The Keeper of the Door. Ethel M. Dell
the death of St. John the Baptist.
A carved oak chest, long and low, stood just within, and upon this the girl seated herself, with the great dog close beside her. Her ten-mile bicycle ride in the heat had tired her.
There was no sound in the house save the ticking of an invisible clock. It might have been a place bewitched, so intense and so uncanny was the silence, broken only by that grim ticking that sounded somehow as if it had gone on exactly the same for untold ages.
"What a ghostly old place it is, Cork!" Olga remarked to her companion.
"And you actually spend the night here! I can't think how you dare."
In response to which Cork smiled with a touch of superiority and gave her to understand that he was too sensible to be afraid of shadows.
They were still sitting there conversing, with their faces to the sunlit garden, when there came the sound of a careless footfall and Violet Campion, her riding-whip dangling from her wrist, strolled round the corner of the house, and in at the open door.
She was laughing as she came, evidently at some joke that clung to her memory.
"Look at me!" she said. "I'm all foam. But I've conquered his majesty King Devil for once. He's come back positively abject. My dear, do get up! You're sitting on my coffin!"
Olga got up quickly. "Violet, what extraordinary things you think of!"
The other girl laughed again, and stooping raised the oaken lid. "It's not in the least extraordinary. Look inside, and picture to yourself how comfy I shall be! You can come and see me if you like, and spread flowers—red ones, mind. I like plenty of colour."
She dropped the lid again carelessly, and took a gold cigarette-case from her pocket. The sunlight shone generously upon her at that moment, and Olga Ratcliffe told herself for the hundredth time that this friend of hers was the loveliest girl she had ever seen. Certainly her beauty was superb, of the Spanish-Irish type that is world-famous—black hair that clustered in soft ringlets about the forehead, black brows very straight and delicate, skin of olive and rose, features so exquisite as to make one marvel, long-lashed eyes that were neither black nor grey, but truest, deepest violet.
"Don't look at me like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged person, isn't he, wherever he goes? Didn't someone once say of him that he rushes in where angels fear to tread? It's rather an apt description. How is he, by the way? And why didn't you bring him too?"
She stood on the step, with the sunlight pouring over her, and daintily smoked her cigarette. Olga came and stood beside her. They formed a wonderful contrast—a contrast that might have seemed cruel but for the keen intelligence that gave such vitality to the face of the doctor's daughter.
"Oh, Nick is playing cricket with the boys," she said. "He is wonderfully good, you know, and takes immense care of us all."
"A positive paragon, my dear! Don't I know it? A pity he saw fit to throw himself away upon that very lethargic young woman! I should have made him a much more suitable wife—if he had only had the sense to wait a few years instead of snatching the first dark-eyed damsel who came his way!"
"Oh, really, Violet! And fancy calling Muriel lethargic! She is one of the deepest people I know, and absolutely devoted to Nick—and he to her."
"Doubtless! doubtless!" Violet flicked the ash delicately from her cigarette. "I am sure he is the soul of virtue. But how comes it that the devoted Muriel can tear herself from his side to go a-larking on the Continent with the grim and masterful Dr. Jim?"
"Oh, I thought you knew that. It is for the child's benefit. Poor little Reggie has a delicate chest, and Redlands doesn't altogether suit him. Dad positively ordered him abroad, and when Muriel demurred about taking him out of Dad's reach (she has such faith in him, you know), he arranged to go too if Nick would leave Redlands and come and help me keep house. You see, Dad couldn't very well leave me to look after Dr. Wyndham singlehanded."
"My dear, of course not!" Up went the violet eyes in horror at the bare suggestion. "You scandalize me. An innocent child like you! Not to be thought of for a moment! Rather than that, I would have come and shared the burden with you myself!"
"That's exactly what I have come to ask you to do," said Olga eagerly.
"Do say you can! You can't think how welcome you will be!"
"My dear, you're so impetuous!" Violet was just a year her junior, but this fact was never recognized. "Pray give me time to deliberate. You forget that I also have a family to consider. What will Bruce say if I desert him at a moment's notice?"
"I'm sure Bruce won't mind. Can't we go and ask him?"
"Presently, my child. He is not at home just at present. Neither is Mrs. Bruce." The daintiest grimace in the world testified to the opinion entertained by the speaker for the latter. "Moreover, Bruce and I had a difference of opinion this morning and are not upon speaking terms. So unfortunate that he is so difficile. By the way, he is hand and glove with the new assistant. Were you aware of that?"
"I knew that he came to tea here yesterday," said Olga.
"Oh! And how did you find that out?"
"He told me."
"You mean you asked him!"
"Indeed, I didn't!" Olga refuted the charge with indignation. "I don't take the smallest interest in his doings."
"Not really?" Her friend looked at her with a comprehending smile.
"Don't you like the young man?" she enquired.
"I detest him!" Olga declared with vehemence.
Again the slender little finger flicked the ash from the cigarette. "But what a mistake, dear!" murmured the owner thereof. "Young men don't grow on every gooseberry bush. Besides, one can never tell! The object of one's detestation might turn out to be the one and only, and it's so humiliating to have to change one's mind."
"I shall never change mine with regard to Dr. Wyndham," Olga said with great determination. "I should hate him quite as badly even if he were the only man in the world."
But at that the cigarette was suddenly whisked from the soft lips and pointed full at her. "Allegro,"—it was Violet Campion's special name for her, and she uttered it weightily—"mark my words and ponder them well! You have met your fate!"
"Violet! How dare you say such a thing?" Olga turned crimson with indignant protest. "I haven't! I wouldn't! It's horrid of you to talk like that!"
"Quite indecent, dear, I admit. But have you never noticed how indecent the truth can be? What a pity to waste such a lovely blush on me! I presume he hasn't begun to make love to you yet?"
"Of course he hasn't! No man would be such a fool with you within reach!" thrust back Olga, goaded to self-defence.
"But I am not within reach," said Violet, with a twirl of the cigarette.
"Far more so than I," returned Olga with spirit. "Anyhow, he never went out of his way to have tea with me."
A peal of laughter from her companion put a swift end to her indignation. Violet was absolutely irresistible when she laughed. It was utterly impossible to be indignant with her.
"Then you think if I am there perhaps he will be persuaded to stay at home to tea?" she chuckled mischievously. "Well, my dear, I'll come, and we will play at battledore and shuttlecock to your heart's content. But if the young man turns and rends us for our pains—and I have a shrewd notion that that's the sort of young man he is—you mustn't blame me."
She tossed away her cigarette with the words, and turned inwards, sweeping Olga with her with characteristic energy. She was never still for long in this mood.
They passed through the great hall to a Gothic