The Heart of a Woman
by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy · English · Gutenberg #32730 · 471,866 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Heart of a Woman
Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy
Release date: June 7, 2010 [eBook #32730]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32730
Credits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF A WOMAN ***
Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
THE HEART OF A WOMAN
BY BARONESS ORCZY
AUTHOR OF "THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL," "PETTICOAT RULE," ETC.
[Illustration]
HODDER & STOUGHTON
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1911,
By George H. Doran Company
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--WHICH TELLS OF A VERY COMMONPLACE INCIDENT 3
II.--ONCE MORE THE OBVIOUS 14
III.--AND NOW ALMOST LIKE A DREAM 17
IV.--NOTHING REALLY TANGIBLE 32
V.--JUST AN OBVIOUS DUTY 39
VI.--JUST A DISAGREEABLE OLD MAN 46
VII.--THE PART PLAYED BY A FIVE-POUND NOTE 50
VIII.--AND THUS THE SHADOW DESCENDED 59
IX.--WHICH TELLS OF THE INEVITABLE RESULT 65
X.--LIFE MUST GO ON JUST THE SAME 72
XI.--AND THERE ARE SOCIAL DUTIES TO PERFORM 84
XII.--SHALL A MAN ESCAPE HIS FATE? 92
XIII.--THEY HAVE NO HEART 95
XIV.--THE TALE HAD TO BE TOLD 105
XV.--AND MANY MUST BE QUESTIONED 112
XVI.--AND THE PUPPETS DANCED 120
XVII.--AND WHAT OF THE SECRET? 125
XVIII.--IT WOULD NOT DO, YOU KNOW 132
XIX.--NOT ALL ABOUT IT 138
XX.--AND THAT'S THE TRUTH 149
XXI.--HAVE ANOTHER CIGAR 156
XXII.--THEN THE MIRACLE WAS WROUGHT 167
XXIII.--WHY ALL THIS MYSTERY? 179
XXIV.--A HERD OF CACKLING GEESE 183
XXV.--THE FOG WAS DENSE, I COULDN'T RIGHTLY SEE 191
XXVI.--THE NEXT WITNESS, PLEASE 199
XXVII.--AND PEOPLE WENT OUT TO LUNCHEON 205
XXVII.--WHICH TELLS OF AN UNEXPECTED TURN OF EVENTS 216
XXIX.--THE WORLD IS SO LARGE 223
XXX.--AND THEN EVERY ONE WENT HOME 233
XXXI.--AND THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT CARE 237
XXXII.--A MAN MUST ACT AS HE THINKS BEST 244
XXXIII.--IF YOU WOULD ONLY LET YOURSELF GO 249
XXXIV.--WHICH SPEAKS ONLY OF FAREWELLS 261
XXXV.--WHICH TELLS OF PICTURES IN THE FIRE 268
XXXVI.--PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT SORT OF THING 274
XXXVII.--IT IS ONE HUMAN LIFE AGAINST THE OTHER 287
XXXVIII.--THE HAND OF DEATH WAS ON HIM TOO 292
XXXIX.--A MERE WOMAN FIGHTING FOR THE THING SHE LOVED 300
XL.--AND THUS HER HOUR HAD COME 310
XLI.--WHICH TELLS OF THE CONTENTS OF THE NOTE BOOK 313
XLII.--WHICH TELLS ONCE MORE OF COMMONPLACE INCIDENTS 319
THE HEART OF A WOMAN
BARONESS ORCZY
CHAPTER I
WHICH TELLS OF A VERY COMMONPLACE INCIDENT
No! No! she was not going to gush!--Not even though there was nothing
in the room at this moment to stand up afterward before her as dumb
witness to a moment's possible weakness. Less than nothing in fact:
space might have spoken and recalled that moment . . . infinite
nothingness might at some future time have brought back the memory of
it . . . but these dumb, impassive objects! . . . the fountain pen
between her fingers! The dull, uninteresting hotel furniture covered
in red velvet--an uninviting red that repelled dreaminess and peace!
The ormolu clock which had ceased long ago to mark the passage of
time, wearied--as it no doubt was, poor thing--by the monotonous
burden of a bronze Psyche gazing on her shiny brown charms, in an
utterly blank and unreflective bronze mirror, while obviously
bemoaning the fracture of one of her smooth bronze thighs! Indeed
Louisa might well have given way to that overmastering feeling of
excitement before all these things. They would neither see nor hear.
They would never deride, for they could never remember.
But a wood fire crackled on the small hearth . . . and . . . and those
citron-coloured carnations were favourite flowers of his . . . and his
picture did stand on the top of that ugly little Louis Philippe bureau
. . . No! No! it would never do to gush, for these things would see .
