The Guarded Halo E-Book

Margaret Pedler

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A girl disregards the evidence of a crime and the man who threw away his honour.

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Leseprobe

Copyright

First published in 1928

Copyright © 2022 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

A DIFFICULT CHOICE

Fen Wyatt had passed smoothly and automatically from father to son for a couple of centuries or more. A kindly, comfortable old house, mellowed by time and the care of generations who had lived in it and loved it. It had cradled their coming and periodically its darkened windows looked down regretfully upon their going, as first one and then another head of the family had been borne, shoulder-high, to his last resting-place. But Fen Wyatt remained—and hitherto there had always been a son to step into his inheritance.

And now it seemed as though the old house was waiting—gravely, rather surprisedly waiting for someone to come and take up the reins of government which Nicholas, the last member of the family upon whom the churchyard gate had closed finally and for ever, had unexpectedly let fall a month ago.

Outside, everything appeared just as usual. There was no perceptible change to mark the fact that Nick Wyatt—bluff, good-hearted, prejudiced Nick Wyatt—had stepped abruptly out of this world into the next. Commonplace, everyday little sounds filled the garden—the hum of a mowing machine as it was driven forward and back across meticulously shaven lawns; the slow, occasional footstep of a gardener followed by the metallic clip, clip of his shears as he trimmed a privet hedge; blithe singing of birds in the green-frocked trees, the piercingly sweet note of a blackbird fluting high above the twittering chorus. No, life was going on just the same outside the old house.

But inside, in an old-fashioned, low-ceiled room, with the May sunlight pouring into it through criss-crossed diamond window-panes, two people were facing the fact that, with the passing of Nick Wyatt, the whole of their world had come unstuck—suddenly and unbelievably.

“We’re right up against it.” Bob Wilson spoke with a definiteness which seemed to imply that he had mentally scoured every nook and corner wherein a grain of hope might lurk, and found them conspicuously empty.

He was sitting on the arm of a chair, his long legs stretched out dejectedly in front of him, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and an expression of half-incredulous dismay on his face. It was rather a nice face. It possessed no pretensions to good looks, but there was a certain dogged strength about its square-jawed plainness, and a humorous frankness in the direct gaze of the pleasant gray eyes, set somewhat wide apart, that was not without attraction.

“Right up against it,” he repeated dispiritedly.

The girl to whom he vouchsafed this depressing piece of information was sufficiently like him, although darker in colouring, to justify the assumption that they were brother and sister. A slim, eager slip of a girl, she had the same wide-apart gray eyes, their rain-clear greyness in her case accentuated by a double rim of short black lashes, and the same determined mouth, only more delicately cut. But whereas Bob’s hair was of a nondescript brown and unequivocally straight, hers was black as a crow’s wing—satiny, shingled hair with a fugitive wave in it that denied it severity. Narrow, straight black brows gave a characteristic touch to her small, pointed face, and in the thin, sleeveless black frock she was wearing, sharply contrasting with the warm pallor of her skin, she conveyed rather the impression of a black-and-white etching.

She regarded her brother curiously.

“Do you mean,” she said slowly, “that we haven’t any money at all?”

He gave a short laugh.

“That’s about the size of it,” he admitted ruefully. “Actually, we’ve about enough to carry us on for a few weeks, with care and circumspection. But after that’s used up we shall have to fend for ourselves—unless there are any lineal descendants of Elijah’s ravens flying about!”

Shirley’s incredulous gaze passed bewilderedly from her brother’s face to the glimpse of garden visible through the windows. Just within sight, Tomkins, the ancient head gardener, was busily engaged in tying up some rose trees, while Mugs, the wire-haired terrier, occupying a strategic position behind him, was equally busy surreptitiously burying a bone in the rose-bed’s sacred precincts. It all looked so accustomed, so ordinary, that it seemed impossible to realize the cataclysm which had suddenly changed the whole of life as far as she and her brother were concerned.

A month ago they had been living what appeared to be a perfectly safe and secure existence, the favoured niece and nephew of a devoted bachelor uncle, surrounded by all those pleasant ways of living which plenty of money can procure, and with the ultimate prospect, when the time should eventually come for Nicholas Wyatt to be gathered to his fathers, of being left in possession of a sum which would at least maintain them both in independence for the rest of their lives.

More than that it had been out of Uncle Nick’s power to assure them. Fen Wyatt itself, together with the monies which provided the big annual income he enjoyed, was entailed, and at his death must go to Alan Wyatt, son of his younger brother James. As long as that brother had lived, so long had Nick quarrelled with him. As is not infrequently the case with blood relations, the two men had nothing in common, and they had split finally and completely on the subject of their sister’s marriage, Nick approving whilst his brother fiercely disapproved the man of her choice—James’s disapprobation being based upon the fact that the man in question was painfully lacking in this world’s goods. And when at the last the death of the younger put an end to the ceaseless warfare between the brothers, the hostile sentiment had been carried on into the next generation, and Nicholas and his nephew and heir, Alan Wyatt, had had nothing to do with each other beyond the interchange of occasional acrimonious letters relating to family and estate matters.

