Produced by Al Haines The Honour of the Clintons By Archibald Marshall _Author of_ "Elton Manor," "The Squire's Daughter," "The Eldest Son," etc. New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY _To_ _ARTHUR MARWOOD_ CONTENTS BOOK I CHAPTER I A Home-Coming II A Vulgar Theft III The Squire Is Drawn In IV Joan Gives Her Evidence V A Quiet Talk VI The Young Birds VII The Verdict BOOK II I Bobby Trench Is Asked to Kencote II Joan and Nancy III Humphrey and Susan IV Coming Home from the Ball V Robert Recumbent VI Joan Rebellious VII Disappointments VIII Proposals BOOK III I The Squire Confronted II A Very Present Help III The Burden IV This Our Sister BOOK IV I A Return II Payment III The Straight Path IV A Conclave V Waiting VI The Power of the Storm VII Thinking It Out VIII Skies Clearing IX Skies Clear BOOK I CHAPTER I A HOME-COMING The lilacs in the station-yard at Kencote were heavy with their trusses of white and purple; the rich pastures that stretched away on either side of the line were yellow with buttercups. Out of the smiling peace of the country-side came puffing the busy little branch-line train. It came to and fro half a dozen times a day, making a rare contact between the outside world and this sunny placid corner of meadow and brook and woodland. Here all life that one could see was so quiet and so contented that the train seemed to lose its character as it crept across the bright levels, and to be less a noisy determined machine of progress than a trail of white steam, floating out over the grazing cattle and the willows by the brookside, as much in keeping with the scene as the wisps of cloud that made delicate the blue of the fresh spring sky. The white cloud detached itself from the engine and melted away into the sky, and the train slid with a cheerful rattle alongside the platform and came to a stand-still. Nancy Clinton, who had been awaiting its arrival with some impatience, waved her hand and hurried to the carriage from which she had seen looking out a face exactly like her own. By the time she had reached it her twin sister, Joan, had alighted, and was ready with her greeting. "Hullo, old girl!" "You're nearly ten minutes late." The twins had been parted for a fortnight, which had very seldom happened to them before in the whole nineteen years of their existence, and both of them were pleased to be together once more. If they had been rather less pleased they might have said rather more. More was, in fact, said by the maid who stood at the carriage door with Joan's dressing-bag in her hand. "Good-afternoon, Miss Nancy. Lor, you _are_ looking well, and a sight for sore eyes. We've come back again, you see, and don't want to go away from you no more. Miss Joan, please ketch 'old of this, and I'll get the other things out. Where's that porter? He wants somebody be'ind 'im with a stick." "Hullo, Hannah!" said Nancy. "As talkative as ever! Come along, Joan. She can look after the things." The two girls went out through the booking-office, at the door of which the station-master expressed respectful pleasure at the return of the traveller, and got into the carriage waiting for them. There was a luggage cart as well, and the groom in charge of it touched his hat and grinned with pleasure; as did also the young coachman on the box. "I seem to be more popular than ever," said Joan as she got into the carriage. "Why aren't we allowed a footman?" "You won't find you're at all popular when you get home," said Nancy. "The absence of a footman is intended to mark father's displeasure with you. He sent out to say there wasn't to be one, and William was to drive, instead of old Probyn. Father is very good at making his ritual expressive." "What's the trouble?" enquired Joan. "My going to Brummels for the week-end?" "Yes. Without a _with_-your-leave or _by_-your-leave. Such a house as that is no place for a well-brought-up girl, and what on earth Humphrey and Susan were thinking of in taking you there he can't think. I say, why _did_ you all go in such a hurry? You didn't say anything about it when you wrote on Friday." "Because it was arranged all in a hurry. Lady Sedbergh is going through a month's rest cure at Brummels, and she thought she'd have a lively party to say good-bye before she shuts herself up. It was Bobby Trench who made her ask us, at the last moment." "Joan, is Bobby Trench paying you attentions? You never told me anything in your letters, but he seems to have been always about." Joan laughed. "I'll tell you all about Bobby Trench later on," she said. "I've been saving it up. Mother isn't annoyed at my going to Brummels, is she?" "I don't think so. But she said Humphrey and Susan ought not to have taken you there without asking." "There wasn't time to ask. Besides, I wanted to go, just to see how the smart set really do behave when they're all at home together." "Well, how do they?" "It really is what Frank calls '_chaude étoffe_.' I don't wonder that Lady Sedbergh wants a rest cure if that's how she spends her life. On Sunday we had a fancy dress dinner--anything we could find--and she came down as the Brummels ghost in a sort of nightgown with her hair down her back and her face whitened. She looked a positive idiot sitting at the head of the table. She must be at least fifty and the ghost was only seventeen." "What did you wear?" "Oh, I borrowed Hannah's cap and apron; and Susan's maid lent me a black dress. I was much admired. Susan was a flapper. She had on some clothes of Betty Trench's, who is only fourteen, and about her size. She looked rather silly. Humphrey was properly dressed, except that he wore white trousers and a pink silk pyjama jacket. He said he was Night and Morning. He looked the most respectable of all the men, except Lord Sedbergh, who said he wasn't playing. He's a dear old thing and lets them all do just what they like, and laughs all the time. Bobby Trench was a bathing woman, with a sponge bag thing on his head. He was really awfully funny, but he was funniest of all when he forgot what he looked like and languished at me. I was having soup, and I choked, and Lord Rokeby, who was sitting next to me, thumped me on the back. All their manners are delightfully free and natural." "Well, you seem to have enjoyed yourself." "We finished up the evening with a pillow fight. Fancy!