The Secret of the Tower | Page 5

that in drink
cases, but I should be sorry to think--"
"Drugs, more likely," Mr. Naylor suavely interposed. Then he rose
from his chair and began to pace slowly up and down the long room,
looking at his beautiful pictures, his beautiful china, his beautiful chairs,
all the beautiful things that were his. His family took no notice of this
roving up and down; it was a habit, and was tacitly accepted as
meaning that he had, for the moment, had enough of the company, and
even of his own sallies at its expense.
"I've asked Dr. Arkroyd to bring her over, Miss Walford, I mean, the
first day it's fine enough for tennis," Mrs. Naylor pursued. There was a
hard court at Old Place, so that winter did not stop the game entirely.
"What a name, too!"

"Walford? It's quite a good name, Delia."
"No, no, Anna! Beaumaroy, of course." Miss Wall was back at the
larger problem.
"There's Alec's voice. He and the General are back from their golf.
Ring for another teapot, Gertie dear!"
The door opened, not Alec, but the General came in, and closed the
door carefully behind him; it was obviously an act of precaution and
not merely a normal exercise of good manners. Then he walked up to
his hostess and said, "It's not my fault, Anna. Alec would do it, though
I shook my head at him, behind the fellow's back."
"What do you mean, General?" cried the hostess. Mr. Naylor, for his
part, stopped roving.
The door again! "Come in, Mr. Beaumaroy--here's tea."
Mr. Beaumaroy obediently entered, in the wake of Captain Alec Naylor,
who duly presented him to Mrs. Naylor, adding that Beaumaroy had
been kind enough to make the fourth in a game with the General, the
Rector of Sprotsfield, and himself. "And he and the parson were too
tough a nut for us, weren't they, sir?" he added to the General.
Besides being an excellent officer and a capital fellow, Alec Naylor
was also reputed to be one of the handsomest men in the Service; six
foot three, very straight, very fair, with features as regular as any
romantic hero of them all, and eyes as blue. The honorable limp that at
present marked his movements would, it was hoped, pass away. Even
his own family were often surprised into a new admiration of his
physical perfections, remarking, one to the other, how Alec took the
shine out of every other man in the room.
There was no shine, no external obvious shine, to take out of Mr.
Beaumaroy, Miss Wall's puzzling, unaccounted-for Mr. Beaumaroy.
The light showed him now more clearly than when Mary Arkroyd met
him on the heath road, but perhaps thereby did him no service. His

features, though irregular, were not ugly or insignificant, but he wore a
rather battered aspect; there were deep lines running from the corners
of his mouth, and crowsfeet had started under the gray eyes which, in
their turn, looked more skeptical than ardent, rather mocking than eager.
Yet when he smiled, his face became not merely pleasant, but
confidentially pleasant; he seemed to smile especially to and for the
person to whom he was talking; and his voice was notably agreeable,
soft and clear--the voice of a high-bred man, but not exactly of a
high-bred Englishman. There was no accent definite enough to be
called foreign, certainly not to be assigned to any particular race, but
there was an exotic touch about his manner of speech suggesting that,
even if not that of a foreigner, it was shaped and colored by the
inflexions of foreign tongues. The hue of his plentiful and curly hair,
indistinguishable to Mary and Cynthia, now stood revealed as neither
black, nor red, nor auburn, nor brown, nor golden, but just, and rather
surprisingly, a plain yellow, the color of a cowslip or thereabouts.
Altogether rather a rum-looking fellow! This had been Alec Naylor's
first remark when the Rector of Sprotsfield pointed him out, as a
possible fourth, at the golf club, and the rough justice of the description
could not be denied. He, like Alec, bore his scars; the little finger of his
right hand was amputated down to the knuckle.
Yet, after all this description, in particularity if not otherwise worthy of
a classic novelist, the thing yet remains that most struck observers. Mr.
Hector Beaumaroy had an adorable candor of manner. He answered
questions with innocent readiness and pellucid sincerity. It would be
impossible to think him guilty of a lie; ungenerous to suspect so much
as a suppression of the truth. Even Mr. Naylor, hardened by
five-and-thirty years' experience of what sailors will blandly swear to in
collision cases, was struck with the open candor of his bearing.
"Yes," he said. "Yes,