. . and, though they might not remember, they would remind.
And Louisa counted herself one of the strong ones of this earth. Just
think of her name. Have you ever known a Louisa who gushed? who called
herself the happiest woman on earth? who thought of a man--just an
ordinary man, mind you--as the best, the handsomest, the truest, the
most perfect hero of romance that ever threw a radiance over the
entire prosy world of the twentieth century?
Louisas, believe me, do no such things. The Mays and the Floras, the
Lady Barbaras and Lady Edithas, look beatific and charming when,
clasping their lily-white hands together and raising violet eyes to
the patterned ceiling paper above them, they exclaim: "Oh, my hero and
my king!"
But Louisas would only look ridiculous if they behaved like that . . .
Louisa Harris, too! . . . Louisa, the eldest of three sisters, the
daughter of a wealthy English gentleman with a fine estate in Kent, an
assured position, no troubles, no cares, nothing in her life to make
it sad, or sordid or interesting . . . Louisa Harris and romance! . .
. Why, she was not even pretty. She had neither violet eyes nor hair
of ruddy gold. The latter was brown and the former were gray. . . .
How could romance come in the way of gray eyes, and of a girl named
Louisa?
Can you conceive, for instance, one of those adorable detrimentals of
low degree and empty pocket who have a way of arousing love in the
hearts of the beautiful daughters of irascible millionaires, can you
conceive such an interesting personage, I say, falling in love with
Louisa Harris?
I confess that I cannot. To begin with, dear, kind Squire Harris was
not altogether a millionaire, and not at all irascible, and penniless
owners of romantic personalities were not on his visiting list.
Therefore Louisa, living a prosy life of luxury, got up every morning,
ate a copious breakfast, walked out with the dogs, hunted in the
autumn, skated in the winter, did the London season, and played tennis
in the summer, just as hundreds and hundreds of other well-born,
well-bred English girls of average means, average positions, average
education, hunt, dance, and play tennis throughout the length and
breadth of this country.
There was no room for romance in such a life, no time for it. . . .
The life itself was so full already--so full of the humdrum of daily
rounds, of common tasks, that the heart which beat with such ordinary
regularity in the seemingly ordinary breast of a very ordinary girl
did so all unconscious of the intense pathos which underlay this very
ordinary existence.
Vaguely Louisa knew that somewhere, beyond even the land of dreams,
there lay, all unknown, all mysterious, a glorious world of romance: a
universe peopled by girlish imaginings, and the sensitive, creating
thoughts of poets, by the galloping phantasies of super-excited
brains, and the vague longings of ambitious souls: a universe wherein
dwelt alike the memories of those who have loved and the hopes of
those who suffer. But when she thought of it all, she did so as one
who from the arid plain gazes on the cool streams and golden minarets
which the fairy Fata Morgana conjures on the horizon far away. She
looked on it as all unreal and altogether beyond her ken. She shut her
eyes to the beautiful mirage, her heart against its childish
yearnings.
Such things did not exist. They were not for her--Louisa Harris. The
little kitchenmaid at the court who, on Sunday evenings, went off
giggling, her chubby face glowing with pride and the result of recent
ablutions, on the arm of Jim the third gardener, knew more about that
world of romance than well-bred, well-born young ladies ever dreamed
of in their commonplace philosophy.
And Louisa Harris had always shut down the book which spoke of such
impossible things, and counted herself one of the strong ones of the
earth.
Therefore now, with Luke's letter in her hand, in which he tells her
in a very few words that he loves her beyond anything on earth, and
that he only waits the day when he can call her his own, his very own
dearly loved wife, why should Louisa--prosy, healthy-minded,
healthy-bodied Louisa--suddenly imagine that the whole world is
transfigured?--that the hotel room is a kind of ante-chamber to
heaven?--that the red velvet, uncompromising chairs are clouds of a
roseate hue and that the bronze Psyche with the broken thigh is the
elusive fairy who, with Morgana-like wand, hath conjured up this
mirage of glorious visions which mayhap would vanish again before
long?
She went up to the window and rested her forehead against the cool
pane. She might be ever so strong, she could not help her forehead
feeling hot and her eyes being full of tears--tears that did not hurt
as they fell.
Outside the weather was indeed prosy and commonplace. Rain was coming
down in torrents and beating against the newspaper kiosk over the way,
on the roofs of tramways and taxi-autos, making the electric light
peep dimly through the veil of wet, drowning, by its incessant patter,
to which the gusts of a November gale made fitful if loud
accompaniment, the shouts of the _cochers_ on their boxes, the rattle
of wheels on the stone pavement, even at times the shrill whistle for
cabs emanating from the porch of the brilliantly lighted Palace Hotel.