--Lady Sedbergh and some of the other older women joined in, and made as much noise as anybody. You should have seen Hannah's face when I did at last get into my room, where she was waiting for me. She said a judgment was sure to fall on us for such goings on." "A judgment is certainly going to fall on _you_, my dear. Father will seize you the moment you get into the house and ask you what you mean by it." "Dear father!" said Joan affectionately. "It _is_ jolly to be home again, Nancy. How lovely the chestnuts are looking! Dear peaceful old Kencote!" They drove in through the lodge gates, where Joan received a smile and a curtsey, and along the short drive through the park, and drew up beneath the porch of the big ugly square house. Mrs. Clinton was at the door, and Joan enveloped her in an ardent embrace, which was interrupted by the appearance of the Squire, big and burly, with a grizzled beard and a look of self-contented authority. "I've got something to say to you, Miss Joan. Come into my room." He turned his back and marched off to the library, in which he spent most of his time when he was indoors. Joan, after another hug and kiss, followed him. It may or may not have been a sign of the deterioration in manner, wrought by her visit to Brummels, that she winked at Nancy over her shoulder as she did so. "Aren't you going to kiss me, father?" she asked, going up to him. "I am very pleased to see you again, and I'm sure you're just as pleased to see me." The face that she lifted up to him could not possibly have been resisted by any man who had not the privilege of close relationship. The Squire, however, successfully resisted it. "I don't want to kiss you," he said. "I'm very displeased with you. What on earth possessed Humphrey and Susan to take you off to a house like that, without a with-your-leave or a by-your-leave? And what do you mean by going to places where you knew perfectly well you wouldn't be allowed to go?" "But, father darling," expostulated Joan, with an expression of puzzled innocence, "I knew Lord Sedbergh was an old friend of yours. I didn't think you could _possibly_ object to my going there with Humphrey and Susan. They only got up their party on Friday evening, and there wasn't time to write home. Why do you mind so much?" "You know perfectly well why I mind," returned the Squire irritably. "All sorts of things go on in houses like that, and all sorts of people are welcomed there that I won't have a daughter of mine mixed up with. You've been brought up in a God-fearing house, and you've got to content yourself with the life we live here. I tell you I won't have it." "Well, I'm sorry, father dear. I won't do it again. Now give me a kiss." But the Squire was not yet ready for endearments. "Won't do it again!" he echoed. "No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that. If you can't go on a visit to your relations without getting into mischief you'll stop at home." "I don't want anything better," replied Joan tactfully. "I didn't know how ripping Kencote was till I drove home just now. Everything is looking lovely. How are the young birds doing?" "Never mind about the young birds," said the Squire. "We've got to get to the bottom of this business. You must have known very well that I should object to your going to a house like Brummels. When that young Trench came here a few years ago you heard me object very strongly to the way he behaved himself. Cards on Sunday, and using the house like an hotel, never keeping any hours except what suited himself, and I don't know what all. Did they play cards on Sunday at Brummels?" Joan was obliged to confess that they did. "Of course! Did _you_ play? Did Humphrey and Susan play?" "Oh no, father; I don't know how to play and I wouldn't think of it," replied Joan hurriedly, to the first question. "Did you go to church?" "Oh yes, father. I went with Lord Sedbergh. He is a dear old man, and hates cards now." "I don't know why you should call him an old man. He is just the same age as I am. It's quite true that we were friends as young fellows. But that's a good many years ago. He has gone his way and I have gone mine. I don't suppose he is responsible for all the folly and extravagance that goes on in his house; still, he lives an altogether different sort of life, and we haven't met for years. If he remembers my name it's about as much as he would do." "Oh, but he talked a lot about you, father. He told me all sorts of stories about when you were at Cambridge together. He said once you began to play cards after dinner and didn't leave off until breakfast time the next morning." "H'm! ha!" said the Squire. "Of course young fellows do a number of foolish things that they don't do afterwards. Did