The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best short books to read txt) 📖

that is your affair. I have already warned you that you are wasting your time. Your championship is quite superfluous, and will do no good to anyone. I think you will see this for yourself when you have taken time to think it over. Wouldn't it be as well to do so before you go any further--for your own sake, not for mine?"
"I am not thinking of myself at the present moment," Jack responded sternly, "or of you. I'm thinking of Chris--and Chris only. Man, do you want to kill her? For you're going the right way to do it."
The cigarette between Mordaunt's fingers slowly doubled and crumpled into shapelessness, but the steely eyes never altered. They barred the way inflexibly to the man's inmost soul. He uttered neither question nor answer.
But Jack was not to be silenced. "I tell you, she is ill," he said. "I saw her myself yesterday. She was simply broken down. I never saw such a change in anyone. I couldn't have credited it. Hilda is horribly anxious about her. She is going to wire to me here as to her condition."
"Why here?" Very calmly came the question.
Jack explained. Almost in spite of himself his own heat had died down, cooled by that icy deliberation. "I went to Kellerton yesterday in search of you, found only Noel there, but had to spend the night as it was late. I came on by the first train, and wired to Hilda to send her message here in case you may be wanted. It ought to come through in about an hour."
"And you propose to wait for it?"
"Yes, I do." Jack paused an instant; then, "You must wait too," he said doggedly. "She isn't very likely to want you, and I've sworn you shan't frighten her any more; but you shan't abandon her either while there is the faintest chance that she may want you."
"There is not the faintest." Mordaunt glanced down at the thing that had once been a cigarette which he still held between his fingers, contemplated it for a moment, then rose and went to the mantelpiece for an ash-tray. "You have taken a good deal upon yourself, Jack," he said. "But I have borne with you because I know that your position is a difficult one. You say you know everything. That may be so, and again it may not. In either case, our points of view do not coincide. I will wait until that telegram comes; but it is not my intention to go to my wife--whatever it may contain."
Jack bit his lip savagely. "In short, you don't care what happens to her!" he said. "You want to be rid of her--one way or another. And you don't care how!"
He spoke recklessly, uttering the thought that had come uppermost in his mind without an instant's consideration. Perhaps instinctively he sought to rouse the devil that till then had been held in such rigid control. But the effect of his words was such as he had scarcely looked for.
Mordaunt turned with the movement of a goaded creature and gripped him by the shoulder. "You believe that?" he said.
They stood face to face. Mordaunt was as white as death. His eyes in that moment were terrible. But it seemed to Jack that they expressed more of anguish than of anger, and he felt as if he had seen a soul in torment. He averted his own instinctively. It was a sight upon which he could not look.
"Do you believe it?" Mordaunt said, his voice very low.
"No!" Impulsively Jack made answer. That instant's revelation had quenched his own fire very effectually. "Forgive me!" he said. "I--didn't understand."
The hand on his shoulder relaxed slowly. There fell a silence. Then, "All right, Jack," Mordaunt said very quietly.
And Jack knew that he had dropped the veil again that shrouded his soul's agony.
"You will wait here for that telegram?" Mordaunt asked, after a moment.
"Yes, please."
"Will you come into the other room? Rupert is with me."
"No. I'll wait here, thanks."
"Very well. I shall see you again." Mordaunt crossed to the door, then paused, and after a moment came slowly back to the table.
He stood before it in silence, looking down upon the portrait that Jack had laid there as one looks upon the face of the dead.
His face showed no sign of softening, yet Jack made a last effort to move him. "You're not going to let her fret her heart out for you? You'll go back to her if she is wanting you? Damn it, Trevor! You can't know what she is suffering! And after all--she is your wife!"
Mordaunt's mouth hardened. He made no response.
"Surely you don't--you can't--think evil of her?" Jack said.
Mordaunt raised his eyes slowly. "You have said enough," he said, with quiet emphasis. "As for this portrait, take it if you value it. I never cared for it myself."
"Never cared for it!" Jack ejaculated.
"No. It never conveyed very much to me. I did not regard her in that light."
"Then you never knew her," Jack said with conviction.
"Possibly not." Mordaunt turned away once more. "Most of us are blind," he said, "until our eyes are opened. I am going to send you in some breakfast if you are sure you prefer to stay here."
He went out quietly, leaving Jack marvelling at his own docility. The last thing he would have expected of himself was that at the end of the interview he also would be accepting the hospitality of the man he had come almost prepared to shoot. The turn of events forced him into a species of unwilling admiration. There was no denying the fact that, mismanage his own private affairs as he might, this was a born leader of men.
Mordaunt himself brought him his sister's telegram some time later.
He remained in the room while Jack opened it, but he betrayed no impatience to hear its contents. As for Jack, he stood for several seconds with the message in his hand before he looked up.
"I suppose you will have to see it," he said then reluctantly.
"That is as you like."
But though the words were emotionless, Mordaunt's eyes searched his face, and in answer to them Jack held out the paper.
"I am sorry," he said.
"In no danger. Keep Trevor away," was the message it contained.
"As I thought," Mordaunt observed, and handed it back without further comment.
"She will be wanting you presently," Jack said uneasily, "You know how women change."
And Mordaunt smiled, a grim, set smile. "Yes, I know," he answered.


