Chapter SEVEN

It was some time before the ring at the bell was answered. Then, after a second summons, the door was opened by a very dignified butler who wore the old-fashioned side-whiskers, eschewing the more modern method of clean-shaving.

Aylmer decided from his experience, that this pleasant-looking person was a choice thing in butlers. He was respectful without being in the least servile. He took from the young man his hat and coat and showed him into the drawing-room, where, somewhat to his surprise, he found Eileen alone.

She rose, with just a faint suspicion of color in her cheek; no doubt she was thinking of their last meeting in the Soho restaurant and had not quite got over a certain guilty feeling.

“Welcome to The Laurels,” she said in her pretty, cheerful voice. “Richard will be back presently to echo my welcome. But he has been called away for a few moments to attend to some rather tiresome business. You must put up with me till he appears.”

How charming she was, he thought. What a knack she had of saying little depreciating things of herself which rather provoked a compliment. He answered her in a similar vein. “I shall be delighted to see Mr. Quentin when he comes but he has left a more than efficient substitute.”

The dignified butler presently appeared with tea and a decanter of whisky. The hostess put a question to him: “Is Mr. Quentin likely to be long, Dicks?”

Dicks answered her in a deep, mellow voice. “I am not quite sure, ma’am. Perhaps it would be better not to wait. And besides, he never takes tea.”

Naturally, this capable man was well acquainted with the habits of the household, and could give sound advice. Eileen turned to her guest. “Tea, Mr. Aylmer, or would you prefer a whisky-and-soda?”

Aylmer declared for the more harmless beverage. Eileen seemed pleased at his choice.

“I noticed, when we were at Ostend, you were what I should call an abstemious sort of man,” she said, speaking rather more seriously than was her usual custom. “I am very glad of it, for your own sake and that of others who are connected with you. In this house things are a bit the other way, too much so for my liking. Richard, in spite of that quaint manner of his, is a very temperamental person. He is always in a state of nerves, and they require soothing, with _that_”--she pointed with a contemptuous gesture to the decanter. “You heard Dicks say he never takes tea. When he does put in an appearance, he will pour himself out a very liberal dose of whisky.”

Another small revelation about the master of the house. And yet, was it quite a revelation? During their sojourn abroad, together, Aylmer had remarked that Quentin was a heavy drinker, not only at meals with the stimulus of food, but during the day.

“And the few people who find their way here,” went on Eileen in the same serious voice, “seem to be troubled with a similar weakness. And it runs through the house; the servants drink. Dicks is a most excellent servant, and never forgets himself, but that flush on his cheek is more than a symptom of good health. And his master puts temptation in his way.”

She was letting him into the inner secrets of the establishment with a rather embarrassing frankness, he thought. But later on at dinner he had an opportunity of understanding what she meant.

The drawing-room, a long, low-ceilinged apartment of considerable size, looked out upon the front garden. Aylmer could look right down to the gate. He kept his eyes open, expecting to see shortly the shabbily-dressed figure of the man with the refined face emerging on his way out, from the kitchen quarters. But many minutes passed and there was no sign of the man who earlier had arrested his attention. Probably some out-at-elbows relation of one of the servants, who had dropped in for refreshment of some sort. It was evidently a very hospitable house. From what Eileen had let fall, the servants could do much as they pleased under the rule of a too indulgent master.

Half an hour passed. Nobody came down the garden, and the host had not put in an appearance. Aylmer by no means resented his absence, as he much preferred to be alone with the charming young woman; but he could not help thinking it was somewhat strange behavior on a first visit. He had been asked especially to come early, and Quentin, surely, should have been there to receive him.

The suspicion of what her guest must be thinking seemed to arouse in Eileen a growing embarrassment. At length, unable to contain herself, she rose, and rang the bell sharply.

She spoke in an irritated tone to the butler when he answered the summons. “Please ask Mr. Quentin if he will be very much longer. We have finished tea. Mr. Aylmer has been here for over half an hour.”

In a few minutes Dicks returned. Mr. Quentin sent his most sincere apologies to his guest. He would be with them directly.

But, it was a good ten minutes after that message before he put in appearance; and, during that period, the man with the limp had not shown himself. Somehow, Aylmer could not help associating his host’s absence with that rather sinister-looking person.

When he arrived, he was full of contrition and cordiality. As soon as the greetings were over, he stretched out his hand to the decanter, and poured out a very liberal allowance of spirit, to which he added a quite small measure of soda-water. This he drained at one long gulp, and as he held the glass to his mouth, Aylmer noticed that his hand trembled. The young man fancied that his whole demeanor, since he had entered the room, evinced traces of some unusual inward agitation.