anyone but you and Lord Sedbergh go to church on Sunday?" Joan was obliged to confess that they had been the only attendants. "Well, there it is!" said the Squire. "Out of all that household, only two willing to do their duty towards God Almighty! I shall give Humphrey and Susan a piece of my mind. I blame them more for it than I do you. But at the same time you ought not to have gone, and I hope you fully understand that." "Oh, yes, father dear," replied Joan. "You have made it quite plain now. Don't be cross any more, and give me a kiss. I've been longing for one ever since I came in." The Squire capitulated. "Now run away," he said when he had satisfied the calls of filial affection, and paternal no less. "I've got some papers to look through. What you've got to do is to put it all out of your mind, and settle down and make yourself happy at home. God knows I do all _I_ can to make my children happy. The amount that goes out in a house like this would frighten a good many people, and I expect some return of obedience to my wishes for all the sacrifices I make." When Joan had left him the Squire went to find his wife. "Nina," he said, "I'm infernally worried about Joan going to a house like Brummels. The child's a good child, but wants looking after. She ought never to have been allowed to go up to Susan. I thought trouble would come of it when it was suggested." Mrs. Clinton did not remind her husband that both the twins had stayed with their sister-in-law before, and that beyond a grumble at anybody preferring London to Kencote he had never made any objection. "I think they ought not to have taken her away on a visit without asking," said Mrs. Clinton. "But Joan and Nancy are grown-up now, and I think they are both too sensible to take any harm by being with Susan. What I feel is that they must see things for themselves, and not be kept always shut up at home." "Shut up!" repeated the Squire. "That's a foolish way of talking. Home is the best place for young girls; and who could wish for a better home than Kencote? The fact is that this London life is getting looser and more immoral every day. Look what an effect it is having on Humphrey and Susan! What with all that money that old Aunt Laura left them, and the allowance I make to Humphrey, and the few hundreds a year that Susan has, they could very well afford to keep up quite a nice little place in the country, and live a sensible healthy life. As it is they live in a poky flat that you can hardly turn round in, and yet they spend twice as much money as Dick, who is my eldest son, and is quite content to live here quietly in the Dower House and not go running about all over the place. And they spend twice as much as Walter, who has a family to keep. And they don't really get on well together, either. Their marriage has been a great disappointment--a disappointment in every way. The fact is that a young couple without any children to look after and keep them steady are bound to get into mischief, especially if they've got the tastes that Humphrey and Susan have, and enough money to gratify them. Nina, I _hate_ this set of people that they make their friends of. Did you know that that Mrs. Amberley was staying at Brummels?" "I saw her name in the paper," said Mrs. Clinton. "A nice sort of woman for a young girl like Joan to be asked to meet! She's a notoriously loose character; and a good many other members of the party are no better than they should be. Lady Sedbergh herself is a frivolous fool, if she's no worse, and as for that young cub who came here a year or two ago, I don't know when I've seen a young fellow I object to more. I believe Sedbergh himself has the remains of decency and dignity; but what does one person count amongst all that vicious gang? Upon my word, Humphrey and Susan ought to be whipped for taking a girl of Joan's age to such a place. The children shan't go to stay with them again. The fact is that they can't be trusted in anything. Well, I can't stay talking here; I must go back to my papers." In the meantime Joan had retired with Nancy to their own quarters. They still occupied one of the large nurseries as their bedroom, and used the old schoolroom as a place where they could enjoy the privacy necessary for their own intimate pursuits. Their elder sister and three of their brothers were married, their governess had left them at the end of the previous year, and as a rule they had these rooms on the second floor of the East wing entirely to themselves. But at this time, Frank, their sailor brother, was at home on leave, and had taken up his old quarters there. He was a rising young lieutenant of twenty-six, and the twins had been presented to their sovereign and let loose generally on a grown-up world. But between them they managed to produce a creditable revival of the period when the East wing had been full of the noise and games of childhood; for they were all three young at heart and the cares of life as yet sat lightly on them. "Frank and I have started schoolroom tea again," said Nancy, as she and Joan went up to their bedroom together. "He says he wants eggs, after being out the whole afternoon; and mother doesn't mind. You will preside over the urn at five o'clock." "Jolly!" said Joan. "Where is Frank?" "He hacked over to Mountfield to see Jim and Cicely." (Cicely, the eldest of the Clinton girls, had married a country neighbour, Jim Graham, and lived about five miles from Kencote.) "But he said he would be back for tea. I suppose you calmed father