THE GIRL WITH HAIR THE colour of heather honey came out of the cottage into the thin, spring sunshine and paused before a bed of daffodils nodding in the breeze. Behind her, a fitting background for beauty garbed in a cotton sun bonnet, the low house with its ancient thatch tanned to a dull brown by fifty years of storm and sunshine. In front the garden in which Gladys Brooke took such a pride and delight. A typical old world cottage garden in which was set the house which dated back to the days of the Merrie Monarch. Beyond that a sort of broad lane fringed by tall elms which straggled along until it reached the village street. A shop here and there, a public house in black and white, the smithy, and again the church, with the vicarage under its shadow fronting the Georgian residence of the doctor and again the entrance to the squire’s domain.
It was not always that Gladys Brooke had lived in that ideal spot, remote even from the rush and fret of motors and sightseers. Three years before, she had been just the fortunate type of young woman with money to spend and no heed, save for herself and her own recreation. She and her brother, Wilfred, had been left alone in the world with more than sufficient for their wants, which had been modest enough, so far as Gladys was concerned. For she was essentially an open-air girl, keen on sport and quite content to spend a few days in town occasionally, with now and then a dance and dinner. And so it had gone on until the time came when Wilfred, who was three years her junior, began to cause her considerable anxiety.
Wilfred was not an idler, exactly, but headstrong and impatient of advice, going his own way and gradually getting into a fast, monied set, with the inevitable consequences. He had been wise enough to retain his position in a great mercantile house where his father had placed him before he died, but beyond that, he showed little sign of self-reliance and a proper sense of responsibility. It was some time before Gladys found out that Wilfred was spending a great deal more than he could afford in following the fortunes of the turf. She had no idea, until the crash came, how deeply he was involved in that insidious form of gambling, though there were occasions when he had borrowed money from her, which she considered that he had no right to do. With his salary and private income of some three hundred a year and sharing a flat with her in London, he ought to have been happy and comfortable enough and, no doubt, would have been but for his passion for horseflesh.
And then, like a bolt from the blue came the tragedy. Gladys was still thinking of it then, as she stood in the sunshine watching a bed of nodding daffodils and the narcissi that filled the air with fragrance. She could see it all as she stood there—the sullen look on that white, handsome face of Wilfred’s, and the words that came from his lips as he told her of his shame. He had come back from the office early so that she had been surprised to see him in the sitting room of the flat. Wilfred had been dismissed and that in ignominy and disgrace by a kindly employer, who had told him that he had only retained Wilfred’s services so long out of respect for the boy’s dead father. And even he, the head of the firm, would be powerless to prevent a prosecution unless restitution was made.
“How—how much?” Gladys had ventured with pallid lips. It was characteristic of her that she uttered no reproach. “What is it that you have to find?”
“Six thousand pounds,” Wilfred confessed sullenly.
“But your own money?” Gladys asked.
“Gone long ago,” Wilfred said recklessly. “Not a penny of that left. If you only knew what infernal luck I have had you wouldn’t look at me like that. If things had gone well I should have made a fortune, and now I don’t know where to turn.”
“We have got to face this,” Gladys said steadily. “If I understand correctly, you will be prosecuted by the directors unless this sum is forthcoming.”
“That is about what it comes to,” Wilfred confessed. “I have until the end of the week and perhaps you——”
He paused and looked almost imploringly at his sister.
“Go on,” Gladys interrupted with a touch of hardness. “You might just as well say it as leave it to me. I am to find the money to save our name from disgrace and keep you outside of a jail. Very well, I will do it.”
“You always were a brick,” Wilfred murmured.
“Oh, please don’t,” Gladys replied. “I don’t want to do it, but I must, and you see that I must. You came back this afternoon on purpose to ask me to find it. Now, don’t deny it. The money shall be found, and, when it is, I shall have little more than a few hundreds left. That means that I must find some way of getting a living and I dare say I shall manage that because I have always been told that I could turn my talent of painting to advantage. But there is one condition, Wilfred. If I get you out of this mess, you must leave England.”
