CHAPTER FIVE

He had always felt curious on the subject of Stormont’s business, one which evidently brought him in a large income, for how otherwise could he have maintained the upkeep of such an expensive place as Effington. It was strange, too, that the man had never made any allusion to it himself, more especially as he did not appear to be of a reticent or secretive nature. With the majority of persons it is not necessary to know them for very long before they let drop something that proclaims their occupation.

He had told the Stormonts all about himself on the occasion of his second meeting with them at Brighton, without any reserve. If he had foregathered more intimately with them at Nice, he would have told them then. Even with such a very reticent man as Craig, you could not have been in his society for a few hours without learning that he was a member of the diplomatic corps. It certainly was odd that Stormont never dropped a remark that enabled you to fix his occupation. He occasionally spoke of himself as a business man, and that was all.

To carry on any sort of business, he must have an office or offices somewhere, and presumably they were in London. But Stormont had never given him the address. Only once, when they had travelled together up to London and parted at Waterloo, he had mentioned that he was bound for the City, a sufficiently vague definition.

Those words he had overheard uttered by the man Whitehouse aggravated the curiosity he had for long felt on the subject since he had become so intimately acquainted with the family.

Very delicately he questioned Gloria as they proceeded with their game in the billiard-room.

“I suppose business does not take up all your uncle’s time? He spends a good deal of it in this delightful place,” he said.

There was not the slightest hesitation in the girl’s reply. He had long ago made up his mind that everything about Gloria Stormont was open and above-board. How frank she had been about herself, and her youthful days in China with her father and mother.

“I shouldn’t say he went up to London more than three days a week on an average; his heart has been wrapt up in Effington ever since he bought it from young Sedgemere a few years ago. When we lived in London itself, he used to work much harder.”

“Oh, you lived in London before you came here,” said Leonard, who learned this fact for the first time. Certainly Stormont was a very reticent fellow about strictly personal matters. He had never made any allusion to a previous home which, from his intense fondness for rural life, the young man fancied might have been in the country.

“Yes, we had a dear old eighteenth-century house in Curzon Street. It was very comfortable and convenient, but my aunt and I welcomed the change as much as he did. I should hate to go back to town life again after this sweet Effington.”

“I suppose you had a very large circle of acquaintances in town?” asked Lydon, still pursuing his questioning.

“Not large at all, considering the fact that my uncle seemed so well off,” was the frank answer. “He honestly owns that he is not very fond of general society. He has a few friends who come down here now and again. There were some of them with us on your first visit. Of course we know a lot of people round about here, in fact a great many more than in London.”

“You travel a great deal, don’t you? Mr. Stormont seems well acquainted with all the principal places in Europe.” This was one of the subjects on which her uncle had not been reticent. His knowledge of the Continent, of the customs and habits of the different foreign nations, was extensive and exhaustive, and he always seemed pleased to air it.

“Oh, uncle is a tremendous traveller; he has been everywhere and seen everything; but he has not travelled so much since we have been here, a matter of some five years. Before that he used to be away the greater part of the year. Sometimes my aunt and I went with him, but usually he went alone. His business took him a good deal abroad, you know.”

Here was the opportunity he had been waiting for, and he hastened to seize it. “It seems rather funny, one learns these things so soon, as a rule. But I have never heard what your uncle’s business is.”

Gloria’s reply was perfectly free from embarrassment. “It is connected with finance; I suppose he is what you call a financier.”

So the secret was out: the owner of Effington Hall was a financier. Well, there were a good many people belonging to that profession, some of them quite reputable, controlling vast interests, some of them quite the reverse, addicted to very shady doings. No doubt the rubicund Stormont was one of the respectable ones, but why the deuce had he been so reticent about it? The proper pursuit of finance was quite a respectable calling. When a man does not openly mention his occupation, his silence rather gives you the idea he is secretly ashamed of it.

It was quite within the bounds of possibility that Stormont was not amongst the high spirits of the financial world, that his activities inclined a little to the shady side of the profession. But if that were so, would he have had the hardihood to buy Effington, and run the gauntlet of the respectable people of the neighbourhood?

On the Sunday morning Stormont absented himself from church, contrary to his usual custom. Mr. Whitehouse remained at home to keep him company. All the others went as they had done on the previous occasion. Lydon had a shrewd suspicion that the two men wanted to be alone to discuss business affairs. Evidently matters were settled during the morning, for the two men did not shut themselves up again during the rest of the day.

Whitehouse might possibly be an excellent man of business, but he was not a lively or inspiring person. Grave and taciturn to a degree, he spoke very little, and only when addressed directly by his host or some other member of the party. He did not volunteer conversation. From a few hints dropped by Gloria, Leonard gathered that the women rather disliked him, and looked upon him as a wet blanket.

