Chapter 33

GONE

“DEAR JOAN,

“I daresay you will wonder at not having heard from me for so long, but I have been busy. Things have been going from bad to worse with me of late, and I have been obliged to give up the old offices in Gracebury. I often think of the days when we were so much together, as I daresay you do. Naturally I miss you, and naturally I want to see you again. I feel that you seemed to have some objection to my coming to your house. That being so, I wish to consult your wishes in every way, and so I am writing to suggest that you meet me to-morrow, that is Saturday night, on the Little Langbourne Road. I daresay you will wonder why I am so familiar with your neighbourhood, but to tell you the truth I am naturally so interested in you that I have been down quietly several times—motoring, just to look round and hear news of you from local gossip, which is always amusing. I have heard of your engagement, of course, and I am interested; but we will talk of that when we meet—to-morrow night at the gate leading into the field where the big ruined barn stands, about half a mile out of Starden on the Little Langbourne Road at nine o’clock. This is definite and precise, isn’t it? It will then be dark enough for you to be unobserved, and you will come. I am sure you will come. You would not anger and pain an old friend by refusing.

“I hear that the happy man is a sort of gentleman farmer who lives at Buddesby in Little Langbourne. If by any chance I should fail to see you at the place of meeting, I shall put up at Little Langbourne, and shall probably make the acquaintance of Mr. John Everard.

“Believe me, “Your friend, “PHILIP SLOTMAN.”

It was a letter that all the world might read, and see no deep and hidden meaning behind it, but Joan knew better. She read threat and menace in every line. The man threatened that if she did not keep this appointment he would go to Langbourne and find John Everard, and then into John Everard’s ears he would pour out his poisoned, lying, slanderous story.

Better a thousand times that she herself should go to Johnny and tell him the whole truth, hiding nothing. Yet she knew that she could not do that; her pride forbade. If she loved him—then it would be different. She could go to him, she could tell him everything, laying bare her soul, just because she loved him. But she did not love him. She liked him, she admired him, she honoured him; but she did not love him, and in her innermost heart she knew why she did not love Johnny Everard, and never would.

But the letter had come, the threat was here. What could she do? to whom turn? And then she remembered that hard by her own gate was a man, the man to whom she owed all this, all her troubles and all her annoyance and shame, but a man who would fight for and protect and stand by her. Her heart swelled, the tears gathered for a moment in her eyes.

He had not answered the letter she had sent him a couple of days ago. She had looked for an answer, and had felt disappointed at not receiving one, though she had told herself that she expected none.

For long Joan hesitated, pride fighting against her desire for help and support. But pride gave way; she felt terribly lonely, even though she was soon to be married to a man who loved her. To that man ought she to turn, yet she did not, and hardly even gave it a thought. She had made no false pretences to Johnny Everard. She had told him frankly that she did not love him, yet that if he were willing to take her without love, she would go to him.

So now, having decided what she would do, Joan went to her room to write a letter to the man she must turn to, the man who had the right to help her. She flushed as the words brought another memory into her mind; the flush ran from brow to chin, for back into her mind came the words the man had uttered. Strange it was how her mind treasured up almost all that he had ever said to her.

_“You gave me that right, Joan, when you gave me your heart!”_

That was what he had said, and she would never forget, because she knew—that it was true.

She went to her own room, where was her private writing-table. She found the room in the hands of a maid dusting and sweeping.

“You need not go, Alice,” she said. “I am only going to write a letter.” The girl went on with her work.

“I did not think to appeal to you, yet I find I must appeal for help that I know you will give, because but for you I should not need it. I—”

She paused.

“Funny, miss, Mrs. Bonner’s lodger going off like that in such a hurry, wasn’t it?” said the girl on her knees beside the hearth.

Joan started. “What do you mean, Alice?”

“The gentleman you gave our Bob a letter for—Mr. Alston,” said Alice Betts. “Funny his going off like he did in such a hurry.”

“Then you—you mean he is gone?”

“Thursday night, miss.”

Gone! A feeling of desolation and helplessness swept over Joan.

Gone when she had counted so on his help! She remembered what she had written: “I ask you earnestly to leave Starden,” and he had obeyed her. It was her own fault; she had driven him away, and now she needed him.

The girl was watching her out of the corner of her small black eyes. She saw Joan tear up the letter she had commenced to write.

“It was to him, she didn’t know he had gone,” Alice Betts thought, and Alice Betts was right.

Mr. Philip Slotman had fallen on evil days, yet Mr. Philip Slotman’s wardrobe of excellent and tasteful clothes was so large and varied that poverty was not likely to affect his appearance for a long time to come.

Presumably also his stock of cigars was large, for leaning against the gate beside the tumble-down barn he was drowning the clean smell of the earth and the night with the more insinuating and somewhat sickly smell of a fine Havannah.