“Oh, come, I say!” Wilfred protested.
“On no other condition,” Gladys said firmly. “So long us you stay in London and mix with the reckless lot who have helped to ruin you, it will always be the same. I will go round to-morrow morning and see Mr. Trevor. He seems to have behaved very well to you, and, for the sake of our own good name, I am grateful, and perhaps, with his connections all over the world he may be able to find you something to do somewhere. For the moment there is nothing more to be said.”
So Gladys had gone to the head of the great firm in Billiter street and had found in him a kindly and sympathetic friend.
“Do I understand you will find this money?” he asked.
“Every penny of it,” Gladys said. “I dare not go to relatives and I cannot see my brother disgraced.”
“I am afraid this will cripple you,” the great man said.
“It will take practically all I have,” Gladys said quietly. “Not that I mind that, much, because, after all, mine is rather a selfish sort of life. On the whole, I think I should be happier getting my own living.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“Well, you see, I have a certain talent with my brush. Really I am quite clever in designing. For instance, I design all my own dresses. More than once, I have sent coloured sketches to the Paris firms where I have occasionally been extravagant enough to buy a frock and they have invariably been accepted and paid for. Oh, I have no anxiety about the future.”
The elderly man with the iron-grey hair looked admiringly at the pretty girl who sat opposite him. There was something about her rather unusual style of loveliness that appealed to the man of money. Besides, he had daughters of his own and he had forgotten the rigid calls of business for the moment.
“It is a great pity,” he said grimly, “that your brother is not more like you. Now, my dear young lady, listen to me. I want to help you if I can. It isn’t I who want the money, but I am merely the head of a great limited liability company, and my co-directors are very bitter against your brother. They regard it as a shameful thing that a young man like himself with no encumbrances and, ostensibly in the possession of a private income, should have got himself into this mess. They are not so much concerned with the moral side of the matter as with the material aspect. If I can assure them that the money will be paid, then you will hear no more about it. So we may regard that as settled. But you I want to assist. Now I have a good many irons in the fire. In confidence, I have very large interests in a great Paris dress house, the name of which I will give you. Moreover, I will give you a personal letter to the head of the firm. Perhaps, between us, we can find you regular occupation. No, I don’t want any thanks. And now, as I am exceedingly busy——”
With that the kindly old gentleman bustled Gladys out of the office, and she went her way in a far happier frame of mind than that in which she had arrived. Moreover, Mr. Trevor was as good as his word. Within three months, Gladys found herself with more work, almost, than she could do, work, moreover, for which she was exceedingly well paid.
And there was something in this great misfortune that seemed to bring out all that was fine and noble in her nature. She turned her back upon the life she had been leading, purchased the thatched cottage in the country, where she settled down with an elderly servant who had been her nurse in the old days. And there, almost to her great surprise, she was wholly and entirely satisfied with her work and her garden and the flowers that had been so carefully tended by the previous tenant. And she had been as good as her word, so far as Wilfred was concerned. She had seen him off to South Africa, where she had managed to secure a post for him in a Cape Town bank. It was not a big opening, nor were the prospects particularly good. But it meant work and discipline and a strict supervision which she hoped in time would make another man of that weak-minded brother of hers.
Not that she didn’t feel the separation. It had been a terrible wrench, but once it was over, she was good. And now Wilfred had been in Cape Town for the best part of two years and his letters were beginning to grow less frequent than they had been at first. It was two mouths, now, since Gladys had heard from him and, as she stood there in the sunshine, she was wondering if the post would bring her anything that morning.
The postman drifted down the lane presently and handed Gladys nothing more than a newspaper over the gate.
NO LETTER FROM WILFRED, AGAIN, she thought. Still, the newspaper meant something. Gladys could see at a glance that it was a copy of the South African Banner, which came to her regularly every week as evidence that her brother was alive and well. Wilfred had taken out a subscription so that the journal in question arrived punctually every Monday morning. It was disappointing that another mail should have arrived without anything more tangible than that paper in question, and Gladys walked into the cottage a little depressed and, to tell the truth, just a little annoyed as well. She cheered herself with the thought that next Monday would probably bring the desired letter, so that she turned into that pleasant, beautifully furnished sitting room of hers where breakfast awaited her. An old woman with a cheery, apple face, and a pleasant smile hovered over the table with an air of expectation which Gladys did not fail to note.