Meanwhile, Nicholas had concentrated his whole affections upon Bob and Shirley, the children of his much-loved sister. The latter had been suddenly and very tragically left a widow, and practically penniless, a few weeks after the birth of her daughter, and thenceforward he had charged himself with her entire welfare. His first proposal had been that she and her children should come and live with him at Fen Wyatt, but when she rejected this, with all a woman’s innate craving to have a home of her own, he had established her in a house a few miles distant. Never very strong, however, and broken-hearted by her husband’s death, her grip on life had gradually and almost imperceptibly weakened, until at last, at the end of two years, she quietly faded out of existence.

It was then that Nicholas showed that, just as in the case of his brother death could not soften his ingrained hostility, so death had no power to stem his devotion. Equally with his dislike, his affection also carried itself into the next generation, and when his sister’s death left her children entirely bereft, he had put into practice his original idea and brought them to Fen Wyatt, together with the nurse who had seen them both come into the world and had stood devotedly by their mother throughout the tragedy which had broken her.

That had been eighteen years ago, when Bob was a sturdy youngster of nine and Shirley seven years younger, and since then the brother and sister had learned to look upon Fen Wyatt as so completely “home”—their own home—that, now, the realization that it was no longer theirs but their cousin’s, Alan Wyatt’s, that with the death of Nicholas they had become merely interlopers, had descended upon them as a stunning blow.

Shirley had never associated the thought of death with Uncle Nick—big, striding Uncle Nick, with his jolly, weather-beaten face and cheery smile, riding hard and straight to hounds three times a week, driving his fast sports car with unhesitating steadiness of nerve and judgment, vital and gay and optimistic as many a far younger man. Twenty years hence, perhaps, when fifty-five had translated itself into seventy-five. But not yet—not yet… And already it had happened. Uncle Nick was dead, had been dead three weeks, and here she was sitting listening to Bob while he enlightened her as to the precise circumstances in which his death involved them. Added to the shock of his sudden passing and the sick, aching misery which had succeeded it, the illimitable sense of loss of which they were both so desperately conscious, there was to be this new and acute consideration—a sordid counting up of pounds and shillings, the necessity for facing the question of ways and means.

A rather wistful smile curved Shirley’s lips for a moment. How stricken and self-reproachful Uncle Nick would be could he have known the circumstances! Fortunately he didn’t know. It had always been his chief desire to make secure the future of his sister’s children. He had a certain small patrimony of his own, quite apart from the Fen Wyatt monies, and his aim and object had been so to increase this during his lifetime that it should be sufficient for their needs after he was gone.

“You’ll never be rich,” he used to say discontentedly. “There’ll not be a twentieth of what that damned young rotter, Alan, will come in for. But you’ll have enough to carry on in a little place that’s your own. Bob knows enough about the management of land to run a small farm off his own bat.”

Practically it had amounted to an obsession with him, this determination to make them independent, and latterly he had speculated pretty heavily with his small personal fortune in his endeavours to accomplish it. At first he had been amazingly successful, and his capital had augmented itself by leaps and bounds. Then the tide suddenly turned, and in a few weeks he had lost it all. But he was still undaunted and optimistic. Only the day before he died he had been full of fresh plans.

“We’ll economize a bit,” he declared, “and invest whatever I can save out of the Fen Wyatt income. After all, the income’s mine to do what I like with as long as I live, provided I keep the place up adequately.” He beamed cheerily at niece and nephew. “There’s nothing to make a song about. The luck was out and my castle’s tumbled down. But there’s plenty of time to make a fresh start and build it up again. I’m not much more than half-way through life, after all.”

But sometimes Fate doesn’t give a fresh start. Nick Wyatt didn’t get one. Instead, he died that night, passing quietly in his sleep from this world to the next, and Bob and Shirley were left alone to face the music.

“I’m glad—glad he never knew,” said Shirley, speaking her thoughts abruptly. “He would have hated it so for us.”

“We shall hate it pretty badly ourselves before long, I expect,” rejoined her brother grimly. “You’ve not realized it yet. Neither have I. That we’re practically penniless… We shall begin to realize it when we turn out of here.”

She glanced round the room and her eyes misted suddenly. The dearness of it all! Dearness of books, their covers faded with much fingering, of the little low stool on which she used to sit in front of the big fire, yawning about the day’s sport with Uncle Nick when they had come home together from a day with hounds; above all, dearness of the big, old-fashioned arm-chair where he himself had always sat. Instinctively she and Bob had avoided its use since he was no longer there to fill it.

“Yes, I suppose we shall have to go,” she said unevenly. “It doesn’t seem real, does it? When—when do we go, Bob?”

“Well, Alan Wyatt’s been quite sporting over that. He wrote at once, you remember, saying that there was no hurry. And now I’ve had another letter from him.”

“Another? What about?”

Bob foraged in his pockets, finally producing the letter in question and unfolding it.

“He says that of course he knows Uncle Nick’s death will make a great difference to us and—and all that. And he suggests making us an allowance—thinks it would be only fair in the circumstances.”

A swift flush dyed Shirley’s face scarlet.

“Oh, Bob——!” She broke off, then added quietly, “May I see the letter?”

He handed it across to her in silence. There was a curious expression in his eyes as he did so, half deprecating, half interrogative, as though he wondered how she would regard its contents.

