CYNTHIA accordingly held her tongue. Nevertheless, that evening Richard Walton said to her across the dinner table:
“So you were, after all, molested by one of the hands, Miss Cynthia.”
“Molested!” cried Robert Daventry indignantly.
Cynthia’s face flamed.
“Who told you?” she asked of Richard Walton.
“Pedro.”
Cynthia had not thought of the Gaucho. He had seemed so entirely uninterested, so utterly unalarmed.
“‘Molested’ is too strong a word,” she said hastily. She now meant to make as light of the encounter as she possibly could. “It was very likely my fault. I got out of the trap and walked toward the wheat. It may be that the man fancied I wished to speak to him.”
“What did he do?”
The question came from Joan Daventry.
“He sprang from his seat, ran to me, and stopped in front of me. That was all.”
“Quite all?”
Cynthia nodded.
“He just stood and stared at me until Pedro drove up.”
“Did he say nothing?”
“Not a word.”
In spite of her resolve to treat the adventure lightly, Cynthia’s voice grew troubled as she answered the questions. For she answered them with her eyes upon Joan Daventry’s face, and she saw the perplexity there deepen into disquietude and misgiving. She turned toward Robert Daventry. Upon his face uneasiness was still more evident. He was plainly agitated. He sat listening in suspense. His indignation had gone.
Cynthia’s fear revived under the stimulation of their anxiety. She continued slowly:
“But although he did me no harm, although he threatened none, there was something strange. He saw me at once. He ran so very quickly to me the moment I was within reach. He seemed almost to be looking out for me.”
Joan sank back into her chair with a gesture of helplessness, which was all the more alarming because it was so singularly out of keeping with her character. Her eyes sought her husband’s and sought them in dismay. Cynthia noticed both the gesture and the look. They kindled a vague terror in the girl. The wide brown plain was as a picture before her. She saw the great wheat-field glistening in the heat, a wind-wheel in a corner above a well, and this man with the evil eyes and the face of malice looking her over from head to foot.
“Yes,” she said. “He seemed to be expecting me, and there was something else. He seemed to hate me;” and Robert Daventry with a cry sprang sharply to his feet.
Joan raised a quick warning hand. But the cry had been uttered; and with a sob Cynthia buried her face in her hands.
“I am frightened now,” she said. “You frighten me.”
Robert Daventry stood over her, clumsily remorseful, and laid his great hand on her shoulder.
“There’s nothing to fear, Cynthia,” he began. “Joan and I—” he broke off abruptly at a second warning from his wife. “We will pack that man off about his business to-morrow.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Daventry. She had mastered her agitation, and now affected carelessness. “We can’t really have Cynthia’s birthday spoilt in this way.”
“No, of course not,” cried Robert Daventry, seizing upon this explanation of his distress. But he could not leave it in its simplicity. “It’s abominable that Cynthia should have her birthday spoilt. She has only one a year, poor girl. That’s what’s troubling us, Cynthia. Nothing else. But it’s enough to upset us, isn’t it? To think that you should actually have your birthday spoilt—by one of my men, too.”
So he went on, like a commentator on an ancient text, expanding the explanation, underlining it, and forcing upon Cynthia’s intelligence its complete improbability. Even in the midst of her fears she could not but look with amusement toward Joan; and the two women exchanged the smile of their sex at the perennial clumsiness of man.
“He shall go first thing to-morrow morning,” cried Mr. Daventry; and Richard Walton quietly rejoined:
“He has gone already. I paid him off this morning.”
Mr. Daventry ceased abruptly from his vociferations.
“Thank you, Walton,” he said. “Then that’s ended,” and he sat down.
But he had hardly taken his seat when the door opened and the parlor-maid brought to him upon a salver a folded slip of dirty paper.
“A man came with this to the door, sir. He is waiting for an answer.”
Robert Daventry unfolded the slip and read the message written within it. He did not lift his eyes when he had read. He sat staring at the paper like a statue. And he sat amidst a deep silence. The cloud which had but now been lifted, had gathered once more above the heads of that small company. Though Robert Daventry did not speak, his long silence spoke for him; and though he schooled his face to composure, it was plain that he schooled it. A vague disquiet held the others at the table. Not one of them but had a conviction that this dirty, insignificant, scrap of writing announced a catastrophe.
Joan was the first to move. She walked round the table and stood behind her husband. He did not hear the rustle of her gown; and he was not aware that she leaned over him to read the message until the pressure of her hand upon his shoulder reminded him that she was his ally.