He seated himself in an easy chair, and began to talk in a rapid, jerky fashion. “I suppose one cannot escape small annoyances in this world. One shuts oneself up like a recluse, excludes commonplace persons from one’s life, only opens one’s doors to people with whom one feels a certain measure of affinity. And yet, careful as one may be, one can never wholly escape from disturbing things.”

While giving utterance to these cryptic words, he poured himself out another dose of ardent spirit, which this time he consumed in a more leisurely fashion. Aylmer stole a glance at Eileen, on whose brow was a distinct frown. She evidently did not approve of his recourse to stimulants as a remedy for his frayed nerves.

Aylmer found himself wondering if this tendency to drink was more than an infirmity; if it had grown into a vice. During the time they had been alone, he had asked Eileen if she felt more contented now that she was in England. Her answer had been of rather a hesitating character.

“In some ways, yes,” she had told him. “But I believe the other life suits Richard better. I don’t think the loneliness is very good for him; he is thrown too much on his own resources.”

He fancied he was able to read between the lines of that vague statement. In the crowded life of an hotel, Quentin was open to observation, he had to keep a control over his unfortunate impulses. Here, in this big house, with only one weak woman, hardly more than a girl, and a set of obsequious servants, he was responsible to nobody but himself. And the young man felt almost certain that, fond as the man must be of Eileen in his placid, paternal way, he did not allow her to exercise much influence over him. Quiet as he was, he conveyed the idea of obstinacy.

It was rather an embarrassing moment. Quentin had admitted that he had been upset, but he would not say frankly what had upset him. To create a diversion, Aylmer inquired after Martyn.

The commonplace question seemed to rouse Quentin from his disturbing reflections. He spoke in a brisker tone.

“Oh, very well, very well, indeed. I had a letter from him a couple of days before we left for England. He is making a leisurely journey through Italy. He never stops in one place for long, a bird of passage something like ourselves, but without any anchorage in his own country, such as Eileen and I have here.”

“Are you likely to make a long stay at Hampstead?”

Quentin seemed to hesitate. Eileen, from whose fair brow the frown had not wholly disappeared, answered for him.

“It is no use asking Richard that question; he couldn’t give you a reliable reply. He is a man of moods and impulses. To-day he might tell you we would stay a month, and next week he is as likely as not to give me twenty-four hours’ notice to pack up and be off to the end of the world.”

Quentin laughed good-humoredly at the petulance in her tone.

“Not quite so bad as that, my dear, surely. If the climate behaves itself, I think I could put in a good few weeks here. But of course, if we have an abominable spell of weather, I am afraid I shall want to set out for sunnier lands. I hate gloom and rain,” he concluded with a little shiver of disgust.

There were no more embarrassing moments, and presently the conversation flowed easily between them. The slight cloud disappeared from Eileen’s face, and she was again the sunny, charming young woman he had known at Ostend.

Aylmer thought how little one knows of people till one sees them in their own home. At the hotel they always had seemed an easy-going couple, not particularly devoted, perhaps, but always very pleasant to each other. On this, his first visit to them, in their strictly domestic surroundings, there had been a certain sub-acid note in Eileen’s demeanor to her supposed husband. Did he, in this more intimate environment, display, unchecked, certain qualities that aroused her resentment and caused her to show herself in a less attractive light? He could not, of course, bring himself to admit that she was at fault.

In due course they went in to dinner, Quentin apologizing for there being no other guest. “We are quite _en famille_, as you see, Mr. Aylmer, but I shall hope that you will not be too bored with us.”

The young man made some polite rejoinder, and the dinner proceeded, the dignified Dicks and the neat-looking parlormaid attending on the small party. The Laurels was not nearly so big a house as the Peytons’ mansion at Wimbledon, but it was a much more elegant one. The furniture at Wimbledon was solid and expensive, that of The Laurels evidently had been chosen by a person of very considerable taste and artistic leanings. The same applied to the dinner. There was more profusion at Mr. Peyton’s table: here there was a smaller menu, but the dishes harmonized better with each other. And the wines were especially choice. But in this respect Quentin, of course, had a serious rival, for the stockbroker dealt with a first-class wine-merchant, and was greatly assisted by him in his choice of vintages.

At a certain point in the repast, Eileen half rose with the intention of leaving the two men to themselves. But Quentin intervened. “My dear child, in a small party like this, let us dispense with that barbarous custom of separating the sexes just when we are really beginning to get convivial. Stay with us. I am sure Aylmer is too great an admirer of the ladies to object.”

Quentin had been by no means sparing in his enjoyment of the excellent wines to which his butler had helped him, and he was certainly by now in a most convivial mood. He set down his half-finished glass of port with genuine satisfaction.

