They walked up the gravelled walk under the chestnut trees, whereon the leaf buds, luscious looking, with their young green surface delicately tinged with pink, looked over ready to burst into fan-shaped fulness of glory. The well-kept paths, the orderly flower beds, and smoothly trimmed lawns looked all so simple, so obvious beside the strange problem which fate had propounded to these two young people walking up and down side by side — and with just a certain distance between them as if that problem was keeping them apart.
And that intangible reality stood between them, causing in Luke a vague sense of shamefacedness, as if he were guilty toward Louisa, and in her a feeling of irritation against the whole world around her, for having allowed this monstrous thing to happen — this vague shadow on life's pathway, on the life of the only man who mattered.
People passed them as they walked: the curious, the indifferent: men with bowler hats pulled over frowning brows, boys with caps carelessly thrust at the back of their heads, girls with numbed fingers thrust in worn gloves, tip-tilted noses blue with cold, thin, ill-fitting clothes scarce shielding attenuated shoulders against the keen spring blast.
Just the humdrum, every-day crowd of London: the fighters, the workers, toiling against heavy odds of feeble health, insufficient food, scanty clothing, the poor that no one bothers about, less interesting than the unemployed labourer, less picturesque, less noisy, they passed and had no time to heed the elegantly clad figure wrapped in costly furs, or the young man in perfectly tailored coat, who was even now preparing himself for a fight with destiny, beside which the daily struggle for halfpence would be but a mere skirmish.
Instinctively they knew — these two — the society girl and the easy-going wealthy man — that it was reality with which they would have to deal. That instinct comes with the breath of fate: a warning that her decrees are serious, not to be lightly set aside, but pondered over; that her materialized breath would not be a phantom or a thing to be derided.
Truth or imposture? Which?
Neither the man nor the girl knew as yet, but reality — whatever else it was.
They walked on for awhile in silence. Another instinct — the conventional one — had warned them that their stay in the park had been unduly prolonged: there were social duties to attend to, calls to make, luncheon with Lord Radclyffe at Grosvenor Square.
So they both by tacit consent turned their steps back toward the town.
A man passed them from behind, walking quicker than they did. As he passed, he looked at them both intently, as if desirous of arresting their attention. Of course he succeeded, for his look was almost compelling. Louisa was the first to turn toward him, then Luke did likewise: and the passer-by raised his hat respectfully with a slight inclination of head and shoulders that suggested foreign upbringing.
Once more convention stepped in and Luke mechanically returned the salute.
"Who was that?" asked Louisa, when the passer-by was out of ear shot.
"I don't know," replied Luke. "I thought it was some one you knew. He bowed to you."
"No," she said, "to you, I think. Funny you should not know him."
But silence once broken, constraint fled with it. She drew nearer to Luke and once more her hand sought his coat sleeve, with a light pressure quickly withdrawn.
"Now, Luke," she said, abruptly reverting to the subject, "how do you stand in all this?"
"I?"
"Yes. What does Lord Radclyffe say?"
"He laughs the whole thing to scorn, and declares that the man is an impudent liar."
"He saw," she asked, "the first letter? The one that came from St. Vincent?"
"Yes. Mr. Warren and I did not think we ought to keep it from him."
"Of course not," she assented. "Then he said that the letter was a tissue of lies?"
"From beginning to end."
"He refused," she insisted, "to believe in the marriage of your uncle Arthur out there in Martinique?"
"He didn't go into details. He just said that the whole letter was an impudent attempt at blackmail."
"And since then?"
"He has never spoken about it."
"Until to-day?" she asked.
"He hasn't spoken," he replied, insisting on the word, "even to-day. Two or three times I think letters came for him in the same handwriting. Mr. Warren did not open them, of course, and took them straight to Uncle Rad. They always bore foreign postmarks, some from one place, some from another; but Uncle Rad never referred to them after he had read them, nor did he instruct Mr. Warren to reply. Then the letters ceased, and I began to forget the whole business. I didn't tell you, because Uncle Rad told me not to talk about the whole thing. It was beneath contempt, he said, and he didn't want the tittle-tattle to get about."
"Then," she asked, "what happened?"
"A week ago a letter came with a London postmark on it. The address and letter were both type-written, and the latter covered four sheets of paper, and was signed Philip de Mountford. Bar the actual story of the marriage and all that, the letter was almost identical to the first one which came from St. Vincent. Mr. Warren had opened it, for it looked like a business one, and he waited for me in his office to ask my opinion about it. Of course we had to give it to Uncle Rad. It had all the old phrases in it about blood being thicker than water, and about longing for friendship and companionship, and all that. There was no hint of threats or demand for money or anything like that."
"Of course not," she said. "Whilst Lord Radclyffe is alive, the young man has no claim."
"Only," he rejoined, "that of kinship."
"Lord Radclyffe need not do anything for him."
Already there was a note of hostility in Louisa's even voice. The commonplace woman was donning armour against the man who talked of usurping the loved one's privileges.
"I wish," he insisted, "that I could have got the letter from Uncle Rad to show you. It was so simple and so sensible. All he asks is just to see Uncle Rad personally, to feel that he has kindred in the world. He knows, he says, that, beyond good-will, he has no claim now. As a matter of fact, he has something more substantial than that, for Uncle Arthur had a little personal property, about fifteen thousand pounds, which he left to us four children — Jim and Frank and Edie and me, and which I for one wouldn't touch if I knew for certain that this Philip was his son."
"But," she argued, "you say that the man does not speak of money."
She hated the talk about money: for she had all that contempt for it which women have who have never felt the want of it. It would have been so simple if the intruder had only wanted money. She would not have cared a little bit if Luke had none, or was not going to have any. It was his right which she would not hear of being questioned; his right in Lord Radclyffe's affections, in his household, and also his rights in the future when Lord Radclyffe would be gone.
"You are sure," she insisted, "that he does not want money?"
"I don't think," he replied, "that he does, just now. He seems to have a little; he must have had a little, since he came over from St. Vincent and is staying at a moderately good hotel in London. No. He wants to see Uncle Rad, because he thinks that, if Uncle Rad saw him, blood would cry out in response. It appears that now he has lodged all his papers of identification with a London lawyer — a very good firm, mind you — and he wants Uncle Rad's solicitor to see all the papers and to examine them. That seems fair to me, doesn't it to you?"
"Very fair indeed," she mused.
"What I mean," he added with great conviction, "is that if those papers weren't all right, he wouldn't be so anxious for Uncle Rad's solicitors to have a look at them, would he?"
"No."
And