Complete Works of Bram Stoker (307 page)

Believe me, Yours faithfully, JUDITH HAYES.

P. S.  —  By the way, I forgot to say that the first contingent will after a few days in London go on to Cumberland or Westmoreland  —  I know it is the “Lake” country!

Athlyne read the letter eagerly; but when he had finished he dropped it impatiently. There was not a thing in it that he wanted to know  —  not once the name he wanted to see. He sat for a while thinking; then he took it up again saying to himself:

“She’s no fool; it must have taken her some pains to say so little.” As he read it the second time, more carefully this time and not merely looking for what he wished to find, the letter told its own story, and in its own way. Then he smiled heartily as he sat thinking it over and commenting to himself:

“Not a word about her, not even her name! And yet she must know that it would be of some interest to me to hear of her. I wonder if it would do to run over to Ischia. There seems to be a party of them...” He read over the letter again with a puzzled look, which all at once changed to a smile. “Good old Judy! So that’s it is it! That’s not the first letter Miss Judy has written with a double meaning in it She hasn’t those fine eyes and that quick wit for nothing. Why it’s as clever and as secret as that sent to Basing at Pretoria.” For a good while he pondered over it, making notes on the back of the envelope. Then he read these over:

“We are at Ischia.

“I am writing because I promised.

“The habit of personal reticence (that means not saying a thing for yourself) is for both young and old.

“Our voyage was dull, no adventure, no meeting any one like you.

“Mrs. Ogilvie and Judy remain at Ischia some weeks.

“Colonel Ogilvie doesn’t like going alone and goes to the Lake County (who is to be with him but Joy?)

“He wants to go motoring (seems more in this  —  think it over).

The rest of us  —  (that can only mean Joy) are looking forward to meeting friends in England  —  (that proves she is going with her father).

“Let me know where you will be during the coming weeks.

“My brother’s section of our party  —  (He and Joy)  —  leave here next week.

“I haven’t told Mrs. Ogilvie or most of the rest of us (Besides Mrs. O. there are only two so that most of them must mean the bigger  —  that is Colonel Ogilvie  —  she has not told that one of the two  —  then she has told the other. And the other is Joy!)

“If any of those kept in ignorance knew they too would send their love!

‘“Toot Then one does. Judy sends her own ‘kind remembrance.’ The only other one, Joy, sends her love  —  to me.

“Joy sends her love to me!”

He sat for a moment in an ecstasy, holding the letter loosely in his hand. Then he raised it to his lips and kissed it. Then he kissed it a second time, a lighter kiss, murmuring:

“That’s for Aunt Judy!” He proceeded with his comment:

“The postscript: ‘After a few days in London  —  will go on to Cumberland or Westmoreland.’ No address in either place, what does that mean? She has been so clever over the rest that she can’t be dull in this. She must know the London address... she thinks it best not to tell it to me  —  why?”

That puzzled him. He could not make out any reason from her point of view. He was willing to accept the fact and obey directions, but Judy had been so subtle in the other matter that he felt she must have some shrewd design in this. But the simple fact was that in this matter she had no design whatever. She intended to write to him again on hearing from him and to give him all details.

But for his own part Athlyne had several reasons for not seeing Colonel Ogilvie in London. Knowing that the father might make some quarrel out of his coming to his home in a false name he wanted to make sure of the daughter’s affection before explaining it to him. Besides there was the matter of continuing the fraud  —  even to Judy. Until things had been explained, meeting and any form of familiarity or even of hospitality on either side was dangerous. He could neither declare himself nor continue as they knew him. He was known in London to too many people to avoid possible contretemps, even if he decided to continue the alias with them and take chance, until he could seize a favourable opportunity. And as he could not introduce the old gentleman to his friends and his clubs it would be wiser not to see him at all. When all was said and done the pain of patient waiting might be the least of many ills.

