The Keeper of the Door.

by Ethel M. Dell.

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE LESSON

"Then he's such a prig!" said Olga.

"You should never use a word you can't define," observed Nick, from the depths of the hammock in which his meagre person reposed at length.

She made a face at him, and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was wont pathetically to remark, everyone bullied him because he was small and possessed only one arm, having shed the other by inadvertence somewhere on the borders of the Indian Empire.

Certainly Olga--his half-brother's eldest child--treated him with scant respect, though she never allowed anyone else to be other than polite to him in her hearing. But then she and Nick had been pals from the beginning of things, and this surely ent.i.tled her to a certain licence in her dealings with him. Nick, too, was such a darling; he never minded anything.

Having duly punished him for snubbing her, she returned with serenity to the work upon her lap.

"You see," she remarked thoughtfully, "the worst of it is he really is a bit of a genius. And one can't sit on genius--with comfort. It sort of flames out where you least expect it."

"Highly unpleasant, I should think," agreed Nick.

"Yes; and he has such a disgusting fashion of behaving as if--as if one were miles beneath his notice," proceeded Olga. "And I'm not a chicken, you know, Nick, I'm twenty."

"A vast age!" said Nick.

For which remark she gave him another jerk which set him swinging like a pendulum.

"Well, I've got a little sense anyhow," she remarked.

"But not much," said Nick. "Or you would know that that sort of treatment after m.u.f.fins for tea is calculated to produce indigestion in a very acute form, peculiarly distressing to the beholder."

"Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot the m.u.f.fins." Olga laid a restraining hand upon the hammock. "But do you like him, Nick? Honestly now!"

"My dear child, I never like anyone till I've seen him at his worst.

Drawing-room manners never attract me."

"But this man hasn't got any manners at all," objected Olga. "And he's so horribly satirical. It's like having a stinging-nettle in the house.

I believe--just because he's clever in his own line--that he's been spoilt. As if everybody couldn't do something!"

"Ah! That's the point," said Nick sententiously. "Everybody can, but it isn't everybody who does. Now this young man apparently knows how to make the most of his opportunities. He plays a rattling hand at bridge, by the way."

"I wonder if he cheats," said Olga. "I'm sure he's quite unscrupulous."

Nick turned his head, and surveyed her from under his restless eyelids.

"I begin to think you must be falling in love with the young man," he observed.

"Don't be absurd, Nick!" Olga did not even trouble to look up. She was st.i.tching with neat rapidity.

"I'm not. That's just how my wife fell in love with me. I a.s.sure you it often begins that way." Nick shook his head wisely. "I should take steps to be nice to him if I were you, before the mischief spreads."

Olga tossed her head. She was slightly flushed. "I shall never make a fool of myself over any man, Nick," she said. "I'm quite determined on that point."

"Dear, dear!" said Nick. "How old did you say you were?"

"I am woman enough to know my own mind," said Olga.

"Heaven forbid!" said Nick. "You wouldn't be a woman at all if you did that."

"I don't think you are a good judge on that subject, Nick," remarked his niece judiciously. "In fact, even Dr. Wyndham knows better than that. I a.s.sure you the antipathy is quite mutual. He regards everyone who isn't desperately ill as superfluous and uninteresting. He was absolutely disappointed the other day because, when I slipped on the stairs, I didn't break any bones."

"What a fiend!" said Nick.

"And yet Dad likes him," said Olga. "I can't understand it. The poor people like him too in a way. Isn't it odd? They seem to have such faith in him."

"I believe Jim has faith in him," remarked Nick. "He wouldn't turn him loose on his patients if he hadn't."

"Of course, Sir Kersley Whitton recommended him," conceded Olga. "And he is an absolutely wonderful man, Dad says. He calls him the greatest medicine-man in England. He took up Max Wyndham years ago, when he was only a medical student. And he has been like a father to him ever since. In fact, I don't believe Dr. Wyndham would ever have come here if Sir Kersley hadn't made him. He was overworked and wouldn't take a rest, so Sir Kersley literally forced him to come and be Dad's a.s.sistant for a while. He told Dad that he was too brilliant a man to stay long in the country, and Dad gathered that he contemplated making him his own partner in the course of time. The sooner the better, I should say. He obviously thinks himself quite thrown away on the likes of us."

"Altogether he seems to be a very interesting young man," said Nick. "I must really cultivate his acquaintance. Is he going to be present to-night?"

"Oh, I suppose so. It's a great drawback having him living in the house.

You see, being his hostess, I have to be more or less civil to him. It's very horrid," said Olga, upon whom, in consequence of her mother's death three years before, the duties of housekeeper had devolved. "And Dad is so fearfully strict too. He won't let me be the least little bit rude, though he is often quite rude himself. You know Dad."

"I know him," said Nick. "He's licked me many a time, bless his heart, and richly I deserved it. Help me to get out of this like a good kid! I see James the Second and the twins awaiting me on the tennis-court. I promised them a sett after tea."

He rolled on to his feet with careless agility, his one arm encircling his young niece's shoulders.

"I shouldn't worry if I were you," protested Olga. "It's much too hot.

Don't waste your energies amusing the children! They can quite well play about by themselves."

"And get up to mischief," said Nick. "No, I'm on the job, overlooking the whole crowd of you, and I'll do it thoroughly. When old Jim comes home he'll find a model household awaiting him. By the way, I had a letter from him this afternoon. The kiddie is stronger already, and Muriel as happy as a queen. I shall hear from her to-morrow."

"Don't you wish you were with them?" questioned Olga. "It would be much more fun than staying here to chaperone me."

Nick looked quizzical. "Oh, there's plenty of fun to be had out of that too," he a.s.sured her. "I take a lively interest in you, my child; always have."

"You're a darling," said Olga, raising her face impulsively. "I shall write and tell Dad what care you are taking of us all."

She kissed him warmly and let him go, smiling at the tuneless humming that accompanied his departure. Who at a casual glance would have taken Nick Ratcliffe for one of the keenest politicians of his party, a man whom friend and foe alike regarded as too brilliant to be ignored? He had even been jestingly described as "that doughty champion of the British Empire"--an epithet that Olga cherished jealously because it had not been bestowed wholly in jest.

His general appearance was certainly the reverse of imposing, and in this particular, to her intense gratification, Olga resembled him. She had the same quick, pale eyes, with the shrewdness of observation that never needed to look twice, the same colourless brows and lashes and insignificant features; but she possessed one redeeming point which Nick lacked. What with him was an impish grin of sheer exuberance, with her was a smile of rare enchantment, very fleeting, with a fascination quite indescribable but none the less capable of imparting to her pale young face a charm that only the greatest artists have ever been able to depict. People were apt to say of Olga Ratcliffe that she had a face that lighted up well. Her ready intelligence was ardent enough to illuminate her. No one was ever dull in her society. Certainly in her temperament at least there was nothing colorless. Where she loved she loved intensely, and she hated in the same way, quite thoroughly and without dissimulation.

Maxwell Wyndham, for instance, the subject of her recent conversation with Nick, she had disliked wholeheartedly from the commencement of their acquaintance, and he was perfectly aware of the fact. He could not well have been otherwise, but he was by no means disconcerted thereby.

It even seemed as if he took a malicious pleasure in developing her dislike upon every opportunity that presented itself, and since he was living in the house as her father's a.s.sistant, opportunities were by no means infrequent.