Trent’s Own Case. E. C. Bentley
in the way of getting abroad.’ Aunt Judith certainly appeared to be enjoying to the full the excitement that she had tasted in anticipation. Her eyes were bright, and her cheek had an unaccustomed flush.
Trent came at once to the point that was uppermost in his mind. ‘You will be glad to hear that it is all settled about Eunice. I saw Randolph this evening, as I had arranged, and I made quite sure that he won’t trouble her again. You know, Aunt Ju, I could see you didn’t feel quite confident about it when I told you I knew how to get a really binding promise out of the old man. Well, that is what I’ve done; you can set your mind at rest. I couldn’t explain to you how I was going to manage it, and I can’t now. I told him, you see, that I would keep quiet about it, as long as he lived at least; it was a bargain. But it’s all right.’
‘It is such a relief to know that, Philip.’ Miss Yates buried her nose in the carnations gratefully. ‘You are quite right, I couldn’t help being a little worried until it was quite certain.’
‘All the same,’ Trent went on, ‘it looks as if I am booked for a bit of a row with Eunice about it. It seems you wrote to her saying you had told me what had been going on, and you were letting me loose on the old man. She doesn’t like it. I got a note from her yesterday, and it wasn’t a nice note, though knowing what she is it didn’t altogether surprise me.’
There was a slight but perceptible elevation of Miss Yates’s chin. ‘What do you mean, Phil, by knowing what she is?’
‘Now don’t get up in arms, Aunt Ju. Of course I didn’t mean …’
‘My dear boy, I am not up in arms, but …’
‘Well, call it a partial mobilization then. You can’t bear to hear a hint of criticism of Eunice, everybody knows that. It’s how I feel myself about her, for that matter. But there’s no harm in saying I wasn’t surprised to be told that her private affairs were none of my damned business, and that she would be obliged if I would keep my nose out of them, and that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself … with more to the same effect.’
Miss Yates, smiling, laid a neatly gloved hand on his arm. ‘If that’s all you mean, Phil, by saying you know what she is, why of course you do … it’s common knowledge that Eunice has a good allowance of spirit. I dare say you have heard things in that tone of voice from her before. So have I, sometimes. So has your wife, though she is a much older friend than you are. None of us take it too tragically, I am sure. We all know …’
‘What she is. Wasn’t that what you were going to say, Aunt Ju? So there we are again at the starting-point of our misunderstanding, and we find ourselves in complete agreement—just like foreign ministers in an official communiqué.’
‘Yes; only we really are, my dear. Now I will confess to you, Phil, that I thought it quite possible she might write you something like that, and I hoped that you would disregard it. She has always insisted on managing her own life just as she likes, and making a hash of it in any way she chooses—which she has done, goodness knows.’
Trent nodded. ‘Goodness does know, indeed. Speaking of that,’ he added, ‘I saw Wetherill for a moment just before I started to come here. He was looking extremely well, I’m sorry to say. I never set eyes on that fellow without wanting to murder him.’
‘I wish you would, I’m sure,’ Miss Yates said with intense feeling. ‘Though there’s no way of doing it that wouldn’t be too good for him.’
‘Yes; and another thing against it is that it’s a game two can play at. He could give me points at it. Wetherill is not the convenient sort of villain who will always take a licking from the hero without doing anything about it. He is fit to take care of himself in any sort of a scrap, he’s afraid of nobody, and he loves a row. It’s a fact, you know, that he killed a man in a duel at La Spezia, after being wounded twice.’
‘I expect he cheated,’ Miss Yates said. ‘I never cared much for La Spezia, and now I shall like it less. Wetherill ought to have lived in Italy of the fifteenth century, along with the Sforzas and the other Renaissance wild animals.’
‘So he ought,’ Trent agreed. ‘But he has always left undone the things that he ought to have done.’
‘She has had nothing to do with him for some time now—she told me so. But that has happened before, and it never lasts. I do wish,’ Miss Yates said fretfully, ‘Eunice could have managed to take that sort of interest in any other man. There were enough for her to choose from, goodness knows! and a number of them very decent fellows, I have no doubt. There was that young doctor friend of yours, I forget his name—’
‘Bryan Fairman, you mean.’
‘Yes. I never met him, but I always thought it would be nice for her to be married to a friend of yours and Mabel’s, and I knew from the way you both used to speak of him that he was the right sort. What makes it all the more irritating is, she has always been very fond of him in a way.’
‘I don’t know,’ Trent said, ‘how many times she has refused to marry him—both of them have lost count, I should think—but I dare say she always did it in the most affectionate terms. Poor Aunt Ju! You never realized what you were letting yourself in for when you decided to become a mother to a girl like Eunice Faviell.’
Miss Yates smiled whimsically. ‘When I decided! It was Eunice who made up her mind to adopt me—you know it was. Why she did, I don’t suppose she knows herself.’ Miss Yates turned the discussion to her plans of travel, and to the changes wrought in Rome since the eighteen nineties. Trent’s own arrangements for the immediate future came under review. Early next day he was going down to Glasminster to attend the wedding of Julian Pickett. Perhaps Aunt Judith remembered Julian. Of course Aunt Judith did. He was the young fellow who had had a limp ever since a tiger bit him somewhere in the Himalayas.
‘In the gluteus maximus,’ Trent murmured.
‘I knew it was somewhere like that,’ Aunt Judith said. ‘Yes; and the day you brought him to see me he rolled up a sheet of music and made a noise like a panther through it, so that Elizabeth dropped the tea-tray in the pantry, and had to be given sal volatile.’
At 8:15 Miss Yates was installed in her place, continuing the conversation through the open window. At 8:19¾ a man carrying a kit-bag hurried past the barrier. He fled to the first-class Pullman, and leapt in just as the train began to move. He was standing in the doorway, with the attendant hauling in his bag, when he chanced to turn and look Trent straight in the face.
Trent, whose casual glance had seen in him only an unknown individual in a big coat over brown tweeds, and a soft hat well pulled down, uttered an exclamation. ‘Bryan! By Jove, you nearly missed it!’
‘Phil! You here!’ With a wild gesture the man leaned from the receding coach. ‘Why the devil …’ The rest of his shout was drowned in the rumble as the train gathered speed. Trent, in his astonishment, barely remembered to reply to his aunt’s wave from the window.
What could be the meaning of Bryan Fairman’s state of agitation? Why had his friend, usually so strictly self-controlled, looked and acted like a demoralized and desperate man?
MISS Yates, for her part, had not perceived this brief scene of recognition, and she applied herself now, very contentedly, to the taking of things as they came. She observed that, as the train drew out of the station and gathered speed, there was a change in the atmosphere of the carriage. Passengers who had been painfully absorbed by long-drawn-out farewells pulled themselves together. They became more jaunty and less self-conscious. They were on the threshold of something like another existence, in which for a time they would be freed from the conventions of their environment and from neighbourly inquisition. Consciously or unconsciously, they hoped to be really rather