The Castleford Conundrum E-Book

J. J. Connington

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

AS PHILIP CASTLEFORD came down the broad stairs, a faint burst of laughter reached him through the closed door of the drawing room. At the sound of his wife’s shrill titter rising above the bass of the two men’s voices, he winced and gave vent to his spleen in an ejaculation, all the more vehement because it was uttered under his breath.
“Damn those people!”
In that concise imprecation he included his wife, the two brothers of her first husband, and her companion, Constance Lindfield. He hesitated for a moment at the foot of the stair, trying to brace himself to face that hostile group; but his mental conflict was a pure make-believe, like a stage-fight with its foregone conclusion.

Leseprobe

THE CASTLEFORD

CONUNDRUM

J. J. Connington

© 2020 Librorium Editions

All rights reserved

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

________________

Chapter 1

The First Camp

AS PHILIP CASTLEFORD came down the broad stairs, a faint burst of laughter reached him through the closed door of the drawing room. At the sound of his wife’s shrill titter rising above the bass of the two men’s voices, he winced and gave vent to his spleen in an ejaculation, all the more vehement because it was uttered under his breath.

“Damn those people!”

In that concise imprecation he included his wife, the two brothers of her first husband, and her companion, Constance Lindfield. He hesitated for a moment at the foot of the stair, trying to brace himself to face that hostile group; but his mental conflict was a pure make-believe, like a stage-fight with its foregone conclusion. In a weak attempt to keep up his self-respect he pretended that he was considering whether to join the others or not, though all the while he knew that he could not force himself to enter the drawing-room that night.

The Glencaple brothers’ visits were never pleasant to him, but that night’s dinner had been even worse than usual. He had sat at the head of the table, nominally the master of the house but almost totally ignored by everybody. When he tried to join in the general talk, a cool glance and a monosyllabic reply was the best he got; someone else cut in with a fresh topic; and he was left out in the cold. Without being definitely offensive, they had made it quite plain that they weren’t interested in anything he had to say. A child forcing itself into a conversation between adults might have been disposed of in much the same manner. It wasn’t exactly snubbing, but it came to much the same thing in its results.

His daughter had come off rather better, which was always something to be thankful for. Kenneth Glencaple, turning his red face and stolid eyes upon her from time to time, had flung isolated sentences across the table, enough to recognise Hilary’s existence without encouraging her to talk freely. Laurence Glencaple had been a shade more considerate. In his faintly cynical way he had made some attempt to draw her out; but whenever she spoke more than a sentence or two, her stepmother or Constance Lindfield had skilfully edged her out of the talk and turned the current into some fresh channel.

Most galling of all to Castleford, during that dinner, was the knowledge that the very bread he ate was paid for with Glencaple money and that the two brothers never forgot the fact. His wife had been the widow of the third Glencaple, the rich one, and now enjoyed his whole fortune. Naturally enough, a country doctor like Laurence or a struggling business man like Kenneth would be jealous of a stranger— “and one of these damned out-at-elbows artists, too, of all things”— established in their brother’s stead and sharing in the income which he had left.

He might have got over that, if there had been any common ground between him and them; but they seemed to take pains to prove that there was none. Over their coffee that night, after the women had left the room, the two brothers had discussed bridge (which he detested), stock exchange quotations (in which he took no interest), and some acquaintances of theirs (whom he had never met). Tacitly he was shut out from their confabulation. In their eyes he was not the host, though he sat at the head of the table; and they took no pains to hide their view of his position.

When they rose to pass into the drawing-room, he had left them and gone upstairs, making the feeble excuse that he had forgotten something or other that he needed. They hadn’t waited for him— just as he expected. He could take refuge in his study, if he chose, for no one would miss him.

While he was still hesitating over that foregone conclusion, with his eyes fixed on the closed door of the drawing-room, he heard a light step on the stairs above. A graceful, fair-haired girl came down, carrying some sewing in her hands. Castleford moved aside to let her pass.

“Are you going into the drawing-room, Hilary?” he asked as she reached his side.

His daughter’s tone, in her reply, was that of one discussing a purely impersonal question.

“I don’t think I’m wanted there.”

Castleford could well believe that. Hilary, at twenty, was apt to draw men’s attention away from her stepmother. On her side, the rivalry was quite unconscious; but Winifred, fifteen years older, preferred not to risk comparisons when they could be avoided. Nothing definite was ever said, but Hilary knew very well that her stepmother was best pleased if she slipped away on some pretext when male visitors were about. Winifred wanted men to talk to her, not to waste time on her stepdaughter.

The interruption had given Castleford time to find the excuse which was to salve his self-esteem. After all, his wife and the Glencaples were a sort of family party. It was reasonable enough to leave them to themselves, in case they might want to discuss any Glencaple affairs.

In turning towards the study, Hilary caught sight of something lying on the hall table.

“That’s Dr. Glencaple’s bag, isn’t it?” she asked carelessly as she passed. “He might have taken it with him to the cloak-room when he came in.”

“I suppose he wanted to have it handy,” her father suggested. “I expect he’s brought a fresh supply of insulin tonight. The last lot’s almost exhausted.”

Laurence Glencaple had certainly made a success of Winifred’s case with that stuff, he reflected. He had got her practically back to normal, apparently, barring the strict dieting and the substitution of saccharin for sugar in her tea and coffee. It was hardly surprising that she swore by him. That gave him a pull with her. Castleford made a wry face as he thought of it. He could guess well enough how that pull was being exerted, just then. His wife had no knack of concealing her thoughts; and from remarks which she dropped now and again, it was easy to divine the sapping and mining which the Glencaple brothers were doing in order to induce her to alter her will.

