CHAPTER XXIX

THE LOST HEIRLOOM

IN the gallery stood Phyllys, gazing at a vacant space once occupied by an ancestral portrait. She knew the spot, though during a former visit her attention had not been drawn to it. Colin, under pressure of modelling, had failed to take her round. Then had come her summons home, with the discovery that the picture had vanished.

She hardly wondered that the loss had not been more quickly found out. The oak-panelled wall was so dark, the pictures around so resembled it in tint, the corner itself was so much in shade,—that the disappearance might easily go unnoticed. As she thus cogitated, a step made her turn.

"Fine afternoon," remarked Mr. Dugdale. "Kathleen wants you for a drive. She will call at half-past three."

He was cool, neat, precise as always, but in his face was a glimmer of something not often visible. He liked Phyllys as he liked few; partly for her own sake, partly for her father's.

"Swiss trip cut short in a hurry," was his next remark. "How came that about?"

"Mrs. Keith did not care to stay longer."

"So I hear. Can't discover any reason."

"I don't know why it was. She seemed upset—and one day she had a fainting-fit."

"Real?"—with a glance.

"Yes, quite real."

"She's given to nervous attacks," as if in apology.

Phyllys looked towards the corner. "That picture has never been found!"

"No. Extraordinary!" and he knitted his brows.

"But if the thief took it—"

Mr. Dugdale raised his eyebrows.

"Humbug!"

"You don't think it was a thief?"

He glanced round to see that they were alone, and lowered his voice. "That's all humbug. No more a thief than I am. I'd wager a hundred pounds it is Mrs. Keith's own doing. Don't repeat what I say. There 'd be no end of a rumpus."

Phyllys was startled, despite her own suspicions. "But why? What could make her?"

"Mrs. Keith has done many things for which reasons are hard to find. Odd woman—always was! Never could conceive what made Giles' father give him into her charge. Must have been demented."

"'She' must?" inquiringly.

He gave a short laugh. "I meant Giles' father. But she—well, you are not far out there."

"She has been a good mother to Giles."

"Taken care of his health. As for the lads' moral training, it's a marvel to me how they have turned out so well. Precept enough! But as for example!"

"What was the picture like?" asked Phyllys. She had often wished for an opportunity to ask this.

"Young fellow, in the dress of two hundred years ago. Pleasant face—blue eyes—look of Colin. That is why she has hidden it—if she has, which I, for one, don't doubt. Can't say this to Colin or Giles. I'm telling you in confidence." There was in Mr. Dugdale a feminine element, apparent at this moment.

Phyllys assented. He seemed to be describing the hidden oil-painting—the likeness of Mrs. Keith's brother.

"Why should she mind its being like Colin?"

"No accounting for feminine vagaries. But in this case a clue does exist. She has always set herself against Colin's modelling—no reason!—it's like the schoolboys and Dr. Fell. Since things are so, she detests being told that Colin is like the young fellow in the portrait, simply because 'he' was a sculptor—and a successful one in his day, though not of lasting fame. Which accounts for the resemblance—not so much feature as expression."

"The spirit of sculpture in both," suggested Phyllys.

"That may be! However, years ago she made up her mind that Colin should not model; and, having made up her mind, she sticks to it like a leech. Therefore, anything that encourages him in his love of sculpture she hates like poison. Consequently, when she detected a growing likeness, she banished the portrait from the drawing-room. Then, finding attention drawn to the resemblance, she made away with it. Bless you—no!—even she wouldn't venture to destroy it. But I haven't a doubt—not a doubt!—she's got it somewhere under lock and key. And what is more, I'm certain Giles suspects the same—which is why he refuses to have the police."

"Doesn't he want it found?"

"He doesn't want his private affairs to be the talk of the county. Mind, he says nothing. All this is conjecture. I'm telling you because—" and a pause—"I think you ought to know; and you might have influence with Mrs. Keith." His look said, "You know something already."

Phyllys admired his astuteness, but felt herself powerless. "It seems such an extraordinary thing," she said. "A picture belonging to somebody else."

Mr. Dugdale tapped his forehead with a forefinger.

"Is she—really?"

"That is my theory again. Nothing else explains."

"Explains—?"

"The muddle she makes of life. The way in which she snubs her own son, and fawns on Giles. The fact that not a word she says can be relied on. There's a moral twist in her. She will contradict herself a dozen times a day, if it suits her purpose. All the same, she knows what she is about. She's the oddest mixture I ever came across of cleverness and—really one might almost call it semi-insanity. Only there is method in the madness."

"What sort of man is her brother?"

