The Yellow House; Master of Men. E. Phillips Oppenheim
it would save my getting postal orders.”
I left the room to write a note. When I came back my father had gone into his study. I followed him there, and, entering the room without knocking, found him bending over his desk.
He looked up at me and frowned.
“What do you want?” he said, sharply.
I explained, and he took the note from me, listening to the details of my commission, and making a note in his pocket-book.
“I will see to this for you if I can,” he said. “I will not promise, because I shall have other and more important matters to take up my attention. In the meantime, I should be glad to be left undisturbed for an hour. I have some letters to write.”
I left him at once, and I heard the key turn in the door after me. At half-past three a fly arrived from the Junction, and he appeared upon the step carrying a small black bag in his hand.
“I shall be back,” he said, “on Friday. Goodbye, Alice; goodbye, Kate.”
We kissed him, and he got up in the carriage and drove off. Alice and I remained upon the doorstep looking at one another. We both felt that there was something mysterious about his sudden departure.
“Have you any idea what it means?” she asked me.
I shook my head.
“He has not told me anything,” I said. “Didn’t you say that he used to go to London often when you were at Belchester?”
Alice looked very grave.
“Yes,” she said; “and that is one reason why we left the place. The people did not like it. He went away very often; and, indeed, old Colonel Dacre wrote to the Bishop about it.”
“He was a meddlesome old duffer,” I remarked, leaning against the door-post with my face turned towards the Yellow House.
“He was rather a busybody,” Alice admitted; “but I am not surprised that he wrote to the Bishop. A good many other people used to complain about it. You were not in Belchester very long, so of course you knew nothing about it.”
“And do you mean to say that you have no idea at all why he went so often? You don’t know what he did there, or anything, not even where he stayed?”
“Not the shred of an idea,” Alice declared. “It used to worry me a great deal, and when I came here I hoped it was all over. Now it seems as though it were all beginning again!”
“I believe,” I said, “that I know what took him up to London to-day.”
“Really!” Alice cried, eagerly.
I nodded.
“It was a letter.”
“One that he had this morning?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Morris gave me the letters through the window,” I answered. “There were only two for father. One was from Mr. Hewitt—that was about the schools you know, and the other was from somewhere in South America. It was that letter which took him to London.”
She looked at me with knitted brows, and a general expression of perplexity.
“From South America! I never heard father speak of any one there.”
“From South America,” I repeated. “It was a large square envelope, and the writing was very fine and delicate.”
“I wonder,” Alice suggested, thoughtfully, “whether we have any relatives out there of whom we do not know. It may be that. Perhaps they are poor, and—”
I interrupted her.
“This letter was not from a poor person,” I declared, confidently. “The notepaper, or rather the envelope, was expensive, and in very good style. I believe there was a crest on the envelope.”
“Still,” Alice remarked, “we cannot be certain—especially if the letter was from South America—that it was the cause of his going to London.”
“I think we can,” I answered. “In one corner there were three words, written very small—“London about fifteenth.”
We exchanged glances.
“To-day is the fifteenth,” Alice remarked.
I nodded. It was true. My sister’s eyes were full of trouble.
“I wonder,” she said, softly, “what will be the end of it all? Sometimes I am almost afraid.”
And I, who knew more than she did, was also troubled. Already I was growing to fear my father. Always he seemed to move amongst us with an air of stern repression, as though he were indeed playing a part, wearing always a mask, and as though his real life lay somewhere else, somewhere in the past, or—worst still—somewhere in the present, far away from our quiet little village. I thought of all the stories I had read of men who had lived double lives—men with a double personality one side of whose life and actions must necessarily be a wholesale lie. The fear of something of this sort in connection with my father was gradually laying chill hold upon me. He fulfilled his small parish obligations, and carried himself through the little routine of our domestic life with a stern air of thoughtful abstraction, as though he were performing in a mechanical manner duties contemptible, trivial, and uninteresting, for some secret and hidden reason. Was there another life? My own eyes had shown me that there was another man. Twice had I seen this mask raised; first when he had come face to face with Bruce Deville, and again when he had found me talking with our curious neighbor beneath the roof of the Yellow House. Another man had leaped out then. Who was he? What was he? Did he exist solely in the past, or was there a present—worse still, a future—to be developed?
We were standing side by side at the window. Suddenly there was a diversion. Our gate was flung open. A tall figure came up the drive towards the house. Alice watched it with curiosity.
“Here is a visitor,” she remarked. “We had better go away.”
I recognized him, and I remained where I was. After that little scene upon the lawn only last Sunday I certainly had not expected to see Mr. Bruce Deville again within the confines of our little demesne. Yet there he was, walking swiftly up the gravel walk—tall, untidy, and with that habitual contraction of the thick eyebrows which was almost a scowl. I stepped out to meet him, leaving Alice at the window. He regarded us coldly, and raised his cap with the stiffest and most ungracious of salutes.
“Is Mr. Ffolliot in?” he asked me. “I should like to have a word with him.”
I ignored his question for a moment.
“Good morning, Mr. Deville,” I said, quietly.
His color rose a little. He was not so insensible as he tried to appear, but his bow was flagrantly ironical.
“Good morning, Miss Ffolliot,” he answered, frigidly. “I should like a word with your father—if I could trouble you so far as to tell him that I am here.”
“My father will be exceedingly sorry to have missed you,” I answered, smiling upon him; “he is out just now.”
His frown deepened, and he was obviously annoyed. He made ready to depart.
“Can you tell me when he will be in?” he asked. “I will call again.”
“I am afraid that I cannot positively,” I answered. “We expect him home on Friday, but I don’t know at what time.”
He turned round upon me with a sudden change on his face. His curiously colored eyes seemed to have caught fire.
“Do you mean that he has gone away?” he asked, brusquely.
“He has gone to London this afternoon,” I answered.