Castleford wondered how much his daughter saw of these things. There was nothing of the sphinx about Hilary; and yet he could never be sure what she was thinking about or how much she noticed. She had an air of watchful reserve, always, when her stepmother was present. He had shirked telling his daughter what his exact position was. Occasionally she rebelled against some edict of her stepmother’s, and for the sake of peace he had to make an appeal to her on personal grounds. “Do it on my account, please. I don’t want a row.” Hilary was fond of him and had hitherto given in without difficulty; but sooner or later, now she was grown up, that explanation would have to come.

Hilary led the way into the study, placed a reading-lamp beside her chair, and prepared to begin her sewing. Her father, when she had settled herself, chose a deep armchair near hers and dropped into it with a faint sigh of satisfaction. Here at least he was free from all the little pin-pricks and petty discomforts which made up the background of his life.

For some minutes Hilary busied herself with her work. Then, without looking up, she made an apparently casual observation:

“I didn’t know the Glencaples were coming to dinner tonight.”

“Neither did I, till the dressing-gong rang,” Castleford admitted. “She only told me as I was going upstairs.”

Between father and daughter, the stepmother was never given a name. Winifred was always “She” or “Her” to them. When she married Castleford, eight years back, she had suggested that her stepdaughter should call her “Mother”; but Hilary, without a direct refusal, evaded the point by omitting any form of address when she spoke to Winifred. To third parties she spoke of “Mrs. Castleford.”

She made no comment on her father’s last remark. As she sat intent upon her sewing, Castleford watched her for a moment or two with quiet satisfaction. They might despise him, in that house, but they could find no fault with Hilary’s appearance, at any rate. The reading-lamp showed up her profile, clean-cut as a cameo, and he studied it, feature by feature, with regret that his days of miniature painting were over. She would have made a better model than most of those he had used in the old days. No wonder Winifred kept Hilary out of the way when men were about, he mused with a certain grim satisfaction. A girl like this was hardly the foil for his wife, who looked her full thirty-five years. And Winifred had no intellectual gifts to throw into the scale. All her talk, in that affected drawl of hers, was the merest chatter about trifles; her knowledge of current events was drawn entirely from the pictures in the illustrated papers; her enthusiasms were all for shams of one sort or another— anything that seemed “out of the common.” Her one engrossing topic was dress; and yet, though she spent a small fortune on her wardrobe, she never seemed to get a result which Hilary achieved on her tiny allowance.

Castleford pulled his pouch from his pocket and began to fill his pipe. He paid for his own tobacco. It, at any rate, was not bought with Glencaple money, and could therefore be enjoyed without afterthoughts. He stuffed the bowl left-handedly, for his right hand lacked the index and the top joint of the middle finger; but the injury was evidently of long standing, since he showed no awkwardness in his manipulation.

“She allowed that cub to stay up for dinner tonight,” he observed when he had got his pipe well alight. “I suppose that was because his father was here. His manners don’t improve.”

The “cub” was Kenneth Glencaple’s boy. Kenneth lived in a town some fifty miles away and the child had been sent to stay with the Castlefords during his school holidays to give him a chance to get over a recent illness. He was a flabby, pasty-faced youngster; but Winifred, who had no children of her own, had taken a fancy to him; and Castleford had a suspicion that young Francis might be a pawn in the game the Glencaples were playing.

“Connie Lindfield’s given him a present— a rook-rifle,” Hilary explained briefly. “It came by the late parcel post, and I expect he was burning to get dinner over so that he could get back to it.”

“I’m not sure it’s quite the toy for him,” her father said doubtfully. “See that you keep out of his neighbourhood if he starts shooting round about here. He’s a thoroughly careless little brute. He might easily do a lot of harm.”

“He’s a horrible little creature!” Hilary broke in. “I caught him this morning, round by the garage, when I went to get out the car. Guess what he was doing. He’d got hold of a wretched little black kitten. He was drowning it in a bucket of water, holding it under with a mop. Then, when it was at the last gasp, the little fiend took it out and let it revive again before he put it back. ‘Making the fun last longer,’ he said quite seriously when I caught him at it. I’m in his black books because I stopped him.”

“I hope you didn’t make a fuss with her about it,” Castleford muttered, avoiding her eyes.

Hilary caught the note of apprehension in his voice and bent over her work again as she answered.

“Not I. What good would it do? Of course she’d have backed up her little Frankie. It would just have been raising trouble for nothing. He’d lie his way out of any scrape. He doesn’t know what truth is, that child.”

“He’s not exactly straight, I know,” her father admitted. “But after all...”

Now that Hilary had had her say, it was safer to change the subject. One never knew who might happen to overhear an incautious remark in that house. The less said, the better.

“Making a new evening frock?” he asked, leaning forward to examine her work.

Hilary saw that he wanted to change the subject. She lifted the fabric from her knee and held it out for inspection. But though Castleford looked it over with apparent interest, his thoughts were elsewhere. Hilary had clever hands. If he had been able to give her some proper training and set her up with capital, she might have made herself independent. But things had turned out very differently from what he had hoped.

He came back with a start to the present, to find Hilary’s big hazel eyes fixed upon him. She was hesitating over something she wanted to say, and wondering if this was the best moment to approach the subject. Her father looked more than usually worried tonight. Perhaps she had better postpone things. But then, nowadays, he never seemed to be anything but worried, though he tried to put a good face on it. Apparently something encouraged her, for after a second or two she decided to risk it.

“I suppose you couldn’t increase that allowance of mine, Father?”

Then, at the involuntary blink which he gave as he heard her request, she hurried on to tone down her demand.

“Oh, I don’t mean double it, or anything like that. But just a little more, if you can spare it. I’m frightfully hard up.”

The change in his expression showed her that she had embarked on a forlorn hope.

“It’s no odds, really,” she assured him, without waiting for the verbal confirmation of his decision. “I just thought I’d ask, in case...”