… Naturally, ran the small, somewhat pedantic script, I am quite aware that my father and my Uncle Nicholas hated each other cordially, and perhaps there was good reason for it. Nor do I imagine that there is the least likelihood of anything in the nature of friendship between ourselves. We have been too long reared in an atmosphere of mutual hostility. But the fact remains that we are branches of the same family, and for the credit of that family I should prefer that you and your sister were not dependent upon others for your livelihood. For this reason, therefore, I propose to make you each an annual allowance which would provide you with at least a liveable income.

Here the letter branched off into details of amount and mode of payment, concluding rather pompously:

And I trust that you will see your way to accepting this in the spirit in which it is offered.

Shirley read the letter in silence. Then she looked across at her brother, and in her eyes there was the same interrogative, uncertain expression that had been in his.

“It’s very unexpected, isn’t it?” she said at last. “And rather nice of him—in the circumstances.”

“And it provides a way out,” he answered briefly.

“No.” She shook her head with decision. “It doesn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

A look of sudden anxiety, of apprehension, sprang into her face.

“Why, you couldn’t—we couldn’t possibly accept this,” she said swiftly. “You think that, too, Bob? Oh, you must think that!”

“Must I? What’s your reason for saying we can’t accept it?”

“Uncle Nick is the reason. You know, and I know, that there is nothing he would have hated more than for us to accept anything whatever from the James Wyatt family. He would never have allowed it while he was alive, and it wouldn’t seem straight or—or honourable to do the very thing he would have loathed now he’s dead.”

Bob slipped off the arm of the chair on which he had been perched, and stood up.

“Well said, old thing. Them’s exactly my sentiments—only I didn’t want to express them till I knew how you felt about it.”

A little sigh of relief escaped between her lips.

“Then that’s all right,” she replied. “Do you know, for a moment you quite frightened me, Bob. I thought,” slowly, “that you wanted to take this wretched money.”

Bob’s eyes twinkled.

“I do,” he said. “I want it no end. I feel exactly like a donkey who sees a bunch of carrots dangled in front of his nose—just out of reach.”

“Well, as long as you know they’re out of reach——”

“I’m afraid they are,” he admitted with a short sigh. “It’s a pretty stiff temptation, though, Shirley. A liveable income—just what Uncle Nick always intended us to have—and we’ve only got to say ‘Yes, please’ for it. I suppose,” thoughtfully, “we are right in refusing it?”

“Right? Of course we’re right,” she answered impetuously. “Uncle Nick’s been a perfect brick to us all our lives, and we can’t be so utterly low-down as to have taken everything he’s always given us—and then respond by taking the very thing of all others he would hate us to do. Can you imagine what his feelings would be if he knew that we were living on the charity—for that’s what it would amount to—of the James Wyatt family… choosing to live on it?”

Bob nodded.

“Yes, I can pretty well imagine,” he said gruffly.

“We couldn’t do it. It would be—disloyal, somehow. We owe everything in the world to Uncle Nick, everything we’ve ever had.” Her voice shook a little at the remembrance of how much of love and thought and kindness had been comprehended in that “everything.”

“We can’t let him down over this,” she went on quietly. “You can’t let down anyone who’s been so unutterably good to you. I should feel ashamed all my life if we took this money.”

Bob lit a cigarette and stood smoking in silence for a while, staring down into the fire. Inwardly he agreed heartily with every word his sister had spoken. Scrupulously honourable himself, Nick Wyatt had inculcated the same fineness of perception in these two for whose lives he had made himself responsible—a fineness that carried loyalty and honour to its uttermost limit. Nevertheless, Bob had all a man’s practical sense of the value of money, added to which, as considerably the elder of the two, he had a heavy feeling of responsibility regarding his sister. And although her impulsive refusal to consider Alan Wyatt’s proposal met with an instant response in his own heart, he could not but realize that to turn down an offer of a liveable income, in the circumstances in which they found themselves, would be regarded by most people as an act of quixotic folly.

Rapidly he envisaged the future. To refuse this offer meant that both he and Shirley must find work of some kind. Later on he might be able to earn enough to support them both, but he recognized that unless he had phenomenal luck it was unlikely he would be able to do much more at the outset than keep himself. And phenomenal luck rarely comes your way at the moment when you particularly need it. At length, tossing his cigarette half smoked into the fire, he turned back to his sister and put the matter squarely before her, pointing out the advantages of Alan Wyatt’s offer and painting the alternative future, should they decide to refuse it, in no uncertain colours.

“After all,” he wound up, “we live in a material world, and we’ve got to look at the thing from a practical point of view. Most people would say we were utter fools to refuse an offer which means sure and certain bread-and-butter.”

But Shirley remained unmoved.

“I’d rather be a fool than a knave,” she returned composedly. “And that particular bread-and-butter—bought with Alan Wyatt’s money—would choke me. Every mouthful would be a sort of insult to Uncle Nick.”

He nodded assent.

“I know what you mean. Then the alternative is a job for each of us.”

“Well, you won’t find any difficulty in getting one,” she answered, with sisterly pride in this big brother of hers. “And even I must be of some sort of use in the world. I know a bit about poultry-keeping and dairy-work, and I can drive a car and speak French. There must be lots of people who want that kind of thing.”

“Oh, lots,” agreed Bob.

Both were speaking in happy ignorance of the efficiency demands of the present day, their viewpoint based on life as it had come to them with every sharp edge and corner rounded off by the smoothing action of money.

“Then write today and refuse the offer, Bob,” said Shirley. “I shall feel much happier when we’ve put it right behind us.”

