and my curiosity aroused, I consented, and followed the man back to a great stone-built mansion about fifty yards away. The front door in its deep portico stood open, just as the servant had left it when, apparently, he had dashed out into the street to accost the first passer-by.
“I’m sure my master will be most grateful to you, sir,” the young footman said as I crossed the threshold.
We passed through a large square hall and up a great flight of softly-carpeted stairs to the library on the first floor – a big, sombre room, lined with books from floor to ceiling – evidently the den of a studious man.
In the grate there burned a bright log fire, and on either side stood two deep leather arm-chairs. It was a room possessing the acme of cosiness and comfort. Over the fireplace was set a large circular painting of the Madonna and Child – evidently the work of some Italian master of the seventeenth century – while here and there stood several exquisite bronzes.
In the window on the left was set a great carved Renaissance writing-table, and upon it burned an electric lamp with an artistic shade of emerald glass.
A few moments later a man in evening-dress entered hurriedly – almost breathlessly. I judged him to be about forty-five, dark-haired and decidedly handsome, but his complexion was a trifle sallow, and his features had a decidedly Oriental cast.
He greeted me profusely in a quiet, highly refined voice. Though his appearance was foreign, yet he was certainly English.
“I’m really awfully sorry to trouble you, sir,” he said in a tone of profuse apology, “but the fact is that I find myself in a state of considerable perplexity. It is extremely good of you to consent to accompany Horton back here. I only hope that I have not interfered with any appointment you have to keep.”
“Not at all,” I replied, wondering who my host might be, for the whole affair was so sudden and unexpected that I was bewildered.
“Do sit down, and have a cigar,” said my unknown host cheerily, and he took up a large silver box from a side table whereon was set a decanter of whisky, a syphon of soda water and four glasses upon a beautiful old tray of Georgian silver.
I selected a Corona, and sinking into the inviting chair, lit it, while he also took a cigar, and having clipped off the end, lit up as well.
We chatted affably, for my host was certainly geniality itself.
“This is quite an unexpected visit!” I remarked laughing, wondering still why I had been called in.
“Yes,” he said. “I should not have had the pleasure of your acquaintance had it not been for the great trouble I have to-night,” and he drew a deep sigh, while across his dark face passed an expression of pain and regret. “Some men are happy, others are – are, well, unfortunately unhappy in their domestic life. I, alas! am one of the latter,” he added.
“That is very regrettable,” I said sympathetically.
“My wife,” he said hoarsely after a pause, “my wife took out my little boy this evening and deliberately left him in Westbourne Grove – just in order to spite me! Then she rang me up from some call-office and told me what she had done. Put yourself in my place,” he said. “Would you not be indignant? Would you not be filled with hatred – and – ”
“I certainly should,” was my reply. “I’m a bachelor, and sometimes when I see so many unhappy marriages I fear to take the matrimonial plunge myself.”
“Ah! Take my advice and remain single as long as ever you can, my dear sir. I – I haven’t the pleasure of your name.”
“Garfield – Hugh Garfield,” I said.
“Mine is De Gex – Oswald De Gex,” he said. “You may perhaps have heard of me.”
Heard of Oswald De Gex! Of course I had! He was reputed to be one of the wealthiest of men, but he lived mostly in Paris or at his magnificent villa outside Florence. It was common knowledge that he had, during the war, invested a level million sterling in the War Loan, while he was constantly giving great donations to various charities. Somewhat eccentric, he preferred living abroad to spending his time in England, because, it was said, of some personal quarrel with another Member of the House of Commons which had arisen over a debate soon after he had been elected.
I recollected, too, that his wife – whose handsome pictured face so often appeared in the newspapers – was the daughter of a sporting baronet, yet I had never heard any whisper of such matrimonial troubles as he had just revealed to me.
He seemed a most easy-going man, whose clean-shaven face under the softly shaded electric light did not now appear so sallow and foreign as at first. His eyes were dark and rather deeply set, while his mouth was narrow and refined, with a dimple in the centre of his chin. His cast of features was certainly foreign, and handsome withal – a face full of strength and character. When he spoke he slightly aspirated his c’s, and now and then he gesticulated when enthusiastic, due, of course, to his long residence abroad.
Often I had read in the newspapers of the splendid mediæval castle which he had bought from the Earl of Weymount, a castle perched high upon the granite rocks facing the Channel, between the Lizard and St. Ruan. He had spent a fortune in restoring it, yet he very seldom visited it. The historic place, with its wind-swept surroundings, was given over to his agent at Truro and to a caretaker.
As a matter of fact, I had once seen it while on a summer tour in Cornwall five years before, a great square keep with four towers, storm-worn and forbidding – one of the most perfect specimens of the mediæval castles in England. I had been told by the man who drove the hired car about its history, how in the early fourteenth century it had been the home of William Auberville, a favourite of Edward II. From the Aubervilles the old fortress had passed a century later into the Weymount family, and had been their ancestral home for centuries.
I chanced to mention that I had seen the castle, whereupon the millionaire smiled, and remarked:
“I fear that I’ve not been there lately. I am so very seldom in England nowadays. Besides, the old place is so cold and gloomy. It is draughty even on a summer’s day. My wife liked it when we were married – liked it until somebody told her of a family legend, how Hugh de Weymount, in the fifteenth century, walled up his wife in the north tower and left her to starve to death. Ever since she heard that story she has hated the old place. But,” he added with a hard laugh, “it is most probably not true, and if the gallant knight actually did such a thing, perhaps, after all, the lady deserved it!”
My friend certainly seemed soured against the opposite sex. And surely he had just cause to be if his wife, in order to spite him, had deliberately lost the heir, little Oswald De Gex, in Westbourne Grove.
It was a strange thing that the heir of one of the wealthiest men in Britain should have been abandoned in Bayswater. As a bachelor, I wondered as to the state of mind of the mother – a mother who could take out her child on a winter’s night, without hat or coat, and deliberately cast him adrift just to annoy her husband.
But the gentler sex in these days of drugs and dancing are, it must be admitted, strangely abnormal. Women with crazes abound everywhere. That women are emancipated from the almost Oriental thraldom in which they lived in the days of Victoria the Good is a bright sign of our times – the times of discovery, refinement, and mutual happiness of all classes. But certain circles – those circles wherein women take drugs to enable them to dance the better, circles where opium is smoked, and where morals do not count, where religion is scoffed at and relegated to the limbo of an out-of-date fiction, and where only the possessor of money counts, there
