“I was born with the love of fighting in my bones,” Sir Timothy went on. “In my younger days, I fought in every small war in the southern hemisphere. I fought, as you know, in our own war. I have loved to see men fight honestly and fairly.”
“It is a man’s hobby,” Francis pronounced.
“I encouraged you deliberately to think,” Sir Timothy went on, “what half the world thinks that—my parties at The Walled House were mysterious orgies of vice. They have, as a matter of fact, never been anything of the sort. The tragedies which are supposed to have taken place on my launch have been just as much mock tragedies as last night’s, only I have not previously chosen to take the audiences into my confidence. The greatest pugilists in the world have fought in my gymnasium, often, if you will, under illegal conditions, but there has never been a fight that was not fair.”
“I believe that,” Francis said.
“And there is another matter for which I take some blame,” Sir Timothy went on, “the matter of Fairfax and Victor Bidlake. They were neither of them young men for whose loss the world is any the worse. Fairfax to some extent imposed upon me. He was brought to The Walled House by a friend who should have known better. He sought my confidence. The story he told was exactly that of the mock drama upon the launch. Bidlake had taken his wife. He had no wish to appeal to the Courts. He wished to fight, a point of view with which I entirely sympathised. I arranged a fight between the two. Bidlake funked it and never turned up. My advice to Fairfax was, whenever he met Bidlake, to give him the soundest thrashing he could. That night at Soto’s I caught sight of Fairfax some time before dinner. He was talking to the woman who had been his wife, and he had evidently been drinking. He drew me on one side. ‘To-night,’ he told me, ‘I am going to settle accounts with Bidlake.’ ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘Here,’ he answered. He went out to the theatre, I upstairs to dine. That was the extent of the knowledge I possessed which enabled me to predict some unwonted happening that night. Fairfax was a bedrugged and bedrunken decadent who had not the courage afterwards to face what he had done. That is all.”
The hand slipped from Francis’ shoulder. Francis, with a smile, held out his own. They stood there for a moment with clasped hands—a queer, detached moment, as it seemed to Francis, in a life which during the last few months had been full of vivid sensations. From outside came the lazy sounds of the drowsy summer morning—the distant humming of a mowing machine, the drone of a reaper in the field beyond, the twittering of birds in the trees, even the soft lapping of the stream against the stone steps. The man whose hand he was holding seemed to Francis to have become somehow transformed. It was as though he had dropped a mask and were showing a more human, a more kindly self. Francis wondered no longer at the halting gallop of the horses in the field.
“You’ll be good to Margaret?” Sir Timothy begged. “She’s had a wretched time.”
Francis smiled confidently.
“I’m going to make up for it, sir,” he promised. “And this South American trip,” he continued, as they turned towards the French windows, “you’ll call that off?”
Sir Timothy hesitated.
“I am not quite sure.”
When they reached the garden, Lady Cynthia was alone. She scarcely glanced at Francis. Her eyes were anxiously fixed upon his companion.
“Margaret has gone in to make the cocktails herself,” she explained. “We have both sworn off absinthe for the rest of our lives, and we know Hedges can’t be trusted to make one without.”
“I’ll go and help her,” Francis declared.
Lady Cynthia passed her arm through Sir Timothy’s.
“I want to know about South America,” she begged. “The sight of those trunks worries me.”
Sir Timothy’s casual reply was obviously a subterfuge. They crossed the lawn and the rustic bridge, almost in silence, passing underneath the pergola of roses to the sheltered garden at the further end. Then Lady Cynthia paused.
“You are not going to South America,” she pleaded, “alone?”
Sir Timothy took her hands.
“My dear,” he said, “listen, please, to my confession. I am a fraud. I am not a purveyor of new sensations for a decadent troop of weary, fashionable people. I am a fraud sometimes even to myself. I have had good luck in material things. I have had bad luck in the precious, the sentimental side of life. It has made something of an artificial character of me, on the surface at any rate. I am really a simple, elderly man who loves fresh air, clean, honest things, games, and a healthy life. I have no ambitions except those connected with sport. I don’t even want to climb to the topmost niches in the world of finance. I think you have looked at me through the wrong-coloured spectacles. You have had a whimsical fancy for a character which does not exist.”
“What I have seen,” Lady Cynthia answered, “I have seen through no spectacles at all—with my own eyes. But what I have seen, even, does not count. There is something else.”
“I am within a few weeks of my fiftieth birthday,” Sir Timothy reminded her, “and you, I believe, are twenty-nine.”
“My dear man,” Lady Cynthia assured him fervently, “you are the only person in the world who can keep me from feeling forty-nine.”
“And your people—”
“Heavens! My people, for the first time in their lives, will count me a brilliant success,” Lady Cynthia declared. “You’ll probably have to lend dad money, and I shall be looked upon as the fairy child who has restored the family fortunes.”
Sir Timothy leaned a little towards her.
“Last of all,” he said, and this time his voice was not quite so steady, “are you really sure that you care for me, dear, because I have loved you so long, and I have wanted love so badly, and it is so hard to believe—”
It was the moment, it seemed to her, for which she had prayed. She was in his arms, tired no longer, with all the splendid fire of life in her love-lit eyes and throbbing pulses. Around them the bees were humming, and a soft summer breeze shook the roses and brought little wafts of perfume from the carnation bed.
“There is nothing in life,” Lady Cynthia murmured brokenly, “so wonderful as this.”
Francis and Margaret came out from the house, the former carrying a silver tray. They had spent a considerable time over their task, but Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy were still absent. Hedges followed them, a little worried.
“Shall I ring the gong, madam?” he asked Margaret. “Cook has taken such pains with her omelette.”
“I think you had better, Hedges,” Margaret assented.
The gong rang out—and rang again. Presently Lady Cynthia and Sir Timothy appeared upon the bridge and crossed the lawn. They were walking a little apart. Lady Cynthia was looking down at some roses which she had gathered. Sir Timothy’s unconcern seemed a trifle overdone. Margaret laughed very softly.
“A stepmother, Francis!” she whispered. “Just fancy Cynthia as a stepmother!”
THE ILL-LAID SCHEME OF MR. AMBROSE WEARE
Mr. Philip Letheringcourt, as he stepped out of his electric brougham and entered the premises of the London and Westminster Banking Company in Lombard Street, had certainly more the air of a man of fashion than of one interested in the everyday affairs of City life. He was immaculately dressed, handsome, debonair, from the tips of his patent boots to the bunch of violets which adorned his button-hole. He entered the bank with the air of one a little unaccustomed to his surroundings, and, approaching a vacant spot at the counter,