'Hobcraft. Decidedly. Couldn't do without him. He has been having thirty-five shillings a week.'

Harvey rose, and led the way to the smoking-room. His companion had become a new man; the glow of excitement gave him a healthier look, and he talked more like the Cecil Morphew of earlier days, whom Rolfe had found and befriended at the hotel in Brussels.

'There's nothing to be ashamed of in a business of this kind. If only her father was dead, I'm sure _she_ wouldn't mind it.--Ah, Rolfe, if only she and I, both of us, had had a little more courage! Do you know what I think? It's the weak people that do most harm in the world. They suffer, of course, but they make others suffer as well. If I were like _you_--ah, if I were like _you_!' Harvey laughed.

CHAPTER 8

To Alma, on his return, he gave a full account of all he had heard and done. The story of Hugh Carnaby's good fortune interested her greatly.

She elicited every detail of which Harvey had been informed; asked shrewd questions; and yet had the air of listening only for her amus.e.m.e.nt.

'Should you have thought Redgrave likely to do such a thing?' Rolfe inquired.

'Oh, I don't know him at all well. He has been a friend of Sibyl's for a long time--so, of course----'

Her voice dropped, but in a moment she was questioning again.

'You say that Mr. Redgrave went to see him at Coventry?'

'Yes. Redgrave must have heard he was there, from Sibyl, I suppose.'

'And that was two days ago?'

'So Carnaby said--Why?'

'Somebody--oh, I think it was Mrs. Rayner Mann, yesterday--said Mr Redgrave was in Paris.'

Cecil Morphew's affairs had much less interest for her; but when Harvey said that he was going to town again tomorrow, to look at the shop in Westminster Bridge Road, she regarded him with an odd smile.

'You surely won't get mixed up in things of that kind?'

'It might be profitable,' he answered very quietly; 'and--one doesn't care to lose any chance of that kind--just now----'

He would not meet her eyes; but Alma searched his face for the meaning of these words, so evidently weighted.

'Are you at all uneasy, Harvey?'

'Not a bit--not a bit,' answered the weak man in him. 'I only meant that, if we are going to remove----'

They sat for more than five minutes in silence. Alma's brain was working very rapidly, as her features showed. When he entered, she looked rather sleepy; now she was thrilling with vivid consciousness; one would have thought her absorbed in the solution of some exciting problem. Her next words came unexpectedly.

'Harvey, if you mean what you say about letting me follow my own instincts, I think I shall decide to try my fortune--to give a public recital.'

He glanced at her, but did not answer.

'We made a sort of bargain--didn't we?' she went on, quickly, nervously, with an endeavour to strike the playful note. 'Hughie shall go to Mrs. Abbott's, and I will attend to what you said about the choice of acquaintances.'

'But surely neither of those things can be a subject of bargaining between us? Isn't your interest in both at least equal to my own?'

'Yes--I know--of course. It was only a joking way of putting it.'

'Tell me plainly'--he looked at her now--'have you the slightest objection, on any ground, to Hughie's being taught by Mrs. Abbott? If so, do let us clear it up.'

'Dear, I have not a shadow of objection,' replied Alma, straightening herself a little, and answering his gaze with excessive frankness. 'How could I have? You think Mrs. Abbott will teach him much better than I could, and in that you are quite right. I have no talent for teaching.

I haven't much patience--except in music. It's better every way, that he should go to Mrs. Abbott. I feel perfect confidence in her, and I shouldn't be able to in a mere stranger.'

Harvey gave a slow nod, and appeared to have something more of importance to say; but he only asked how the child's cold had been tonight. Alma replied that it was neither better nor worse; she spoke absently.

'On whose encouragement do you princ.i.p.ally rely?' was Rolfe's next question.

'On that of twenty people!'

'I said "princ.i.p.ally".'

'Herr Wilenski has often praised me; and he doesn't throw his praise away. And you yourself, Harvey, didn't you say last might that I was undoubtedly as good as most professionals?'

'I don't think I used quite those words; and, to tell you the truth, it had never entered my head that you would take them for encouragement to such a step as this.'

Alma bent towards him, smiling.

'I understand. You don't think me good enough. Now the truth, the truth!' and she held up a finger--which she could not succeed in keeping steady.

'Yes, you shall have the truth. It's too serious a matter for making pretences. My own judgment is worthless, utterly; it should neither offend nor encourage you. But it's very plain to me that you shouldn't dream of coming before the public unless Wilenski, and perhaps some one else of equal or better standing, actually urges you to it. Now, has he done anything like that?'

She reddened, and hardly tried to conceal her vexation.

'This only means, Harvey, that you don't want me to come out.'

'Come now, be more reasonable. It does not _only_ mean that; in fact, I can say honestly it doesn't mean that at all. If Wilenski tells you plainly that you ought to become a professional violinist, there's no one will wish you luck half so heartily as I. But if it's only the encouragement of "twenty people"--that means nothing. I'm speaking simply as the best friend you have. Don't run the risk of a horrible disappointment. I know you wouldn't find that easy to bear--it would be bad for you, in every way.

Impelled by annoyance--for the project seemed to him delusive, and his sense of dignity rose against it--Harvey had begun with unwonted decision, but he was soon uncomfortably self-conscious and self-critical; he spoke with effort, vainly struggling against that peculiar force of Alma's personality which had long ago subdued him.

When he looked at her, saw her distant smile, her pose of the head as in one who mildly rebukes presumption, he was overcome with a feeling of solemn inept.i.tude. Quite unaware that his last sentence was to Alma the most impressive--the only impressive--part of his counsel, suddenly he broke off, and found relief in unexpected laughter.

'There now, I've done my duty--I've discharged the pedagogue. Get rid of your tragic mask. Be yourself; do as you wish. When the time comes, just tell me what you have decided.'

So, once more, did he oust common-sense with what he imagined a riper wisdom. One must not take things funereally. Face to face with a woman in the prime of her beauty, he heard a voice warning him against the pedantic spirit of middle age, against formalism and fogeyishness.

'Now I know you again,' said Alma, softening, but still reserved; for she did not forget that he had thrown doubt upon her claims as an artist--an incident which would not lose its importance as she pondered it at leisure.

Harvey sat late. On going upstairs, instead of straightway entering his own room, he pa.s.sed it with soft step and paused by another door, that of the chamber in which Hughie slept under the care of Miss Smith. The child had coughed in the night during this last week. But at present all was quiet, and with comfortable rea.s.surance the father went to rest.

Alma had matters to occupy her more important than a child's pa.s.sing ailment. As she slowly unrobed herself by the fire, combed out her warm, fragrant, many-rippled tresses, or held mute dialogue with her eyes in the gla.s.s, from a ravel of uneasy thoughts there detached itself, first and foremost, the discovery that Redgrave had not been in Paris when Mrs. Strangeways said he was. What was the meaning of this contradiction? Thereto hung the singular coincidence of Redgrave's return home exactly at the time when she and Mrs. Strangeways happened to be there. She had thought of it as a coincidence and nothing more; but if Redgrave had deceived Mrs. Strangeways as to his movements, the unlooked-for arrival took a suspicious significance. There remained a dark possibility: that Mrs. Strangeways knew what was about to happen.

Yet this seemed inconceivable.

Was it inconceivable? Why should a woman of that age, and of so much experience, feel nervous about going alone to her friend's house on such a simple mission? It appeared odd at the time, and was more difficult to understand the more she thought of it. And one heard such strange stories--in society of a certain kind--so many whispered hints of things that would not bear to be talked about.