Emma Orczy - The Heart of a Woman

"Very well. You can wait until his lordship has been told."

"Mr. Luke – "

"Best not wait to see his lordship, Parker. Take my word for it."

"Very well, Mr. Luke."

There was a tone of finality in Luke's voice which apparently Parker did not dare to combat. The man looked confused and troubled. What had seemed to him merely a venial sin – the taking of a bribe for a trivial service – now suddenly assumed giant proportions – a crime almost, punished by a stern dismissal from Mr. Luke.

He went without venturing on further protest, and Luke, left standing alone in the hall, once more put his hand on the knob of the library door. This time he tried to turn it. But the door had been locked from the inside.

From within the hum of a man's voice – speaking low and insistently – still came softly through. Luke, with the prodigality of youth, would have given ten years of his life for the gift of second-sight, to know what went on between those four walls beyond the door where he himself stood expectant, undecided, and more than vaguely anxious.

"Luke!"

It was quite natural that Louisa should stand here beside him, having come to him softly, noiselessly, like the embodiment of moral strength, and a common-sense which was almost a virtue.

"Uncle Rad," he said quietly, "has locked himself in with this man."

"Who is it, Luke?"

"The man who calls himself Philip de Mountford."

"How do you know?"

"How does one," he retorted, "know such things?"

"And Parker let him in?"

"He gave Parker a five-pound note. Parker is only a grasping fool. He concocted the story of Mr. Dobson and the lease. He is always listening at key-holes, and he knows that Mr. Dobson often sends up a clerk with papers for Uncle Rad's signature. Those things are not very difficult to manage. If one man is determined, and the other corruptible, it's done sooner or later."

"Is Lord Radclyffe safe with that man, do you think?"

"God grant it," he replied fervently.

Jim and Edie made a noisy irruption into the hall, and Luke and Louisa talked ostentatiously of indifferent things – the weather, Lent, and the newest play, until the young people had gathered up coats and hats and banged the street door to behind them, taking their breeziness, their optimism, away with them out into the spring air, and leaving the shadows of the on-coming tragedy to foregather in every angle of the luxurious house in Grosvenor Square.

And there were Luke de Mountford and Louisa Harris left standing alone in the hall; just two very ordinary, very simple-souled young people, face to face for the first time in their uneventful lives with the dark problem of a grim "might be." A locked door between them and the decisions of Fate; a world of possibilities in the silence which now reigned beyond that closed door.

They were – remember – wholly unprepared for it, untrained for any such eventuality. Well-bred and well-brought up, yet were they totally uneducated in the great lessons of life. It was as if a man absolutely untutored in science were suddenly to be confronted with a mathematical problem, the solution or non-solution of which would mean life or death to him. The problem lay in the silence beyond the locked door – silence broken now and again by the persistently gentle hum of the man's voice – the stranger's – but never by a word from Lord Radclyffe.

"Uncle Rad," said Luke at last in deep puzzlement, "has never raised his voice once. I thought that there would be a row – that he would turn the man out of the house. Dear old chap! he hasn't much patience as a rule."

"What shall we do, Luke?" she asked.

"How do you mean?"

"You can't go on standing like that in the hall as if you were eavesdropping. The servants will be coming through presently."

"You are right, Lou," he said, "as usual. I'll go into the dining-room. I could hear there if anything suspicious was happening in the library."

"You are not afraid, Luke?"

"For Uncle Rad, you mean?"

"Of course."

"I hardly know whether I am or not. No," he added decisively after a moment's hesitation, "I am not afraid of violence – the fellow whom we saw in the park did not look that sort."

He led Louisa back into the dining-room, where a couple of footmen were clearing away the luncheon things. The melancholy Parker placed cigar box and matches on a side table and then retired – silent and with a wealth of reproach expressed in his round, beady eyes.

Soon Luke and Louisa were alone. He smoked and she sat in a deep arm-chair close to him saying nothing, for both knew what went on in the other's mind.

Close on an hour went by and then the tinkle of a distant bell broke the silence. Voices were heard somewhat louder of tone in the library, and Lord Radclyffe's sounded quite distinct and firm.

"I'll see you again to-morrow," he said, "at Mr. – Tell me the name and address again, please."

The door leading from library to hall was opened. A footman helped the stranger on with coat and hat. Then the street door banged to again, and once more the house lapsed into silence and gloom.

"I think I had better go now."

Louisa rose, and Luke said in matter-of-fact tones:

"I'll put you into a cab."

"No," she said, "I prefer to walk. I am going straight back to the Langham. Will you go to the Ducies' At Home to-night?"

"Yes," he said, "just to see you."

"You'll know more by then."

"I shall know all there is to know."

"Luke," she said, "you are not afraid?"

It was the second time she had put the question to him, but this time its purport was a very different one. He understood it nevertheless, for he replied simply:

"Only for you."

"Why for me?"

"Because, Lou, you are just all the world to me – and a man must feel a little afraid when he thinks he may lose the world."

"Not me, Luke," she said, "you would not lose me – whatever happened."

"Let me get you a cab."

He was English, you see, and could not manage to say anything just then. The floodgates of sentiment might burst asunder now with the slightest word uttered that was not strictly commonplace. Louisa understood, else she had not loved him as she did. It never occurred to her to think that he was indifferent. Nay more! his sudden transition from sentiment to the calling of a cab – from sentiment to the trivialities of life pleased her in its very essence of incongruity.

"I said I would walk," she reminded him, smiling.

Then she gave him her hand. It was still gloveless and he took it in his, turning the palm upward so that he might bury his lips in its delicately perfumed depths. His kiss almost scalded her flesh, his lips were burning hot. Passion held in check will consume with inward fire, whilst its expression often cools like the Nereid's embrace.

He went to the door with her and watched her slender, trim figure walking rapidly away until it disappeared round the corner of the Square.

When he turned back into the hall, he found himself face to face with Lord Radclyffe. Not Uncle Rad – but an altogether different man, an old man now with the cynical lines round the mouth accentuated and deepened into furrows, the eyes hollow and colourless, the shoulders bent as if under an unbearable load.

"Uncle Rad," said Luke speaking very gently, forcing his voice to betray nothing of anxiety or surprise, "can I do anything for you?"

But even at sight of his nephew, of the man who had hitherto always succeeded in dissipating by his very presence every cloud on the misanthrope's brow, even at sight of him Lord Radclyffe seemed to shrink within himself, his face became almost ashen in its pallor, and lines of cruel hardness quite disfigured his mouth.