CHAPTER V
THE WARNING AND A DARE
The Englishman came up cautiously. But when Preston had presented him to Mrs. Varris, he seemed to dismiss or, at least, postpone further consideration of whatever had disturbed him. The four entered together into the great cathedral. The service for which the Englishman had come was about to begin, and would be over within an hour. But young Preston sighed hopelessly as they went down the long, late-Norman nave to the famous Octagon of Ely; and as he again estimated the great transepts and the carved panels of the choir, he knew it would be long after noon and well toward tea-time before he could hope to have Miss Varris to himself again.
It was later than that, indeed,—for he had forgotten the obligation of bridge,—before he could speak alone to the girl once more. But at last he lured her a little away from the others; and she was looking up at him and laughing to tease him just a little.
"Plotting?"
"Probably the most dastardly and desperate enterprise ever conceived by an American—in a cathedral town."
"What, just now?"
Young Preston shrugged himself up delightfully in the sense of the girl's near presence with him, and her still unfailing understanding of his moods.
The sun had long set over the red and gray glowing towers of the militant Ely; and even the long, long hours of the English twilight were gone; and the Americans had been driven in to the inevitable bridge.
Without, where the smooth, silver moon rose above the high embattled towers and turrets of the mighty church, the soft evening shadows fell aslant upon the dry, cool fields and the fens. Between the willows beyond, as they rustled and stirred with the night breeze, the river slipped shimmering by and seemed to wink and beckon, as the glint from the leaves winked, too, for those shut up in the inn to come out.
But the Americans within only drew closer together and bent more eagerly over their cards.
Young Preston and the girl, who had been playing together, had finished the obligatory game early; and as Mrs. Varris counted the score with the Englishman, who played the fourth hand, the two young people went over and stood in the wide, high window opening upon the lawn.
"Cathedrals by day, and bridge by night. Look at 'em!" Young Preston turned and indicated the crowded tables eloquently. With four women about each board—and sometimes one or two looking on—the tables stretched from the lounge through the parlors, and one, where husbands were playing, invaded even the smoking room. "Oughtn't they to be robbed to prevent them?"
"Yes; even robbed!" the girl had to agree honestly as she followed his glance about. "But I hope you were not plotting that then!" she laughed. "Not against mother, at least!"
"Oh, no; not just at that moment, Miss Varris," he reassured. "I was considering something far more furious than that. I was planning to write a book about them—and the cathedral towns!"
"What? After what you have said about the books already written?"
"Yes, Miss Varris," he replied sadly. "When I view this havoc of American homes which those books have wrought, and see how impossible it is to cure the victims even with the most skilful and persistent robbery, I am driven to the extreme of being willing to fight books on the cathedral towns with books. If I do, and I am spared the strength to give any conception of the truth of things going on in these towns, the prevailing passion for foreign ecclesiastical architecture will receive a shock in more than one trusting home. But come, Miss Varris, they are through with the score there."
"And adding in the hundred for the last rubber," Mrs. Varris was saying as the young people returned, "gives us—on points and honors both—just two hundred and fifty-two points ahead, Mr. Dunneston. Not too uneven, and very good bridge!" she nodded in congratulation to her partner as she arose. "Thank you very much!"
She turned then to another table. The girl, too, glanced away for a moment.
"That's ten shillings, sixpence?" Preston murmured in a low whisper to the Englishman, and settled his losings covertly.
He nodded, as the girl turned suddenly and caught them.
"You two have been playing against each other for money!" she reproved, in a cautious whisper.
"Only ha'penny points, please, Miss Varris!" Preston begged. "I didn't mean that you should know; and I don't ordinarily play that way. Just to-night," he pleaded aside to her," I wanted to for a special object, truly."
"What was it?" the girl demanded.
The Englishman, holding Preston's coins in his hand, had bowed and arisen.
"Watch him, Miss Varris!" Preston cried. "This was the purpose—to test his true belief in me. See! If he puts those coins into his pocket, he believes—in spite of what he appears to have heard to-day—that I am not the thief. But if he drops them into the box for indignant clergymen there before him now, he must suspect me. This is the test."
"I see," the girl nodded, as the Englishman stood a fraction of a meditative instant before the alms box and then let the little metal pieces slip into the slot.