She began fervently to wish that she hadn’t broached the subject. She hated to add another worry to those he had already. And he would worry at having to refuse, she knew quite well. After all, it would just be possible to scrape along on her present allowance, though it meant using the same frock a good deal oftener than she cared about. The pin-money that had served for a girl of sixteen or seventeen didn’t seem to go far when you added four or five years to her age. It was a very tight squeeze, nowadays, even if she could make some things for herself to save expense. And she was fond of clothes. Some girls dress to attract men; others like to outdo other women. Hilary dressed to please herself first and foremost; and in doing so, she managed to achieve in a great measure the other two aims. Still, if her allowance couldn’t be increased, there was no good in whining. She suppressed a natural sigh of disappointment and bent over her work again.

Castleford was spared the awkwardness of an immediate reply. The study door opened, and they both glanced up at the unexpected intruder: Winifred’s half-sister.

Constance Lindfield was one of the powers behind the throne in that divided house. She was handsome, in a hard way, rather than pretty. Firm lips and a businesslike manner gave her an air of competence and decision. At thirty-three, she had lost the freshness of youth; but she did her best to replace it by scrupulous attention to her appearance. Her dark hair, in some mysterious manner, always seemed to have been freshly waved. Her lips and eyebrows were, if anything, a shade too carefully tended. The polish on her nails was almost obtrusively evident. Perhaps she overdid it a trifle. Her natural advantages seemed a little lost under that brilliant finish. Yet she did not spend undue time over the battery of toilette appliances which crowded her dressing-table. She had the knack of doing things quickly, systematically, and thoroughly.

Her women-friends did not deny her a certain degree of charm. Some men she attracted by her looks or by her quick intelligence. Others were repelled by a certain insensitiveness and by her obvious desire to exert what she termed “sex-attraction.” But this desire she took care to curb when Mrs. Castleford was present. Then, quite naturally, she slipped into the background, leaving the field to her senior.

She did not come farther than the threshold of the room.

“Oh, Hillie, you’re to bring the car round at half-past eleven tomorrow. Winnie wants you to drive her over to Sunnydale.”

Hilary glanced up, evidently unpleasantly surprised.

“But she told me this afternoon that she didn’t want the car tomorrow. I’ve fixed up a foursome for the morning.”

Miss Lindfield shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly, as though to indicate that she cared nothing about the matter.

“Oh, of course, if you can’t manage it...” she said. “I’ll tell Winnie you can’t go.”

Her tone implied quite plainly: “Refuse if you like. You’ll catch it; and I shan’t care.”

Hilary glanced across at her father and saw a mute appeal in his eyes. Mrs. Castleford was a fool in many ways, but in others she manifested a certain cunning. If Hilary displeased her, she left the girl alone but vented her spite on her husband, counting on the girl’s affection for her father to bring her to heel rather than have him badgered on her account. It was a shrewd bit of tactics and almost invariably it proved successful.

On this occasion, however, Hilary set some store by her golf fixture. She made an effort to save it.

“I’m partnered with Dick Stevenage. Last week we’d arranged to play a single and I had to cancel it. I don’t like to let him down twice running.”

Miss Lindfield seemed to consider for a moment.

“I’ll play instead of you, if you like,” she suggested with the air of making a concession, though a faint undertone of eagerness was apparent in her voice.

Hilary did not seem to welcome the proposal.

“Wouldn’t it do just as well if I ran her over to Sunnydale later on in the morning?” she asked.

Very occasionally Miss Lindfield would condescend to intervene on her behalf; but she could never count on it. It depended on Miss Lindfield’s mood. She was sparing in her favours to Hilary and freakish in her choice of the occasions when she bestowed them. Tonight, evidently, she was not in a helpful frame of mind.

“You’d better go and ask Winnie herself,” she suggested.

This time the shrug she gave was unconcealed. It meant: “Well, if you won’t take my way out of the difficulty, find one of your own.” The suggestion of a direct application to Winifred was obviously not meant seriously. Hilary knew quite well what would happen if she tried that. She would have to go, that very moment, into the hostile atmosphere of the drawing-room; and there her petition would be curtly refused under the cynical eyes of the two Glencaples. To take that course would be merely courting humiliation.

“It’s hardly worth it,” she said, ambiguously, concealing her chagrin as well as she could. “I’ll ring up someone to take my place in the foursome.”

If Miss Lindfield wouldn’t help, Hilary decided, then she should not have the chance of replacing her as Dick Stevenage’s partner. What a fool she had been to mention Dick’s name at all! She ought to have remembered that Miss Lindfield might want to play with him and would seize the chance of keeping Hilary out of the way instead of helping her.

Miss Lindfield betrayed no disappointment at the sidetracking of her proposal. Her faint gesture said quite plainly: “Just as well you’ve caved in.”

“I’ll tell Winnie you’ll be ready at half-past eleven, then,” she rejoined, as she closed the door behind her.

Castleford had been a silent and embarrassed spectator of the scene. To intervene would merely have been to throw away the last chance that Constance Lindfield would take pity on Hilary. She had no love for him, and would have seized the occasion to strike at him through his daughter. As for persuading his wife to change her whim, he knew from experience how futile any attempt on his part would be. It would simply mean a peevish argument with a foregone conclusion. His convenience or Hilary’s meant nothing to Winifred. In many ways she was more like a spoilt child than a grown woman. Opposition to even her lightest caprice was sure to rouse her obstinacy.

He hunched his shoulders into the yielding back of the deep armchair and pulled nervously at his pipe. It was mortifying to see this sort of thing going on, and yet be unable to lift a finger to stop it. He glanced covertly across at his daughter, whose eyes were fixed on her work. What could Hilary think of it all? She must look on him as a poor sort of father to have, a man who couldn’t even assert himself in a case like this. He saw that long-postponed explanation would have to be made. Hilary was old enough to draw her own conclusions about the worst side of the position; and if she could do that, she might as well hear what could be said for the defence. After all, there was nothing actually discreditable in the affair.

