The Key (Morley Roberts)/Chapter 3

When Hector was announced he came in and took Felicia by both hands, and smiled down at her.

“We haven't met for a long time,” he declared almost gaily, “and now that I'm to come and stay here, you are going to the Riviera to-morrow. I call that mean, Felicia. But where's Lady Hale?”

Felicia laughed and looked at him demurely.

“She has gone up-stairs with a duster, a pair of socks, a bundle of prescriptions, and a prayer-book, Mr. Durant.”

Hector stared in surprise, and, looking round, saw some of the drawers in the desk still open. A light broke in on him.

“Why, the dear thing has at last ransacked Sir George's desk. Did she do it in fear and trembling?”

Felicia explained the method adopted, and did it so amusingly that Hector sat down and laughed till he nearly cried.

“To think that she believed him so careful and tidy all these years!” he said at last. “How did she take it?”

“Oh, he's still perfect,” said Felicia, but not so brightly. “And you really going to write his biography?”

Hector nodded.

“I think it might go, lots of interesting stuff in him. He was really an amazing man, Felicia, and so intricate.”

“She says he was so simple.”

“Simple! Did you understand him, Felicia?” asked Hector.

She glanced up at the portrait.

“I—I don't know. I suppose not. Did you?”

Hector stood in front of the fireplace and also looked at the portrait for quite a minute before he replied:

“Not in the least, Felicia. If I did I shouldn't want to write the book. Any biographer (of merit, you understand) only writes a life to discover what the man was. I mean he must want to make a working hypothesis to explain the contradictions, or apparent contradictions, which make up real character. So, of course, I don't understand. He was a perfect miracle of openness, and a master of secrecy.”

Felicia nodded gravely.

“Ah, you know that?” she asked.

“And you! How”

“I—thought so sometimes,” said Felicia hastily.

And then Lady Hale sailed into the room like a full-rigged ship coming into harbor.

“My dear Hector!” she cried.

“Dear Lady Hale,” said Durant. With a touch of old-world courtesy which became him admirably he bent and kissed her hand.

“How sweet of you to come,” she said, beaming, “and how grieved I am to think we have to go away. But Doctor Courtney declares that it is necessary both for me and dear Felicia, who has a cough. Has she coughed since you came in, Hector?”

Hector turned to the girl.

“Now, did you, Felicia?”

Felicia denied it, laughing.

“Nevertheless, she coughs very often,” said Lady Hale. “And a cough is a serious matter. Doctor Courtney says so, and he declares that Felicia's chest is weak, and that I require rest and sunshine. And it appears I have an apex to my right lung. Therefore he prescribes Cannes, and I yield. But it is a pity. I looked forward so much to having you here and telling you about my dear husband. After all, though I never understood governing and politics or diplomacy, I understood his inner character as a wife only can.”

Hector smiled.

“Of course you will see the book before it is printed, Lady Hale. And any alterations you think necessary”

“To be sure,” said Lady Hale. “I will make notes in the Riviera. I will dictate them to Felicia and send them to you daily. We have just gone through the desk, Hector.”

“So Felicia tells me.”

“I never knew before how careful he was to preserve everything. Where are the keys, Felicia? Oh, here they are. Now, Hector, there is one key missing, and the most important one. It is the key to the cabinet. Have you got it?”

Hector shook his head, and answered with curious dryness:

“No, Lady Hale, it is not in my possession.”

“Dear me,” said Lady Hale, “and I thought you must have it. He trusted you so completely about these important matters, diplomacy and so on, and what the dear man jokingly called his incriminating documents. He said that in a long public career a man accumulated a lot of papers very useful in making people do their duty. But I dare say you understand. What shall we do about the key?”

While she was chattering Hector had been trying the keys himself. But a very acute observer might have noted that he never turned any key very hard.

“I'll get it open, all right,” he said, as he slipped the bunch of keys into his pocket. “I can get a locksmith in, or some decent retired burglar, you know. There won't be any difficulty about it, Lady Hale. Have you any particular papers to hand over to me?”

“Nothing that I know of,” said Lady Hale. “Stay, yes, I have a great number of prescriptions written for him by Doctor Courtney, and also some dating from Malta and Barbados. Will they be useful to you?”

Hector replied gravely enough that he did not think them necessary, and Lady Hale owned that he was perhaps right.

“Besides, if you want any information of that kind Doctor Courtney will give it you, won't he? He is coming in to tea to say good-by to us; so good of him, and busy as he is, rising fast, too. The Duchess of Ormont says that he'll be on the top of the tree like a bird, with such a bedside manner, in no time.”

“He's a ripping good chap, I think,” said Hector.

“That's what poor Sir George said,” cried Lady Hale. “'Ripping' was the very word he used.”

She bent her head and whispered to Hector.

“He's in love with Felicia, Hector.”

“Yes?”

“Deep,” said Lady Hale, nodding.

“And she”

“Hardly deep,” said Lady Hale, sighing, “but perhaps inclined to be. I approve heartily, and why not?”

“No reason at all,” said Hector.

“The duchess says his manner is equal to a coal-mine, Hector!”

“A coal-mine?” echoed Hector, in some amazement.

“As valuable as one of the duke's, you know. The duchess always reckons in coal-mines. She says it takes five good working coal-mines to keep going, one for every house they have and two for pin and pocket money for her and the duke”

There was just then a loud knock at the street door.

“The doctor, I feel sure,” said Lady Hale. “Felicia, dear, look out and see if it is the doctor.”

But Felicia, with some firmness, declined to do anything of the sort.

“Oh, no, Lady Hale!”

“Why not?” asked Lady Hale. “I'm sure I would. Indeed, I will.”

