CHAPTER XXXIII

CALUMNY

I? What I answered? As I live I never fancied such a thing As answer possible to give. --COUNT GISMOND.

Lancelot, returning from what he called distinguishing between the rams and the he-goats, was intercepted by Sybil Ayres.

"Oh, Mr. Burmester, it is so interesting! Here is a gentleman who knows all about Miss Lutwyche! Not only that, but what do you think? Her brother is his servant!"

Lance stared blankly.

"Some mistake, Miss Ayres," he said pleasantly. "Miss Lutwyche has no brother."

"Well, if I'm tellin' lies, you can easily prove it, you know," said Amurrica jocosely. "The young lady's got a short memory, but I daresay it can be refreshed."

"Do let me introduce Major Otis," said Sybil. "He is so interested to meet Miss Lutwyche's _fiancé_."

Otis took Lance by the hand, and shook it impressively.

"I'm proud to meet a man of generosity and insight--I say, of generosity and insight," said he solemnly. "Insight to see that the gal's real grit, in spite of her family; and generosity to overlook the things in her past that are better not talked about."

"Look here!" said Lance, in a fury. "I don't know whether this is the latest variety of American humour, but whatever it is, it's deuced bad form, and you'll find you had better keep your head shut in England. Kindly choose some other subject of conversation than Miss Lutwyche, unless you want me to punch your head."

"You could easily do that," said Otis pensively. "I'm in quite the early stages of my convalescence. However, there's no need. Of course I withdraw all I said. Naturally, I thought you must know all about--well, well! Keep your hair on! Sorry I spoke. Can't say more than that, can I? Only this one thing I must say. My boy, Arnie Lutwyche, has lived in hopes of finding his sister when he got to England. Are you goin' to prevent his speakin' to her?"

"There's some absurd error," said Lance, in a rage. "I tell you Miss Lutwyche has no brothers. I also warn you, Major Otis, that there are libel laws in England."

He raised his hat and hurried off, afraid to trust himself.

Just as he departed, Madeline and Theo, who had been for a long time hanging around, in hopes of being introduced to some officers, ventured to come up, and found themselves welcomed by Miss Ayres with quite unwonted cordiality.

"Oh, do come here! Miss Lutwyche is your cousin, isn't she?" she cried. "You must be introduced to an old friend of hers!"

The girls listened spellbound to the piquant story of the presence in England of a Boer boy who was Millie's brother. "A regular, sulky Boer," giggled Sybil, "who only speaks very broken English."

They looked at each other.

"Why," said Madeline, "then I expect the Major could tell us all about Millie before she came to England--what we have always wanted to know--how she got her arm broken, and so on."

"I can tell you that, certainly. She broke her arm scrambling out through a skylight to meet her lover, when her stepmother had locked her in."

"That we can easily believe," cried Theo. "Father sent her away from the Vicarage for that very same thing--getting out of her bedroom window at night! And then she tried to fix the blame on Gwen."

Sybil Ayres listened with eyes starting from her head.

"Do you suppose Mr. Burmester knows all this?" she cried.

"If he don't, he oughter," said Otis, whose English was apt to fray, as it were, when he grew familiar or confidential. "The person that told him would be doin' him a kindness. Look here! I ought to know something about that gal, since I was engaged to marry her, with her mother's consent."

"To marry her! She was only sixteen!" cried Theo.

"We were short of gals in Slabbert's Poort," said Amurrica, with that irresistible dry grin which always fascinated people. "But the day her father was buried, Mestaer, the feller she was carryin' on with, picked a quarrel with me, fought me, pounded me into a jelly, and carried off my gal that night."

Madeline grew very red. The seriousness of this accusation was more than she had contemplated. After all, Melicent was a Cooper!

"You must mean he tried to carry her off," she said faintly.

Major Otis took out the cigar he was smoking--one of General Ayres' best--and touched her sleeve lightly with one finger.

"Cousin of yours?" He looked round at Sybil with raised eyebrows. "Better not. This pretty young English lady don't know the sorter thing her cousin came out of."

"Having gone so far, you ought to speak out, I think," said Madeline.

He shook his head, and looked sympathetic.

"This young lady is going to be married, I hear--to make what's called a good match?"

They all assented.

"Well then, why spoil her chances?" He shrugged his shoulders and replaced his cigar.

"Why, there are the Burmesters to think of," cried Sybil Ayres indignantly. "And the Helstons, whom she has deceived all these years."

"That's so," said Amurrica slowly. "That's so, certainly."

"You had better tell us what you know; we are her cousins," said Theo.

"Well, what I'm tellin' you now, I'm prepared to swear to, before any magistrate in this county," he replied, as if reluctantly. "It's simply this. Mestaer carried off Millie Lutwyche to his house and kept her there. After some days he deserted her, went off and enlisted--and the chaplain chipped in, and sent her home to her friends. Arnie Lutwyche will tell you all whether that's true or not, and you must decide whether Burmester ought to be told."

Madeline and Theo stood looking at one another.

"And she pretended to be so honest, and so disgusted with us for doing things on the quiet!" gasped Madeline at last. "Father ought to be told. Go, Theo, tell him to come at once and hear what Major Otis has to say."

Meanwhile Lance, in white heat, made his way to where his party were standing.

"Melicent," he said, "do you know there's a brute of a chap called Otis here to-day--a fellow that was notorious in Africa for all kinds of rascality--telling everybody that he knows you, and has got a brother of yours over here with him as his servant. What does he mean by such cheek?"