“No Marta,” she said. “No letter again this morning. But the paper has arrived, as you see.”
“Yes, I see that, miss,” the elderly retainer said with a sniff. “But there, Master Wilfred always was that careless. Not that he means to forget you. I’m sure.”
Gladys finished breakfast leisurely and then, for the next hour or so, was busy in that little attic studio with her work. She came down just before lunch time and sat in the sunny porch of the cottage with the South African paper in her hand. She had nothing to do for the next half hour or so, and there was more than one item of interest in the news sheet which she spread out over her knee. She came presently to a story which was not badly told and evidently the work of some newspaper man who possessed a considerable literary faculty and the gift of telling a narrative in an attractive fashion.
It related to the adventures of three or four Englishmen who had gone up from Cape Town, right through to the wilds of Upper Rhodesia in search of treasure. There had been rumours to effect that precious stones had been found there, rubies as well as diamonds, but that the locality was in the hands of a certain none too friendly tribe that had spelt disaster to more than one pioneer in the past.
But these fresh adventurers seemed to have been more successful than their predecessors. They had not only contrived to make their way as far as Tom Tiddler’s ground, where the treasure lay, but had managed to send letters down country describing their success. So far, there had been no sensational find of rare gems, but here and there, they had picked up a few stones which convinced them that they were on the eve of a discovery that was likely to prove of great advantage. Beyond doubt, the treasure lay there, and it was only a question of how soon the ground could be properly laid out and used to the great commercial benefit of the community.
All this was in the first part of the story. It was told in letter form without mentioning any names and merely retailed as an item of interest. Then a bit lower down in the column the drama began to develop itself. The three white men who formed the party, together with their native followers, had found themselves suddenly in great peril. They had contrived, some way or another, mortally to offend some native chief on whose land they had trespassed and, in the end, they had found themselves taken prisoners. One of the three Englishmen had met his death in an attempted escape and between the lines of the story, Gladys could see that the victim in question had been more or less callously abandoned by his two companions who were only too anxious to get away with whole skins. They had managed to fight their way down country with the aid of their rifles and camp followers and at length reached the outposts of civilisation where the story was told to a trader who had passed it on to the journalist who was responsible for the narrative.
And then and there, the tale more or less abruptly ended. There was the suggestion that more would follow next week, and with this Gladys had to be content.
It was nothing to her, she told herself, and, yet all the same, the story moved her strangely. Why had those two men stolen away under the cover of the night and abandoned their comrade to his fate? So far as Gladys could gather, each of the Englishmen had been a bound prisoner in separate huts. One of them had managed to escape his bonds and free his nearest neighbour before the alarm was given. Then they had contrived to secure a rifle each, and a plentiful stock of ammunition and collect a handful of their black followers. But they had not troubled about the third man, who was lying, bound, in a hut not half a mile away from the scene of the fight. Surely two Englishmen, fully armed, could have held their own against a whole tribe of savages whose only weapons were spears, and have made an attempt, at least, to rescue their unfortunate comrade whom they had so cruelly abandoned to torture by a savage tribe. It did not sound like British pluck and courage at all.
Gladys was about to throw the paper down in silent contempt when her eye caught a faint, badly printed paragraph opposite the leader page. It was the familiar item in what is called the stop press edition, and contained altogether but a few lines which ran as follows:—
“With regard to our adventure story on page five, some further information has come to hand. It appears that the three Englishmen concerned in the ‘Through Upper Rhodesia in Search of Treasure’ are named respectively Patrick French, Walter Bland, and Wilfred Brooke. It is the latter, who, unfortunately met his death at the hands of savages after he was apparently abandoned by his companions who were apparently, unable to effect his rescue. Mr. French is a wealthy young traveller and explorer, who came to South Africa some few years ago in search of adventure. Mr. Bland is also an Englishman, who, we understand, was connected with the theatrical profession, and who has been with many touring companies through the colonies for some considerable time. The unfortunate man who lost his life was until lately, a clerk in the Universal Bank, Natal. He was a comparatively newcomer.”