It was close on half-past six by the clock of the Gare du Nord
opposite. The express from Ostend had just come in--very late of
course, owing to the gale which had delayed the mail boat. Louisa,
straining her eyes, watched the excited crowd pouring out of the
station in the wake of porters and of piles of luggage, jabbering,
shouting, and fussing like an army of irresponsible pigmies: men in
blouses, and men in immaculate bowler hats, women wrapped in furs,
clinging to gigantic headgear that threatened to leave the safe refuge
of an elaborate coiffure or of well fixed gargantuan hatpins,
midinettes in fashionable skirts and high-heeled shoes, country women
in wool shawls that flapped round their bulky forms like the wings of
an overfed bat, all hurrying and jostling one another in a mad
endeavour to avoid the onrush of the innumerable taxi-autos which in
uncountable numbers wound in and out of the slower moving traffic like
the erratic thread of some living, tangled skein.
Just the every-day prosy life of a small but ambitious capital
struggling in the midst of an almost overpowering sense of
responsibility toward the whole of Europe in view of its recent great
Colonial expansion.
Louisa gave an impatient sigh.
Even the strong ones of the earth get wearied of the daily round, the
common task at times. She and aunt were due to dine at the British
Embassy at eight o'clock; it was only half-past six now and obviously
impossible to sit another two hours in this unresponsive hotel room in
the company of red velvet chairs and the bronze Psyche.
Aunt, in conjunction with her maid Annette, was busy laying the
foundations of an elaborate toilette. Louisa was free to do as she
pleased. She got a serviceable ulster and a diminutive hat and sallied
forth into the streets. She did not want to think or to dream, nor
perhaps did she altogether wish to work off that unusual feeling of
excitement which had so unaccountably transformed her ever since
Luke's letter had come.
All she wanted was to be alone, and to come out of herself for awhile.
She had been alone all the afternoon, save for that brief half hour
when aunt discussed the obvious over a badly brewed cup of tea: it was
not that kind of "alone-ness" which Louisa wanted now, but rather the
solitude which a crowded street has above all the power to give.
There is a kind of sociability in any room, be it ever so
uncompromising in the matter of discomfort, but a crowded street can
be unutterably lonely, either cruelly so or kindly as the case may be.
To Louisa Harris, the commonplace society girl, accustomed to tea
fights, to dances and to dinner parties, the loneliness of this
crowded little city was eminently welcome. With her dark ulster
closely buttoned to the throat, the small hat tied under her chin,
with everything on her weather-proof and unfashionable, she attracted
no notice from the passers-by.
Not one head was turned as, with a long breath of delight, she sallied
forth from under the portico of the hotel out into the muddy, busy
street; not one glance of curiosity or interest so freely bestowed in
the streets of foreign capitals on a solitary female figure, if it be
young and comely, followed this very ordinary-looking English miss.
To the crowd she was indifferent. These men and women hurrying along,
pushing, jostling, and scurrying knew nothing of Luke, nor that she,
Louisa Harris, was the happiest woman on earth.
She turned back toward the Boulevard, meaning to take a brisk walk all
along the avenue of trees which makes a circuit round the inner part
of the town and which ultimately would lead her back to the Gare du
Nord and the Palace Hotel. It was a walk she had often done before:
save for one or two busy corners on the way, it would be fairly
solitary and peaceful.
Louisa stepped out with an honest British tread, hands buried in the
pockets of her serviceable ulster, head bent against the sudden gusts
of wind. She did not mind the darkness of the ill-lighted, wide
boulevard, and had every intention of covering the two miles in a
little more than half an hour.
How the time sped! It seemed as if she had only just left the hotel,
and already surely not a quarter of a mile away she could see
glimmering the lights of the Place Namur, the half-way point of her
walk.
She was in the Boulevard Waterloo where private houses with closed
porte-cochères add nothing to the municipal lighting of the
thoroughfare.
Trams had been rushing past her in endless succession: but now there
was a lull. Close by her a taxi-auto whizzed quickly past and came to
a standstill some hundred yards away, near the pavement, and not far
from an electric light standard.
Louisa, with vacant eyes attached on that cab, but with her mind fixed
on a particular room in a particular house in Grosvenor Square where
lived a man of the name of Luke de Mountford, continued her walk.
Those same vacant eyes of hers presently saw the chauffeur of the
taxi-auto get down from his box and open the door of the cab, and then
her absent mind was suddenly brought back from Grosvenor Square,
London, to the Boulevard Waterloo in Brussels, by a terrible cry of
horror which had broken from that same chauffeur's lips. Instinctively
Louisa hurried on, but, even as she did so, a small crowd which indeed
seemed to have sprung from nowhere had already gathered round the
vehicle.
