CHAPTER XIV.

AND RECEIVES HIS ANSWER.

Mrs. Yale gasped.

“Proposed this morning!” she repeated incredulously. “At five o’clock!”

“He called at five this morning,” said the girl, “as Martha Ann will tell you, if you have any doubts.”

“Why was I not aroused?” asked Mrs. Yale, with a sense of grievance that she had missed something.

“Because he wasn’t proposing to you,” said the girl calmly. “It was my affair entirely.”

Mrs. Yale got up from the table, a little hurt.

“I think, Yvonne,” she said, with a sort of stagey gentleness, “that you might remember my anxieties and sacrifices.”

“I do not forget them,” said her stepdaughter; “only, unfortunately, this is my anxiety and my sacrifice.”

Mrs. Yale sniffed, and searched aimlessly for her handkerchief, but thought better of it. After all, Yvonne was not the sort of girl to be moved by tears. She did not need to have this fact again impressed upon her. She was hard. The dear colonel, her father, had shown similar callousness of tears, and had laid down the perfectly dreadful theory that the more one wept the less one perspired. And indeed, he had written a paper on the subject, and had invited the Royal Society to allow him to read it--a request which was respectfully declined.

The subject of her marriage, as Yvonne had so truly said, had formed a periodic matter for argument--only unfortunately, in the present instance, it was absolutely necessary that Mrs. Yale should know where she stood.

She had hinted as much--indeed, had said as much--before; but now she could say so in very truth. The eccentric behaviour of Long Island Gas was as nothing to the monstrous conduct of an oil well in Southern Russia.

Quite a lot of Mrs. Yale’s money had gone from time to time towards the sinking of a bore hole upon what the directors invariably and carefully referred to as “The Property.”

When they wrote to Mrs. Yale they referred to themselves as “Your Directors.” It gave the good lady the comforting feeling that they were distant relations--though what satisfaction accrued to her from that, Heaven only knows.

“Your Directors,” who had started out on their career joyful and optimistic, making conservative estimate of future profits, which were beyond the dreams of avarice, had grown rather gloomy of late. “Your Directors” had been probing the bowels of the earth without any great profit to themselves, and apparently without any great inconvenience to the earth. The oil, in its furtive, sneaking way, seemed to have got wind of “Your Directors’” intentions, and moved off to a neighbouring oil field.

“Your Directors”--sharp and cunning fellows--were not to be evaded. They purchased the neighbouring oil field, and told Mrs. Yale, by private letter, that the prospects were of the brightest, and they hoped soon to make a definite statement.

After six months they made a definite statement--but the prospects were no longer of the brightest. The oil, in a panic, had retired some thirty versts.

“Your Directors” were considering their position. Mrs. Yale was impressed by the whole-hearted devotion of “Your Directors” to her interests, and the employment of the blessed word “versts” brightened her up. After all, it looked as if there was a mine somewhere, and undoubtedly it was in a foreign country where “miles” had a special name of their own, and so many other extraordinary things happened.

In one way or another, as a result of poetic folders and disinterested advice from Mr. Macdougal and other outside brokers with names reminiscent of the Old Testament, Mrs. Yale had lost some eight hundred pounds; not a considerable sum to most of the people who lived in Upper Curzon Street, and not one to bother even a woman circumstanced as Mrs. Yale was--the morning after the loss.

Yvonne knew nothing of her stepmother’s folly, or she would have worried much more than did Mrs. Yale. As a matter of fact, that amiable lady did not greatly distress herself. She was obsessed with the idea that she was a born financier. She adjusted things. She had learnt the financier’s trick--which is, not to borrow from Peter to pay Paul, but to borrow from Peter, pay half of Paul’s demands, and utilise the other half for playing margin on sure enough stock.

In this way the debt both to Peter and Paul may be discharged with a bit of luck, and anyway Paul has had something on account.

Mrs. Yale spent the day shopping pleasantly; Yvonne dreamt away the hours in reverie. She thought of Talham, that first meeting in the park, the adventures that followed her parting with the jade bracelet, and all he had said that morning. She acted on a sudden impulse and sent him a wire.

So the day wore on, bringing Mrs. Yale back from her precious bargain sales, weary but triumphant, and the possessor of many articles for which she had no particular use, but which were undeniably cheap.

Just before dinner the second visitor was announced.

Yvonne read the card and frowned. “Mr. Raymond de Costa,” said the pasteboard elaborately. He had called for an answer to his letter.