All the morning and afternoon he thought over the letter which he was to write to Judy. He despaired of writing anything which could mean so much; and beyond that again he felt that he could say nothing which would be so important to its recipient as the message of Judy’s letter had been to him. How could he hope for such a thing! The letter, which just before the time of collection he posted with much trepidation, ran:

“MY DEAR MISS HAYES:

“Thank you very much for your most kind letter and for all that you have said and left unsaid. I too had a dull journey from New York and found London duller still. As a town it seems to have fallen off; but it will brighten up again I am sure before long! I am glad you are all well. I suppose your party will re-unite after Mrs. Ogilvie’s cure has been completed. It is strange how we are all taking to motor cars. I am myself getting one, and I hope in the early summer to have some lovely drives. I am looking out for a companion. But it is a difficult thing to get exactly the one you want, and without such it is lonely work. Even going the utmost pace possible could not keep one’s mind away from the want When I went to America that time I was feeling lonely and dull; and I have felt lonelier and duller ever since. But when I get my motor I hope all that will shortly cease. I hope that when you arrive  —  if you and Mrs. Ogilvie do come over  —  that you will honour my car by riding in it I shall hope to have some one with me whom you must like very much  —  you seem to like nice people and nice people seem to be fond of you. I greatly fear it will not be possible for me to see Colonel Ogilvie in London, for I have to be away very shortly on some business, and I probably shall not be back in time; but I am going up North in a few weeks in my new car if it is ready  —  and I shall hope to see my friends. Perhaps Colonel Ogilvie and some of his friends will come for a drive with me. Won’t you let me know where he will be staying after he leaves London. Please give, if occasion serves, my warm remembrance to all. I have not forgotten that delightful conversation we had before tea the day I called. Tell Miss Joy that I wish we could renew and continue it Miss Ogilvie must be a very happy girl to have, in addition to such nice parents who love her so much, an aunt like you so much her own age, so sympathetic, so understanding. I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to you for writing. I look eagerly for another letter.

Believe me, “Yours very sincerely.”

There he hesitated. He had meant never to write again the name Richard Hardy. Here the letter seemed to demand it. He had already thought the matter over in all ways and from all points of view and had, he thought, made up his mind to go through with the fraud as long as it was absolutely necessary. There was no other way. But now when he had to write out the lie  —  as it appeared to him to be  —  his very soul revolted at it. It seemed somehow to dishonour Joy. Since he had looked into the depth of her eyes, scruples had come to him which had not ever before troubled him. It was unworthy of her, and of himself, to continue a lie. And so with him began again the endless circle of reasoning on a basis of what was false.

A lie, little or big, seems gifted with immortality. At its creation it seems to receive that vitality which belongs to noxious things. The germs which preserve disease survive the quick lime of the plague-pit and continue after the seething mass of corruption has settled into earthly dust; and when the very bones have been resolved into their elements the waiting germs come forth on disturbance of the soil strong and baneful as ever.

Sometimes Athlyne grumbled to himself of the hardness of his lot. It was too bad that from such a little thing as taking another name, and merely for the purpose of a self-protective investigation of a lie, he should find himself involved in such a net-work of deceit. Other people did things a hundred times worse every day of their lives. He had often done so himself; but nothing ever came of it. But now, when his whole future might depend upon it, he was face to face with an actual danger. If Colonel Ogilvie quarrelled with him about it that would mean the end of all. Joy would never quarrel with her father; of that he felt as surely as that he loved her. All unknown to himself Athlyne had an instinctive knowledge of character. Any one who had ever seen him exercise the faculty would have been astonished by the rapidity of its working. The instant he had seen Joy he had recognised her qualities. He had understood young Breckenridge at a glance; otherwise he was too shrewd a man to trust him as he had done. It is not often that a man will entrust the first comer in a crowd with a valuable horse. To this man, too, an utter stranger, he had entrusted his secret, the only person who now knew it on the entire American continent. So also with Colonel Ogilvie. He was assured in his inner consciousness that that old gentleman would be hard to convince of the necessity for disguise. There was something about his fine stern-cut features  —  -so exquisitely modified in his daughter  —  and in his haughty bearing which was obnoxious to any form of deceit One of these grumbling fits came on him now, and so engrossed him that he quite forgot to sign the letter. It was in the post “box when he recollected the omission. He rejoiced when he did so that he had not written the lie. It was queer how sensitive his conscious was becoming!

