The Secret of the Tower | Page 5

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, Miss Wall, that's right, we go to town every Wednesday. No particular reason why it should be Wednesday, but old gentlemen somehow do better--don't you think so?--with method and regular habits."
"I'm sure you know what's best for Mr. Saffron," said Delia. "You've known him a long time, haven't you?"
Mr. Naylor drew a little nearer and listened. The General had put himself into the corner, a remote corner of the room, and sat there with an uneasy and rather glowering aspect.
"Oh no, no!" answered Beaumaroy. "A matter of weeks only. But the dear old fellow seemed to take to me--a friend put us in touch originally. I seem to be able to do just