CHAPTER II
While Janet Tosswill was thinking so intently of Godfrey Radmore, hehimself was standing at the window of a big bedroom in one of thosemusty, expensive, old-fashioned hotels, which, perhaps because they arewithin a stone's throw of Piccadilly, still have faithful patrons all theyear round, and are full to bursting during the London Season. As toRadmore, he had chosen it because it was the place where the grandfatherwho had brought him up always stayed when he, Godfrey, was a little boy.
Tall, well-built after the loose-limbed English fashion, and with a dark,intelligent, rather grim cast of face, Radmore looked older than his age,which was thirty-two. Yet, for all that, there was an air of power and ofreserved strength about him that set him apart from his fellows, and acasual observer would have believed him cold, and perhaps a thoughtcalculating, in nature.
Yet, standing there, looking out on that quiet, narrow street, he wasseething with varying emotions in which he was, in a sense, luxuriating,though whether he would have admitted any living being to a share in themwas another matter.
Home! Home at last for good!--after what had been, with two short breaks,a nine years' absence from England, and from all that England stands forto such a man.
He had left his country in 1910, an angry, embittered lad oftwenty-three, believing that he would never come back or, at any rate,not till he was an old man having "made good."
But everything--everything had fallen out absolutely differently fromwhat he had expected it to do. The influence of Mars, so fatal tomillions of his fellow beings, had brought him marvellous, unmerited goodfortune. He had rushed home the moment War was declared, and afterputting in some time in a training which he hated to remember, he had atlast obtained a commission. Within a fortnight of having reached hisMecca--the Front, he was back in England in the--to him--amazing guise ofwounded hero. But he had sent for none of his old friends for he wasstill ashamed. After the Armistice he had rushed through England on hisway to Australia, putting in a few days with a Colonel and Mrs. Crofton,with whom he had been thrown in Egypt. More to do his host a kindnessthan for any other reason, Radmore had sent his godson, Timothy Tosswill,a pedigree puppy, from the queer little Essex manor-house where theCroftons were then making a rather futile attempt to increase theirslender means by breeding terriers.
The days had slipped by there very pleasantly, for Radmore liked histaciturn host, and Mrs. Crofton was very pretty--an agreeable playfellowfor a rich and lonely man. So it was that when it came to the point hehad not cared to look up any of the people associated with his earlyyouth.
But now he was going to see them--almost had he forced himself upon them.And the thought of going home to Old Place shook and stirred him to theheart.
To-day he felt quite queerly at a loose end. This perhaps, partly becausethe lately widowed Mrs. Crofton, with whom he had spent a good deal ofhis time since his arrival in London three weeks ago, had left town. Shehad not gone far, only to the Surrey village where he himself was goingon Friday.
When pretty Mrs. Crofton had told Radmore that she had taken a house atBeechfield, he had been very much surprised and taken aback. It hadseemed to him an amazing coincidence that the one place in the wide worldwhich to him was home should have been chosen by her. But at once she hadreminded him, in her pretty little positive way, that it was he himselfwho, soon after they had become first acquainted in Egypt, had drawn suchan attractive picture of the Surrey village. That, in fact, was why, inJuly--it was now late September--when she, Enid Crofton, had had to thinkof making a new home, Beechfield had seemed to her the ideal place. Ifonly she could hear of a house to let there! And by rare good chancethere had been such a house--The Trellis House! A friend had lent hera motor, and she had gone down to look at it one August afternoon, andthere and then had decided to take it. It was so exactly what shewanted--a delightful, old, cottagy place, yet with all modernconveniences, lacking, alas! only electric light.
All this had happened, so she had explained, after her last letter tohim, for she and Radmore had kept up a desultory correspondence.
And now, with Janet Tosswill's voice still sounding in his ears, GodfreyRadmore was not altogether sorry to feel a touch of loneliness, for attimes his good fortune frightened him.