“Help yourself, while it is here, Aylmer,” he cried, dropping the formal “Mister” in his jovial mood. “And persuade that little teetotaller to have a drop more. I have only a half-dozen bottles of it left, and I don’t know where to replace it. There’s nothing like it on the market at the present moment.”

But Eileen refused on the ground that, as she was no judge of wine, it would be wasted on her. Quentin turned round to the butler, who, so it seemed to Aylmer, had been lingering unnecessarily in the room. “Dicks, you must take away a glass of this to drink downstairs, you know it of old.”

The dignified butler brought not one but two glasses. For a moment his genial master looked uncertainly at the second glass, as if wondering why it was brought. Then he seemed to recollect himself. “And, of course, one for Mrs. Masters, the cook. She deserves it, for she surpassed herself in that _vol-au-vent_.”

Dicks, with a muttered word of thanks, left the room. Aylmer stole a glance at Eileen, and saw that the cloud had slightly returned to her face. She evidently did not approve of these free and easy relations between the servants and their master. Mr. Quentin might have restrained his good-heartedness on this particular evening.

When they crossed the hall, into the drawing-room, sounds of enjoyment were heard issuing from the regions of the kitchen. Even Quentin, with his lax notions of domestic discipline, frowned a little at the sound. “What an infernal row,” he said.

Eileen spoke very sharply. “It is perfectly disgraceful. Mr. Aylmer must be surprised at the way in which the house is run. And it is all your fault. You let them turn the place into a bear garden; you never exert your authority in the slightest degree.”

A rather obstinate look came over Quentin’s face; although he was in too jovial a mood to resent such plain speaking by any show of temper. “My dear, are you not more than a bit uncharitable? These poor devils are enjoying themselves downstairs, as we are enjoying ourselves upstairs, only our veneer of refinement enables us to disguise our feelings better.”

To these philosophical remarks, Eileen did not condescend to reply. But Aylmer surmised that there might be several things at The Laurels which did not meet with her approval. He rather wondered that she did not introduce greater order into the establishment herself. Was Quentin, in spite of his quiet, amiable manner, one of those obstinate men who will not be interfered with?

In the drawing-room she played and sang a little. But, neither her vocal nor instrumental performance was of a high order. Presently Quentin began to talk, and Aylmer was surprised to find what a very well-read and cultivated fellow he was when he fairly got himself launched forth. He wandered from politics to art, from art to literature and music, and was perfectly at home in every subject on which he touched.

It was rather a revelation to his guest, for at Ostend he never had let himself go, never poured forth the treasures of information with which he seemed so fully endowed. Even Eileen, in spite of her chagrin at the imperfect running of the establishment, seemed to forget her annoyance, and listened to him with evident pleasure. And, Aylmer was quite convinced that his host was a many-sided man.

The time passed quickly; and then, at a pause in the conversation, Quentin glanced at the clock. “I’m afraid I’ve been a sad monopolist this evening,” he remarked. “I see it is past eleven, and I have been talking most of the time. Are you a late bird, Aylmer? Living so much alone when in England, we get into the habit of going to bed early. Is it too soon for you?”

Aylmer replied politely in the negative. Quentin rang the bell for the butler to lock up the house, and “good-nights” were exchanged. As a matter of fact, eleven o’clock was rather an early hour for the young man, and when he got into bed, he felt very wakeful.

Naturally, he was more than a little excited by his first visit to the house which sheltered the object of his affections. He wondered much at the peculiar relations which existed between Eileen and this middle-aged man who passed as her husband. Now that real love had come to her, she was naturally dissatisfied; but before this period, had she enjoyed any measure of real happiness in such an unreal existence? Perhaps for this reason--for Quentin was too intelligent not to have surmised what she was feeling--she had been rushed about from place to place in the hope of providing her with amusement and distraction.

He fell into a doze presently, and then woke up with a sudden start. He lay wide awake, listening. Yes, surely, there was the sound of stealthy footfalls along the corridor outside his room and down the big staircase that led into the hall. Presently, straining his ears, he heard the front door opened very softly, and apparently it was not closed. He struck a match, and looked at his watch; it was a few minutes past two o’clock.

He peeped into the corridor, and made out that the door of one of the bedrooms was ajar. He knew it was the one in which Quentin slept, Eileen’s room being next to it. Quickly, he stepped across to the window and drew the blind a very little aside, so that he could see through to the garden.

It was a very bright night, the moon shining brilliantly, and he could see as plainly as if it were day.

Three men were clustered under the shade of a big tree close to the gate which opened on to the carriage-drive.

There was no mistaking those figures, dressed in the same clothes in which he had last seen them. They were Quentin, Dicks the butler, and the man with the limp. The three were engaged in animated conversation.