The paper fluttered lifelessly from Gladys’ hand. It was as if someone had struck her a blow in the face. So, then Wilfred was dead. He had perished miserably in a foreign land in circumstances that Gladys shuddered to contemplate. Perhaps it was all for the best, but Gladys was not in the mental condition to take this philosophical view of the case yet.
She sat there, trying to piece this extraordinary puzzle together. To begin with, what was Wilfred doing in that expedition? Why had he suddenly abandoned his post in Cape Town and gone off wandering into the wilderness so abruptly without writing a single line to his sister about it? It had been little less than a miracle that had put Wilfred on his feet again and turned his head in the right direction. And then, just as he had the chance of making good and wiping out the disgraceful past, he had wilfully flung to the winds the gifts the gods had sent him and become a mere wanderer on the face of the earth. Why had he done it—why? Gladys asked herself the question over and over again without arriving at any sensible conclusion.
And then there came another dreadful thought. Had Wilfred fallen away from grace again and lost his situation? Every circumstance pointed to that conclusion. Doubtless he had fallen into evil hands again and been led away by bad companions. Who was this man, Bland, for instance. Gladys had never heard of him before. An actor of no repute, evidently probably an adventurer touring Africa with a fifth-rate company, and ready for anything that came along.
But French—Patrick French was a different proposition altogether. Gladys knew all about him. In the early days when his correspondence was regular, Wilfred had spoken of French over and over again. He was a splendid chap—a top-hole fellow. One of the very best, generous and handsome, and a man of family besides. Any amount of money, and only wandering about to amuse himself. Never had there been such a man as Patrick French, according to Wilfred’s account. Very impulsive, too, and candid to a fault. Why, had he not fallen in love with Gladys’ photograph the first time he had seen it, and sworn by all his gods that hers was the face of the ideal wife of his dreams!
It all came back to Gladys with overwhelming force as she sat there with her face in her hands. Poor Wilfred, as usual the worst judge of a man in the world, had placed himself in the hands of this cowardly scoundrel who had deliberately left him to a cruel and quite unnecessary fate.
But it was idle to sit there brooding when there were things to be done. Gladys rose to her feet, and, putting on her hat, walked across the fields to the neighbouring town of Marwich, rather than send off a cablegram from the village post-office. She was not known at Marwich, and from there she could cable to Wilfred’s late bank manager at Cape Town and prepay the reply, it was only a question of hours before the response came, and, in the meantime, she could only sit down and wait. She had to tell Marta, of course, but no more than it was necessary for that excellent gossip to know. Mr. Wilfred was dead, he had died on a hunting expedition, and Gladys had read all about it in the papers that she had received that morning. And Marta accepted the explanation without asking to see the account in print—which was, perhaps, just as well.
It was quite late in the evening before the telegraph boy came with the eagerly-expected message. It ran:—
“W.B. discharged over four months ago. Know nothing whatever of his whereabouts since.”
IT WAS NOT IN GLADYS’ nature to lie down beneath a blow such as this. It had been bad enough to realise that Wilfred was dead, but to find that, for the second time, he had been unable to resist temptation hurt Gladys perhaps more than the knowledge of his death. In a queer, inconsequent way, the mere fact that Wilfred was no longer alive was a sort of relief. He might have gone on for years causing her grief and anxiety, and, what was just as bad, probably coming to her at short intervals for pecuniary assistance.
But she had hoped, at any rate, that the lesson he had learnt in London would have been a permanent one. Yet, here he was, at the expiration of a further two years, once more involved in disgrace and degradation. Still, he was dead now and, with all his faults, Gladys mourned him sincerely.