So that same evening a coolly courteous refusal was dispatched to Alan Wyatt, and Shirley went to bed with a little warm glow of thankfulness at her heart. She felt as though, had they accepted, they would have been letting Uncle Nick down, and that was unthinkable. As she said to Bob, when she kissed him good night:

“One must play the game by someone who has played it so splendidly by us. I’m glad you refused, Bob.”

But there were days to come when they were to count to the last farthing the unreckoned cost of “playing the game,” when Bob was to ask himself bitterly if the price had not been too heavy a one to pay.

Chapter 2

THE BIG ADVENTURE

Looking out of her bedroom window, Shirley was conscious of a sudden pang. A fortnight had elapsed since the day she and Bob had taken their decision regarding their cousin’s offer of an allowance, and from that time onward arrangements for their departure from Fen Wyatt had proceeded apace. There had been a great many things to see to—rooms to be secured in London, a selection made of what to take with them of their own personal possessions and what to discard—since they both recognized that henceforth they must “travel light”—farewell visits to be paid to friends and neighbours, and, finally, the packing up of trunks and boxes. The time had simply flown by in the accomplishing of these things.

And now the actual morning of departure had come, and Shirley felt a poignant tug at her heart as she stood at her open window for a moment before going downstairs to breakfast. Mid-May sunshine flooded the garden below, where an early rose or two had already pushed crumpled petals up between green calyx leaves; Mugs, the terrier, was light-heartedly chasing a cat off the lawn, and in the meadows beyond cattle were lazily cropping the young, sweet grass. It was all typical of the life she had known, the life that with today was coming to an end, giving place to one that would be new, strange, and untried. Never again would she stand at this same window looking out on the familiar landscape, background against which almost the whole of her days had been lived, and the dull insistence of the word “Never” clanged against her consciousness, as it has clanged for each of us at some time or another, with a horrible finality that was almost unbearable.

Stifling a sigh, she turned from the window and took her way downstairs. In the hall, trunks and suitcases stood strapped and ready, emphasizing afresh the imminence of departure, and, as she hurried by them, two of the servants passed her with the quiet tread and half-averted gaze of their class when trouble is in the air.

It had been arranged that the household staff should remain on in the service of the new owner, all except old Nanny who had been the Wilsons’ nurse when they had first come to Fen Wyatt. Alan Wyatt had offered her a post there as linen-room maid—he could be relied upon always to do the conventionally correct thing—but, when Shirley had conveyed the offer to her, she had indignantly refused it.

“Not for me, miss, thank you,” she had asserted with some asperity, her eyes suddenly dimmed with loyal, indignant tears. “Fen Wyatt’s no place for me with old master gone and not even my own bairns to look after. I’ll take a temp’r’y job, and perhaps when you and Master Bob’s settled down somewhere you’ll have me back. I can cook as good as anyone, as well you know, miss.”

“I know you can, Nanny,” Shirley had answered unhappily. “But I’m afraid Mr. Bob and I will never be anywhere where we can afford to keep even a ‘staff’ of one. You see, we’re really poor people now.”

“There’d be no question of wages, miss,” rejoined Nanny simply. “I’d work my fingers to the bone for you and Master Bob without a penny piece, and that’s the truth. And if so be,” she twiddled the corner of her apron awkwardly between her fingers, “and if so be you—you haven’t got quite enough to start a little home of your own, for furnishings and what not, why, miss, I haven’t been here all these years on good wages and not saved a bit. I’ve two hundred pounds put by in War Savings ’Stificates, and that’s yours—yours and Master Bob’s—tomorrow, if it ’ud help.”

Shirley, touched to the quick, had thrown her arms round the old woman’s neck and hugged her. Then, quietly and soberly, she had explained to her exactly the circumstances in which Uncle Nick’s death had left them, and how even two hundred pounds couldn’t help them to start a home of their own. To poor old Nanny it was all very terrible and difficult of belief—that her “bairns,” as she had always called them, should have to “turn to and work.” It was a subversal of the whole order of the universe, and the worst of it was there didn’t seem anybody in particular upon whom the blame for such a state of things could be laid. Nor would she relinquish the idea that somehow and at some time a home would materialize in which she could once more serve and care for her adored young master and mistress.

“So I’ll just take a temp’r’y job, as I said, Miss Shirley,” she repeated doggedly. “And then you can send for me when you want me.”

Many a time, during the heart-breaking days that followed, days devoted to the preparations for departure, the recollection of Nanny’s unshakable belief in that future home had served in some queer indefinable way to comfort Shirley, even though she could not share it.

But this morning, on this last day of all, she could find no comfort anywhere, and she entered the sunny breakfast-room weighed down with an overwhelming sense of sadness. Bob had been standing leaning against the framework of the open French window, his face grave and a trifle drawn looking. The wrench of leaving Fen Wyatt was trying him hard, while the thought of the future filled him with anxiety.

At the sound of Shirley’s entrance he turned swiftly, and, seeing the sadness in her face, forced a smile to his own.

“‘Morning, old thing. Come along and partake of your last breakfast as one of the idle rich. It’s a jolly good one, anyway,” lifting off the dish covers as he spoke, “fish kedgeree and the succulent kidney and bacon. Which will you have?”

Shirley shook her head. The idea of food was repulsive to her.

