“I shall tell Mr. Getherfield all about it!” she murmured as she sped along. “He’ll understand things better than I do.”
The sun was just dipping behind the far-off hills in the West as Letty rounded a cliff-like promontory of the valley and came in sight of Mr. Getherfield’s house, Foxden Manor, a quaint, seventeenth-century structure. Here, amid the solitude of the moors, Mr. Getherfield grew roses, improved his grounds, planted rare shrubs, and indulged in the antiquarian tastes which had been his recreation through a long life spent among mills and machines.
He came out of his door as she wheeled her bicycle up the path between the trim lawns, and trotted eagerly towards her, a little, spare, very old but intensely active man who still clung to something like a Quakerish simplicity and invariably presented himself in old-fashioned drab-hued garments. He admitted to being already eighty years of age, but Lucas Etherton had once remarked to his daughter that he honestly believed the old fellow had dropped ten years somewhere in his journey and forgotten to pick them up again.
Eighty or ninety, there was a plenitude of vigour in the hearty embrace which the old man gave his godchild as, they met in his garden, and in the way in which he took her bicycle from her and wheeled it off to an outhouse. That done, he linked his arm in hers, and turned her towards a distant corner of the grounds.
“Just in time, my dear, to see by daylight a nice little improvement we’ve carried out since you were here,” he said, with a satisfied chuckle. “Do you remember saying I ought to put a seat up, down there by the stream? Well, come and see what’s been done — for you.”
But Letty held back and glanced at the house.
“Godfather,” she said, “I’m in no mood for improvements! I’m awfully bothered — so I came to you. Let’s go in — I want to tell you something — a lot.”
The old man gave her a quick glance out of his shrewd old eyes, and turned to the porch.
“Come along!” he said soothingly. “Glad you came, my dear — always ready, here, you know.”
“That's just why I came — knowing that,” answered Letty.
She followed him across the raftered hall into a low-ceilinged, oak-panelled room, on the open hearth of which, although May was nearly over, a bright fire of pine logs was sending out an inviting crackle.
“Now, my dear?” he said quietly. “What’s it all about?”
Letty had made up her mind to tell Mr. Getherfield everything, and narrated the whole story of the events of the afternoon, from the time of her meeting with Marston Stanbury to her recent encounter with Pike, and Mr. Getherfield listened in silence, only nodding his old head now and then at certain passages.
“What does it all mean, Godfather?” asked Letty in the end. “Don’t you think I’ve cause to be anxious — and unhappy?”
Old Getherfield laughed softly, and turning to his desk, drew a cigar-case to him and selected a cigar.
“Only about one thing, my dear,” he answered, as he began to smoke — “only about one thing!”
“What?” demanded Letty.
“I don’t like that young man Pike knowing so much about your father’s affairs,” said Mr. Getherfield. “That’s not well! Now, though Pike has been at the Old Mill so long that he couldn’t fail to know a good deal, your father ought not to have let him get as much knowledge as he evidently possesses. Pike is a sly fellow, my dear! — and I’m surprised that he was as candid as he was with you tonight. It looks to me as if he knew rather more — perhaps a good deal more — than he revealed. But of course he does — men of that sort never tell all they know.”
“Oh, you don’t think he knows more about father’s affairs?” exclaimed Letty.
“He may,” answered Mr. Getherfield. “Probably he was paving the way this evening, thinking that next time he had the chance of a téte-à-téte with you he’d tell you more — if you let him. Have a care of that fellow, Letty! Your father’s kept Pike too long. He knows too much. But as regards the rest—”
“Yes — the rest!” said Letty eagerly. “That’s what’s bothering me!”
“Has nothing struck you?” asked the old man, with an almost whimsical smile. “Think! — a locked room into which nobody but your father goes — money going out otherwise than for strictly business purposes — a secret, to be revealed to somebody who’s lent some of the money — why, of course, the whole thing’s plain enough! And you can’t see it?”
“I see nothing!” replied Letty.
The old man waved his cigar and laughed.
“Why, you father’s inventing something!” he said. “That’s it! Years before you were born, my dear, your father spent time, thought, money, prodigally, in trying to perfect a certain invention — he gave it up then, after spending a fortune over it, because he came to the conclusion that it was premature. But I happened to know that he always meant to return to it, and I should say that he has returned! Leave him alone — he’ll come out all right. All the same, I wish he hadn’t borrowed money from Sir Cheville Stanbury. Why didn’t he come to me?” Letty’s eyes had grown bigger and bigger during this explanation, and at its conclusion she heaved a sigh of intense relief.
“Oh, do you really think that’s it!” she exclaimed. “Of course, that would account for everything! But — would so much money go into a mere invention?”
Mr. Getherfield laughed drily and patted the girl’s head.
“Bless your innocence!” he said. “There’s one man within twenty miles of us, now a peer of the realm, who spent three hundred thousand pounds over a machine before he got it to be what he wanted! Oh, yes, my dear, invention is — a sink down which you can pour money like water, as in those cases.”
“But they succeeded? — and made money?” asked Letty.
“Yes, they succeeded and made money — so much money that neither of them knows how much money he’s got!” replied the old man, still more drily. “And the probability is that if — as seems certain — Lucas Etherton has gone back to his invention, why, he’ll come out on top, and then — we shall see! And that’s why I’m sorry, very sorry indeed, that he either borrowed a little money from Sir Cheville or gave him his confidence this afternoon.”
“Why, particularly, Godfather!” inquired Letty.
“It would have been far better jf he’d kept his secret to himself,” answered Mr. Getherfield. “However, he may have had another idea in taking Sir Cheville into his confidence — perhaps that didn’t strike you?”
“No!” said Letty wonderingly. “Nothing struck me. I must be very dense.”
“Ah, well, I don’t suppose Lucas is so wrapped up in his invention that he isn’t aware of his daughter’s love affairs!” remarked the old man, with a teasing laugh. “And Lucas may have said, ‘Oh, well, no harm in letting the old fellow see that when my girl marries his nephew, she’ll not go to him empty-handed — far from it!’ ”
Letty made no answer. She sat for a long time staring into the fire, and the old man continued to smoke, silently watching her. At last she got up and kissed him.
“I knew you’d be able to smooth everything out!” she said. “You’re a wise old thing! — like an old owl in a bam. Now I’ll go home — quite happy.”
“Nothing of the sort!” declared Mr. Getherfield. “You’ll stop here for the night. Your room’s always ready, and your father’s away, so why should you go home? Now run off to the telephone, and then come back and tell me all the gossip about Sir Cheville and his French lady — I’m dying to hear it.”
However old and wise he might be, Mr. Getherfield was not above an innocent love of the current talk of the countryside, and he listened with great interest and amusement while Letty told him what she had heard from Marston Stanbury about Sir Cheville’s engagement to the French governess at the vicarage. In the end he shook his head and smiled — the smile was as sage as it was whimsical.