She had forgotten all about the man and his selfish pleasures—she only recollected the bright, happy boy he used to be and how she had shared in his youthful triumphs, because Wilfred had always been a good sportsman and, both at school and afterwards, had shone where athletic pursuits were concerned. But now that was all over, there was nothing but a bitter-sweet memory left and the knowledge that time would heal the wound.
All the same, Gladys would have given a good deal for a real friend. She had always been fairly independent since her parents had died when she was very young, and she and Wilfred had been left to the casual care of relatives and guardians. She had seen something of her relatives at intervals during the time she was in London, but after the disgraceful affair in Billiter Street, she had been inclined to shun her own flesh and blood. So far as she knew none of these had the least idea of why Wilfred had left the employ of his London firm and gone but to South Africa. One or two of them had expostulated with her when she had turned her back on the metropolis and elected to bury herself in what her smart relations called the dismal country. But she had done so and, from that moment, had led her own life. She knew the doctor’s wife and the vicar and, on one or two occasions, had dined at their houses. But for the most part, she had kept very much to herself, with an occasional week-end on some distant golf links, or a flying visit to town to see some play, the account of which had interested her.
And here she was now, at a crisis of her life, practically alone in the world. Her first impulse had been to sell or otherwise dispose of the cottage and go out to South Africa to make inquiries. For a brief moment, she had entertained the wild idea of trying to find her brother’s grave.
But that, she realised, was out of the question. Still, she would have liked to confront the two men who seemed to be entirely responsible for Wilfred’s death and denounce them to their faces. It had been so unlike the unfortunate Wilfred to pick out the last men in the world as his intimates. No doubt these two scoundrels had made use of him and then, when the crisis came, turned their backs upon him without the slightest compunction. There was that man, Patrick French, for instance. Wilfred had spoken of him in his letters as if he were a sort of Admiral Crichton, a being sans peur et sans reproche. A gentleman of birth and fortune who would have scorned to do anything that suggested meanness or cowardice. A man who had dared to admire her photograph and pretend that he saw in it the ideal for whom he had been looking all through his manhood! The angry tears came into Gladys’ eyes as she thought of it. And this was the man to whom Wilfred had offered his friendship!
Of the other individual she knew nothing, but she could imagine the class of man he was. A strolling actor, a bragging boasting liar, who lived like a parasite upon his acquaintances. Gladys dismissed him from her mind without another thought. She was never likely to meet him face to face, but perhaps, some day, she might meet this Patrick French and expose him for the coward and false friend that he was.
At any rate, she could make inquiries. If he belonged, as he had said, to a good English family, and if he was in the possession of means of his own, it would not be a difficult matter to look up his record; but that would have to remain for the moment and, in the meantime, she would have to wait as patiently as she could for further details. They would come to her, no doubt, in the course of time, through the medium of the same South African paper when the story of the excursion into Upper Rhodesia came to be concluded.
So Gladys hugged her grief to herself, saying nothing even to the faithful Martha as to the ugly side of the tragedy. Wilfred was dead, and there was an end of it. No occasion to let the faithful old serving maid know that he had died under the shadow of a double disgrace.
It was three weeks before the post brought further news from the Cape. There was the copy of the South African Banner which, strangely enough, contained nothing more of the adventure story but with it arrived two letters, both addressed in unfamiliar handwriting to Miss Gladys Brooke at Heatherthatch Cottage, near Marwich. Gladys turned them over in her hand, wondering who her strange correspondents could be. She broke the seal of one and began to read.
The heading was an address in Elizabeth st., Cape Town, and the signature at the end was that of one, Gerald Lewis. The name was utterly unfamiliar to Gladys, so that she turned wonderingly back to the opening lines.
“Dear Miss Brooke (it began)
“I dare say you will wonder why you are hearing like this from a total stranger and why I am addressing you so familiarly. But, the fact is, I was very friendly with your late brother and I conclude that you already know of his death, because it has already been recorded for some weeks in the South African Banner, which paper I have every reason to know is regularly sent you from the publisher’s office.