“Neither, thanks. I’m not hungry. I’ll just have a cup of coffee.”

“Nonsense. You must have something.” He became persuasive. “See, I’ll choose for you—the S. K. and bacon, as being more sustaining than kedgeree.” He came round to her side with a plate on which reposed a kidney cooked to a turn, flanked by crisp, golden-brown curls of bacon. “Now be a good girl and eat it up. Remember, tomorrow you may have to breakfast off a fried sardine,” smiling, “so make the most of present opportunities.”

She yielded at last to his kindly coaxing and made a valiant effort to eat. But she felt as though each morsel would choke her, and Mugs, leaning an eager, palpitating little body against her knee, came in for more than his usual share of titbits.

“I wonder how Mugs will like being a poor man’s dog,” continued Bob, talking at random in an endeavour to distract her thoughts a little. They had decided to take Mugs with them, feeling that to part with him would be the last straw on their already overburdened young backs. “Reared on the fat of the land and the very best bones, he will have to get used to his daily dog-biscuit—with a rabbit-neck sometimes by way of a treat.”

Shirley smiled wanly, and tried to repay Bob’s manful efforts by making a pretence of cheering up. But it was a poor pretence and petered out altogether later on when, breakfast over, she made a last pilgrimage round the house and garden, bidding a voiceless goodbye to the place which had been home so long but never would be again. Mugs followed close at her heels, his eyes wistfully puzzled, his short tail at half-mast, sensing, in the way dogs will, that all was not well with his beloved mistress.

Last of all, she bent her steps in the direction of the stables, and here the sight of Uncle Nick’s favourite hunter, with its sleek brown head thrust over the door of the box next that which housed her own thoroughbred mare, was almost more than she could bear. Several other brown and chestnut heads were quickly pushed over the wooden doors of different stalls, and little whinnies of pleasure mingled with an impatient stamping of hoofs. The half-dozen hunters in the stables knew very well that Shirley’s morning visit usually coincided, when the head groom wasn’t looking, with surreptitious gifts of apple or sugar or an illicit handful of corn.

She went down the line as usual, stroking velvety noses that nuzzled affectionately against her palm, and the tears were running unchecked down her face when at length she made her way back to the house. Bob met her on the threshold.

“The servants are all waiting to say goodbye,” he announced, his voice a trifle uneven. These final moments were straining even his self-control far more than he had anticipated.

Shirley made a shrinking little gesture of protest.

“Oh, Bob—I—I can’t!” she said shakily.

Instantly his self-control returned. These two were such close friends, meant so much to one another, that either was always ready to help the other at no matter what personal cost.

“Yes, you can,” he declared sturdily. “It ’ud break their hearts if you didn’t say goodbye to them, and they’ve always been such a decent crowd. So pull up your socks, old thing, and come along.”

She sighed heavily. The whole of her being, at the moment, seemed merged into a single agonizing essence of farewell—farewell to the old home, to all the dear, familiar ways of life, above all, farewell to that beloved personality whose spirit, in some intangible way, still seemed to pervade the place he had known and loved. And she would have been illimitably thankful if she could have avoided this final ordeal, have crept silently away, wrapped in her own grief, without any further last words or elaboration of goodbyes.

But she realized the truth of Bob’s prompting in regard to the servants—the claim they had on her. And a recognition of what was due to other people, the necessity of playing the game by them, was an inherent characteristic of her make-up. Noblesse oblige, or, at least, its modern equivalent, had been a basic axiom of Uncle Nick’s whole life, and she could not fail his teaching now. So she rallied pluckily to Bob’s urgent demand and accompanied him into the old, high-raftered hall where a little crowd of subdued-looking maids and men had assembled.

But at length it was all over—the leave-takings in the hall, the parting glimpses, through half-opened doors, of rooms which had held so much of happiness and laughter, even the final poignant moment when, for the very last time, Shirley and Bob crossed the threshold of Fen Wyatt and stepped into the car that was waiting to bear them to the station.

As it rounded the curve of the drive they had a brief vision of the flock of servants still clustered about the doorway, of the fluttering handkerchiefs of the maids, and in the forefront of the group old Nanny, her wrinkled face twisted and wrung as her eyes strained after her heart’s children. Then the car turned the corner and swept out of sight.

Shirley’s hand suddenly clutched Mugs’s small body very tightly as he sat beside her, so tightly that he uttered a little yelp of protest.

“Bob,” she said a trifle breathlessly, “I think I feel rather like Ishmael when he was driven out to live in the wilderness.”

He glanced down at her whimsically.

“Don’t think of it like that. Let’s think this is only another bit of the Big Adventure, as Uncle Nick used to say.”

Her pulses, which had been jerking unevenly, steadied down. The memory of Uncle Nick’s cheery philosophy was like the reassuring touch of a friendly hand.

“Never get the wind up about life, kiddy,” he had said to her on one occasion. “Always think of it as a Big Adventure, with lots of queer turns and surprises—and take good luck or bad just as it comes, without funking. There’s only one thing bigger—the Biggest Adventure of all—and that’s death.”

And now Nick himself had gone on that Biggest Adventure, leaving her to fare forth alone, without his kindly guidance, on the next stage of her journey. Her mouth set itself determinedly in a straight line of courage. Whatever the future held in store, she would try to remember that it was all part of the adventure of life, and meet it “without funking.”