In reply to further questioning, Miss Stormont said that he used to be a frequent visitor to Curzon Street; but since they had taken up their residence at Effington, he came somewhat infrequently, not more than three or four times in the year, and then only for a stay of a day or two. She understood that he and her uncle had been connected in business for many years and that they had a very great regard for each other.

Whitehouse left directly after breakfast on the Monday morning, and Lydon hailed his departure with pleasure. There was something rather repellent about the man, with his taciturnity, his unsmiling gravity, his deep-set eyes and sombre gaze. For himself, he accepted Stormont’s cordial invitation to stay another day, during which he enjoyed the society of the charming Gloria to the full.

He had expected that his host would accompany him to town on the Tuesday morning, but Stormont announced that, as the weather was so fine, he had made up his mind to take a week’s holiday. Lydon thought it must be a very accommodating business that allowed him so much leisure, more especially in view of the fact, inadvertently dropped by Gloria, that he was in a certain sense living from hand to mouth, at any rate spending money as fast as he made it.

Mrs. Barnard said good-bye to him in the dining-room after breakfast. Stormont and his niece went with him into the hall. When he had shaken hands with them, rather a lingering process in the case of Gloria, Stormont detained him with a gesture, and went out to tell the chauffeur to drive down to the lodge gates and await them there. “Just a word with you, my boy, before you go,” he said, linking his arm in that of the young man and conducting him slowly down the avenue, leaving a rather surprised Gloria behind.

When they were well out of earshot, he spoke. “Look here, my dear Leonard, I hope you don’t mind me calling you by your Christian name, but I think we are now intimate enough to excuse the liberty.”

“Not in the least,” answered Lydon, who wondered what was coming.

“Thanks. I want to tell you that I’m not blind, neither is my sister. You are in love with Gloria, aren’t you?”

Leonard was rather taken aback by the direct question. In his confusion he could not make any coherent reply. “I am,” he stammered, “But, of course, I--I--I----” He could not finish the sentence.

“I quite understand, my dear fellow,” said Stormont, his broad rubicund face relaxing into a smile. “You admit you love Gloria. I wanted you to be quite frank and open with me in the matter. I don’t wonder at it, for she is a sweet girl, one out of a thousand, charming, honest, open as the day. Well, I will let you into a little secret. If my observations are correct, I believe she returns your affection. My sister thinks so too, and women can read each other pretty well as a rule.”

He spoke in his hearty, breezy way. In spite of Craig’s caustic criticism of him, there was something engaging about the personality of the homely-looking man. Lydon could not help flushing. “It makes me inexpressibly happy, sir, to hear you say that. I take it, from your telling me so much, that you do not disapprove. Have I your permission to speak to Miss Stormont?”

“When and as soon as you please,” was the hearty response, “I had half made up my mind to tell you yesterday. I wish I had; I dare say by now I should have been congratulating you and my niece. Personally I am very pleased that you have fixed your affections on Gloria. So is Mrs. Barnard, who is a shrewd judge of character. In common with myself, she likes you very much and thinks you would make an excellent husband. Well, I can’t say more, can I? Run down here again next week, and fix it up. Come as often as you like. My sister and I love young people about the house.”

Lydon thanked him in warm terms for having made his wooing so easy. True, Gloria had not yet revealed her feelings, but in his heart he had not much doubt as to what they were.

But Stormont had not yet said all he wanted. As they drew near to the lodge gates, where the car was waiting, he motioned the young man to a halt.

“Just a little something more, to make everything plain and clear. Very possibly you have thought that Gloria is the niece of a rich man and will come into a tidy sum when I die?”

The young man interrupted him hastily. “I assure you, on my word of honour, Mr. Stormont, I never speculated on such a contingency. If I gave it a thought, I was rather depressed by the circumstance than otherwise. I felt a natural reluctance to ask a girl brought up so luxuriously to share a very modest fortune.”

“You’re not the sort of which fortune-hunters are made. I could see that at a glance, or I should not have been so open with you,” was the generous reply. He sank his voice very low when he continued: “Well, I must let you into a little secret which I think nobody suspects. I am not in the true sense of the term a rich man. I make plenty of money and I believe I shall continue to do, if my luck holds, as long as I live. But I am an incurable spendthrift; I fritter as fast as I make. Of course, you are a totally different temperament from me. At such an admission you will shrug your shoulders and think I am an insensate fool.”

Lydon preserved an embarrassed silence. Had he expressed in words what he really felt, they would have been far from palatable to the hearer.

After a short pause, Stormont spoke in a tone of considerable emotion, as if he were voicing his real remorse. “You cannot blame me any more than I blame myself. But this love of spending for spending’s sake, when it once gets hold of a man, is as deadly as any other form of vice, as drink or gambling. Dozens of times I have tried to check myself, to act prudently, but to no purpose.”

