If you will kindly take this, pay your bill out of it, and divide the remainder between Robert and Gladys, I shall be very much obliged. I've been very comfortable here and I shall certainly come again."

He pressed a five-pound note into the landlord's hand, and before that bewildered one could think of anything more urgent than the commonplaces which begin, "I'm sure, sir," or, "I shouldn't like to think," he and Charles had turned their backs on the Five Bells, and the landlord was staring after them. The round, white back of Charles showed for quite a long time through the darkness. Slowly he drew the bolts, put out the lights, and went back to bed.

"It's a rum go," he told his wife, after he had told her all he had heard and overheard, "a most peculiar rum go. But he's a gentleman, he is, whichever way you look at it. Miss up at the Hall might do a jolly sight worse, if you ask me. Shouldn't wonder, come to think of it, if she ain't waiting for him around the corner, as it is."

"He's the kind of gentleman a girl _would_ wait around the corner for,"

said the landlady. "It's his eyes, partly, I think. And he's got such a kind look. But if she is--waiting round the corner, I mean, like what you said--he _have_ got a face to go on like what he did to Miss Davenant."

"Yes," said the landlord, blowing out the candle, "he _have_ got a face, whichever way you look at it."

It was bright daylight when a motor--one of the strong, fierce kind, no wretched taxicab, but a private motor of obvious speed and spirit--blundered over the shoulder of the downs down the rutty road to Crow's Nest Farm.

Mr. Basingstoke, happy to his finger-tips as well as to the inmost recesses of the mind in his consciousness of results achieved and difficulties overcome, slipped from the throbbing motor and went quickly around to the back door, Charles with him, straining at the lead. The path that led to the door had its bricks outlined with green gra.s.s, a house-leek spread its rosettes on the sloping lichened tiles of the roof, and in the corner of the window the toad-flax flaunted its little helmets of orange and sulphur-color. He tapped gently on the door.

Nothing from within answered him--no voice, no movement, no creak of board, no rustle of straw, no click of little heels on the floor of stone. She might be asleep--must be. He knocked again, and still silence answered him. Then a wave of possibilities and impossibilities rose suddenly and swept against Mr. Basingstoke's heart. So sudden was it, and so strong was it, that for a moment he felt the tremor of a physical nausea. He put his hand to the latch, meaning to try with his shoulder the forcing of the lock. But the door was not locked. The latch clicked, yielding to his hand, and the door opened into the kitchen, with its wide old chimneyplace, big mantel-shelf, its oven and pump, its brewing-copper and its washing-copper, its litter of packing-cases and straw, and the little nest he had made for her between the copper and the big barrel. The soft, diffused daylight showed him every corner, and Charles sniffing, as it seemed, every corner at once. He crossed over and tried the door that led to the house. But he knew, before his hand found it unyielding, that it had not been unlocked since last he saw it.

He knew, quite surely, that the lady was not there. There was no sign or trace of her, save the rounded nest where she must have snuggled for at least a part of the night that he had spent in such strenuous diplomacy, such ardent organization, for her sake. No other trace of her ... yes, on the flap-table by the window his match-box, set as weight to keep in its place a handkerchief. It was own sister to the little one his pocket still held--and, as he took it up, exhaled the same faint, delicate fragrance. He read it, Charles snuffling and burrowing in the straw at his feet. On it a few words were written, some illegible, but these few plain:

I will write to General Post-Office, London.

There are no words for the thoughts of the baffled adventurer as he locked the door and walked around the farm to the waiting motor. His only word on the way was to Charles, and it calmed, for an instant, even that restless spirit.

"London," he said to his chauffeur. "My friend isn't coming," and he and Charles tumbled into the car together.

A line of faces drawn up against a long fence watched his departure with mild curiosity. Twenty or thirty calves and their rustic attendant saw him go. The chauffeur looked again at the house's blank windows and echoed the landlord's words.

"Rum go!" he said to himself. "Most extraordinary rum go."

VII

TUNBRIDGE WELLS

AN earnest and prolonged struggle with Charles now occupied Mr.