down all right?" "Oh yes. He's a dear old lamb, but he must have his say out. You only have to give him his head, and he works it all off. You know, Nancy, although father is rather tiresome at times, he is much better than all those silly old men you meet about London. He is over sixty, and he doesn't mind behaving like it. A lot of _them_ expect you to treat them as if they were your own age, whether they are married or not." "You seem to have gone through some eye-opening experiences." "I have. I feel that I know the world now." She had taken off her hat, and stood in front of the glass, touching the twined masses of her pretty fair hair. The lines of her slim body, and her delicate tapering fingers, were those of a woman; but the child's soul had not yet faded out of her eyes, and still set its impress on the curves of her mouth. "Tell me about Bobby Trench." Joan laughed, with a ringing note of amusement. "Of course you know _why_ we were all given such a sudden and pressing invitation to Brummels," she said. Nancy jumped the implied question and answer. "Well, it was bound to come sooner or later," she said. "With _both_ of us, I mean; not you only. There is no doubt we possess great personal attractions. But I don't think you have much to boast about, if it's only Bobby Trench. What is he like? Has he changed at all since he came here?" "Oh, he is just as silly and conceited as ever; but love has softened him." "I shouldn't want him softened, myself. He'd be sillier than ever. Tell me all about it, Joan. How did he behave?" Joan told her all about it; and the recital would not have pleased Mr. Robert Trench, if he had heard it. With those cool young eyes she had remorselessly regarded the antics of the attracted male, and found them only absurd. But she had not put a stop to them. "You know, Nancy," she said guilelessly, "it's all very well to talk as they do in books about a man being able to make a girl like him if he keeps at her long enough; but I am quite sure Bobby Trench could never make me like him--in that way--if he tried for a hundred years. Still, it _is_ rather nice to feel that one is grown up at last." "The fact of the matter is, you have been flirting with Bobby Trench," said Nancy; "and you ought to be ashamed of yourself." But Joan indignantly denied this. "What I did," she said, "was to prevent his flirting with me." There was a moment's pause. Then Nancy said unconcernedly, "I suppose I told you that John Spence came here." Joan turned round sharply, and looked at her. "No, you didn't," she said. After another moment's pause, she said, "You know you didn't." Then came the question: "Why didn't you?" "He was only here for two nights," said Nancy. "At the Dower House, of course. If I didn't tell you, I meant to." Joan scrutinised her closely, and then turned away. "He was awfully sorry to miss you," Nancy said. "He told me to give you his love." "Thank you," said Joan, rather stiffly. John Spence was a friend of Dick Clinton, who had managed his estates for him for a year. He had first come to Kencote when the twins were about fifteen, and had impressed himself on their youthful imaginations. He was nearly twenty years older than they, but simple of mind, free of his laughter, and noticeably warm-hearted. He liked all young things; and the Clinton twins had afforded him great amusement. He had been to Kencote occasionally as they were growing up, and the elder-brotherly intimacy with which he had treated them at the first had not altered. He was the friend of both of them, but when he had come twice to Kencote to shoot, during the previous season, he had seemed to show a very slight preference for the society of Joan. It had been so slight that the twins, who had never had thoughts which they had not shared, had made no mention of it between them. But now, at a stroke, the great fact of sex came rushing in to affect these young girls, who had played with it in a light unknowing way, but had never felt it. They could amuse themselves, and each other, with the amorous advances of Bobby Trench, but the fact that Nancy had omitted to tell Joan of John Spence's visit was portentous, slight as the omission might seem. Their habitual intercourse was one of intimate humour, varied by frank disputes, which never touched the close ties that bound them. But this was a subject on which they could neither joke nor quarrel. It was likely to alter the relations that had always existed between them, if it was not faced at once. It was impossible for either of them not to face it. For the whole of their lives each had known exactly what was in the mind of the other. Each knew now, and the knowledge could not be ignored. "Well, he was awfully nice," said Nancy, rather as if she were saying something she did not want to. "I liked him better than ever. But he sent his love to you." "I don't see why you shouldn't have told me that he had come," said Joan. But she saw very well, and in the light of her seeing John Spence ceased to be the openly admired friend of her and Nancy's childhood, and became something quite different. CHAPTER II A VULGAR THEFT In the great square dining-room at Kencote the Squire was sitting over his wine, with his eldest and youngest sons. From the walls looked down portraits of Clintons dead and gone, and of the horses and dogs that they had loved, as well as some pictures that by-gone owners of Kencote had brought back from their travels, or bought from contemporary rising and since famous artists. There were some