"And so!" Preston sank back. "I can't tell you what a fall that is for me. Yesterday, Miss Varris, after seven long days of carefully cultivating the confidence of an Englishman who can trace the gout in his family in an unbroken succession of bandages back for five hundred years, I had persuaded him that he could properly keep my money after winning it from me; and to-night—you have seen."
"He hasn't said a suspicious word against you to mother!" the girl encouraged. "He said something to me; but both this morning and this afternoon he had every possible chance to—expose you to mother. And he didn't."
"That's true," Preston agreed. "Of course, I was present most of the time. Still, I can't conceive his being reluctant to discuss me merely because I was present. But," he suggested with an inspiration, "although he must have expected you to warn your mother, don't you think we owe her a last chance of being directly informed about me before night? See; he is talking with her now. If you come out into the garden for a moment—"
The girl signalled her mother as she glanced about and, receiving permission, followed the young American out into the soft radiance of the lawn. They went on to where the grass gave way to the walled walks and flowering beds; and between the high box hedges upon either side of them the steady moonlight fell obliquely, putting first one and then the other of the young people in the dark shadow, as they turned back and forth. And as he watched from the dark in which he was then hidden, Preston saw the girl's face soften unconsciously and become strangely serious and gentle in the silver light. And his lips, as he tried to open them, seemed to stick tightly together and the light banter of the moment before became inane and foolish.
As he watched her silently, she seemed to be unconscious of his scrutiny; but suddenly she stopped, before they had come to the end of the walk, as if to seek refuge in the shadow before her turn. As he himself had to come into the light then, Preston held the other word he had formed to say till he might have again the protection of the hedge shade. But when at last they turned, they both kept silence so long that it began to assume a meaning which forced him to speak.
"You are going on to Lincoln to-morrow morning?" he asked.
"Yes; why?"
"It's funny, isn't it," he considered, "but all the time I have been looking for you I never once thought about what I should do after finding you. I guess," he explained to himself, as the girl made no comment, "that just the chance of finding you seemed so 'impossibly good' that I could not think beyond that."
"And now?" the girl asked.
"After a few hours you are going away again. And—it is not permitted to search after people a second time, after once finding them."
"Why do you not come with us to Lincoln then?" the girl asked, a little puzzled. "Mother asked you, did she not?"
"Yes; but—what were you and Mr. Dunneston arguing about this afternoon when you stopped so suddenly as I came up?" he demanded.
"Do you want to know?"
"Please."
"Well then—frankly—the impropriety, if not the—the—"
"Danger?"
"Yes—the danger of—of taking up with and—"
"And trusting?"
"And trusting persons whom one cannot—sufficiently know."
"I thought that was it. And you were disagreeing—"
"About what constitutes sufficient knowledge of a person, and the methods in which such sufficient knowledge can be gained."
"Yes. Now, I know Mr. Dunneston's ideas on those subjects; but what position did you take, Miss Varris?" the American asked directly.
"About what constitutes sufficient and proper knowledge of one?"
"Yes."
"Well—I said the most proper and sufficient impressions which a girl can have to—to—"
"To protect her! I understand. Please go on."
"Must be and should be those which, with a reasonable opportunity of knowing and judging a man, she forms for herself."
"And Mr. Dunneston did not agree? He thought it necessary, did he not, that one person's family should be known to the other's for at least a few hundred years?"
"Well," the girl smiled, "he seemed to think that preferable—but not exactly necessary."
"But he did think it absolutely essential for proper protection that before a girl permits a man to see much of her, she should know from some—some responsible friend of both, the manner of man he may be?"
"Yes. He was unyielding on that point."
"All of unyielding, I guess. Well—and when you told him that you had merely met me on the boat; that I was an entire stranger before you found me in the next place at the dining table, what did he say?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No; he—" the girl had come to the end of the walk and if she turned about, as they had been turning, she would be brought again into the light. So she stopped and, with her back to the high hedge, halted in its deeper shadow.
"He—what?" young Preston demanded gently.
"He did not believe that we knew you only from the boat."
"But I told him so, when I presented him to you this morning."
"No," the girl corrected gently; "you said only that mother and you and I had crossed together."