Chapter 3

PAGAN STREET

Shirley sat back on her heels and poked viciously at the small, unresponsive fire which flickered spasmodically in the grate, threatening to come to an untimely end at any moment. June had blustered in unsmilingly, bleak with chilly rain and wind, and a fire was a necessary extravagance. Only this obstinate, black-looking handful of coals in the high-barred fire-place—which last was not nearly as black as it should have been, but showed unsightly patches of red rust here and there—compared very unfavourably with the cheery, crackling log fires that had prevailed at Fen Wyatt.

But then, as she admitted with a sigh, everything at No. 7, Pagan Street, where she and Bob had found temporary quarters while they looked for work, was as different as it could possibly be from Fen Wyatt. A narrow, drab-looking street, with tall, grimy houses on either side, many of them boasting a fly-blown card in the windows which bore the legend, Apartments, in large letters. Shirley could not conceive why it rejoiced in the name of Pagan. There was certainly, as she had remarked with a faint smile to Bob, no suggestion of pagan luxury about it.

In fact, luxury, even the smallest modicum of it, was a thing she was beginning to rule out of her life. A brief three weeks in London had sufficed to bring both Bob and Shirley sharply up against the meaning of actual shortage of money—something entirely outside their previous experience. A week, and they had found it necessary to readjust their ideas as to how long their limited funds would hold out if—and this was becoming a much bigger “if” than they had anticipated—they did not both find jobs before long. The cost of their lodgings in Pagan Street, consisting of two ill-furnished bedrooms and a diminutive sitting-room, was making deep inroads into their small amount of capital, and to the actual rent had to be added the price of food and various other items of existence. The “fried sardine” for breakfast had become an actual fact—and it wasn’t even always fried, either.

Neither of the Wilsons, in the beginning, had expected to find much difficulty in obtaining a position of some kind, but their optimism had been speedily quenched. So far, daily perusal of the “vacancy” advertisements in the newspapers, and manifold visits to different agencies, had proved quite barren of results. Between them they had written dozens of letters of application for various posts, the majority of which had not even brought an answer, while Bob had often tramped the streets all day in order to save bus fares, applying personally for any work that seemed to offer, only to find himself one of hundreds of other candidates similarly situated—either too young, too old, too inexperienced or inefficient to be considered by those in authority. And, on her side, Shirley had been equally unsuccessful.

So that the end of three weeks found them with a sadly depleted exchequer, no prospects, and still occupying the same depressing rooms in Pagan Street. And even their continued tenancy of the latter had seemed at the outset to be a matter of speculation, since Mrs. Barnet, their landlady, had eyed the young couple with considerable suspicion—a fact which supplied them with one of their few moments of genuine amusement. Even Shirley’s assurance that they were not “theatricals,” and that Bob was her very own brother, had at first failed to allay her doubts.

“They all calls ’em that, brother or cousin or somethin’ of the sort,” she averred sceptically. “And ’aving always kep’ me lodgin’s respec’able, I’m not goin’ to start no other at my time o’ life.”

“I don’t know what ‘they’ do,” Shirley informed her at last, firmly. “I’ve told you that Mr. Wilson is my brother, but if you’re not satisfied we’ll look for rooms elsewhere.” Although, even as she delivered herself of this ultimatum, uttered with all the dignity she could muster up, she was conscious of an inward tremor of apprehension. For she was well aware that, handicapped by their small acquaintance with the cheaper parts of London, she and Bob would find difficulty in discovering fresh quarters at short notice. Moreover, the loss of time entailed in hunting for them would be little less than a calamity, when the search for work was so all-important.

Perhaps something in the clear gray eyes which challenged her convinced Mrs. Barnet of the groundlessness of her doubts, for she shuffled away at last with a muttered apology.

“No offence meant, miss, and I ’ope none taken. But one ’as to be pertic’lar in lettin’ rooms.”

And later on, downstairs in the basement she confided her considered opinion to the charlady who “obliged” her twice a week.

“’E don’t negleck ’er enough to be ’er ’usband, nor ’e ain’t sloppy enough to be anythink else, so I dessay ’e is ’er brother, after all.”

But sidelights of amusement, such as that provoked by Mrs. Barnet’s dark suspicions, were becoming less and less frequent in the lives of Bob and Shirley, and the girl’s face, as she tried to persuade the sulky fire to burn more brightly in readiness for her brother’s return, seemed to have acquired a gravity that was foreign to it. There is nothing in the least funny about being hard up, and when, with each day, the prospect of obtaining work seems to draw no nearer, an element of panic begins to enter in.

There was a look almost of desperation in Shirley’s eyes as she awaited Bob’s coming. He had gone out once more in search of a job, and she wondered wretchedly whether he would have any success today or would return with only the usual depressing report of failure.

“Oh, Mugs, it’s thoroughly beastly being poor!” she exclaimed at last, out loud. She felt she simply must confide her thoughts to someone, and for the moment Mugs was the only possible audience. He had been sitting on his small haunches, thoughtfully contemplating her efforts to coax the coals into a blaze, and probably wondering in his doggy mind why there should be such an immense difference between the caloric values of London and Fen Wyatt fires. At the sound of Shirley’s voice he leapt up, wagging his stumpy little tail and thrusting a warm, moist nose eagerly into her hand. He did not know what the trouble was, but he was quite aware there was trouble in the air, and he attempted the only form of consolation of which he was capable. She stroked his head in silence for a minute or two.