Hilary looked up, caught his eye, and looked down again. When she spoke, it was characteristic of her that she left the major grievance unmentioned and concentrated on a minor point.

“I wish they wouldn’t call me ‘Hillie.’ I hate the sound of it.”

Castleford nodded a thoughtful agreement. He hated it too. Why should anyone want to corrupt “Hilary” into “Hillie” for the sake of saving a syllable? But in this house, no one ever seemed to be given their full name except by himself and his daughter. He lived in an atmosphere of diminutives. Constance Lindfield was “Connie”; Laurence Glencaple was “Laurie”; Kenneth was cut down to “Ken” or “Kennie” and his child was “Frankie” or “Frankie-boy.” Winifred liked people to call her “Winnie,” possibly because it sounded young. As for Castleford himself, he had never heard his own name since he came to Carron Hill. He was “Phil” to all of them, except when in moments of expansion— now grown rare— his wife addressed him as “Phillie.” It was like going back to the nursery. Some unconscious pedantry in his nature rebelled against all that sort of thing. It was a trifle, of course, just like a crumb in a bed; but trifles grow to exasperation-point if one has to suffer them for long enough. One loses perspective under the continual irritation.

Hilary put aside her sewing and rose from her seat.

“I’ll have to ring up somebody to take my place,” she said rather ruefully. “I’ll be back again in a minute or two.”

Castleford turned slightly in his chair and watched her go out of the room. She seemed to have fought down her vexation, as she always did, nowadays. It wasn’t because she had a yielding nature, he remembered. As a small child she had been rather a spitfire. But since she grew up she had controlled her temper, so far as outward signs went, though he sometimes wondered what was going on behind that calm exterior.

This business of the car was especially mean. Winifred could quite well afford to keep a chauffeur, but her spirit of petty economy had suggested to her that Hilary might serve instead. The girl was not asked to clean the car; the gardener had been taught to do that. But Hilary was expected to give up any of her own engagements if the car was needed. Winifred had always refused to learn to drive it herself; and though Constance Lindfield could drive when it suited her to do so, she generally left Hilary to take her stepmother out. There would have been no harm in it, had there been any spirit of give-and-take in the matter. After all, Hilary lived in the house at her stepmother’s expense and it was not unreasonable that she should do something to make herself useful. What made it hard was that Winifred cared for the convenience of no one but herself; and this car-driving demand was made without the slightest consideration for the girl’s feelings or for her private engagements.

Castleford pulled moodily at his pipe and meditated, for the thousandth time, upon his situation. Only one thing could set them both free from this entanglement. Hilary might get married, and then the problem would almost solve itself. Winifred held him in her grip only because of Hilary. Once the girl was safely provided for, he could fend for himself.

“If I had my hands free,” he assured himself bravely, “I’d bring that woman to her bearings— and double-quick, too.”

What Castleford feared was that Hilary, exasperated by her position, might take the bit in her teeth and marry the first man who asked her, merely in order to escape from Carron Hill. That might be merely a jump from the frying-pan into the fire. At twenty, a girl may fall in love with a detrimental just as readily as with a decent man. Dick Stevenage, for instance. And at the thought of him Castleford’s mouth twitched as though he had bitten on a sore tooth. Hilary seemed rather keen on that young scoundrel. He was always about Carron Hill, nowadays, hanging on to Winifred’s skirts, giving Constance Lindfield the glad eye when Winifred was safely out of the way, and, lately, running after Hilary when both the others were off the map. Stevenage! Castleford cared little enough for Winifred, but still... nobody likes to see another man coming between him and his wife. And even at the worst, he supposed he’d have to put up with it. A divorce would throw Hilary and himself on the world.

“Damn the whole lot of them!” he cursed under his breath, with all the bitterness of a weak man who is denied any more direct outlet for his feelings.

Chapter 2

A Marriage of Convenience

HILARY’S RETURN interrupted his train of thought.

“I’ve got someone to take my place,” she explained as she gathered up her work and settled herself again in her chair.

She went on with her sewing in silence for a few minutes; but the quick, nervous movements of her needle betrayed her exasperation at this new display of her stepmother’s wanton disregard for her arrangements. At last she put her work on the arm of her chair and looked across at Castleford.

“Why did you ever think of marrying her, Father?”

Castleford would have preferred her to couple the question with a recital of grievances. There was an ominous brevity about it which left him no loop-hole to escape into side-issues. He took his pipe from his mouth and made a helpless gesture with his mutilated hand.

“I did it for the best; really I did, Hilary.”

Intent though she was upon her own grievances, his daughter was startled by the note in his voice. His disappointed hopes, his years of repression embittered by petty vexations, his exasperation at the fresh-scored humiliations of that evening, a certain shame at his position, and an appeal for sympathy from the only creature to whom he could turn: all were blended in that feeble justification. For once, that carefully-concealed misery had found expression.

It was not the tone that surprised Hilary; it was the intensity of it. She had not been so blind as Castleford had hoped. Where her father was concerned, she had sharp eyes and quick ears; and behind the screen of her reserve she had noted and remembered trifle after trifle, until she had built up a very fair structure of evidence. Had she chosen to do so, she could have given him a shrewd description of the lie of the land at Carron Hill. She had no illusions about the state of affairs. What she did not know was the chapter of accidents which led up to it.

Her father had married a second time when she was still a mere child. He had offered no explanations then; and in later years he seemed to shrink from giving any, even when she left him an opening. Now she had determined to force his confidence; and she had been aghast at the feeling which he betrayed in that single sentence. She had always looked on him as bent on quietness for the sake of quietness— “Don’t let’s have a fuss!”— and she had faintly resented his attitude, both on his own account and especially when she herself was sacrificed to maintain it. For the first time, she had got a glimpse of the misery which lay behind his patient manner.

