The Secret of the Silver Car by Wyndham Martyn (best classic romance novels txt) 📕

“Apparently,” said Grenvil, “it was the only decent thing I did during those dreadful forgotten years. If you knew the agony of not knowing what I did and dreading every day to learn something more of my career you’d pity me. I couldn’t meet Castoon. They say I was a sort of secretary to him for six months—but he had to send me away. All I remember of lotu is that he was my father’s private secretary when he was a small boy of ten and my father ambassador at Constantinople. I’m afraid to see any of the people who come here.”

“That will pass,” Trent said reassuringly, “you’ll get a grip on yourself as your health improves.”

“That’s what Daphne says,” Arthur answered, “Isn’t she splendid?”

“Indeed she is,” Trent said not daring to put the fervor in his voice that he felt. There was almost an uncanny feeling in talking with this new Arthur Grenvil. As a judge of men, and as a man who had met a great number of criminals and could estimate them accurately, Trent had known even in the darkness of the dug-out that Private William Smith was bad.

Despite the absence of coarseness from the speech of the unseen man Trent had felt that he was evil and dangerous, a man to watch carefully. And this same man stripped of his mantle of black deeds was now sitting talking to him with the deferential a the junior listening with respect to his superior in years and his superior in knowledge.

What a role for Anthony Trent, master criminal! But he played it as well as any of the parts he had set himself to enact. He became the elder brother, the sage counsellor, the arbiter, the physical trainer and the constant companion. In the beginning he cheerfully set out to play the part in order to win Daphne’s approval. Later he really liked Arthur. He taught him to drive the high-powered Lion car that was seldom used by the earl’s chauffeurs and discovered in him an aptitude for Mechanics which delighted his father.

“You have done more for my son than I imagined could be done by anyone,” Lord Rosecarrel said gratefully.

“I owe him no small debt,” Anthony Trent retorted, “and it’s a very pleasant way of trying to pay it.”

It was not often that he saw the earl. Occasionally they played a game of billiards after dinner but the elder man was constantly occupied with reading when he was not aboard his boat. Since he had come to Cornwall, Trent had discovered what an important personage Lord Rosecarrel had been in the political life of his country until his sudden resignation a year before the war. Every now and then Trent would see regret expressed in a London paper or weekly review that he would not place his vast knowledge of the near East at his country’s disposal.

There was still considerable trouble centering about the Balkans; and since the earl had been minister or ambassador at Belgrade, Bucharest and Constantinople he knew the country as few could hope to do without his experience.

The prime minister himself, snatching a few days of golf at Newquay, motored over to the castle to lunch and asked his host personally to come from his retirement. It happened that Trent was lunching at the castle and heard the earl’s decision not to leave private life. There was an incident in connection with this which made a furious impression on the American.

When he had declined to represent his country finally, Lord Rosecarrel looked over the table at his son who was talking gaily and did not observe the glance. It was a look almost of hate that the earl flashed at him. Then it passed and was succeeded by the melancholy which the old aristocrat’s face habitually wore. Trent was certain none had seen but he and he had never seen an evidence of it before.

He reflected that Arthur was never wholly at ease in his father’s company. Again and again he had caught a certain shamed look when the earl was speaking. Of course it was the knowledge of how in the forgotten years he had disgraced an honored name. That was understandable. But why should the father who knew all and had forgiven suddenly throw this look of hate over the table at the unconscious son?

“Arthur,” said Trent one day to Lady Daphne, “looks as if he were still begging forgiveness. Why?”

“It must be fancy on your part,” she said and changed the subject instantly.

He supposed it was some other skeleton, from that full closet, whose rattling bones had not been buried yet. There was something which still rankled in the earl’s memory. He knew he would never find its origin from Daphne.

His intimacy with the Grenvils began to alarm him. It was a fellowship which would sooner or later come to an end. He was utterly without vanity when it came to his relationship with Lady Daphne; but his love for her gave him such an insight and sympathy with her that he could not but be conscious that of late a softer mood had come to her when they were alone together.

He knew that she looked for his presence where before she had been indifferent. Sometimes when they touched hands at parting there was the faint, lingering hold which said more than looks or spoken words. It distressed him to hear that she had defended him valiantly when the wife of a nearby landowner had referred to him as an American adventurer and fortune hunter. Daphne had sprung to his rescue in a flash. Half the country gossiped about it. It was very loyal of her, he felt, but also very unwise.

The earl had heard of it and was displeased. But he trusted his daughter and Trent was working amazing changes with Arthur. It was only when the prime minister spoke of the American that Lord Rosecarrel knew he must not ignore the thing any longer.