Basingstoke. Charles was determined to stand on the seat with his paws on the side of the car, to look out and to be in readiness to leap out should any pa.s.sing object offer a more than trivial appeal. His master was determined that Charles should lie on the mat in the bottom of the car, and, what is more, that he should lie there quietly. The discussion became animated and ended in blows. It was just at the crisis of the affair, when Edward had lightly smitten the hard, bullet head and Charles was protesting with screams as piercing as those of a locomotive in distress, that the car wheeled into the highroad and narrowly missed a dog-cart coming up from Seaford. As they pa.s.sed, Edward's hand went to his hat, for the driver of the dog-cart was Miss Davenant.

Charles, partially released, leaped toward the lady, only to hang by his chain over the edge of the car. By the time he had been hauled in again and cuffed into comparative quiescence Miss Davenant was left far behind, a little, gesticulating figure against the horizon. Her gestures seemed to Edward to be gestures of recall. But he disregarded them. It was not till later that he regretted this.

A final struggle with Charles ended in victory, not because Edward had enforced his will on that strong and strenuous nature, but because Charles was now exhausted and personally inclined to surrender. He lay at last on the floor of the car, his jaws open in a wide, white-toothed smile, and his pink tongue palpitating to his panting breaths. Edward sat very upright, his hands between his knees, holding the shortened chain of Charles. Mile after mile of the smooth down country slipped past, the car had whirled down the narrow, tree-bordered road into Alfreston, past the old church and the thirteenth-century, half-timbered Clergy House, where three little girls in green pinafores were seeking to coerce a reluctant goat along to Polegate and across the railway lines, and still Mr. Basingstoke never moved. His mind alone was alive, and of his body he was no longer conscious. He thought and thought and thought. Why had she left the farm? Had she been frightened? Had she been captured? Where had she gone? And why? And behind all these questions was a background of something too vague and yet too complicated to be called regret--or something which, translated into words, might have gone something like this:

"Adventures to the adventurous. And three days ago the world was before me. I had set out for adventures and I found nothing more agitating than the pleasant pleasing of one little child. Then suddenly the adventure happened. And now no more charming wanderings, no more aimless saunterings in this pleasant, green world, but rush and worry and hurry and dust, uncertainty, anxiety, ... the whole pretty dream of the adventurer shattered by the reality of the adventure."

Suddenly, and without meaning to do it, he had mortgaged his future to a stranger. The stranger had fled and he was--well, not pursuing, but going to the place she had named as that from which he might gain a clue and take up the pursuit. It was not exactly regret, but Mr. Basingstoke found himself almost wishing that time could move backward and set him in the meadow where the red wall was, and give him once more the chance to fly or not to fly his aeroplane. Perhaps if he had the choice he would not fly it. But all this was among the shadows at the back of his mind. In the foreground was the small, insistent cycle of questions: Why had she left the farm? Had she been frightened? Had she been captured? Where had she gone? When? How? Why?

It was not till the car was slipping through Crowborough, that paradise of villa-dwellers who have "done well in business," that the thought came to him, had she, after all, gone back to her aunt? Had she thought better of it, and just gone humbly back with confession and submission in both hands? It was then that he remembered that Miss Davenant had seemed to signal ... perhaps she had some errand to him ... perhaps submission had been given as the price of a farewell message, aunt-borne, to meet him at the farm? Mr. Basingstoke was not subject to attacks of indecision, but now for a moment he wavered. Then imagination showed him himself on the door-step of the Hall asking for Miss Davenant, and Miss Davenant receiving or not receiving him--in either case he himself cutting a figure which he could not for a moment admire.

Common sense reinforced imagination. The handkerchief said General Post-Office. It could only have said that if the handkerchief's owner meant him to go to the General Post-Office. If the handkerchief's owner had meant him to go back to the Hall, the handkerchief could just as easily have said the Hall. He went back to his questionings, and the car drew near Tunbridge Wells.

Charles, exhausted by the morning's combat, had slept heavily, but now he roused himself to take the role of Arbiter of Destinies. He roused himself, sat up, snuffled and blew, and then, with wide smile and lolling tongue, proclaimed himself to be that pitiable and suffering creature, a bull-terrier dying of thirst. In vain Edward sought to calm him; he insisted that he was, and that he had a right to be, thirsty.

His insistence affected his master. Edward became aware that he, also, was thirsty; more, was hungry. His watch showed him that the chauffeur had every right to consider himself an ill-used man. A bright-faced hotel whose windows were underlined with marguerites and pink geraniums beckoned attractively.

"After all, one must live," said Edward, and breathed an order. The car drew up in front of the White Horse.

