now although it had seemed to gerard, when he first arrived at the priory that afternoon, that all was as usual there, he had long before this discovered that this was by no means the case.
everything did indeed look as it had looked on his previous visits. the visitors were quite as numerous, the conversation was quite as lively. the groups moved about from room to room, listened to the music at one end of the suite, played cards at the other, and drank tea between the two, with just the same appearance of having nothing on their minds but the amusement of the moment.
the van santens, on their side, behaved exactly as they had always behaved; the young men played bridge and poker, with intervals of conversation and laughter with those of their guests who did not care for cards. cora sang as sweetly as ever, was just as charming when, instead of singing or playing, she was listening to arthur’s impassioned speeches, or lisping out her little crisp sentences by way of her share in the general conversation.
delia, as usual, flitted from group to group, never in the same place long, and always bringing with her[280] a sense of repose and ease, the result of the singularly tactful and neat way she had of setting things right when they were going wrong.
mrs. van santen, perhaps, showed traces of the emotion which the unpleasant scene of the preceding sunday had caused her. she was sensible enough, dear old soul, not to disturb the general harmony by any open allusion to the trouble on that occasion, or by any appearance of anxiety about the present. but she did not look quite so peaceful, quite so serene, as she had looked before, and gerard was quite sure that she was keeping a watchful eye on her card-playing sons, lest any more disturbances should break the peace of her family and her guests.
but underneath all this surface appearance of calm and pleasure gerard was now conscious that there was a current of anxiety, a subdued unrest, which infected the whole of the van santen family, and had spread, perhaps without their being fully aware of it, to their guests.
it was easily explained, of course, by the occurrences of the preceding sunday, by the inevitable self-consciousness which they had produced in everybody; so that the visitors felt impelled to be more sprightly and more at ease than usual, and the family, on their side, had to keep up an air of having absolutely forgotten the ill-mannered attack made upon one of them by the hasty and impetuous sir william.
thus the general atmosphere seemed to be electric,[281] charged with a sort of vague danger, and conducive to excitement and unrest.
when gerard found himself ousted by denver, he retreated to the music-room, and there he found arthur and cora, no longer at the piano, but conversing with intense seriousness in a corner of the room. he had scarcely entered, when mrs. van santen came in, noiselessly, but wearing a look of unusual excitement in her good old face. she went straight to cora, said a few words to her in an undertone, and went back again into the next room.
then cora spoke to arthur, and he, after a few minutes’ earnest conversation with her, sauntered across the room to gerard.
“it seems,” he said, “that the van santens are rather surprised to see you here to-day. they had an idea, i think, that you took the part of sir william gurdon against them.”
by a rapid process of thought, gerard knew how this idea had arisen in their minds. he had left the priory by himself on the preceding sunday, and had only met sir william afterwards. as he had expressed no opinion favorable to sir william’s cause previous to that, but as he had, on the contrary, done his best to persuade the baronet that he had made a mistake, it was clear that cora’s idea could not be based on what she had then seen and heard.
it was because denver had followed sir william, having injured the tire of his car in order to bring[282] him to a standstill, and because he had then discovered gerard in the baronet’s company, and the family understood him to be on the side of the enemy.
he was careful, however, to give no hint of what he knew to arthur when he was thus accused of siding with the baronet.
“surprised to see me, are they?” said he. “do you mean that they wish me to withdraw?”
“no, no, oh no, of course not,” said arthur hastily. “but they want to understand how it is that you have changed your mind about that? and whether you have seen sir william since?”
gerard perceived that cora had sent her obedient slave, arthur, to try to “pump” him as to his position and intentions. it was part of the general uneasiness that he had noticed that they wanted to know precisely the attitude taken up by each of their visitors. and gerard knew that he was especially under observation, on account of his known admiration for miss davison and denver’s possible jealousy, as well as because he was now known to have been the cause of the miscarriage of denver’s projected attack upon sir william.
although neither he nor the baronet could have sworn to the identity of the figure, which had shadowed them and which they had then pursued, with denver van santen, or of the fact that he had been[283] armed, there was very little doubt in the minds of either upon those points.
knowing that his answer would be faithfully reported, gerard answered with caution—
“seen sir william! oh yes, i went up to town with him last sunday. we started in his car, but had a breakdown and went back by train.”
“and did you persuade him to think better of his disgraceful conduct?”
“i persuaded him—or rather, i helped to persuade him—to write an apology to mrs. van santen.”
“and you quite see that he made a fool of himself?”
gerard hesitated.
“i don’t think his conduct was very wise,” he admitted at last.
“or that he was justified in bringing such an accusation?”
“i think, if he thought what he did, it would have been better to talk things over with his own friends before making a scene.”
this answer was not at all what arthur wanted. it made him uneasy.
“surely you don’t think there was anything in it? i can’t think you would be here to-day if you had thought there was!”
“well, we needn’t discuss that now. it’s a subject[284] we should be bound to get warm over, whatever we thought, isn’t it?” said he soothingly.
“it certainly makes me warm to hear a doubt cast upon my friends.”