“And who is the good looking lad upon whose words your daughter hangs?”

“A delightful fellow,” the earl said, “I don’t know what Arthur would have done without him. He is reconstructing the poor boy.”

And indeed the earl was fond of the stranger. But his daughter must marry into her own station in life. His other girl’s home was in France and he wanted Daphne to remain in England. It occurred to him as very strange that he had made so few inquiries into Trent’s antecedents. He supposed it was the man’s personal charm and the fact that he was himself not in good health that had allowed him to be careless. One day at a dinner that came in the week after the prime minister’s visit, a dinner to which Trent alone was bidden, he said:

“We shall miss you very much when you have to go, Mr. Trent, but I suppose your affairs in America call you imperatively.”

Anthony Trent made no answer for the moment. It was as though sentence of death had been passed upon him. He could only admit that this was the logical if long-delayed end to the pleasantest days of his life. He had brought it on himself by his own weakness. For all his strength he was in some ways deplorably weak. He had been weak to leave the ways of honest men. Primarily he had none of those grudges against organized society which drive some men to crime. He had fallen because he was tired of narrow ways of life and a toil which offered few high rewards.

And, more than all, he had been weak in that he had encouraged an intimacy with a family of this type. The Lady Daphne was not for him. He called to mind a phrase that Miss Barham had said about Castoon at this very table. She had said there was nothing financially shady about him which might prevent marriage between him and Daphne. No matter how much Anthony Trent sought to deceive himself about his way of crime and comfort himself with the reflection he never despoiled the poor or worthy but inevitably set himself against the rich and undeserving, he knew he stood condemned in the eyes of decent men and women. He was aware that Daphne and Arthur were listening for his answer. Daphne’s face was white.

“I shall miss you all, sir,” he said, “more than I can say.”

“You are not really going?” Arthur cried.

“I must,” he said. “My affairs at home need looking after and I have lingered on here forgetting everything.”

Lady Daphne said nothing. He did not dare to look at her. He knew she was thinking that but for her father’s mention of his leaving she might not have known until he chose to tell; and he had told another first.

Because he was grateful that Trent had been quick to take the hint the Earl of Rosecarrel was particularly gracious to his guest and proposed a game of billiards.

It was while the old nobleman was making a break that Daphne dropped into a chair at Trent’s side.

“Are you really going?” she asked.

“I ought never to have stayed so long,” he answered.

“Do you want to go?”

“You know I don’t,” he said passionately.

“And is your business so important?” ‘

“Wait,” he said rising to his feet when his opponent had finished a break of fifty-three. “It’s my turn.”

“I have never,” said the earl, chalking his cue, “seen you miss that particular shot before.”

Anthony Trent came to the girl’s side.

“We can’t talk here,” he whispered. “The hounds meet at Michaelstowe tomorrow and draw the Trenewth covers. Will you be out?”

“Yes,” she said, “but what chance shall we have to talk there?”

“We can lose the field,” he said, “and ride back

over the moors alone.”

Arthur Grenvil had taken the mastership of the North Cornwall Foxhounds and persuaded Trent to follow them. The American had added a couple of better-bred faster horses to his hack and now enjoyed the gallop after a fox as much as any hardened fox-hunter of them all.

A fox was discovered almost immediately when

the Trenewth covers were drawn and got well away making in a westerly direction for the Wadebridge road. Daphne and Trent made a pretense of following but soon drew apart from the rest. The music of hounds became fainter and they turned back to the moors.

“You might have told me,” she said reproachfully.

“I didn’t know,” he answered, “I only realized when your father spoke that it was more or less a command.”

“My father may be the lord-lieutenant of the county,” she said, “but he has no power to send a man away if the man doesn’t want to go.”

“Can you think I want to go?” he demanded.

“I only know you are not going to stay.”

She touched her horse lightly on the shoulder and put him to a canter. Trent saw that she was heading for Rough Tor, one of the two mountains guarding the moorlands. Once or twice they had ridden to its rocky top and looked at the hamlets through whose chimneys the peat smoke rose, and those strange hut circles of a prehistoric people. The path along which she went was too narrow to permit him to ride by her side and he was forced to ride in silence for almost an hour.

When she dismounted at Rough Tor and he tethered the horses to a short wind shorn tree he could see she was not the same cheerful girl of yesterday.

“Why did you stay here so long?” she asked presently.

“Because I love you,” he answered.

“Why do you go away?”

“Because I love you better than I knew.”