When she spoke, her response was to his tone and not to his words.

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to hurt you. You know I didn’t?”

Castleford’s gesture acquitted her. Then he put his pipe back in his mouth, clenched his teeth on it, and stared before him for a moment or two. He was trying to find the best opening for the tale he had to tell, and it seemed a task of some difficulty.

“You don’t remember your mother?” he began at length. “Not clearly, at any rate, I expect. She was something like you— the same eyes and hair, and about your height, too.”

“I’ve seen your miniature of her,” Hilary answered, mechanically picking up her work again. “I don’t remember her very clearly, of course. I was only about eight when she died, wasn’t I?”

Castleford nodded. That miniature was another of the things which he had to suppress. He kept it in a locked despatch-box upstairs, and looked at it only when he was alone. It was one of the best things he had ever achieved, vivid and subtle. More than mere craftsmanship had gone to the making of it; and now it was condemned to lie in the dark.

“If your mother had lived, things would have been different,” he said in a tone which invested the truism with vitality. “She was like you; she didn’t mind taking risks. I’ve always been too inclined to play for safety, myself, I’m afraid. She took a risk when she married me, for I was only twenty-two and I’d no reputation as a miniaturist, then, of course. She had some money— a hundred a year or so— and I had about the same. Just enough to live on, and no more, in these days. But she believed in me, you know; and she spurred me on. She took the risk.”

He seemed to be speaking his thoughts aloud rather than addressing Hilary.

“She took the risk. I don’t think I’d have done it if it had been left to me. But it turned out all right, as it happened. I got some sort of clientele together even quicker than we expected; I suppose my work must have been good enough to please people. Anyhow, we managed to do more than make ends meet. And then you were born, and that made more difference than you’d think.”

He glanced across at his daughter with a faintly whimsical look which she was glad to see.

“So wonderful as all that?” she demanded, encouraging him.

“No, not so wonderful— rather an ugly baby, we had to admit. Disappointing in an artistic family, if anything. Still, we made the best of you, dreamed all sorts of dreams over your cradle, you know, just like any ordinary young couple, and made great plans for your future.”

Hilary heard the sigh with which that sentence closed and hastened to force him on from something which had evidently cost a pang in the recollection.

“And then?”

“Oh, then, I worked twice as hard as before, and things turned out really very well for a time. In four years or so, I was quite on my feet— very lucky, really. And then came the war.”

“The war?” Hilary queried.

Evidently she had been expected to understand that reference without explanation.

“Yes, the war,” Castleford went on. “Of course there was a demand for miniatures; it didn’t die out all at once. Here and there you’d find a girl wanting to give her officer sweetheart something to take with him; but not many of them came my way. I tried for a commission myself, but they turned me down on some point or other. They were more particular about small defects in those days than they were later, and they rejected me because one of my ears wasn’t up to scratch— scarlet fever when I was a boy.”

He got up, knocked out his pipe on an ashtray, and pulled out his pouch as he came back to his chair.

“The bottom seemed to fall out of things, just then. You’re too young to remember anything about it. We were back where we started, you understand; no commissions came in and we’d have been on the rocks if we hadn’t had that couple of hundred a year behind us. Your mother never seemed to lose heart over it, though; it was just one of the risks, I suppose; that was the way she looked at it. And then, quite unexpectedly, I got something steady— you’d never guess what.”

“What was it?” Hilary asked, refusing to waste energy in guessing.

“There were all sorts of queer jobs in the war, you know,” her father went on. “The rummest sort of things suddenly turned out to be essential, things one could never have imagined being useful at all in war-time. I got one of them: they wanted miniature painters at the Admiralty.”

“Whatever for?” Hilary demanded in astonishment. Then a hazy recollection of something crossed her mind. “Oh, something to do with camouflaging ships, painting them so that the submarines were put off, was that it?”

“Dazzle-painting? No, it wasn’t that. You don’t need a miniature-painter to put weird streaks on a ship’s sides. It was compass-card lettering.”

“Compass-cards?” Hilary was evidently no wiser.

“For night compasses,” Castleford explained. “Ships had to sail at night without a light showing even in the binnacle, so they put the lettering on the compass-cards with radium paint. That paint was worth a small fortune, you know— between £400 and £500 per ounce, someone told me once— so naturally they didn’t want to waste it. And who could do fine work of that sort— the fine lettering on the cards— better than a miniature-painter who was trained in minute technique? And, of course, later on, they needed much the same kind of thing for the compasses of night-flying aeroplanes. There was plenty to keep the lot of us busy; and for the rest of the war I was painting nothing but the tiny lettering on these cards. It was trying to the eyes, after a while, but it wasn’t heroic. Still, I suppose I did as much good there as I’d have done elsewhere. What they paid for the work was enough to keep us all afloat; and we were glad to see it coming in, your mother and I.”

His voice trailed off into a silence for some seconds, as though he had forgotten Hilary was listening.

“Then came the Armistice,” he continued, “and naturally they sacked the lot of us. Things were pretty black for a while, with no commissions coming in and prices up. How your mother managed it, I don’t know, but we seemed to get along somehow or other. Then, in 1919, came that Spanish influenza epidemic; your mother went down with it...”

Again his voice dropped and halted for a time.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he resumed, with an obvious effort. “It put the whole world out of joint for me; but you’d never understand how I felt, even if I tried to let you see it. I depended on her so much in ways I only realised after she was gone. You were what kept me straight; I had to pull through somehow on your account, you see? And still commissions didn’t come in; and I had to begin nibbling at capital to keep afloat. It wasn’t an easy time, round about then, anything but easy.”

“And then?” Hilary interjected, lest he should add to his depression with these old griefs.