But before she could rise, the doctor was announced. He was a fine, big, fair man, clean-shaven, blue-eyed, keen, and yet with an air of wise innocence. He was a splendid Anglo-Saxon just as Hector was a very admirable Celt. They had been friends for years. Indeed, it was through Hector that Courtney had become the friend and physician of the house. When the doctor had bowed over Lady Hale's plump hand and shaken hands with Felicia, the two men greeted each other.

“Well, old chap,” said Hector, smiling.

“Well, old chap,” echoed Courtney. “Going strong?”

“As well as a writer chap can. You know what you say.”

Lady Hale inquired what he said.

“He declared that writing, when it becomes a habit, is a vice,” said Hector.

“You see, it's not physiological,” said Courtney, laughing. “It takes it out of a man too much. In a year or two Durant will acquire a diseased nervous system, and I shall be patching him up once a week. Every professional man ought to become an agricultural laborer for six months of the year. Or he might be allowed to travel instead, and go in for adventures.”

“He might even get married,” said Hector.

“Surely not for six months in the year,” said Lady Hale. “I could not approve of that.”

“You never quite approved of society, did you?” asked Hector.

“Certainly not, and Sir George did not, either,” replied Lady Hale rather severely for her.

The two men looked at her and smiled.

“Well, you can travel, and I will get married,” said Courtney, laughing.

“That reminds me,” said Hector suddenly, “that I met Jack Pulleine in Bond Street this morning. He looked the color of a burned loaf. He's just back from Java, or Sumatra, or somewhere.”

Lady Hale obviously wondered who Jack Pulleine was.

Felicia reminded her.

“He's Lady Anne Pulleine's brother, Lady Hale.”

Courtney exclaimed:

“Lady Anne Pulleine, by Jove!”

Then he stopped short.

“How stupid of me to forget; but do you know her, doctor?” asked Lady Hale.

Courtney colored a little, and then rubbed his temple with his finger.

“I've heard her name somewhere. Now, where was it?”

“Perhaps Hector mentioned it,” said Lady Hale.

“I don't think I ever did,” said Hector quietly. He caught Felicia looking at him, and bit his lip.

“I'm sure you didn't,” said Courtney hastily. “But I know the name, somehow.”

”She's a very beautiful woman,” cried Lady Hale. “Isn't she, Felicia?”

“She's pretty,” replied Felicia, somewhat grudgingly.

“Beautiful, my dear, absolutely beautiful. My dear husband said so often in his boyish, open way. Was she not beautiful, Hector?”

“I don't suppose there can be any doubt of it,” said Hector somberly enough.

“She about a great deal with that brother of hers, always traveling,” said Lady Hale. “They came to Barbados after I left because of the earthquake. That's where Sir George first knew them. Felicia, you were there then with your darling mother, were you not? Of course, now I remember everything, and I think we'll have tea; I want it badly. I wonder if Lady Anne was with her brother, Hector.”

Hector nodded.

“He said they'd been away for more than six months, and only got back last night.”

And then tea was brought in, and the doctor helped Felicia with it. She needed help, for she was curiously nervous, and Courtney knew it. He drew encouragement from it. And yet she more often looked at Hector than at the man who obviously loved her.

“Tell me about Lady Anne Pulleine,” he said, when every one had tea and Lady Hale was chattering to Hector about Sir George with a cheerful kind of mournfulness.

He noticed at once that Felicia did not like this Lady Anne. Her cold praise of her beauty showed this plainly enough, but when he spoke she grew more rigid. It was the attitude natural to a very good young woman when discussing some one not obviously good. Courtney knew that attitude, and had often smiled at it, as a quiet man must at ignorance. He did not smile now. He was pleased to see this moral prejudice in the woman he wished to marry.

“Oh, Lady Anne”

“You do not like her, then?” said Courtney.

“Then?” asked Felicia.

“I infer it from your attitude, your very voice,” laughed Courtney.

“Is it so plain, Doctor Courtney? No, perhaps I don't,” said Felicia. “But what do you know of her?”

The doctor opened his unoccupied hand, as if to say nothing, and then he said it.

“Nothing whatever, but I've seen her name somewhere,” he replied, with seeming candor. “Where did you know her? In Barbados?”

Felicia frowned and nodded. Long ago he had noticed she frowned when Barbados was mentioned.

“I'm sure you never liked Barbados or anything connected with it, except Sir George,” said the doctor, and she looked up at the portrait over the fireplace.

“Perhaps not,” she murmured. “But I've really got nothing against Lady Anne.”

“It was a case of Doctor Fell, I can see that.”

And he quoted the old rhyme adapted from Martial.

“Don't substitute Courtney for Fell, I beg,” he added, smiling. “Even if I do send you away. Will you be sorry to go, Felicia? May I call you that?”

She glanced at him doubtfully.

“If—if you like. But I wish you'd tell me what you know about Lady Anne.”

“I assure you I don't know her. I never saw her, but the name is uncommon.”

“Not the way it is usually spelled” said Felicia sharply.

“But hers ends with e-i-n-e,” said the doctor, a trifle incautiously.

“I'm sure you know something about her,” said Felicia quietly enough.

But at that moment a telegram for Lady Hale was brought in. She opened it hastily and exclaimed:

“Oh, how delightful! It's from Lady Anne herself, and she says she hears I am going abroad, and that she'll come at once and see me. Now, isn't that sweet of her?”

They all said it was, but Felicia's voice was hard and dry. She shut up like a flower when the sun goes, and if Courtney had not known that the change in her was due to her dislike of this woman, he would have felt depressed. As it was, he whispered to her:

“I feel I sha'n't like her, either. But I'd rather like to see her. I wonder if she'll come while I'm here.”

He lingered much longer than he ought to have done, but by half-past five was rewarded. Lady Anne Pulleine came in a hansom just as the half-hour struck.