good pictures at Kencote, but nobody ever took much notice of them, except a visitor now and then. Yet their presence had its effect on these latest members of a healthy, ancient line. No family portraits went back further than two hundred years, because Elizabethan Kencote, with nearly all its treasures of art and antiquity, had been burnt down, and Georgian Kencote built in its place. Even Georgian Kencote had suffered at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at the hands of a rich and progressive owner; rooms had been stripped of panelling, windows had been enlarged; and, but for a few old pieces here and there, the furniture was massive but ugly. The Clintons were as old as any commoner's family in England, and had lived at Kencote without any intermission for something like six hundred years; but there was little to show it in their surroundings as they were at present. Only the portraits of the last six or seven generations spoke mutely but insistently of the past, and their prototypes were as well-known by name and character to their descendants as if they had been known in the flesh. To us, observing Edward Clinton, twentieth century Squire of Kencote, with the eldest son who would some day succeed him, and the youngest son, who had taken to one of those professions to which the younger sons of a line undistinguished for all except wealth and lineage had taken as a matter of course throughout long generations, this background of family portraits is full of suggestion. One might ask how much of the continuity of life and habit it represents is stable, how much of it dependent upon fast-changing circumstance. How far is this robust elderly man, living on his lands and desiring to live nowhere else, and the handsome younger man, whose life has been spent in the centre of all modern happenings,--how far are they what they appear to be, representative of the well-to-do classes of modern England; how far is their attitude to the life about them affected by ideas inherent in their long descent? Are they really of the twentieth century, or in spite of superficial modernity, of a time already passed away? One might say that the life lived by the Squire was the same life, in all but accidentals, as that of the squires who had gone before him, and whose portraits hung on the walls, and that it would be lived in much the same way by the son who was to come after him. And so it was. But the lives of those dead squires had been part of the natural order of things of their time. Their lands had provided for it, and of themselves would provide for it no longer. It was only by the accident of our Squire being a rich man, and being able to leave his son a rich man, that either of them could go on living it. To this extent his life was not based upon his descent, and was indeed as much cut off from that of the previous owners of Kencote as if he had been a man of no ancestry at all, whose wealth, gained elsewhere, enabled him to enjoy an exotic existence as a country gentleman. If wealth disappeared the long chain would be broken, for a reason that would not have broken it before. But, when that is said, there still remains the whole ponderous weight of tradition, which makes of him something different from the rich outsider who, with no more than a generation or two behind him, or perhaps none at all, comes in to take the place of the dispossessed owner whose land alone will no longer support his state. What that counts for in inherited benevolence and sense of responsibility, qualified by strange spots of blindness where the awakened conscience of a community is beginning to see more clearly, it would be difficult to gauge. What one may say is that some flower whose perfume one can distinguish should be produced of a plant so many centuries rooted; that twenty generations of men preserved from the struggle for existence, and having power over their fellows, should end in something easily distinguishable from a man of yesterday; that such old established gentility should have some feelings not shared by the common mass, some peculiar sense of honour, some quality not dependent upon wealth alone, some clear principle emerging from the mists of prejudice and the mere dislike of all change. So we come back to the Squire sitting with his sons over their wine, their pictured forebears looking down on them from the walls, and wonder a little whether there is anything in it all, or whether we are merely in the company of a man to whom chance has given the opportunity of ordering his life on obviously opulent lines, like many another with no forebears that he knows anything of. Dick Clinton had held a commission in His Majesty's Brigade of Guards up to the time of his marriage four years before, and had been very much in the swim of everything that was going on in the world of rank and fashion. Now he lived for the most part quietly at the Dower House, which lay just across the park of Kencote, and busied himself with country pursuits and the management of the estate to which he would one day succeed. He was beginning ever so little to put on flesh, to look more like his father, to lose his interest in the world outside the manor of Kencote and the adjacent lands that went with it. But he was not yet a stay-at-home, as the Squire had long since become, and he and his wife had just returned from a fortnight in London, well primed with the interests of their former associates. "Have you heard about this business at Brummels?" he said, as he passed the