“Then? Well, it got worse, after that: prices up, cost of living rising, taxation enormous— not that I had much of an income to pay on— and our capital oozing away week by week. I had to keep up some sort of appearance, you know, with a view to commissions. Shabbiness wouldn’t pay; clients didn’t like it, naturally enough. And all the while, there was your future to think of, you see? That was at the back of my mind all the time; every cheque I drew on my capital account seemed a bit of safety whittled away from you.”

With a quite unwonted demonstrativeness, Hilary slipped across and knelt down beside his chair. The gesture was enough; he needed no words to tell him that she understood what store he had set by her.

“You see the position, don’t you?” he went on. “I— we were sliding downhill week by week and there seemed no way of pulling up again. I was nearly frantic with worry over it— not so much on my own account as yours, really. And then, unfortunately, I got a tip from a man who dabbled in shares. Dunlops were what he talked about. Sure to go up, he said; one could make three or four times one’s capital easily. I hung back for a while. You see, I never took much interest in stocks and shares; they’re out of my line and I don’t understand speculation. Then, as I got more and more worried over our money affairs, I thought of your mother. I knew quite well what she would have said: ‘Take a risk.’”

He stared in front of him for a moment, even lost in memories.

“Well, between one thing and another, I made up my mind at last to take a risk in Dunlops. I sold most of the investments I had— it was no time for half-measures, I felt— and I put the proceeds into Dunlops. You’ve no idea how I felt in the next few weeks; it was like a dream come true. Those shares went up and up; every day I used to read the quotations and they went higher and higher. I’d got over the safety-line and when I sold out we’d have enough money behind us to make you secure for life.”

He made an inarticulate sound which was half groan, half sigh.

“If only I’d had any sense! But when I thought of selling, the man who had given me the tip cried out against it. Dunlops were going far higher yet, he knew; and I thought I might hold on for a week longer, just to snatch a little extra profit. And then the market broke. Of course I was a fool at that game; I thought it was just a temporary set-back and that it would be silly to sell. And I went on thinking that, knowing no better, until all the profit was gone, and most of my original capital had followed it. At the end of that speculation, I’d hardly anything left— a few hundred pounds, perhaps, which might bring in enough income to starve on, not more. That was a bad time.

“And then, after all, the tide turned again. Commissions started to flow in; I began to make a decent income; and bit by bit I was moving on the road towards a modest reputation in my own line. It was the big boom after the war; the profiteers were spending their money royally; and a good many of their wives wanted their faces painted on the flat as well as on the skin. Why most of them risked it is a mystery to me; but that didn’t matter. I was making money again; that was all I cared about, even if it meant painting the portraits of human pug-dogs. And, after all, some of them weren’t quite like that, you know. Things looked quite bright, then.

“And after that flash of sun, there came the slump. Everybody was hard up, or felt they were. Too hard up, at any rate, to want miniatures for family heirlooms, I expect. Before long, I was back where I’d been before. Like everyone else, I’d thought the boom would go on for ever; I hadn’t bothered to be careful with money— I mean I hadn’t saved every penny that I might have done. So when the boom collapsed, I wasn’t much better off than I’d been at the start, after the Dunlop crash.

“I made just enough to let us keep afloat, but now, you see, Hilary, things were different altogether. My ideas had expanded a bit during that stretch when I had a big paper profit in Dunlops. I’d been planning all sorts of things for you: boarding-school, and after that Paris or Switzerland for a couple of years, and then a year abroad for the two of us. That had all been possible— on paper. After all that day-dreaming, poverty was a good deal harder than it had been before, somehow.

“And I’d got one idea ingrained into my mind by all that set of experiences— security for you. I didn’t expect to get another chance; things looked too black for that; but I made up my mind that if any chance came my way, I’d take it, no matter what it was, so long as it meant that you’d be all right if anything happened to me. We’ve no relations, you know, and the idea of my dying and leaving you stranded in the world used to keep me awake at nights. I had some money invested; but the Dunlop affair had made me afraid even for the soundest investments. I’m a child in these things; I quite admit it; and the Dunlop business had turned me into a burned child.

“Then— and this was the last straw— something went wrong with my heart. I couldn’t be sure how bad it was; I was afraid the doctors were lying to me and concealing the gravity of the case; and I had visions of a sudden collapse leaving you absolutely stranded. You were only eleven, then. The medicals told me I’d brought it on with anxiety; and that unless I stopped worrying, I’d go from bad to worse. Much good that advice did! I used to wake in the night with my heart beating sixteen to the dozen and a lump in my throat— globus hystericus, I think they call it and I’d lie there for hours, racked with anxiety on your account. Again and again I swore to myself that I’d take any chance that offered, anything, no matter what, so long as it meant that you’d be protected if anything happened to me.”

He glanced down at Hilary with a mute question in his eyes.

“I really do understand,” she reassured him. “Poor Father! I never guessed it was like that. She came along, wasn’t that it?”

“That was it,” Castleford went on. “I’m not trying to justify myself, even to you, Hilary. I’m simply explaining things. She came along. At first she was a client, merely. Some acquaintance had given her my name, and she wanted a miniature of herself. Then, during the sittings she gave me, we talked a good deal and I learned something about her. Her husband had been a war-profiteer in a small way— an ironmonger, or something, of that sort, who’d blossomed out a bit— and then when he’d made his pile, the ’flu epidemic took him off. She’d plenty of money to spend; and to judge from one thing and another, she seemed to spend it freely.

