Part 54

"You make me want to shake you," he said, crossly.

"I know that," said I. And then he burst like a thunder-cloud--at least, his news did; the news he had been wanting to tell me since Bideford.

When he was in Scotland, he saw Ellaline. She had arrived with those McNamarras I told you about, and their place must be near the one where Dick's mother is visiting. He recognized her from that photograph of the school garden-party (where he saw my picture, too, you know, and was able to find out my name, and where we live in Versailles). That is, he thought he couldn't be mistaken, but made sure by inquiring, until he hit upon someone who could tell him that a Mademoiselle de Nesville had come to stay with Mrs. and Miss McNamarra. Of course, he couldn't have known that Ellaline had taken the name of de Nesville, but as he had heard that de Nesville was her mother's maiden name, it wasn't difficult for a budding Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together.

You see how much worse the position is now, both for Ellaline and me, and that the little wretch didn't exaggerate when he boasted that I'm more "in his power" than ever. What a misfortune that Ellaline should have come to Scotland--so near where we shall be, too, if we go to the Roman Wall! He has only to tell the whole thing to Sir Lionel, and say: "If you don't believe it, run up to such and such a place, and there you will see the real Ellaline Lethbridge, whom perhaps you may recognize from her likeness to your cousin, her dead French mother."

If only Ellaline were safely married! But she can't be yet, for days and days, I'm afraid. She was to have written or telegraphed me at Gloucester, if there were any chance of her soldier lover getting away sooner than last expected; but I had no word from her at all, at the Poste Restante there.

All that sounds bad enough for me, doesn't it? But there's worse to come. The wretch swears he will (as he calls it), "give the show away" to Sir Lionel to-morrow if I don't tell Sir L. myself that I have fallen in love with Dick.

I said that Sir Lionel wouldn't believe me if I did, because I'd told him at Torquay I wasn't in love with Dick. That admission slipped out, and Sherlock Holmes caught at it. "Ah, I thought you'd done something to put him off the scent!" he flashed out. "I call that downright treacherous of you; and all the more I'll hold you down to your bargain this time. I said I'd speak to-morrow unless you did what I told you to do, but now I say I'll speak this minute, if you don't promise by all that's sacred to ask him for his consent to-morrow. I'll shout to him now. One--two--three!"

"Yes, yes, I will!" I cried--because Dick had worked himself up to such a fury that I saw that he meant what he said.

"I shall know fast enough whether you keep your word or not," he growled. "And if you don't, you understand just what you have to expect."

If I hadn't given in to Ellaline! I ought to have known that nothing but trouble could come of it. Yet no--I won't wish it undone. I can't! No matter what happens, I shall never really regret what gave me the chance of meeting a man like Sir Lionel. I don't think there is another in the world. And to-morrow I am to have the honour of informing him that I'm in love with that little worm, Dick Burden. Having seen the sun, I love a flicker of phosphorus on a sulphur match.

Do write me the minute you get this, won't you? No, telegraph if you can think of anything consoling to say. Poste Restante, Chester.

Your frightened and loving

Audrie.

XXX

AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER

Aberystwith, August 29th

Brightest and Best: I have a short reprieve, because Dick has had to go away again; not to his mother, this time, but to London. A telegram was forwarded to him from Gloucester, where he had left sending-on instructions; and he knocked at my door early yesterday morning (at Tintern) to say he must leave immediately by the first train. He was excited, because the telegram came from the head of a firm of well-known private detectives with whom he had been in correspondence for some time, trying to buy a junior partnership for a few hundreds left him by his grandmother. There's a chance now that he may get the partnership, only he must be on the spot, as another man is making an offer "more advantageous--in some ways." Dick is wild to get in, and regards this as the opportunity of a lifetime. Doesn't that prove the type of mind he has? Actually yearning to be in business as a detective! Well, he's had good practice lately, and I must say he has made the most of it.

"This call couldn't have come at a worse time, but I must obey it," he pronounced solemnly, while I peeped through my half-open door, in my prettiest Ellaline dressing-gown--far too nice to waste on Dick. Disgusted with life, as I was, I nearly laughed in his face, and at his face; but dared not quite, for fear of enraging him again just when he appeared to be in a comparatively lenient mood.