CHAPTER IV
THE DESIRE OF HIS HEART

The night was very hot, even hotter than the day had been. Only the whirring electric fan kept the air moving. It might have been midsummer instead of the end of September.
Bertrand de Montville, seated in an easy-chair and propped by cushions, raised his head from time to time and gasped for breath. He held a newspaper in his hand, for sleep was out of the question. He had been suffering severely during the day, but the pain had passed and only weariness remained. His face was yet drawn with the memory of it, and his eyes were heavily shadowed. But the inherent pluck of the man was still apparent. His pride of bearing had not waned.
He was reading with close attention a report upon the chief event of the hour--the trial of Guillaume Rodolphe at Valpre. It had been in progress for four days, and was likely to last for several more. The report he read was from the pen of Trevor Mordaunt, an account clear and direct as the man himself. So far the evidence had seemed to turn in Bertrand's favour, and, his protestations notwithstanding, it was impossible not to feel a quickening of the pulses as he realized this fact. Would they ever send for him? He asked himself. Would they ever desire to do justice to the man they had degraded?
It was evident that the writer of the account before him thought so. However Mordaunt's opinion of the man himself had altered, his conviction on the subject of his innocence of that primary crime had plainly remained unshaken. He had not allowed himself to be biased by subsequent events.
"And that is strange--that!" the Frenchman murmured, with his eyes upon the article. "Perhaps _la petite Christine_ has convinced him. But no--that is not probable."
He broke off as the door opened, and a quick smile of welcome flashed across his face. He stretched out both hands to the new-comer.
"All right. Sit still," said Max.
He sauntered across the room, his coat hanging open and displaying evening dress, and gave his hand into Bertrand's eager clasp. It was a very cool hand, and strong with a vitality that seemed capable of imparting itself.
He looked down at Bertrand with a queer glint of tenderness in his eyes. "I shouldn't have come up at this hour," he said, "but I guessed you would be awake. How goes it, old chap? Pretty bad, eh?"
"No, I am better," Bertrand said. "I am glad that you came up."
Max drew up a chair, and sat down beside his _protege_. For nearly three weeks now Bertrand had been with him. A post-card written from a squalid back-street lodging had been his first intimation that the Frenchman was in London, and within two hours of receiving it Max had removed him to the private nursing-home in which he himself was at that time domiciled. For, notwithstanding his youth, Max Wyndham was a privileged person, and owned as his greatest friend one of the most distinguished physicians in London.
His natural brilliance had brought him in the first place to the great man's notice; and though he was but a medical student, his foot was already firmly planted upon the ladder of success. There was little doubt that one day--and that probably not many years distant--Max Wyndham would be a great man too. Even as it was, his grip upon all things that concerned the profession he had chosen was so prodigious that his patron would upon occasion consult with him as an equal, detecting in him that flare of genius which in itself is of more value than years of accumulated knowledge. He had the gift of magnetism to an extraordinary degree, and he coupled with it an unerring instinct upon which he was not afraid to rely. Equipped thus, he was bound to come to the front, though whether the Wyndham blood in him would suffer him to stay there was a proposition that time alone could solve.
His effect upon Bertrand was little short of magical. Sitting there beside him with the wasted wrist between his fingers, and his green eyes gazing at nothing in particular, there was little about him to indicate a remarkable personality. Yet the drawn look passed wholly away from the sick man's face, and he leaned back among his pillows with a restfulness that he had been very far from feeling a few seconds earlier.
"So you are reading all about the Rodolphe _affaire_," Max said presently.
"It is Mr. Mordaunt's own report," Bertrand explained. "It interests me--that. I feel as if I heard him speak."
Max grunted. He had asked no question as to the circumstances that had led to Bertrand's departure, and Bertrand had volunteered no information. It had been a closed subject between them by mutual consent. But to-night for some reason Max approached it, warily, as one not sure of his ground.
"When do you hope to see him again?"
A slight flush rose in Bertrand's face. "Never--it is probable," he said sadly.
"Ah! Then you had a disagreement?"
Bertrand looked at him questioningly.
Max smiled a little. "No, it isn't vulgar curiosity.