“I took care to make that miniature on the flattering side; you know it, in the drawing-room? It turned out that she painted in an amateurish way herself; and by-and-by she asked me to give her some lessons. I saw a good deal of her, on that excuse; and I had more than a suspicion that she had taken a fancy to me. I was better-looking then than I am now, you know. And I set myself to make that fancy stronger, not quite deliberately, in cold blood; but still with a feeling that I might as well see what came of it. It sounds beastly when one puts it into words, I know. I didn’t want her at all, but I did want her money on your account; and between the two, I suppose I got into a sort of blow-hot, blow-cold attitude which, as it happened, was just the very one to goad her on. You know what she’s like, Hilary; if she wants a thing, she must have it, and she must have it now, cost what it may. Well, before long, I was the thing she wanted. She wasn’t in love with me— not in the way I understand falling in love, at any rate; but I was something she’d set her fancy on just then, and she meant to have me, even if she threw me aside again within a month, afterwards.

“And then, before I’d really made up my mind to it, a thing happened which forced the decision on me. It left me no way out. She used to hire cars, in those days; and now and again she’d take me away with her for the day in one. It was at the end of one of these days. She was dropping me on the way home; and I’d got out of the car. It was a touring car, and I stood on the pavement talking to her, with my hand on the car. I didn’t notice what I was doing, and she didn’t notice my hand, I suppose. Anyhow, she leaned over and slammed the door on my fingers.”

He held up his mutilated hand.

“You see what that cost. By the time they’d operated, my livelihood was gone. You and I were done for. That decided me, you see. There was no way out, except the one. Of course she was in a great state over the accident and the result— or at least she seemed to be. I shouldn’t like to say how much was pity and remorse in it and how much was just ‘getting what she wanted.’ She practically threw herself at my head while I was still an interesting invalid. I had no option that I could see. I let her have her way. I was desperate, you know.

“And she was so eager to do anything, anything whatever that I hinted at. She altered her will immediately after we were married, and made provision for both you and me, in case she died. I was devilish grateful; how could I have been anything else? You were sent to a decent school; I came to live here at Carron Hill. I still had some remnants of pride, and I paid my own way so far as my little income ran to it— tailor’s bills, tobacco, all that kind of thing; but of course she saw to the running of the place and all the household expenses. She could well afford that. And I never sponged on her for money.”

His pipe had gone out, and he paused to relight it, possibly with the idea of giving Hilary time to consider what he had told her.

“Well, that’s how it happened,” he said at last. “I’m not trying to justify myself; but it means a good deal to me, how you look at it, Hilary. I’ve always shirked telling you the story, because I’m not proud of it; but there it is, anyhow,” he ended, weakly.

Hilary reflected for a moment or two, while he waited in anxiety.

“I don’t see anything to be ashamed of,” she reassured him. “She crippled you, and she owed you a good deal more for that than she could pay any other way. Plenty of people get married without being in love. And you did it for me. I couldn’t throw stones if I wanted to; and there’s nothing to throw stones at, even if I wanted to. I’m glad you told me all about it. If you hadn’t, I’d never have guessed how much you’ve done for me. I’ll try to make up for it, now that I know.”

Her tone said much more than her words. Castleford knew, with immense relief, that she thought the more of him now that his tale was told. He knew he had played an unheroic part, and it was a comfort to find that she had weighed his difficulties against his conduct.

“I may as well finish the story,” he recommenced, in a less halting tone. “We were married at a registry office, quite quietly. She insisted on it; and it wasn’t until afterwards that I understood why she wanted it. She had a pretty good idea what the two Glencaples would think of it; and she took the line of facing them with a fait accompli. They had no grounds for objecting, of course; she was her own mistress, even if she was their brother’s widow. But she had more than a suspicion that if the thing came out beforehand, these two would do their best to dissuade her; and she didn’t want to be dissuaded, since she’d set her mind on getting her own way.

“I met them first after the marriage. We didn’t get on. I don’t blame them, because in the meantime they’d discovered that she’d altered her will in my favour, and that cut them out of it. I expect I’d have felt sore myself, if I’d been in their shoes; it’s only human nature, after all.

“The Glencaples weren’t the only surprise she sprang on me. Shortly after her husband died, she’d taken on that half-sister of hers as a companion. Just before she met me, the Lindfield woman’s sister had to go to South Africa for her health— lungs gone wrong— and someone had to go with her to look after her. So that Lindfield woman went off there, and was away until after our marriage. Then when the sister died, Winifred brought Constance Lindfield back here again to her old post as companion, without saying a word to me about the matter. And, naturally, that trusted companion wasn’t exactly pleased to find a husband installed here when she arrived at Carron Hill. Besides, I’d objected to her being taken on again, and that was a black mark against me from the start.”

“I’ve never liked her,” said Hilary, briefly.

“She’s never liked us,” Castleford returned. “And she’s worse than the Glencaples, you know, for she’s always on the premises. I get a rest from the Glencaples between times; but that Lindfield woman is always at one’s elbow. She’d established a regular ascendancy here, before I appeared on the scene; she’s in too strong a position to shake. And half the trouble about the place could be traced back to her, I’m pretty sure, if one could follow up the trail. She hates me. I suppose she counted on making a good thing out of her position here, one way and another; and no doubt she expected to come in for a good thing under the old will, if anything happened. I believe she was down for a fair sum in it. Now, she wouldn’t get much.”

Hilary thought for some moments in silence after he ceased speaking.

“Couldn’t we get away from here?” she demanded at last. “I wouldn’t mind pinching, not really, so long as we could get out of this house.”

Castleford shook his head mournfully.

“Do you think we’d be here now, if it could be helped?” he asked. “It can’t be done. I can’t make money now that I’ve lost these fingers. I’m no good even as an untrained clerk. You’ve had no training in anything. I couldn’t afford to give you any. And two of us couldn’t manage to exist on about a hundred a year, which is all we’ve got now. No, it’s out of the question; we’ve just got to face that.”

He turned his pipe in his fingers, and added darkly:

“I’d be glad enough if that were the worst of it.”

Hilary looked up sharply at his tone.

“What do you mean?”