“You had better see the man, Robert,” she said. “He calls late, but probably he needs help.”
Thus she sought to pass the message off.
“Very well, I will,” said Robert. He turned to the parlor-maid. “Bring him to my study when I ring the bell.”
“I will come with you,” said Joan, as the servant went out from the room.
Richard Walton rose from his chair.
“Perhaps you would like me, too?”
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” replied Joan Daventry. “But perhaps you would stay within sound of the bell. We don’t know who this man is or what he wants. If we ring again, you would know that we needed your advice.”
“Certainly, I will be upon the lookout,” said Walton, and he went from the room and crossed to the servants’ quarters. There he would hear the bell at once should it ring for him. Joan meanwhile turned with a smile to Cynthia.
“We will leave you here for a few minutes,” she said, and the composure of her voice almost reassured the girl; would, indeed, have quite reassured her but for Robert Daventry. She saw that his hands trembled so that the paper shook in them, even as her hands had trembled this morning when she climbed up by the edge of the wheat into her cart.
“Yes, wait here, Cynthia,” said Robert Daventry, as he got to his feet; and Cynthia noticed that while he spoke to her he altogether avoided the glance of her eyes. The old couple went out of the room together, leaving her alone, and carefully latched the door behind them. In the hall for a moment they stood resting from their pretence. A broken word or two burst from Robert Daventry:
“What shall we do, Joan? This is what we have dreaded always.”
Joan raised her finger to her lips.
“Hush! Speak lower. What I said was true. We don’t know who he is, or what he wants. He may not be the man who stopped her in the field at all.”
Robert Daventry shook his head. It was rather his nature to run to meet misfortune if he saw its shadow in his way.
“What shall we do?” he repeated. “Money will send him away,” said Joan.
“And bring him back again,” replied Robert hopelessly. “Sooner or later Cynthia will know;” and Joan threw up her head at his words.
“No,” she said vigorously. “No.”
At her left hand a door stood open upon a dark room. This was the smoking-room. She entered the room and crossed it to the opposite wall. Then she opened a second door, and advancing into this inner room, felt for the switch in the darkness and turned on the light. Bookcases, filled for the most part with books on agriculture, lined the room, a round table, littered with papers, occupied the centre, in the recess of a window stood a writing-desk. This was Robert Daventry’s study. Her husband followed her, and saw that her finger was already on the bell.
“Let us decide what we are to do,” he said, “before you ring.”
Joan shook her head.
“We can’t. We must be guided by what the man knows, and by what he wants. Only we admit nothing,” she declared resolutely; and she pressed the bell. It rang in the passage by the kitchen, but Cynthia, left alone in the dining-room, heard it too.
The moment she heard it, Cynthia rose from her chair, and ran silently to the door. She unlatched it without a sound, and drew it toward her until it was just wide enough open for her to see out. There she stood grasping the door-knob, and in a moment a heavy foot sounded in the hall. Cynthia set her eyes to the chink. She saw first a maid-servant cross the hall, and pass into the smoking-room, and after the maid a man. The man was the reaper who had leapt from his machine and rushed toward her that morning. The maid-servant came back alone and crossed the hall again to the servants’ quarters. A door was shut loudly—the door of Robert Daventry’s study—and then another door opened noiselessly, and opened wide—the door of the dining-room. Cynthia came out into the hall. All the color had gone from her face, her eyes were wide with terror. The man meant her harm—not a doubt of it. He had some power to inflict the harm—that was sure. Otherwise why was he admitted, why were her friends in such concern?
Cynthia was quite alone in the hall now. Voices sounded faintly from the kitchen and in the room behind her a clock ticked. But there were no other sounds. She crossed to the threshold of the smoking-room and looked in. At the other end a bright bar of light on the floor held her eyes. The light came from the study. Cynthia watched it for a moment irresolute. But the temptation grew. She was sure that beyond that bright bar of light, behind that closed door, here in this far-away corner of Argentina, good and evil were at grips for her. A sense of loneliness suddenly possessed her, she longed for the neighborly noises of a city. And while she stood she heard her own name pronounced by Robert Daventry, and at once a harsh, strange voice rose in a laugh, loud and arrogant. She looked about her in a panic. She must fly, or she must know the truth, the whole of it, the worst of it. She stole swiftly and noiselessly into the room. Close by that bar of light a big, low chair stood against the wall. Cynthia crouched in the chair, her frock a blur of misty white in the darkness. There she remained, very still and quiet; and every word spoken in the study came clearly to her ears.
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