Another car was there--unattended--a very nice car. Edward wished it had been his. It had all those charms which his own hired one lacked, and his experienced eye dwelt fondly on those charms.

"Get yourself something to eat," he said to the chauffeur. Charles, straining toward the horse-trough, seemed anxious to prove that his thirst had not been simulated. Edward indulged him. Arrived at the wet granite, however, Charles lapped a tongueful or two, as it were out of politeness and merely to oblige, and then looked up at his master expressively. "You have sadly misunderstood me," he seemed to say. "What I wanted was breakfast," adding, reproachfully, "You will remember that there has been none to-day."

He dragged his master to the hotel door, where they pa.s.sed in under hanging-baskets of pink and white flowers, and in a coffee-room adorned with trophies of the chase Edward ordered luncheon for himself and biscuits for Charles. Now mark the vagaries of Destiny: Charles, impatient for the biscuits, dragged his chain about the coffee-room, empty at this hour of all but himself and his master; he upset the tongs and the shovel and brought them clattering to the fender. Edward replaced them in their stands. Then Charles put his feet in an antimaca.s.sar and dragged it to the floor. After this he went to the writing-table under the wire blind in the middle window and snuffled curiously in the waste-paper basket, upsetting it almost without an effort, and a litter of letters and envelopes and torn circulars was discharged.

Edward, hastening to repair these ravages, scooped the torn fragments in his hands--and on the very top, fronting him, was an envelope bearing his own name--Basingstoke.

"--Basingstoke," the envelope said plainly, adding as an incomplete afterthought, "General Post-O"--and there ending. The handwriting was, like Hypatia's, graceful and self-conscious. That is to say, it was legible, clear, and the letters were shaped by design and not by accident. He never doubted for an instant whose hand it was that had written those words. He went through the waste-paper basket's other contents for more of that handwriting. There was not a sc.r.a.p. The waiter, coming in with accessories to the still-withheld luncheon, stared at him.

"Something thrown away by mistake," he said, and pursued the search.

No--nothing.

But that she had been here was plain; that she still might be here was possible. She must have come by train or by motor--what motor? Train from what station? He went out into the hall to question the highly coiffured young lady whom he had noticed as he came in, the lady who sits in the gla.s.s cage where the keys are kept, and enters your name in the book when you engage your room. The cage was empty, the hall was empty. On the hall-table's dark mahogany lay a shining salver, and on the salver lay a few letters. He picked them up. The one on the top was addressed fully--to

MR. BASINGSTOKE, General Post-Office, London.

The one below was addressed to--

MISS DAVENANT, The Hall, Jevington, Suss.e.x.

Edward glanced round; he was still alone. He put the letters in his pocket and went back to the coffee-room. Charles's attentions had been directed, in his absence, to the waiter, who had thus been detained from his duties.

"Any one else lunching here to-day?" he asked, restraining Charles.

"Mostly over by now, sir," said the waiter. "That dog--dangerous, ain't he, sir?"

"Not a bit," said Edward; "he only took a fancy to you."

"Wouldn't let me pa.s.s--like," said the waiter.

"Only his play," said Edward. "He merely wants his dinner. You've been rather a long time bringing his biscuits. I expect he thought you'd got them in your pocket."

"Sorry, sir," the waiter said, and explained that, being single-handed at that hour, he had had to attend to the other party's lunch, "in the garden, sir," he added, "though why the garden when everything's nice and ready in here--to say nothing of earwigs in your gla.s.s, and beetles, and everything to be carried half a mile--" He ceased abruptly.

"I should like to see the garden," said Edward, "while I'm waiting."

"Lunch ready directly, sir," said the waiter. "Hardly worth while to have it out there now, sir--"

"Which way?" Edward asked, and was told. He went through the hall, under a vine-covered trellis, and the garden blazed before him--a really charming garden, all green and red and yellow; beyond the lawn was an arbor with a light network of hops above it. In that arbor was a white-spread table. There was also movement; people were seated at the table.

Edward stood in the sunshine between two tall vases overflowing with nasturtiums and lobelias and opened his letter.

"Good-by," it said, "and thank you a thousand times. I shall never forget your kindness. But when I had time to think I saw that it wasn't fair to you. But you showed me the way out of the trap. And, now I am free, I can go on by myself. I don't want to drag you into any bother there may be. It would be a poor return for your kindness."

Initials followed--"K. D."