It was not the hour that visitors usually called, unless they were invited to dinner, and, as Martha Ann can testify, the dinner that night was of significant frugality. Mrs. Yale, dining alone (and it was tantamount to dining alone when she had no other companion at the table but her stepdaughter), was an exponent of the simple life.

Martha Ann ushered the visitor into the drawing-room, then flew to find Mrs. Yale, to warn her that three chops and a pint of dessicated soup was very poor preparation for a dinner-party, if it were to include Mr. de Costa.

Yvonne was dressing, but came down within a few minutes of his arrival. The old man rose and favoured her with a bow as she came in.

“I have called for your answer, Miss Yale,” said De Costa.

“I have no answer to give you now, that I was not prepared to give you yesterday,” said the girl, quietly. “I could not, even if I knew, put you in possession of the information you require.”

De Costa shrugged his shoulders.

“It means such a lot to you,” he said, “and to your mother. I am sure she would persuade you----”

“My mother could not persuade me to do anything I thought was dishonourable and unworthy,” she replied, with a note of hauteur in her voice.

“You know the consequences?” asked the old man.

“I know what you threaten,” said the girl, steadily. “That you will have Captain Talham arrested, and that you will subpœna me, and force me to tell you what was inscribed on the bracelet.”

The old man nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “that is my intention. You can save your friend a lot of trouble, and save me a great deal of inconvenience, by telling me all you know.”

She was silent.

“By hook or by crook, I am going to learn what you have to tell,” said De Costa savagely. “This man has done me a grievous wrong, and I intend repaying myself for all the inconvenience to which he has put me, and for all the money which I have lost as a result of his act of theft. The bracelet was not yours; it is not his.”

“There is no Court of Law in England that would force me to say what I did not wish to say,” she said firmly. “Legally--however unfortunate it was your son should have given it to me--it was mine. It is now out of my hands. I cannot tell you anything about it without Captain Talham’s permission.”

De Costa shrugged.

“Your refusal to answer will be accepted as an answer unfavourable to the prisoner. If you lie, the judges and the jury will know.”

“Have no fear,” she said haughtily. “I shall not say anything which is not true.”

It was at that tense moment that Mrs. Yale came in. She boasted her ability to take in a situation at a glance. Now she sought to justify that boast.

“Ah!” she said pleasantly, with a genial smile which comprehended both the old man and her stepdaughter. “I see you have succeeded in persuading my obstinate daughter.”

“I have not yet, madam,” said De Costa, putting on his mask of courtesy. “I do not doubt we shall succeed eventually,” he added, with a smile. “I have had to take a very serious line with Miss Yale, and I know that you will support me in my action.”

“You may be sure, Mr. de Costa,” said the lady fervently, “that whatever action you take you have the approval of one who is not only a fond and doting mother, but is also sufficiently a woman of the world to realise the disinterestedness of your action.”

It was a speech almost worthy of Talham. She turned to the girl.

“Yvonne,” she said, with proper sadness, “I have never yet exercised that authority which my position and my age and the regard in which I was held by that hero who has long since carried his sword to Heaven”--she dabbed her eyes automatically--“entitles me. Yet I feel,” she said firmly, as she drew herself erect as a queen-mother would draw herself erect, “that I must, in this present instance, insist upon your taking a certain line of conduct--a line of conduct which will be beneficial to us all, and which will be creditable and worthy of the name you bear. Mr. de Costa has honoured me with his confidence.”

There was a little exchange of bows between the two.

“He has told me what steps he would take in certain eventualities. For the honour of the house----!” She laid her hand with dramatic effect on the girl’s shoulder.

Yvonne heaved a deep sigh. She put up her hand and took that of her mother’s. It was not so much to demonstrate her affection as to relieve an intolerable, melodramatic situation.

“There is no profit in talking to me like that, mother,” she said quietly. “You do not help me or help Mr. de Costa. The honour of the house, you may be sure, is safely in my keeping,” she said, with her little chin tilted upward proudly. “It is indeed more in my keeping than it is in yours.”

“But think of the court; think of the newspapers!” wailed Mrs. Yale. “Think of the scandal!”

“I have thought of all that,” said Yvonne with a little smile. “I do not relish the prospect any more than you. If Mr. de Costa does this disgraceful thing,” she shrugged her shoulders, “what else can I do but endure? Under any circumstances”--she faced the old man squarely--“I will not tell you what I know about Captain Talham’s plans.”

