage he could. In the meantime he kept more and more to the house, where he sat in his room, over the fire, reading the papers, or doing nothing.

His half-brother, the Rector, came often to see him. He was some years the younger of the two, but for years had looked the older, until now.

The Squire was ageing under his trial. He had lost his confident, upright bearing, shambled just a very little when he walked, and carried his head a trifle forward. His face was beginning to lose its healthy ruddiness, and his beard was whiter, or seemed so.

The two men had always been good friends, but were as unlike in character and pursuits as possible. The Rector was gentle and retiring, a little bit of a scholar, a little bit of a naturalist, gardener, musician, artist. He had no sporting tastes, but liked the country and lived all the year round in his comfortable Rectory. He was not a Clinton, but had been so long in their atmosphere that their interests were largely his. He had been one of the first to be told of the catastrophe. He had made no comments on it, but had shown his sympathy by many kind but un.o.btrusive words and acts.