"Jock Reeves? Never saw him. Rather a scamp, I imagine, in his youth—banished to Australia—family pleased to get him out of the way. So Mrs. Keith says. 'Dear Jock' she calls him. Never seems to write to 'dear Jock,' or to hear from him; and not the smallest anxiety to get him home."

"Have you seen a likeness of him?" Phyllys was picturing still the hidden portrait, declared by Mrs. Keith to represent her brother in theatricals.

"Good while ago. Big-made, substantial fellow, rather jolly-looking—not Mrs. Keith's style."

Giles approached in time for the last words, and Phyllys said, "We are talking about Mrs. Keith's brother. Did you ever see him?"

"Just before he went out. I remember a big man, as Mr. Dugdale says, with a hearty laugh. Very jolly, and good to us little fellows."

"Not at all Colin's style!" thought Phyllys.

She pondered much that afternoon and evening on the enigmatical ways of Mrs. Keith.

That the hidden portrait was the lost heirloom it was impossible longer to doubt,—that it was "not," as professed by Mrs. Keith, the likeness of her only brother, but of a young sculptor, ancestor to Giles, who had lived two centuries earlier, and whose gift, resembling that of Colin, had apparently developed in him something of the same type of features and expression. Mrs. Keith's extreme dislike to the resemblance arose, doubtless, from her aversion to sculpture as a pursuit for her son. An illogical aversion, yet very real. Unreasonableness seemed in her to be a leading characteristic; perhaps connected with that touch of brain-weakness which Phyllys had begun to suspect, and of which Mr. Dugdale spoke frankly.

"A kind of brain-oddity!" decided Phyllys. "But what shoals of lies she has told!"

Then a rebound. In past days Phyllys had been weary of the little Midfell home. She had found Barbara unendurable, had craved escape from Mrs. Wyverne's narrow judgments. Now, in fuller understanding of Mrs. Keith, her mind leaped back to the grandmother, with a sense of repose in that strong solid goodness, in the certainty that she need never fear there to find aught of exaggeration, double meaning, falsity. She recalled, with loving respect, Mrs. Wyverne's sturdy truth and religious devotion—a devotion lived out in daily life, marred by no such terrible inconsistencies. Mrs. Keith made a show of religion, but did not live up to it.

At this juncture, the girl could almost have exclaimed, "Let me go back to the old life, with its limitations, and its reality!"

But other elements existed. She could never again live the old life as in the past. In many ways she had expanded beyond it. She might meet its limitations more patiently, because able to value more truly what it held of real worth; yet those limitations, the spirit of narrowness, the contracted outlook, would try her more severely than of old.

And—there was Giles! She could not put Giles aside.

Needless that she should, she told herself, smiling. Giles had his faults, but he was true! There was in his character a rock-like stability, good to lean upon. She recalled the grasp of his hand, as he drew her from the bog, and she recognised that grip to be symbolical of the strong upholding which might, perhaps, be hers for life should she one day give herself to him.

Midfell village with all its simplicity, the kind old grandmother with all her honesty and goodness, could not satisfy her deeper needs. Giles only was able, she whispered to herself.

And she hardly yet realised, though in a manner she had begun to know, that the deepest needs of her nature not even Giles could satisfy.

When she went to bed she considered all this over again, arriving at the same conclusions with respect to Giles; and dismissing Mrs. Keith as hopelessly eccentric. It was useless to try to understand her. What a mercy Colin had not grown-up like his mother!

She was dropping asleep, letting entanglements glide away. Giles' face came up, and she smiled. Then she forgot herself, and came to, and floated off again, when, like a flash of lightning, an extraordinary conjecture seized her.

It was a conjecture so vivid, so startling, so far-reaching, that in a moment she was wide awake, sitting up in bed.

"Nonsense! Nonsense!" she said aloud.

But the possibility grew. It laid hold upon her imagination. Looking back, she saw scene after scene, heard utterance after utterance, more or less perplexing at the time—all now met, unravelled, explained, by this scathing suggestion—all lending support to it!

"No, no, 'no!'" she said. "I'll never let myself think such a thing again! It's out of the question."

The resolve was powerless. She could not stop thinking. Again and again that dread possibility leapt up, and "would" be faced, "would" assert itself. It cast a lurid light on past, present, future! It made perplexities clear. It set her head whirling.

It could not be. It was too madly impossible. She said these words over and over, but they had no force. She could not divest herself of a growing belief that things were so. And yet, to imagine that she alone should see, that everybody else had been blind! Preposterous!

She tried to laugh. "It's a nightmare! I'll go to sleep and forget!"

But sleep had fled.