"Does Moncrieff drink?" Santley asked bluntly.
"Not openly. That's what makes the wines handed round odder still. He takes one glass, or at the outside two. Never more. But it's possible that he drinks in secret. I saw his hand yesterday trembling like this, Oliver—" and she gave an imitation of palsy. "Lavinia saw it too, and went quite white. But she said nothing, only shot a sort of frightened glance at me as though wondering if I had noticed it, and he too turned his head and looked at me in a sort of watchful, furtive way..."
She was silent for a moment. "But about this morning," she went on; "he chased me round the room. And that brute of a chauffeur of theirs stood by and grinned. I felt as though in another moment he would join in too and help to batter me senseless."
"Chased you! Moncrieff chased you! But what caused it?" Santley asked. The story seemed to him utterly incredible, yet Mrs. Phillimore was a most truthful woman.
"Nothing whatever. Lavinia and I breakfasted alone, and she looked more than usually grave and worried. She said that she had to rush away to see people about the arrangements for the tableaux, and I had gone up to my room and written a couple of notes before I discovered that I had left a letter on the table. I went back to the breakfast room. Major Moncrieff and this chauffeur of his, a man of the name of Edwards, were talking together. I took my letter from the table, and choosing a chair by the window, I opened it, sat down to read it, and said to Harry that it was a fine morning. He ground his teeth at me. He looked—oh, horrible! 'I'll teach you to call the weather fine before noon!' he yelled, and snatching up the first thing close to his hand, it was a big silver teapot—part of my wedding present to Lavinia—he made a rush for me. I managed to get to the door somehow after running right around the table with him after me—" Mrs. Phillimore went white again. "I got to Lavinia's room, but she had gone. Perhaps it was just as well. I might have said things we would both have been sorry for. Irreparable things. As it was, I left a note saying that I had to hurry up to town to see the dentist. I am going to see him, of course—" Mrs. Phillimore broke off to look earnestly at Santley as though to reassure him as to her truthfulness. "But before coming here to see you and talk to you, I sent her a wire saying 'Unable to finish my visit. Please have my things packed and sent to Thackeray Hotel. Writing.' That will give me time to think of what I can do! It's a frightful position. I can't, won't, leave Lavinia with that brute. Yet to separate husband and wife! I know Lavinia is living in terror of him, but she won't hear a word against him. Yesterday when I suggested her coming out with me to Montreux, she said that she wouldn't leave him alone just now for worlds. And she meant it, too, Oliver. And said it in a tone that generally only signifies one thing."
Mrs. Phillimore looked at him with troubled eyes. They were still very pretty eyes.
"What thing?" Santley asked.
"When a woman says that, in that tone, it usually means that there's another woman somewhere. That's why I can't insist on her leaving Beechcroft immediately. If she thinks, or rather knows, that that sort of thing may happen, well, it's easier to leave a husband than to get back to him! And though he's been a brute to me this last week, I too know how fond one can be of him. How charming one side of him is. It's possible that a doctor...that some treatment...or if he stopped taking whatever it is that makes him act like a madman, he would be himself again—his charming, dear, self. I was so fond of him when he married her, and when I stayed with them before. They were poor, but as happy as the day was long—and it was midsummer!" she added with a laugh up at him through the tears. "Now both of them are living under some sort of a dark shadow. A black cloud. Something that makes both of them all nerves."
There was a short silence. The telephone rang. The French buyer could not come till the afternoon at four, would Mr. Santley excuse him, and be at that hour in his studio? Oliver said that he would do both, and hung up.
"What I want of you is this—" Mrs. Phillimore had recovered something of her usual calm. "You promised Lavinia a canvas as a wedding present, the subject to be chosen by her, and she asked you some months ago, as I happen to know, to paint her a picture of her husband."
"Yes. I hope to make the sketches for it when I go down next week," he said.
"Don't wait for next week. Go this week. Go now! I know you always study your subject beforehand, to get under their skin, as you call it. Well, do just that. Study the Major and let me know your verdict. Whether, as I fear, he's going really insane, or whether he's taken to drugs, or if it's drinking bouts..."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Phillimore. I'm truly very sorry, but I can't possibly leave town this week. Not a day before next Thursday. Besides, I'm an artist, not a medical expert!" Santley began. Yet he knew that the idea of painting a potential madman, or drug-taker, or even a secret drinker, had its horrid fascination. He only cared for putting on canvas what lay hidden from most men's eyes—the soul of the sitter; or if not that, then the key in which his nature moved, by which its harmonies could be best understood.
"It's my daughter I'm concerned about," Mrs. Phillimore said simply. "It's Lavinia, Oliver. I can't stay there to help her—perhaps to save her," her voice trembled, "and I very much fear that she will need help, and possibly saving, from that husband of hers before very long, unless something pulls him up. You really can't go down before next week—a week from this coming Thursday?"
"I'm so sorry. I definitely can't. But meanwhile, perhaps Lavinia will be able to give him a hand over the stile," Santley suggested.
"She's completely under his thumb," the mother replied sadly. "She's hypnotised...like the bird and the snake."
"Did any one see you leave?" Santley asked, to get her on to more common-sense subjects, he hoped.
"He did. And it wasn't easy to get away. That dreadful man Edwards answered the telephone to the garage when I said I would like a car to take me to the station. He replied that there wasn't any one who could drive me." Again her face flushed, this time with indignation. "So I rang up and got a car from outside to fetch me. I waited by the gate for it. I felt, as I climbed in, as though I were escaping. Heaven knows what. And I saw both the man Edwards and the Major watching me go. The Major actually started after me, as though to stop me. He had an iron bar in his hand, but Edwards laid a hand on his arm, and the car drove off before anything worse happened."
"It's the most amazing story I've ever heard," Santley said, walking to and fro in front of her in his absorption.
She nodded sadly.
"When did it begin? I mean the change in him?" he asked.
She could only say that she had no idea.
"But I'm afraid you'll hear of a worse change yet," she said. "Beechcroft is so lonely. He chose the house, though Lavinia's money went to buy it. It's surrounded by trees...murder might be done there and no one would know for weeks..."
"Oh come, Mrs. Phillimore!" Santley strove for a lighter tone. "Strong word—murder!"
"I saw murder in his face this morning," she said simply. "Well may Lavinia spend hours crying. She does! In secret. You used to care for her once, Oliver."
Yes, he had once wanted to marry Lavinia very much indeed. But that was six years ago. His life had gone on. Widened. Deepened. He now felt merely faint surprise at the intensity of his old feeling. But Lavinia had the gift of arousing violent, if swift, passion. He remembered how he had felt her refusal, her marriage...and he was very kind to Mrs. Phillimore.
"I can do nothing," the mother went on. "The Major was ever so much worse when we were alone. I think he realised that I was watching him. Whereas my poor Lavinia—as I say, whatever her doubts and terrors—and she has plenty of both, she pretends that everything is as it used to be. Oliver," she leant forward and laid one of her hands on his arm, "Oliver, I'm sending her in you the best of protectors—though I wish you could go at once. However, you'll soon see what's wrong with the Major, and once I know that, I shall know how to safeguard her."
"I can't stay but over the week-end," he said reluctantly.
"Make