The opposition he was encountering had fanned the fury of the old man to a white heat of rage. The veins in his forehead were swelling, his voice trembled when he addressed her:

“I will know!” he said. “I will know what that bracelet said. If you don’t tell me I’ll find a way----”

He stopped suddenly, and looked over the girl’s shoulder at the doorway, his mouth open, his eyes staring, for Talham had brushed aside the agitated Martha Ann, and had stood there, unannounced, for quite a minute.

The girl, following the direction of the old man’s eyes, looked round. Her face went pink and white, her hands clasped and unclasped about her crumpled handkerchief.

He came forward with his shoulders bent a little forward, his eyes peering from left to right, a trick of his when he was facing a peril, the extent of which he did not know.

“I thought I heard my name mentioned,” he said softly. “I intrude for the second time this day, but I come to take farewell----”

He did not directly address Yvonne, nor did he look at her.

Whatever faults the old man De Costa had, cowardice was not one of them.

“I mentioned your name,” he said loudly, “and I am telling you now, Captain Talham, what I have told this young lady: that if you restore that bracelet which you have purloined, I am prepared to take no further action; but otherwise, I shall apply for a warrant for your arrest.”

It was, of course, the maddest kind of bluff to put on a man of Talham’s calibre.

“Indeed!”

Talham was monstrously polite. The girl’s eyes were fixed on him, and her face was a little drawn with anxiety. He smiled at her, an encouraging and an understanding smile.

“We are under the impression,” he said regally, “that you have already applied for the warrant, but that the authorities have refused to supply you with the necessary instrument to remove us. As for the bracelet”--he smiled again--“we are prepared, at this moment, to tell you exactly the wording on that extraordinary ornament; but alas! it is in the hands of our excellent friend Tillizinni.”

There was an awkward pause. The old man made as if to go.

“You shall hear again from me, Captain Talham,” he breathed. “Although I admit the warrant has not been granted, yet in a day or two the necessary affidavits will be received from China.”

“We shall be ready to answer any charge you may bring against us,” said Talham, “and we would remark that it is no part of our desire to shrink from the ordeal of a public trial. We have supreme and complete faith in the justice of our cause, and we do not shrink from the judgment of our peers.”

Evidently De Costa was not anxious to hear the conclusion of the speech. He had long left the room before Talham reached his peroration, which he had so skilfully and adroitly adjusted as to render the presence of the other unnecessary to its dramatic effect.

The girl listened with patience which was beyond praise, though her mind and her heart were in a ferment, and though every moment’s delay was torture to her.

As for Mrs. Yale, that wonderful and adaptable woman, she became the sole audience, as far as Talham was concerned. It was she who supplied the murmured applause, who agreed with the deductions he made and the inferences he assumed, though they were tolerably incomprehensible to her. She sat with the proud and happy smile of the well-tested friend who had seen her loyalty vindicated.

At last Talham’s address came to an end.

“I want to see you alone,” said Yvonne.

There was hardly a break between his last words and her request, so quick she was to take advantage of the silence.

“I have to explain why I wired to you,” she said.

Mrs. Yale tiptoed from the room with ostentatious discretion.

“I wired to you,” said the girl at last, “because I wanted to see you.”

He nodded.

“These people weren’t worrying you, were they?” he asked; “because you need not----”

“I know!” she said hastily. “I know! But I’m afraid of what they will do; that they will force me to go out as witness against you. But I will never tell,” she said. “Never! never!”

Talham was looking at her in perturbation. It was a new Yvonne Yale he saw; such a one as he had never dreamt of. She took his breath away; he felt himself shaking from head to foot, and at that moment he cursed what he thought was a recurrence of malarial fever. But there was no malarial germ in Talham’s veins at that moment. There was something within her that spoke to him, some message which went out in vibrant waves and shook the very centre of life within him.

For the first time in his life, Talham was speechless. He could say nothing; his tongue refused its duty, and Yvonne Yale was in no better case. For her throat had gone dry and husky; it sounded queerly hoarse when she spoke, and she was short of breath, though she had made no recent or unusual exertion.

“Captain Talham,” she managed to say, “I wanted to tell you something.… That is why I sent for you. It is a very extraordinary thing I want to say. Suppose they arrest you?”

He shook his head. Even that possibility did not lend him words.

“Suppose they arrest you,” she went on in her new, breathless way, with her eyes shining and moist, and her lips parted because of the very physical discomfort of breathing. “Suppose they ask me to go into the witness-box to testify against you… there is a law in England, do you know it--that no--no----”

Again she stopped; the words were so difficult and so impossible.

“There is a law in England,” she went on again, “that a wife cannot testify against her husband.”

The last words were in a whisper.

For a moment their eyes met. He held them for a breathing space----