"You are right," Preston admitted. "So he thought that we must have been friends before. I see."
He drew in his breath sharply. He had been standing in the light; but as he spoke now, he drew in under the protection of the high box and hid himself in the dark beside her. The girl had broken off a little green twig from the hedge; and she bent it about her slender fingers as she waited.
"So he considers it incredible, Miss Varris," Preston continued in a low voice, "that I should have claimed you as friends and forced myself upon you, as he has seen, with no other right than a dining- and bridge-table acquaintance across the Atlantic."
"No," the girl corrected fairly. "I think he formed his opinion quite as much from mother and me as from you. It would be foolish for me to deny that both mother and I have felt, and have not been afraid to show, far more—confidence in you, Mr. Preston," the girl raised her fair little face frankly, "than we usually would in one."
"Oh, I surely appreciate that, Miss Varris!"
"But he thought I was just trying to joke with him—especially after I told him that mother had invited you to travel with us for a few days as long as our ways lay together."
"What did he say to that?"
The girl laughed a little. "Oh, he told me with most excruciating seriousness all about your certainly very extraordinary coincidental connection with every crime in every cathedral town which has been reported; and besides, he described some certainly very remarkable and suspicious actions in the towns, preceding the robberies."
"And then?" Preston persisted.
"Oh, he—" the girl checked herself.
"Pointed out how uncomfortable and, perhaps, compromising it might be for you to continue to show the friendliness for me which you have. Didn't he, now?" Preston demanded.
"Yes," the girl admitted.
"I thought so! And, knowing something about the English constitution, I can't hold it against him. For, without discussing now the possibility of my being this circuitous cathedral town thief, he warned you of a real danger from me."
"And now what do you mean?" the girl asked, checking the lighter tone of the moment before.
"I mean, Miss Varris," the young American returned, as gravely, "that, though I was laughing about it this morning, and was joking only a moment ago in there before the others, seriously now, there is almost every circumstantial reason and many other contributing bits of evidence besides, to indicate to the police, convincingly, that I am the thief travelling about robbing the Americans in these cathedral towns.
"Wait, please!" he checked her gently as she laughed lightly at him and started to speak. "You know, the police only this morning ferreted out the true significance of the cathedral crimes as a series. To check up their new theory, they have wired to all the other towns where the robberies have occurred for the names of the Americans registered in the inns and the hotels at the time of the robberies. I understand that in a conclusive number of cases they have found that I have been in the towns just prior to the hotel robberies of the Americans; and also, in a few instances, my search about the hotels and inns where Americans stop and where the robberies occurred, has been remembered and communicated to the police here. There is no other American now in Ely, or here yesterday, who is mentioned even once from any of the other towns. Indeed, no other American man at all is reported as moving about from one town to the other along with the robberies. In short, Miss Varris," he concluded, "I might reasonably be arrested and held for examination to-night. But as the police do not know I realize that I am suspected, they prefer to leave me alone and watch me for a while."
The girl beside him seemed to have waited, with forced patience, for him to finish.
"Excuse me, Mr. Preston," she said then, "but, you know, when we first came out here a moment ago, you began asking me about our plans and about going on to Lincoln to-morrow morning. Then suddenly you went off into this. I don't understand, quite. What has this to do with what you were saying at first?"
"About my going on to Lincoln with you?"
"Yes."
"Miss Varris, it shows why I must not go on with you to-morrow. I need not say how hard it has been to convince myself of that."
"You must not—why?"
"Because I must agree with Mr. Dunneston that it is impossible for a man in my present position to expect or permit your confidence, however fine about it you both may be, when you can know nothing of me from any responsible person. I was laughing this morning, Miss Varris, at the English caution in this matter. But by some sort of poetic justice the right of their way has been brought home to me directly. So I must not go on with you to-morrow—when I would rather do that than anything I ever wished to do!"
He waited, and pulled at the twigs in the hedge nervously. The girl made no reply. She seemed to know that he had not yet entirely delivered himself and she watched him, studying with satisfaction his figure in the dark.
