I still held the unopened telegram, and I thought I detected a note of constraint or embarrassment in his manner as he referred me to the message.
"You haven't looked at my telegram? Then you don't know what brings me down here," he said, with a seriousness which marked the end of the interlude of hilarious back-slapping.
"Anything grave and earnest?" I inquired. "My guess was that you were down here to set up your easel. I guessed wrong?"
He nodded. I was surprised to find him flushed and tongue-tied.
"If I had no better excuse for living than the bit of rotten painting I do from time to time, I might as well blow my brains out — if any," he said, with a bad attempt at lightness. The concealed bitterness was something so novel in him that I probably looked up sharply. He became more embarrassed than ever, a fact which he betrayed by speaking with a sign of irritation.
"Why don't you read the telegram?" he demanded, brusquely, and got up to pace the room while I obeyed the hint. I gave the reading due seriousness.
"Have you met the Drurocks?" read the extraordinary message. "What do you know about him? Is she seen about in public? Is there any gossip? Please learn what you can, but do not reply. Coming at once. — wales."
I put down the sheet and looked up at him.
"Sounds completely balmy, doesn't it?" he challenged. "Well, I'm not off my nut. Never more earnest in my life."
"In that case—" I began.
He leaped down my throat. "You have heard something!" he cried. "What? Is he mistreating her? What's this about their being locked up in that house and all the servants leaving? What do you know? If he's harmed her, Mac, I tell you I'll finish himI'll cut his throat — with pleasure."
The outburst subsided. I think I must have worn the expression of my utter amazement, for he was brought up short.
"You don't know what I'm talking about!" It was an indictment. He was incredulous. "You mean you haven't heard about it? I had all London pitying me — and grinning when I wasn't looking." He shrugged. "Oh well, I suppose a disappointed lover is a comical object. I didn't feel comical, though, I can tell you. Of course, if you don't know what I'm talking about—" He had another one of his sudden changes of mood and subject. "You know, you're an irritating sort, Mac. You never know or hear anything. Where do you keep yourself? Don't you even read the papers? The tabloids got hold of it and smeared me with ink. You know the sort of thing. My picture and hers and one of those blurbs hinting scandaclass="underline" 'Engagement Mysteriously Broken.' That sort of thing! I could have wrung her neck at the time, but now, if she's in trouble—" He trailed off into silence and sent up a thick screen of cigarette smoke.
I took my opportunity to be heard. "Who's neck?" I demanded.
The answer was some more of his disconnected and excitable ramblings. But, out of his incoherence came eventually the coherent story, which I had complete before I got him off to bed far after midnight, bribed with a promise that we should look over the house at Low Fennel promptly after breakfast the following morning.
As a matter of fact, I did have some vague knowledge of his misadventure with a London girl who had gone off to marry some country squire, leaving Wales in the rather awkward predicament of being left waiting at the church. He did not gloss over his own humiliation in telling me of the circumstances. In view of his unheralded arrival in this blighted and inaccessible comer of Cornwall, all in a chivalric ferment and ready on any pretext to slaughter the Husband, he did not need to add that he had recovered badly from the love affair and was ready to pick it up again at any sign from the lady.
She had been Margery Perth, daughter of Capt. Ronald Perth, VC, DSO, etc., etc. — more medals than shillings. Even before she got to be a newspaper darling by reason o'f her engagement to a London catch and the subsequent sudden marriage to an obscure Cornishman, one saw Margery's face in the illustrateds. The press snap-shots hardly did her justice, I was soon to discover.
I offended Aubrey by failing to be properly imoressed by the origins of his love affair with the girl. It seemed to be the usual sort of thing, a house-party, an afternoon on the river, a walk back to the hall by summer moonlight and there you have it, all tied and delivered, ready for the parson. At that, I suppose a love affair is as good as its best moment, and even Romeo and Juliet must have been a common pair of moonstruck nonentities before they rose to tragedy. Aubrey and Margery had their splendid interlude, as I am ready to testify, so let us gloss over the humdrum beginnings.
They led up to an engagement in due form, with a public announcement. Then her father took her to the continent. A tour of the casinos was his regular annual custom and he saw no reason why his daughter's engagement should interfere with his habits. He was that kind of selfish pensioned Britisher, a fellow with his half-pay and a few extra pounds from somewhere and a liking for his ease.
"They left last June," Aubrey told me. "I saw Margery down to the boat-train. I'll swear she had no thought then, but to have the separation over with. It was to be an Autumn wedding. I never heard another word from her until early September, and then it was the news I read in my morning paper:
'Married: Margery Perth, daughter of Capt. Ronald Perth — and all the letters — to Maj. Henry Drurock. Maj. and Mrs Drurock will return to England within the month, and to Cornwall to open Low Fennel, where Maj. Drurock has mining interests.'"
He quoted every line of the announcement. You could tell the bit of print had burned into his memory.
"She wasn't that sort," he protested, earnestly. "There must have been something wrong." He went on in a more subdued manner, as if a bit ashamed of what he was saving. "There were lots of rumours. I don't say they were anything but rumours, mind. But people came back from Biarritz with stories of cheating in the casino. Her father was an unconscionable gambler, you know, and on his half-pay. Anyway, they talked about his being headed for a French jail and this Drurock fellow buying off the authorities. Melodrama, isn't it? I daresay untrue, every bit of it. It was just the sort of thing my fool friends might concoct to salve my wounded pride." He questioned me. "What do you think?"
"How can I think anything?" I retorted. "I only know what you're telling me. Pretty daughters do marry bounders to keep their daddies in funds. It's been done. I've heard of cases. Perhaps only in books, but it's been heard of. What then? You say you never heard from her again and here you are in her village. This is Drurock's land, you know — the village, and everything you see for miles around. Though I wouldn't give a week's pay for the whole of it. It's hopeless terrain. It has no crop but leeches and toads, no climate but a poisonous fog."
"Poisonous?" His utterance of the word was a shout; "Did you say 'poisonous fog'?"
"Merely a figure of speech," I hastened to assure him, betraying, I hoped, no sign of my startled recognition of this reiteration, by an apparently sane Londoner, of the notion which obsessed old Ord. "What's the matter, Aubrey? What about a 'poisonous fog'?"
"I don't know." He shrugged, hopelessly. "It's something hellish, but I can't say what it is." On the last of his breath, he mumbled: "Poor Margery," and then leapt to his feet. "We've got to do something, Mac. We've got to get her out of it. I didn't know what her letter meant — poor child. I thought the poison fumes were something she had imagined, some obsession of her unhappiness."