Melicent turned quickly to him. "What does he say? He has one of the Lutwyche boys here?"

"The Lutwyche boys? Who are they?" cried Lance, in stupefaction.

"Why, Tante Wilma's children," said Millie disgustedly; "my half-brothers and sisters."

There was a silence. Lady Burmester turned a look of blank astonishment upon Mrs. Helston.

"Do I understand that Lance will have a family of half Boer brothers-in-law?" she said.

"But I thought you knew my father married a Boer woman after my mother died. I thought everyone knew it," said Millie. "Surely Mr. Mayne told you; he knows all about it. It was he who got me away from Tante Wilma after my father died."

Lance cleared his throat.

"Perhaps," he said, "before I again encounter Major Otis, it will be as well for you to give me further family information."

"It would have been better had it been given before," echoed his mother, very stiffly.

Melicent dared not look at Bert. She held up her little head proudly.

"I was under the impression that everyone knew," she said. "Pater and Mater certainly do, and I assumed they had told you long ago. Please believe that I have never had the least intention of sailing under false colours."

There flashed across Lancelot's mind a memory of a chance word spoken by Harry Helston the first time he saw Melicent upon Tod's Trush: "_It's not a pretty story, and I daresay would do the poor child no good in a narrow, provincial circle?_"

There were passages in Millie's life of which he knew nothing, but of which, apparently, the odious Otis knew much. It was a rankling thought.

Captain Brooke broke the silence.

"There is one consolation," he observed coolly. "Otis is such a wholesale liar, he'll soon get found out. It might be doing him a kindness if I gave him a hint to keep himself in the background. I know enough about him to make General Ayres regret his hospitality. Whatever you do, keep clear of him, Lady Burmester. If I may count myself enough your friend to give you a hint, avoid being introduced to the fellow. He's not fit to mix with ladies."

"Really, Captain Brooke? I am extremely obliged," said Lady Burmester gratefully.

"Keep clear of the Ayres party, mother," said Lance. "Brooke's right, he's a beast. Come, Melicent, I am going to start the sports now."

He spoke irritably, and Melicent silently walked away with him, conscious of a burning, fiery resentment against him, his mother, herself, and Fate generally.

Her pride was cruelly wounded, and her conscience reiterated, "Serve you right!" She knew that had she really loved Lancelot she would have known no peace until she had told him all about Hubert. She ought to have done so. Now some kind of explanation was unavoidable. It was impossible but that Lance should return to the subject. She now felt certain that Otis would tell everybody who would listen some garbled version of her flight from her stepmother's house. Vaguely she began to realise how far it was in his power to injure her; and she knew that, had Lance been in possession of the actual facts, he would have had no power to injure her at all. She had left her lover in the position of being unable to contradict effectively anything that might be said.

The figure she must cut was not a dignified one. If she broke off the engagement, it could but seem that she did so because she was found out, and dreaded further revelations. If she confessed to Lance, he must feel that she did so only because concealment was no longer practicable, to say nothing of the suspicions which she must arouse by the mere fact of not having spoken before. She saw that, whatever she did, she must lower herself, perhaps fatally, in the eyes of her lover. She positively shrank from the abyss before her. She could not see how she could avoid public humiliation, and what was worse, she must sink in the eyes of the Helstons too. They had loved, shielded, trusted her. She had wilfully gone her own way, keeping from them all that most nearly concerned her, locking her heart, hiding it away from them....

It was human nature that, at the moment, Lance's regard should seem to her more precious than ever before. No woman is ready to resign her lover because she has ceased to be pleasing in his sight.

She stood by his side, watching, with eyes that swam in tears, the great raw-boned Dalesmen slouching round the sloping, bumpy course with limbs all abroad, yet keeping up a pace that was undeniable, as they completed lap after lap of the walking race, which was the great event of the day, a professional champion from another county being entered for it.

Outwardly she maintained her pride and spirit. She smiled and chatted to Lance so naturally that he began to forget his uneasiness.

"Curious," he observed to her presently, "that I never heard of your father's children."

"Vrouw Lutwyche cast me off," said Millie. "She repudiated me. I never expected to hear of her again. They are well-to-do; there seemed no reason why they should trouble themselves; they only wanted to be rid of me."

"Still, they are your father's children."

"Oh," she said, in her hardest voice, "I suppose so; but nobody could think it. They are all Boer, through and through. I could not love them. I am a cold person, as you know. I should have told you of them, if I had not made quite sure you knew."

He did not reply for a moment; when he did, what he said startled her.

"It at least shows how far we have been from perfect confidence."

She looked at him astonished, taken aback. He was studying the race card.

The invitations to the wedding were actually written. It seemed to Melicent that her marriage was as final a thing as the fact that autumn follows summer. She was frightened, shaken.

"Surely," she faltered, "perfect confidence is a thing that comes by degrees?"

"I think it ought to come before marriage, don't you?" said Lance.

She felt as if he had opened an oubliette at her feet. How could she tell him what ought to be told? But evidently she must either do that or lose him. She firmly believed that, in his wholesome, out-of-doors life, were no dark corners concealed from her.

However far she was from passion, she liked Lance dearly. The idea of his contempt was extremely painful.

All her life she had prided herself upon her honesty!

And her attempt to assert her independence of spirit had led her into this _impasse_!