“no doubt has been cast on anybody by me,” replied gerard quickly. “if they want to know, you can tell them so.”
arthur went away, evidently not quite satisfied, and gerard strolled through the adjoining room into the card-room at the end of the suite.
there had been changes in the position of affairs during the short interval since he left miss davison conversing with denver in the middle room.
rachel herself had disappeared, and he learned from delia, who, in the course of her pacifying errands, met him and asked him whether he was going to play bridge, that she had gone upstairs with a headache.
this statement was received by gerard with certain vague suspicions.
he entered the card-room, and found play in full swing at four different tables. as usual, harry van santen was playing bridge, and denver was having his usual luck at poker.
the table at which he sat was the nearest to the door communicating with the adjoining room, and it was also the nearest to the window, which was closed and hidden behind the drawn curtains.
cecil jones formed one of the poker party, and[285] he was being eased of the money of which he had boasted.
but gerard, who had now had time to consider his face well, was surprised to note in his usually sheepish face something which made him quite sure that there was some mystery about this friend of miss davison’s. he had suspected it before, but he was now sure of it. not only was there under his expression of surface silliness an occasional look which showed intelligence of a quite unusual kind, but there was to-day in his manner a certain quiet watchfulness, which made gerard think he was lying in wait for something.
what that something was—whether a signal from one of the van santens, or a scene, or a signal from somebody else and another sort of scene—he could not be sure. but that there was trouble of some kind in the air he knew quite well.
he almost thought, indeed, as he watched cecil jones from the doorway, and saw him losing his money with little silly exclamations of impatience or surprise, that the man appeared to be listening for something.
once or twice he glanced in the direction of the window, although, as it was closed and curtained, he could see nothing whatever of it.
he lost more and more heavily as time went on, and bore his losses with wonderful equanimity.
but when play had gone on for some time, and[286] while he was being steadily eased of his money, gerard heard a soft rustling sound behind him, and turning quickly saw that old mrs. van santen was standing at his elbow, with a look of indescribable terror and distress upon her face. it seemed to him that she was watching cecil jones as if he had been, not the innocent idiot he looked, or the confederate which gerard had till that day believed him to be of her sons, but some harbinger of evil, some messenger of adverse fate.
and in a moment the last rag of suspicion that jones could be a decoy and a partner in the van santen operations fled from gerard’s mind.
the game went on, meanwhile, although it seemed to him that the old lady would fain have stopped it. she even made an attempt to catch denver’s eye, and partially succeeded at last. but he only made her an abrupt sign to withdraw, and went on with the congenial task of winning from the placid jones the money which he had so openly boasted of having brought with him.
at a sign from her son, mrs. van santen suddenly disappeared, and gerard saw her no more for some time, and wondered whether she had retired to “have a good cry” over her son’s gambling propensities, and the troubles which she perhaps foresaw for him in consequence.
gerard, who was quite sure in his own mind that[287] cecil jones was being robbed, and that he was aware of the fact, found himself growing more and more excited, as he waited, in a state of extreme nerve-tension, for the crisis which he felt must be approaching.
the sounds of voices, of movements, became dull and confused in his mind; the figures of the players became blurred, and a sort of singing in his ears warned him that he had better find relief to his intense excitement in the open air, when suddenly, just as he was turning to go towards the french window of the middle room, there was a sound like the hissing of a serpent, followed immediately by the overthrow of half a dozen chairs, and turning, he saw that, as he had foreseen, the crisis had come.
cecil jones, leaning across the card-table, had seized denver’s arm, and dragged out from the sleeve of the american a card, which he flung down, face upwards, upon the table.
leaning across the table, and looking up steadily into the face of the baffled denver, who had sprung up from his chair, and was standing, still in the grip of jones, pale with rage and discomfiture, jones said, in a quiet voice that carried clearly to every corner of the room and into that beyond—
“i thought so. you are a card-sharper!”
in an instant there was an uproar in the room.
the men who had been playing at the same table[288] with denver and jones were on their feet already, exclaiming, protesting, uttering indignant exclamations.
there was now a rush from the other tables, and harry van santen led the crowd that gathered round the detected cheat.
harry, with a very white face, uttered a harsh laugh which was meant to be reassuring, but which was hollow, hideous, unreal, and horrible to hear.
“what’s this?” he cried. “it’s a trick, a silly trick that some of you have played upon my brother! who is it? you, jones? come, speak up and own to it like a man.”
hard as was his forced laughter, the manner of the older american was so assured, his voice was so deep and so confident, that one or two of the men present seemed at first inclined to believe that the version of the affair which he was trying to maintain was the true one.
but cecil jones suddenly sprang up from his sprawling attitude, and stood erect.
“gentlemen,” he said, addressing, conspicuously, not the two americans, but the rest of the company, “there has been systematic cheating carried on here, as some of you might have guessed, i should think. don’t be alarmed. there is nothing to be feared except by the men who have robbed you.”
the uproar of voices, excited, indignant, which[289] had ceased when he began to speak, rose again when he left off.
in the midst of it, there was a shrill scream, and mrs. van santen, looking, not the dear, simple old lady they were all used to, but a very virago, with flaming eyes and harsh voice, cried, addressing harry and denver—
“you can’t get away. the house is surrounded!”