decanter. The Squire frowned at the mention of Brummels. "No. What business?" he asked. "Lady Sedbergh has had a pearl necklace stolen. It's said to be worth ten thousand pounds; say five. She says that she kept it in a secret hiding-place, and the only person who could have known where it was is Rachel Amberley. She accuses her of stealing it. There's going to be a pretty scandal." The Squire frowned more ferociously than ever. "That's the sort of thing that goes on amongst people like that!" he said with disgust. "They have no more sense of honour than a set of convicts. A vulgar theft! And there's hardly one of the whole lot that wouldn't be capable of it." "Well, I don't know about that," said Dick; "but if Mary Sedbergh can be believed, there's not much doubt that Mrs. Amberley walked off with it. It seems that there's an old hiding-place in the morning-room at Brummels. You press a spring in the wainscot, and find a cupboard." "There are plenty of those about," said the Squire. "Anybody might find it. Still, I've no doubt that she's right, and it was that Mrs. Amberley who actually did steal it." Frank laughed suddenly. He was accustomed to suck amusement out of the most unlikely sources, and his father, whether unlikely or not, was one of them. "Why does she think Mrs. Amberley found it?" he asked. "Because she showed her the hiding-place in a moment of expansion. It isn't just a cupboard behind the panelling. When you've found that you have only begun. There is another secret place behind the cupboard itself. Only Sedbergh and his wife knew of it. It's a secret that has been handed down; and well kept." "Then why on earth did she tell a woman like Mrs. Amberley about it?" enquired the Squire. "I don't know; though it's just like her to do it. I think Mrs. Amberley was at school with her, or something of that sort. She had a big party at Brummels, and then emptied the house and went through a month's rest cure there. At the end of the month she looked for her necklace, and found it gone. A diamond star had gone as well; but other things she had put away had been left." "So, whoever the thief was, she had a month's start," said Frank. "Yes. Sedbergh was called in, and they both went straight to Rachel Amberley and offered to hush it all up if she would give back the necklace." The Squire snorted. "Rachel Amberley bluffed it out. She said she would have them up for scandal if they breathed a word of suspicion anywhere. They have been breathing a good many. In fact, it's all over the place. And nothing has happened yet. Everybody is wondering who will make the first move." "_She_ won't," said the Squire, who had never met Mrs. Amberley. "I am not in the way of hearing much that goes on amongst people of that sort, now, but she's a notoriously loose woman. That's why I was so annoyed when I heard that Joan had been taken to a house where she was staying. By the by, this affair didn't take place at that particular time, did it?" "Yes. That's when it happened." The Squire's face was blacker than ever. "Then it will be known who was of the party," he said. "Our name will be dragged into one of these disgraceful scandals, and every Dick, Tom, and Harry in the country will be talking about us. Upon my word, it's maddening. I suppose I can't prevent Humphrey and Susan keeping what company they please, but it makes me furious every time I think of it--their taking Joan there." "I don't suppose Joan's name will come out," said Dick. "There were lots of people in the house at the time, and they are not likely to mention all of them." The Squire was forced to be content with this. "Well, don't say anything about it to her," he said. "It's an unsavoury business, and the less she knows about that sort of thing the better." "You can't keep her shut up for ever," said Dick; but his father pressed more insistently for silence. "I don't want it mentioned," he said irritably. "Please don't say anything to her--or you either, Frank." Frank was mindful of this injunction when he next found himself alone with his sisters, which was at tea-time the next day. But he saw no harm in mentioning the name of Mrs. Amberley. What had Joan thought of her during that visit to Brummels, made memorable by the disturbance that had affected her home-coming? "Oh, I'm sick of Brummels," she said. "Anyone would think it was--well, I won't sully my lips by repeating the name of the place. Anyhow, it was a good deal more amusing than Kencote." "Kencote is the jolliest place in the world," said Frank. "You and Nancy are always running it down." "It may be the jolliest place in the world to you," said Nancy, "because you are here so seldom, and you do exactly what you want to do when you _are_ here. It is pretty slow for Joan and me, boxed up here all the year round." "Well, never mind about that," said Frank, "I want to know how the notorious Mrs. Amberley struck you, Joan." "Is she notorious?" asked Joan. "She struck me as being old, if you want to know. Much older than mother, although I suppose they are about the same age, and mother's hair is white, and hers is vermilion." "Did you talk to her at all?" "Not much. She isn't the sort of person who would care about girls. And I don't suppose they would care much about her, unless they were pretty advanced. I'm not, you know, Frank. I'm a bread and butter Miss from the country. I keep my mouth shut and my eyes open." "At the same time," said Nancy, "our splendid youth is really a great attraction. If Joan and I had lived in the eighteenth