“And even you are an extravagance,” she remarked at last, ruefully. “An extravagance we’ve really no business to indulge in. Only,” clasping him suddenly very tightly in her arms, “we simply can’t do without you, Mugs.”

The “extravagance” merely settled himself happily on her lap and went to sleep, and for another half-hour Shirley sat there holding him, vaguely comforted by the feel of his small warm body against her own.

Presently she caught the sound of Bob’s footsteps on the staircase outside, and, letting Mugs slide down abruptly to the floor, she sprang up to welcome him.

“Well, what news?” she asked eagerly, as he entered the room. But she knew, the moment she saw his face, what the answer would be, and her heart sank.

“No luck,” he said moodily. Crossing to the fire, which had at last consented to burn up, he flung himself down into a chair and held out his hands to the warmth.

The three weeks in London had left their mark on him. He was thinner in face and his eyes held the same expression of secret anxiety which dwelt in Shirley’s.

“I never imagined before,” he went on with a short, half-resentful laugh, “that I was such a useless cumberer of the earth. My services appear to be entirely at a discount wherever I offer them.”

“But they won’t always be,” she put in hastily, speaking with a cheerfulness she was very far from feeling. “You’re bound to come across the right person soon—I mean an employer person.”

“Am I? I see no particular reason why I should,” he returned gloomily. “Have you? What about that Lady Somebody you wrote to who wanted a companion-secretary? Any good?”

“None whatever,” replied Shirley, smiling. “She wants shorthand and book-keeping—household accounts, you know—and someone who can play accompaniments, and do her sewing for her, and who understands face massage and can look after two dogs. I think the last is about the only thing I’m qualified for.”

Even Bob’s face lightened with a brief smile.

“Gosh! The woman wants a sort of walking Whiteley’s, I should think,” he commented. “Well, so that’s that,” he went on. “Three weeks—and we’re just where we were when we started.”

“Except that we’re a trifle poorer,” subjoined Shirley dryly.

He nodded.

“Precisely. And we really can’t reduce expenditure much more. We must remain civilized—at least to the extent of clean towels and soap, et cetera.”

“Cleanliness being next to godliness.”

He grinned.

“It may be. But it’s a damned sight more expensive.” Then, the grin fading swiftly from his face: “Seriously, kiddy, we’re in a very tight place. Funds won’t hold out much longer, and I’m beginning to feel a bit desperate about it. We simply must find jobs.”

“Well, I’m sure we’ve tried hard enough. I don’t know what more we can do.”

“Nor I. Unless,” bitterly, “we’re prepared to eat humble pie and ask Alan Wyatt to renew his offer.”

“Never!” declared Shirley, with spirit. “That’s the one thing we can’t do.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“It would be more to the point if you could think of one thing we can do.”

“I might go out as a housemaid,” she suggested, a little hysterically. “Only I’ve no references from my last place.”

Bob got up suddenly from his chair and, coming to her side, laid his hands on her shoulders. His eyes searched her face.

“Shirley, are you sure—quite sure—you never regret my refusing the money Alan Wyatt offered us?”

She met his gaze with the clear honesty of her own.

“Never,” she answered steadily. “At least I feel—clean—now, even though things are more difficult than we ever expected. I shouldn’t, if we’d accepted.”

His hands fell from her shoulders.

“Then that’s all right,” he said, with a sigh of relief. “It was only for your sake that I asked. I hate your living—in this.” He waved his hand expressively, indicating the meagre little sitting-room with its shoddy furniture and threadbare carpet. “I can stand things for myself, but not for you.”

Shirley smiled his apprehensions aside. She had been down into the depths today, but now her courage was mounting up again, answering to the call on it.

“I can stand my own share, Bob,” she returned gamely. “So don’t worry about me, old thing. After all, something’s bound to turn up before long, and we’ll just hang on somehow until it does.”

And, as though Fate had been charmed into a more kindly mood by the cheery optimism which defied it, something did turn up, the very next day. Shirley, eagerly scanning the advertisement columns of the morning paper, suddenly gave vent to a little shout of delight.

“At last! Listen, Bob, here’s the very thing for me:

‘An English girl, someone bright and jolly, required as companion for two or three months to a young married lady travelling on the Continent. Principal qualifications required: A good knowledge of French and a good sense of humour.’

Bob looked up from his own perusal of another newspaper.

“Are you making it up as you go on?” he inquired sceptically.

“No, indeed I’m not—though it does sound too good to be true, doesn’t it? I’m sure the person who put it in must be nice—it’s so unlike the usual run of advertisements. And I really think I answer to the description wanted.” She glanced down once more at the advertisement. “Let me see: ‘Apply between eleven and one o’clock at 15, Fremingham Place.’ Bob, I must fly, so as to get there before any other bright and jolly English girls.”

She disappeared, to return a few minutes later dressed for the street.

“Wish me luck!” she commanded gaily. “I’m off to apply for ‘a temp’r’y job’—just like old Nanny.”