"But though I can't go with you to-morrow," he said grimly, "I shall find you again and go on then—if I may! Mrs. Thorne, whom your mother mentioned this morning," he explained, "is one of my mother's best friends; and she is responsible enough to satisfy even Mr. Dunneston, I think. She is in Paris, now, or somewhere on the Continent, and the letter I wrote and mailed to her just before dinner should reach her within two days, at most. I have asked her to write you or your mother, Miss Varris. So when I find you again, may I accept your invitation?"
He had moved out as he spoke and stood now in the moonlight, and though the girl saw how serious and intent were his features, she laughed softly.
"Let me have things just a moment now, Mr. Preston," she said, as he turned aside, disappointed at her laughter.
"What?"
"Well, first; if I now had that letter from Mrs. Thorne, you would feel, of course, that you could go on with us?"
"Yes; I think so."
"Now, how could the letter give us such knowledge of you that we would be safer than we now are in trusting you?"
"Well—well—" Preston stammered.
"How many times have you seen Mrs. Thorne or, rather, has she seen you?"
"Oh, I can't say. I used to go to dances at her house; and a dinner party once. And of course I have called."
"With your mother?"
"To tell the truth that is the way mother usually got me there."
"Precisely. Now, just for the fun of it, let's sum up the knowledge of you which this eminently responsible Mrs. Thorne could furnish us. Of course, she would write most complimentarily and reassuringly. But in essentials all she could say would be, 'I know Mr. Preston's mother. He himself has invariably been polite to people at my dinners and he dances decidedly well; and, moreover, my dear, he is one of those almost unique men who pay party calls.' Come now," she laughed, "the only real knowledge which she could give us of you—to absolutely satisfy Mr. Dunneston and you, too—would be just about as vital as that, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," Preston had to admit reluctantly, but not without appreciation. "That would really be about it."
"Now understand, Mr. Preston," the girl warned teasingly, "since for some reason or other you so clearly do not wish to go on with us to-morrow, I am not urging you for yourself. But Mr. Dunneston gave me a sort of dare this afternoon, which I took."
"A sort of dare?"
"Yes; to try out my trustful American way, which he was condemning and I upholding. I told him that I considered what a girl can determine for herself, with any sort of opportunity, to be a great deal more sufficient than the usual introduction and formal commendation which every one trusts. And he urged me to try what he calls my 'American' way with you and see how I would come out with it."
"And you said?"
"I would. I am really sorry that I shall not have an opportunity now. He was most delightfully—exasperating!"
"Mr. Dunneston?" the American repeated absently. "Isn't he?" He stood thinking an instant more and then moved back beside the girl against the hedge.
"You consider," he said at length, "what you and your mother could judge of me during the week I was with you almost constantly upon the Britannia enough to justify me in going with you to-morrow to Lincoln?"
"I said," the girl replied, "that I certainly consider it far more sufficient than anything Mrs. Thorne could tell us—which would have sent you with us with a light heart."
"But you don't know of me even that I know Mrs. Thorne, or that I have written her."
The girl laughed lightly again.
"Really, Mr. Preston," she mocked, "if it weren't that Mr. Dunneston has put me on my mettle and committed me to proving myself right, I would now doubt you myself, almost."
"Tell me this, Miss Varris," the American said, "suppose that this night other Americans were robbed here in Ely—to make the test stronger, suppose you yourselves, whom I alone know to be carrying a good deal of money, were robbed in this inn to-night—would you be willing to have me go on with you to-morrow and travel with you?"
The girl pushed out into the centre of the walk without answering, and glanced down the narrow way to the inn door.
"Come!" she said. "There is mother waiting for me in the doorway."
"Answer me first—please!"
"No; come with me first!"
"Mother," she said, as they came up together, "Mr. Dunneston has warned you?"
The elder woman laughed easily. "Yes. But, though it is so absurd, Mr. Preston," she said, "I am going to take precautions to-night."
"What are you going to do, mother?" the girl asked.
"I haven't fully decided. But we all have been asked by the management to send our valuables down in lock-boxes to the safe. I think I shall do it."
"Good!" the girl commended. She turned suddenly to Preston. "To make the test strong as you can, Mr. Preston," she nodded, "take—I mean, get the thief to take our box; and we'll answer you to-morrow morning! Good-night!"
"You do seem to have doubts yourself, don't you? But good-night!" he cried, as he squeezed the ends of her fingers. "Good-night, Mrs. Varris! Good-night!"