century, we should have been known as the beautiful Miss Clintons. And we should have had a very good time." "You have a very good time as it is," said Frank, "only you're not sensible enough to know it. You ought not to want anything much jollier than this." The windows of the big airy upstairs room were wide open to the summer breezes. Outside, the spreading lawns of the garden, bordered by ancient trees, and the grassy level of the park lay quiet and spacious, flooded with soft sunshine. There was an air of leisure and undisturbed seclusion about the scene, which was summed up in this room, retired from the rest of the house, where the happiness of childhood still lingered. It was not surprising that Frank, coming back to it after his long sea wanderings, should have been seized by the opulent tranquillity of his home. He was as happy as he could be, all day and every day, woke up to a clear sensation of pleasure at finding himself where he was, and watched the dwindling tail of his leave with hardly less regret than the end of the holidays had brought him during his schooldays. At twenty-six, with ten years of the sea and the responsibilities of his profession behind him, he had stepped straight back into his boyhood. He was not reflective enough to realise that time would not stand still for him in this way for ever. It seemed to him that, whatever else might change, Kencote would always be the same, and he could always recapture his boyhood there. That was partly why he disliked to hear his young sisters belittling its comparative stagnation, which was to him so delightful. He had thought them absurdly grown-up when he had first come home; but that effect had worn off. He was a boy, and they were children in the schoolroom again, their father and mother downstairs, out of the way of their noise. So it would be when he came home again in two or three years' time. So it would always be, as far as it was in him to look ahead. But his sisters had other ideas. Their wing-feathers were growing, and they were already beginning to flutter them. Perhaps in after years, whatever happiness might come to them--and all life in the future was, of course, to be happy, as well as much more exciting--they too would look back upon these midsummer months with regret, and wish for their childhood back again. A few days later Joan and Nancy were taking a country walk with their dogs. They were about a mile away from Kencote, when a motor-car came suddenly along the road towards them, driven by a smart-looking young man in a green hat and a blue flannel suit. The girls were on the grass by the side of the road holding two of the dogs until it should have passed, when to their surprise it stopped, and a cheerful voice called out, "Hullo, Miss Joan! Here's a piece of luck! I was just on my way to see you." Joan stood upright with a blush on her face, which she would have preferred not to have shown, while Mr. Robert Trench jumped down from the car and advanced to shake hands with her. He also shook hands with Nancy, remarking that he remembered her very well, and should have known her anywhere by her likeness to her sister. "What remarkable powers of observation you have!" observed Joan, rallying her forces. Bobby Trench only grinned at her. "Chaffing, as usual!" he said. "But, bless you, I don't mind. I say, I suppose you have heard about this beastly thing that has happened at Brummels--about my mother's necklace?" "No, I haven't," said Joan. "What, not heard that it was stolen! Why, it was when you were staying in the house too. Everybody is talking about it. Wherever have you been burying yourself that you've heard nothing?" "At home at Kencote," replied Joan. "You don't think I brought the necklace away with me, do you?" Bobby Trench grinned again. "We were talking it over last night," he said. "I think we have seen everybody that was in the house at the time except you, and I said, 'By Jove! I wonder whether Miss Joan noticed anything?' We don't want to leave any stone upturned, so I said I would run down and look you all up. It must be years since I came to Kencote. You were both jolly little kids then." "I beg your pardon," said Nancy, "we were fifteen. We weren't kids at all." "I apologise," said Bobby. "Anyhow, I thought it was a chance not to be missed. Now, did you notice anything, Miss Joan? Oh, I forgot; I haven't told you the story yet." "I think you had better do that first," said Joan. Bobby Trench then told them the story, and when he came to describe the hiding-place Joan gave an exclamation. "Is it just where that little Dutch picture hangs?" she asked. "The one with the old woman cleaning a copper pot?" "Yes. That's the place," said Bobby. "Why? Do you know anything about it?" Joan's face was serious. "Are you quite sure that Mrs. Amberley took the necklace?" she asked. "We're about as sure as we could be, unless we had actually seen her doing it. I'll tell you what we have found out afterwards. You didn't see her opening the cupboard by any chance, did you?" Joan did not reply for a moment. Nancy looked at her with some excitement on her face. "What _did_ you see?" she asked. Still Joan seemed unwilling to speak, and Bobby Trench said, "If you did see something, you ought to let us know. It's a very serious business. The things stolen are worth pots of money, and we know perfectly well that it can only be Mrs. Amberley who has taken them. Besides, we've pretty well proved it now. We have found people to whom she sold separate pearls; but