Some way down the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, stood a large shabby car drawn up against a hedge, and in that car dozed a chauffeur.

Mr. Slotman took out his watch and looked at it in the dim light.

It was past nine, and he muttered an oath under his breath.

“She won’t be such a fool as not to come now that fellow’s gone!” he thought, and he was right, for a few moments later she was there.

“So you did come?”

“I am here,” Joan said quietly. “You wish to speak to me?”

“Don’t be so confoundedly hold-off! Aren’t you going to shake hands?”

“Certainly not!”

“Oh, very well!” he snarled. “Don’t then. Still putting on your airs, my lady!”

“I am here to hear anything you wish to say to me. Any threats that you have to make, any bargain that you wish to propose. I thought when I paid you that money—”

“That money’s gone; it went in a few hours.”

He felt savagely angry at her calmness, at her pride and superiority. Why, knowing what he knew, she ought to be pretty well on her knees to him.

“Please tell me what you wish to see me about and let me go. It is money, of course?”

Her voice was level, filled with scorn and utter contempt, and it made the man writhe in helpless fury.

“Look here, stow that!” he said coarsely. “Don’t ride the high horse with me. Remember I know you, know all about you. I know who you are and what you are, and—and don’t—don’t”—he was stuttering and stammering in his rage—“don’t think you can put me in my place, because you can’t!”

Joan did not answer.

“If I want money I’ve got a right to ask for it! And I do. I’ve got something to sell, ain’t I?—knowledge and silence. And silence is worth a lot, my girl, when a woman’s engaged to be married, and when there’s things in her past she don’t care about people knowing of. Yes, Miss Joan Meredyth, my lady clerk on three quid a week was one person, but Miss Meredyth of Starden Hall, engaged to be married to Mr. John Everard of Buddesby, is another, ain’t she?”

“Please say what you have to say,” she said coldly. “I do not wish to stay here with you.”

“But you are going to,” he said. “You are going to!” He reached out suddenly and gripped her hand. He had expected that she might struggle; it would have been human if she had, but she didn’t.

“Please release my hand,” she said coldly. “I do not wish to stay here with you!” She paused. “Tell me why you wish to see me!”

He dropped her hand with a snarling oath.

“Well, if you want to know, it is money, and this time it is good money. I am up against it, and I’ve got to have money. I’ve been down here several times, hunting round, listening to things, hearing things. I heard about your engagement. I have heard about you. Oh, everyone looks up to you round here—Miss Meredyth of Starden!” He laughed. “And it is going to pay Miss Meredyth of Starden to shut my mouth, ain’t it? June, nineteen eighteen, ain’t so long ago, is it? Mr. Hugh Alston—hang him!—you set him on to me, didn’t you?”

“So you have seen him?”

“I saw him, curse him! He came and—and—”

“Thrashed you?” Joan asked quietly “I thought he might!”

“Stop it! Stop your infernal airs!” he almost shouted. “I am here for money, and I want it, and mean to have it—five thousand this time!”

“I shall not pay you!”

“Oh, you won’t—you won’t! Then I go to Buddesby. I’ll have a little chat there. I’ll tell them a few things about Marlbury and about a trip to Australia that did not come off, and about a marriage that never took place. I’ve got quite a lot to chat about at Buddesby, and I shan’t be done when I’m through there either. There’s a nice little inn in Starden, isn’t there? If one talked much there it would soon get about the place!”

Under cover of the darkness her cheeks flamed, but her voice was still as cold and as steady as before.

“Have you ever considered,” she asked quietly, “that what you think you know, may not be true?”

“It is true! And if it isn’t true, it is good enough for me; but it is true!”

“It is not!”

He laughed. “It is—at any rate I think so, and others’ll think so. It’ll want a lot of explaining away, Joan, won’t it? if even it isn’t true. But I know better. Well, what about it—about the money?”

“I shall consider,” she said quietly. “I paid you before, blackmail! If I asked you if this was the final payment, and you said Yes. I know that I need not believe you, so—so I shall consider. I shall take time to think it over.”

“Oh, you will?”

“Yes!”

Down the road came a cart. It lumbered along slowly, the carter trudging at the horse’s head. Slotman looked at the slow-coming figure and cursed under his breath.

“When shall I hear?”

“I shall think it over, decide how I shall act, whether I shall pay you this money or not,” she said. “In a few days, this day week, not before.” She turned away.

“And—and if I go to Buddesby and get talking?”

“Then of course I pay you nothing!” she said calmly.

That was true. Slotman gritted his teeth. Two minutes later the carter trudging on his way passed a solitary man smoking by a gate, and far down the road a woman walked quickly towards Starden.