Again there was a pause, and again Lydon could find nothing to say, since if he had spoken he would have been compelled to condemn, in no measured terms, the man’s contemptible and selfish weakness.

And Stormont went on in that half-apologetic, wholly shamed voice. “So when I do die, I shall have lived my life to the full, but I shall leave next to nothing behind. Mrs. Barnard is provided for; she will always be able to live in comfort, and luxury makes little appeal to her. It is on Gloria’s account that I feel remorse, the selfishness of my conduct.”

And then at last the young man found something to say: “There is one thing I should like to tell you, Mr. Stormont, without attempting to criticize you in any way, a thing I have no right to do. So far as Gloria is concerned, I am glad she is not likely to be an heiress. I love her for herself. I want no dowry with her.”

“It is just what I should have expected from you,” replied the rubicund financier with a rather melancholy smile. “Well, things may not turn out so badly for Gloria after all. My brother, her father, is the exact opposite of myself, a prudent, evenly-balanced man who counts the cost of everything, looks long before he leaps, and I should say out of every pound he earns, saves ten shillings. He has a splendid position, and only another child, a son. He is one of the justest men I know, and whatever he leaves--I’ll wager it will be no mean sum--will be divided equitably between his family. So my dear Gloria may be an heiress in a small way, in the end. Now I have kept you talking too long, you have got your train to catch. Good-bye for the present. We shall expect you next week.”

The two men shook hands and Lydon drove to the station, thinking very much over Stormont’s somewhat humiliating confession. How deceitful are appearances! In the eyes of the local circle round Effington, the man with his lavish expenditure must have passed as a person of considerable wealth. And yet the real truth was that he was living, in a sense, from hand to mouth, and that any day might see him stripped of his fair possessions.

Well, the way was perfectly clear to him now. He would run down again next week and ask Gloria to marry him. He would make a lucid statement of his position to her uncle, if he were not already aware of it. Stormont was a weak man, a foolish man in most important respects, but he was certainly not simple-minded, and he seemed to possess an amazing amount of information about other people. He had probably seen a report of the elder Lydon’s will in the papers soon after his death, and knew the exact extent of Leonard’s fortune.

The next week, availing himself of Stormont’s general invitation, he went down on the Friday, having written his host to that effect. The car met him as usual at the station, and to his great delight Gloria was on the platform to meet him. This was, of course, the first time she had ever done such a thing, as on the previous occasions he had travelled down with her uncle.

When they reached the lodge gates, Lydon halted the car and suggested to the girl that they should walk up the avenue. She agreed, not without blushing slightly. He had been unusually quiet during the journey, as if he were pondering very deeply. No doubt with womanly intuition she guessed what was in his mind.

Having resolved upon the step he was taking, he lost no time; as soon as the chauffeur was out of earshot, he spoke:

“I was delighted to see you on the platform; somehow it seemed so intimate. The last time I was at Effington, your uncle brought me along here, and we had a very serious talk together. Perhaps he has told you something of this?”

With a deep blush, the girl admitted that he was correct in his surmise, and this answer encouraged him to proceed.

“I love you very much, Gloria. I wonder if you can care for me a little.”

Her bosom heaved, there was a tender light in the deep blue eyes, her lips trembled slightly as she gave him her answer: “I think I can care for you more than a little.”

The car by now had reached the stables: a bend in the avenue hid the lodge gates: there was nobody in sight. He did what any lover worthy of the name would do under such circumstances. He bent down and pressed his first kiss upon the sweet lips that made a tremulous response to his. He and this charming girl, whom he knew he had fallen in love with at first sight, were now betrothed lovers.

They walked up to the entrance to the picturesque Tudor house, both perhaps a little shy from their new-found happiness, the great event that had happened in their young lives. The door was wide open. Stormont and his sister stood in the hall to greet them; there was no white-haired butler, no inconvenient servants to extend a silent welcoming. Lydon shook hands with his host and hostess, and then turned with a radiant face to his fiancée.

“Gloria has made me very happy,” he said simply, by way of announcing the tremendous fact.

Mrs. Barnard first kissed her niece, and then bestowed an affectionate salute upon Leonard. Stormont literally hugged Gloria and wrung the young man’s hand heartily. “We must celebrate this at once,” he cried in his loud, ringing voice. “Come along. There is only one wine worthy of the occasion. I have still left in the cellar a few bottles of a matchless Krug. We will open one.”

And, as they went along to the dining-room, Stormont and his sister leading the way, the young couple following them, Gloria laid her slender hand on her lover’s arm and whispered, “You have made me very happy too, dear.”