for goodness' sake don't let that out yet. I only tell you so that you may know that it wouldn't only rest on you." Joan raised her eyes to his. "I went into the morning-room," she said, "and Mrs. Amberley was standing with her back to me by the fireplace." "By Jove!" exclaimed Bobby Trench, staring at her as if fascinated. "She turned sharp round when I came in," said Joan, "and then she asked me if I didn't love old Dutch pictures, and showed me that one. That is why I remembered about it." "Was she actually looking at it when you came in?" "Well, no. I don't think she was. It was just a little to the right of where she was standing. I had forgotten all about it, but I remember now that when she mentioned the picture I thought to myself that she seemed to have been looking at the bare panels, and not at the picture at all. Besides, she was blushing scarlet, and it was just as if I had caught her in something." "By Jove! you must jolly nearly have caught her with the panel open. Did you notice anything odd about the wall she was standing in front of as you came in?" Joan thought for a moment. "No, I didn't," she said decidedly. "Had she got anything in her hand?" Joan thought again. "I didn't notice," she said. "But I believe she kept her hands behind her while she was talking to me. She didn't talk long. Just as I was looking at the picture she suddenly said she had some letters to write, and went out of the room." Bobby Trench, with growing excitement, asked her further questions--as to the time at which this had happened, as to the exact words that Mrs. Amberley had said. "We've hit the bull's eye this time," he said. "What a brilliant idea it was of mine to come and ask you! Look here, hadn't we better go and talk to Mr. Clinton about it? He's an old friend of my father's. I expect he'll be pleased to be able to give us a hand up over this business." "I should think he would be delighted," said Nancy drily. "Will Joan have to give evidence at a trial?" "Oh yes. There'll be a trial all right. We've got the good lady sitting, now. But you won't mind that, will you, Miss Joan? If you'll both hop in, I'll drive you back. We can take the dogs, too, if you like. I hope Mr. Clinton will be in. I shall be glad to see him again." CHAPTER III THE SQUIRE IS DRAWN IN If Bobby Trench really felt the pleasure he had expressed at the prospect of seeing Mr. Clinton again, it was a sensation not shared by the Squire, when his motor-car came swishing up the drive, and he alighted from it in company with Joan and Nancy. Some few years before, Humphrey Clinton had brought him to Kencote for some winter balls. Lady Susan Clinton, a distant connection, now Humphrey's wife, and her mother, had been members of the house-party, and trouble had ensued. They belonged to the fast modern world, which the Squire abominated. They had essayed to play Bridge on Sunday; Bobby Trench had tried to get out of going to church, had made havoc of punctuality, had, in fact, seriously disturbed the serene, self-satisfied atmosphere of Kencote. And the Squire had never forgiven him. He was a "young cub," the sort of youth he never wished to see at Kencote again, outside the pale of that God-fearing, self-respecting country aristocracy which was to the Squire the head and front of all that was most admirable and best worth preserving in the body politic. Bobby Trench had been hardly less free of criticism on his own account. Kencote was a cemetery of the dead, a little bit of Hampstead stuck down ten miles from nowhere, which came to the same thing; its owner was an old clodhopper. Never again would he permit himself to be inveigled into paying such a visit. Yet here he was, advancing across the turf to where the tea-table was spread in the shade of a great cedar, with an ingratiating smile on his face, and apparently no doubt of the prospective warmth of his welcome. "How do you do, Mrs. Clinton? Years since I saw you. How do you do, Mr. Clinton? You don't look a day older. The governor sent you messages, in case I should be lucky enough to see you. We are all at Brummels for the week-end. I started at ten this morning; made about a hundred miles of it; lunched at Bathgate. By Jove, you live in a past century here! Wonderful peaceful country, but a bit dull, eh?" The Squire had somewhat recovered from his surprise during this speech, and was prepared to abide by his principles of hospitality, in spite of his distaste for Bobby Trench, and all he represented. But the last comment aroused his resentment, and emphasised the distance that lay between him and this glib young man. "We don't find it dull," he said; "but I dare say people who spend their lives rushing about from one place to another and never settling to anything might. They are welcome to their tastes, but the less I have to do with them the better I'm pleased." Bobby Trench laughed good-humouredly. "Well, it's true we _are_ rather a rackety lot nowadays," he said. "I don't know that you haven't got the best of it, after all. I sometimes think I shouldn't mind settling down in the country myself, and doing a bit of gardening. We've started gardening at Brummels. We quarrel like anything about it; it's the greatest sport. You don't go in for it here, I see. But it's a jolly place. You've got lots of opportunities." The Squire found himself fast losing patience. It was true that he did not go in for gardening,
{'title': 'The Honour of the Clintons by Archibald Marshall', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}