He had come to explain and apologize, and in his perky conceit really seemed to fancy that I might be hurt at his desertion. So when he asked if I would "bid him good-bye pleasantly, and remember to keep my promise," I had a small inspiration. I would bid him good-bye pleasantly, I bargained, provided he let me off keeping the promise until he should come back; because, I said, it would be humiliating to plead with Sir Lionel on the very day my fiance turned his back upon me in order to attend to mere business.

"You call this mere business?" sputtered Dick; and I soothed him, but persisted firmly, gently, until at last he agreed to grant the reprieve. I think his own vanity, not my eloquence, obtained the concession, because it pleased him to believe that I leaned upon him in this crisis. And of course I had to promise over again, more earnestly than ever, "not to back out, but to stick to my word."

I must still stick to it, of course (unless a wire or letter from you meanwhile suggests some miraculous, agreeable, honourable alternative); but sufficient for the day is the evil thereof--and the Dick thereof.

This day and several days to come are free from both; for my albatross can't arrange the details of its partnership, sell out some investments in order to pay the money down, and join us again before Chester. There I shall certainly hear from you; and I have such infinite faith in your dove-like serpentineness, that I let myself cling to the ragged edge of hope. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy myself as much as I possibly can, so that, at worst, I shall have more good days to remember when bad days come. For the days will be very bad indeed if I have to bear Sir Lionel's silent scorn, and still remain with him, awaiting release from Ellaline.

I felt like a different human being after Dick had gone, and would have written you at once, but he had delayed me so long that I had to finish dressing at top speed, because we were to make an earlier start than usual. There was Chepstow Castle to see (quite near, and a shame to have missed it), as well as a hundred-and-fifty-mile run to Tenby.

Chepstow was splendidly picturesque and striking; but the country through which we had to pass on the way to Tenby would not have been particularly interesting if it weren't for the legends and history with which it is as full as it is of ruined castles. It is largely coal country now, and after the lovely, winding Wye, playing hide-and-seek with its guardian hills, we might have found the road unattractive as we ran through Newport, Cardiff, Neath, Swansea, and Carmarthen. But it made all the difference in the world to know that Carmarthen was Merlin's birthplace; that stories of Arthur's exploits and knightly deeds leave golden landmarks everywhere; and that it seems quite an ordinary, reasonable thing to the people to name railway engines after Sir Lancelot. Isn't it charming of them? Yet what would Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat, say to such a liberty, I wonder?

We arrived in Tenby too late for anything save an impression, last evening; but it was one of those enchanting, mysterious impressions which one can only have after dusk, when each old ivied wall is purple with romance, and each lamp in a high window is a lovelight.

My first thought as we came in and found Tenby on fire with sunset, was that the place looked like a foreign town set down in England; and so of course it is, for it was founded by a band of Flemish people, who fled from persecution. The huge old city walls and quaint gates put me in mind of a glorified Boulogne, or a bit of old Dinan, under the castle. And the way the town lies, with its beautiful harbour far below, its gray rocks and broken walls by the sea, in golden sands, is like Turner's ideas of historic French fortresses. The Benedictine monks, too, who come across the gleaming stretch of water from Caldy Island in a green-and-red steam yacht, add one more foreign note. And I'm delighted to tell you that the hotel where we stayed is built upon the city wall of which nobody seems to know the date--not even the guide-books. The people we asked rather apologized for having to confess that probably it was no earlier than the twelfth century; for the twelfth century is considered crudely modern for Welsh things.

In front of my bedroom window an old lookout tower, darkly veined with ivy, stood up from the vast foundation of the stone wall; and at night I could gaze down, down, over what seemed in the moon-mist to be a mile of depth, to an almost tropical garden laid out on the wall itself. When the tide comes in and drowns the gold of the sands, the sea breaks against the buttress of rock and stone, and the hotel seems all surrounded with the wash and foam of waters, like a fortified castle of long-ago.

We ought to have stopped more than one night and part of a next day, but there is so much, so much to do; and, as I told you, Sir Lionel's thoughts are already marching on toward home. There are all the beauty spots of Wales before us; and the Lake Country, and the North by the Roman Wall, before we turn south again for Graylees. I say "we"--but you know what I mean.