One immediate effect of the awakened conscience was that he went about a motor car that very afternoon. He had said to Miss Judy that he was getting one, and his words had to be made good. Moreover he had, in addition to the train of reasons induced by Miss Judy’s mention of Colonel Ogilvie’s getting a car, a sort of intuition that it would be of service to him. Of service to him, meant of course, in his present state of mind with regard to Joy  —  of service in furthering his love affair. He had wished for a horse and got one, and it had brought him to Joy. Now he wanted a motor... The chain of reasoning seemed so delightfully simple that it would be foolish to dispute it. Sub-conscious intuition supplied all lacunae.

The logic of fact seemed to support that of theory. He looked in at his club to find the name of a motor agency. There in the hall he met an old diplomatic friend, who after greeting him said:

“This is good-bye as well.”

“How so?” he asked.

“I am off for Persia. Ballentyre got a stroke just as he was starting and they sent for me in a hurry and offered me the post. It is too good to refuse, so I am booked for another three years. I was promising myself a long rest, or a spell in a civilised place anyhow. It is too bad, just when I was expecting home my new Delaunay-Belleville car which has been nearly a year in hand.”

“Do you take the car with you?” asked Athlyne feeling a queer kind of beating of his heart.

“No. It would be useless there; at all events until I see what the country and the roads are like. I was just off to the agents to tell them to sell it for me.”

“Strange we should meet. I came here to look up the address of an agent. I want to buy a car.”

“Look here, Athlyne; why not take over this? I shall have to sell it at a sacrifice, and why shouldn’t you have the advantage. I’ll let you have it cheap; I would rather clear it all up before I go.”

“All right, old chap. Ill take it. What’s the figure?”

“I agreed to pay £1,000. You may have it at what you think fair!”

“All right. Can we settle it now?”

“By all means.” Athlyne took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque which he handed to the other.

“I say,” said Chetwynd. “You have made this for the full sum.”

“Quite so! What else could I offer. Why man, do you think I would beat you down because you are in a hurry. If there is any huckstering it is I who should pay. I get my car at once, the very car I wanted. I should have to wait another year.”

Three days after, the car arrived. Athlyne had spent the time in getting lessons at a garage and learning something of the mechanism. He was already a fair mechanic and a fine driver of horses; so that before another week was out he had learned to know his car. He got a good chauffeur so that he would always have help in case of need and before the next letter arrived from Miss Judy he was able to fly about all over the country. The new car was a beauty. It was 100- 110 h. p. and could do sixty miles an hour easily.

The next letter which he received from Miss Hayes was short and devoid, so far as he could discern after much study, of any cryptic meaning whatever. She thus made allusion to the fact that he had not signed his letter “By the way I notice that you forgot to sign your letter. I suppose you were thinking at the time of other things.” The later sentence was underlined. The information in the letter was that Colonel Ogilvie and “his daughter” expected to be in London on the Saturday following her letter and would stay at Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street “where I have no doubt they will be happy to see you if you should chance to be in London at the time. I think Lucius intends to write you.”

The latter sentence was literally gall to him. He knew that he must not be in London during their stay there. To be away was the only decent way of avoiding meeting them. He must not meet Colonel Ogilvie until he had made certain of

Joy’s feeling towards him, for he could not make his identity known till he had that certainty. He could then explain his position... The rest of the possibilities remained unspoken; but they were definite in his own mind.

As he had to go away he thought it would be well to study up the various branches of the Ogilvie as well as of the Ogilvie family. He would then make a tour on his own account to the various places where were their ancient seats. As Colonel Ogilvie was interested in the matter some knowledge on his part might lead... somewhere.