Not only had he escaped through the awful ordeal of war with only one badwound, while many of his friends and comrades--the best and bravest, themost happily young, had fallen round him--but he had come back to findhimself transformed from a penniless adventurer into a very rich man. Anold Brisbane millionaire, into whose office he had drifted in the Januaryof 1914, and with whom he had, after a fashion, made friends, had re-madehis will in the memorable autumn of that year, and had left Radmore halfhis vast fortune. Doubtless many such wills were made under the stress ofwar emotion, but--and it was here that Radmore's strange luck had comein--the maker of this particular will had died within a month of makingit. And, as so often happens to a man who had begun by losing what littlehe had owing to folly and extravagance, Godfrey Radmore, thoughexceptionally generous and kindly, now lived well within his means, andhad, if anything, increased his already big share of this world's goods.
Now that he was home for good, he intended to buy a nice old-fashionedhouse with a little shooting, and perchance a little fishing. The place,though not at Land's End, must yet not be so near London that a fellowwould be tempted to be always going to town. It seemed to him amazingthat he now had it within his power to achieve what had always been hisideal. But when he had acquired exactly the kind of place he wanted tofind, what those whom he had set seeking for him had assured him withsuch flattering and eager earnestness he would very soon discover--whatthen? Did he mean to live there alone? He thought yes, for he did not nowfeel drawn to marriage.
As a boy--it now seemed aeons of years ago--it had been far otherwise. ButBetty Tosswill had been very young, only nineteen, and when he had fallenon evil days she had thrown him over in obedience to her father'sstrongly expressed wish. He had suffered what at the time seemed afrightful agony, and he had left England full of revolt and bitterness.
But to-day, when the knowledge that he was so soon going to Beechfieldbrought with it a great surge of remembrance, he could not honestly tellhimself that he was sorry. Had he gone out to Australia burdened with agirl-wife, the difficult struggle would have been well-nigh intolerable,and it was a million to one chance that he would ever have met the man towhom he owed his present good fortune. What he now longed to do was toenjoy himself in a simple, straightforward way. Love, with its tremors,uncertainties, its blisses and torments, was not for him, and in so faras he might want a pleasant touch of half sentimental, half sexlesscomradeship, there was his agreeable friendship with Mrs. Crofton.
Enid Crofton? The thought of how well he had come to know her in thelast three weeks surprised him. When he had first met her in Egypt shehad been the young, very pretty wife of Colonel Crofton, an elderly"dug-out," odd and saturnine, whose manner to his wife was not alwaysover-kindly. No one out there had been much surprised when she haddecided to brave the submarine peril and return to England.
Radmore had not been the only man who had felt sorry for her, and who hadmade friends with her. But unlike the other men, who were all more orless in love with her, he had liked Colonel Crofton. During his visit toFildy Fe Manor, the liking had hardened into serious regard. He had beensurprised, rather distressed, to find how much less well-off they hadappeared here, at home, than when the Colonel had been on so-calledactive service. It had also become plain to him--though he was not a manto look out for such things--that the husband and wife were now on veryindifferent terms, the one with the other, and, on the whole, he blamedthe wife--and then, just before he had started for home again, had comethe surprising news of Colonel Crofton's death!
In her letter to one who was, after all, only an acquaintance, theyoung widow had gone into no details. But, just by chance, Radmore hadseen a paragraph in a week-old London paper containing an account of theinquest.
Colonel Crofton had committed suicide, a result, it was stated,of depression owing to shell-shock. "Shell-shock" gave Radmore pause. Hefelt quite sure that Colonel Crofton had never--to use a now familiarparaphrase--heard a shot fired in anger. The fact that his war servicehad been far from the Front had always been a subject of bitter complainton the old soldier's part.
Radmore had written a sympathetic note to Mrs. Crofton, telling her thedate of his return, and now--almost without his knowing how and why--theyhad become intimate, meeting almost daily, lunching or dining togetherincessantly, Radmore naturally gratified at the admiration his lovelycompanion--she had grown even prettier since he had last seenher--obviously excited.
And yet, though he had become such "pals" with her, and though he missedher society at his now lonely meals to an almost ridiculous extent,Radmore would have been much taken aback had an angel from heaven toldhim that the real reason he had sought to get in touch with Old Place wasbecause Enid Crofton had already settled down at Beechfield.