“You may as well know the whole business, now I’ve gone so far,” her father went on. “You know what I married her for— security, and security for you, mainly. I had all sorts of hopes about what she’d do for you, you see? She’s got any amount of money, and I’d thought she’d send you to a good boarding-school, first of all, and then other things later on— a dress allowance, give you a good time, let you have your chance, and that sort of thing. She didn’t. She’ll spend money on herself freely; that Lindfield woman seems able to get a decent salary from her; but you . . .? She’s never spent a penny on you from first to last, except for the food you eat. She was jealous of you from the start, once we were married. I suppose she didn’t like the idea of my having been married before, as soon as she had got her own way and grew tired of her new toy; and you were a constant reminder of that. Something of the sort, at any rate.”

“Well, what does that matter?” Hilary pointed out. “She can’t do less than she’s doing, can she?”

“No,” said Castleford, gloomily, “but she can do one thing that would knock the bottom out of our security: she can alter her will. Then, if she died— and she’s got this diabetes, remember, even if Glencaple’s treatment seems to be keeping her afloat— we’d be left stranded. And I’m not such a fool that I can’t see the pressure that’s being brought to bear on her to make a new will. The Glencaples are at her on the one side; they’ve never forgiven me for stepping into their brother’s shoes and putting out my hand towards his money. They feel they ought to have it if anything happens— and I don’t blame them much for that. And on the other side, that Lindfield woman is playing the same game, always trying to stir up petty trouble so as to drive a wedge in a little deeper. Between them, I think they’ve come pretty near success now; and I shouldn’t wonder if she alters her will. She’ll cut you out of it, for certain; and likely enough I’ll be scored out also. She wouldn’t think twice about it, in spite of all her original promises; I know her well enough for that. And then, if she happened to die— where would our ‘security’ be? I’ve paid dearly enough for it all these years; and when I see it slipping away...”

He broke off, as though he had blurted out more than he had intended. After a moment, he resumed in a quieter tone.

“That’s how things stand. She’s written to her lawyers and got her will back this morning. I saw the letter on the breakfast-table. The Glencaples came over to dinner tonight. It’s easy to put two and two together; they’re talking the business over now, I expect, in the drawing-room. And what can I do? Nothing! She has no use for me; I’ve no hold over her now, not the slightest. If she alters that will and dies next week, the Glencaples will turn the two of us out onto the street without the slightest compunction.”

Hilary’s strong young face turned to confront him with an expression he had never seen before. He could not interpret it, but he knew he had drawn her closer to him by his revelations; and he was glad he had forced himself to speak so frankly.

“It’s a damnable thing, to lose one’s independence,” he said with a bitterness that made his daughter’s nerves twitch responsively.

“Don’t worry too much,” she answered, with a catch in her voice. “I know just how you feel; but perhaps there’s a way out.”

Castleford seemed to be reminded of something he had overlooked.

“I think I’d better get these bearer bonds into my own hands,” he said, suddenly. “They’re in the safe, here, along with her jewels and some other stuff of hers. They’d be safer in a bank, now I come to think of it. There would be less risk of them being mistaken for her property, then. They’re all we have.”

His pipe had gone out and he rose to knock it out on the ashtray. Hilary took up her work again as he resettled himself in his chair. For a time he stared in front of him, occupied with his own thoughts. With all his frankness, he had kept one thing back from

Hilary, a thing he could hardly tell to his daughter: that damnable anonymous letter about his wife and Dick Stevenage. His teeth clenched on his pipestem as he thought of it. It had come by the post that afternoon; and the brutal terms of it were burned into his memory. It might be true; and under his quiet exterior he was blazing with anger at the mere possibility. That would be the last straw. And yet, what steps could he take? In that precarious position of his, one false move might precipitate a catastrophe in which Hilary would be involved as well as himself.

Chapter 3

The Second Camp

“I COULD SHOOT YOU, Auntie Winnie. Look!”

Frankie brought his new toy to his shoulder and took deliberate aim at his aunt across the drawing-room.

“Put that thing down!” she exclaimed nervously, as she caught sight of the muzzle turned towards her. “Put it down, at once, there’s a good boy. It might be loaded and go off. Accidents are always happening, just like that. I saw a case the other week in the Daily Sketch.”

Frankie, with a sullen face, lowered his rook-rifle.

“It really isn’t loaded,” Connie Lindfield’s cool voice reassured her. “I looked through the barrel before I let him bring it into the room.”

“So there!” added the amiable child.

He took good care, however, to speak below his breath so that his aunt failed to catch the words. It had been impressed upon him by his father, in unmistakable terms, that he must never offend his aunt. Miss Lindfield may have overheard his remark, but if she did so, she made no sign. In Frankie’s eyes, Miss Lindfield was “a good sport.” She never gave him away; she listened to his frequent lies with a smile which he thought encouraging and credulous; she could be counted upon, at times, to give him the very present he coveted; and if she checked him— on rare occasions— she did so in the guise of a fellow-conspirator warning him against trouble from the adult world. A very different kind of person from Hillie, with her indignant eyes and stinging words. That incident of the kitten was still rankling in his mind as well as in Hilary’s.

Winifred Castleford had already forgotten the rook-rifle. She returned to her fashion-paper through which she was skimming idly, for any prolonged study of print was too great a tax upon her faculty of attention.

“Skirts are to be longer, Connie,” she reported, without raising her eyes from the page. “Do you think that’s a good thing?”

“Perhaps.”

In point of fact, Miss Lindfield did not think it would be a good thing. She had neat legs and ankles which could stand the test of golfing-shoes. Short skirts set them off to advantage. If skirts were lengthened by fashion, one of her undeniable assets would be concealed from appraising male eyes; and she was not anxious for the change. She was too tactful, however, to voice her views on the point. Winifred’s ankles were slim enough, but above them she had calves like a sturdy dairy-maid’s. A slightly longer skirt would make a considerable difference to her.