Chapter 4

PARTNERS

Apparently June had suddenly recollected that she was supposed to be a summer month and decided to behave accordingly, for blue skies and sunshine greeted Shirley as she closed the house door behind her and stepped into the street. Her spirits, already on the up-grade, rose still more. It seemed like a good omen that, after so many days of rainy weather, the sun should elect to shine again on this particular morning, and she hurried along on eager feet. As though the Fates were definitely on her side, she caught the omnibus she wanted without any delay, and was soon being carried swiftly toward her destination.

It was not until she was once more on foot, and actually making her way along Fremingham Place, that the good spirits with which she had set out on her errand all at once deserted her, to be replaced by gathering qualms of apprehension. Supposing she didn’t get the job, after all, and had to return to Pagan Street with the same depressing report of “No Luck” that had so far attended every effort to find work which she and Bob had made? In spite of the encouraging assurance she had given him that “they would hang on somehow till something turned up,” she knew very well that they were rapidly approaching the end of their tether, for, although sixpence may be being made to do the work of a shilling, there is nevertheless a limit even to the number of sixpences at one’s command.

Sheer panic lest today should prove only a repetition of the failures of all the previous days overtook her, and when finally she reached the brief flight of steps which led up to No. 15 she was sorely tempted to run away without waiting to hear those unpleasantly familiar words: “The situation is filled.”

Summoning up her courage, however, she pressed the bell-push and, during the brief interval which elapsed between the ring of the bell and the opening of the door, she did her best to fight down the rising tide of nervousness. But, in spite of all her efforts, when finally the door swung back, it was in rather a breathless voice that she addressed the manservant who had opened it.

“I’ve called in answer to an advertisement.”

The man regarded her with the impassive gaze of the well-trained servant, and stood aside to admit her.

“Come this way, please,” he said. And, still feeling as though her heart were in her throat rather than in its proper place in her anatomy, she followed him across an attractive, irregularly shaped hall into what appeared to be a man’s study.

The room was situated at the back of the house, and looked out on to a small oblong space of garden—one of those spaces, attaching sometimes to an old house, which the owner has treasured and kept sacredly preserved against the surrounding onslaught of encroaching bricks and mortar. A very charming garden, Shirley thought it, as her glance took in the path of crazy pavement which ran down betwixt a narrow strip of lawn and a herbaceous border, bright with old-fashioned flowers. At the farther end a big horse-chestnut tree in blossom spread itself like a green, candle-lit tent above some gaily-coloured wicker chairs, and, in the warm sunlight, the whole aspect of the tranquil little garden brought her a curious thrill, half pleasure, half pain. It was such a refreshing contrast to the drab outlook from the windows of the rooms in Pagan Street, and sent her mind travelling wistfully back to Fen Wyatt—Fen Wyatt, with its shaven lawns and shady trees, its riot of summer flowers, its atmosphere of leisured peace.

The sound of a door opening behind her recalled her thoughts sharply to the exigencies of the moment, and she swung round to see, not as she had anticipated, the “young married lady” of the advertisement, but a man’s tall figure standing in the doorway. For an instant a sudden feeling of dismay rushed over her. She had not expected to be interviewed by the husband. It made the whole thing seem so businesslike, far removed from the pleasantly informal impression created by the advertisement. And then a quick glance at the face of the man who had just entered reassured her. It was a well-cut face, though rather thin and worn-looking, with lines on it that spoke of physical suffering. His hair, too, which was so dark as to be almost black, was slightly touched with gray at the temples, and Shirley mentally guessed him to be about thirty-eight or nine. His eyes were dark gray, and it was in these and in the sensitively moulded mouth that she had found reassurance; both held kindness and a quiet, rather whimsical sense of humour.

Nevertheless, she explained her errand a trifle shyly. The recent rebuffs she had met with had taught her that, regarded from the standpoint of the average employer, she was possessed of really very few marketable qualifications.

“I saw your advertisement,” she said, when she and the gray-eyed man had shaken hands. “And I thought perhaps I might—might suit.”

The ghost of a smile flickered over his mouth.

“I think perhaps you might,” he said quietly. He pulled forward a chair. “Won’t you sit down, Miss——” He paused interrogatively.

“Wilson—Shirley Wilson,” she supplied.

He nodded, and as she seated herself, continued:

“And now, tell me what you can do?”

Her heart sank. If this situation depended primarily on what she could “do,” it differed very little from others which she had tried to obtain and failed. However, she met his grave-eyed glance quite candidly.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “there isn’t a great deal I can do. I can speak French—really fluently. And—and I suppose I could make myself generally useful.”

For a moment he returned no answer. He had not seated himself when she did, but had remained standing, leaning against the chimney-piece and looking down at her thoughtfully. The silence and his quiet, appraising scrutiny drove her into further speech.

“I thought—the advertisement,” she murmured lamely. “You didn’t seem to want any very special qualifications.”

“But I do,” he said, speaking at last. “I want—very special qualifications.” He paused, then, regarding her with a curious directness, continued: “I want someone who can ‘be’ more than someone who can ‘do’—someone who could be a real understanding pal to a woman who has just been through a very rough time.”

“Then, your—your wife——” she began.

“My wife?” he said in a puzzled voice. “Oh, I see. You thought I was advertising for my wife?”

“Yes, I thought so.”

“Evidently you think I look the type to give a wife a thoroughly bad time, then,” he observed dryly.

Shirley’s face broke into a smile, and she shook her head.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t believe you’d give anyone a bad time.”