Murmurs of "What is it? What is it?" mingled with smothered groans of
terror, as curiosity caused one or two of the more bold to peer into
the gloomy depths of the cab. Shrill calls brought a couple of
_gardiens_ to the spot. In a moment Louisa found herself a unit in an
eager, anxious crowd, asking questions, conjecturing, wondering,
horror-struck as soon as a plausible and graphic explanation came from
those who were in the fore-front and were privileged to see.
"A man--murdered----"
"But how?"
"The chauffeur got down from his box . . . and looked in . . . ah,
_mon Dieu_!"
"What did he see?"
"A man . . . he is quite young . . . only about twenty years of age."
"Stabbed through the neck----"
"Stabbed?--Bah?"
"Right through the neck I tell you . . . just below the ear. I can see
the wound, quite small as if done with a skewer."
"_Allons! Voyons! Voyons!_" came the gruff accents from the two portly
_gardiens_ who worked vigorously with elbows and even feet to keep the
crowd somewhat at bay.
Louisa was on the fringe of the crowd. She could see nothing of
course--she did not wish to see that which the chauffeur saw when
first he opened the door of his cab--but she stood rooted to the spot,
feeling that strange, unexplainable fascination which one always
feels, when one of those great life dramas of which one reads so often
and so indifferently happens to be enacted within the close range of
one's own perception.
She gleaned a phrase here and there--saw the horror-stricken faces of
those who had seen, the placid, bovine expression of the two
_gardiens_, more inured to such sights and calmly taking notes by the
light of the electric standard.
"But to think that I drove that rascally murderer in my cab, and put
him down safe and sound not ten minutes ago!" came with the adjunct of
a loud oath from the irate chauffeur.
"How did it all occur?"
The _gardiens_ tried to stem the flow of the driver's eloquence; such
details should first be given to the police. _Voyons!_ But what were
two fat _mouchards_ against twenty stalwart idlers all determined to
hear--and then there were the women--they were determined to know
more.
Louisa bent her ear to listen. She was just outside the crowd--not a
part of it--and there was no really morbid curiosity in her. It was
only the call of the imagination which is irresistible on these
occasions--the prosy, matter-of-fact, high-bred girl could not, just
then, tear herself away from that cab and the tragedy which had been
enacted therein, in the mysterious darkness whilst the unconscious
driver sped along, ignorant of the gruesome burden which he was
dragging to its destination.
"_Voila!_" he was saying with many ejaculations and expletives, and a
volley of excited gestures. "Outside the _Parc_ near the theatre two
bourgeois hailed me, and one of them told me to draw up at the top of
the Galerie St. Hubert, which I did. The same one--the one who had
told me where to go--got out, clapped the door to and spoke a few
words to his friend who had remained inside."
"What did he say?"
"Oh! I couldn't hear and I didn't listen. But after that he told me to
drive on to Boulevard Waterloo No. 34 and here I am."
"You suspected nothing?"
"Nothing, how should I? Two bourgeois get into my cab; I see nothing;
I hear nothing. One of them gets out and tells me to drive on farther.
How should I think there's anything wrong?"
"What was the other man like? The one who spoke to you?"
"_Ma foi!_ I don't know. . . . It was raining so fast and pitch dark
just outside the _Parc_ lights--and he did seem to keep in the
shadow--now I come to think of it--and his cap--he wore a cap--was
pulled well over his face--and the collar of his coat was up to his
nose. It was raining so, I didn't really see him properly. I saw the
other one better--the one who has been murdered."
But the rotund _gardiens_ had had enough of this. Moreover, they would
hear all about it at full length presently. As for the crowd--it had
no business to know too much.
They hustled the excited driver back on to his box, and themselves got
into the cab beside it--the dead man, stabbed in the neck from ear to
ear--the wound quite small as if it had been done with a skewer.
The _gardiens_ ordered the chauffeur to drive to the commissariat, and
Louisa turned away with a slight shiver down her spine and her throat
choked with the horror of what she had only guessed.
CHAPTER II
ONCE MORE THE OBVIOUS
You don't suppose for a moment, I hope, that a girl like Louisa would
allow her mind to dwell on such horrors. Mysterious crimes in strange
cities--and in London, too, for a matter of that--are, alas! of far
too frequent occurrence to be quite as startling as they should be.
A day or two later, Louisa Harris and her aunt, Lady Ryder, crossed
over to England. They had spent five weeks in Italy and one in
Brussels, not with a view to dreaming over the beauties of the Italian
Lakes, or over the art treasures collected in the museums of Brussels,
but because Lady Ryder had had a bronchial catarrh which she could not
shake off and so her doctor had ordered her a thorough change.
Bellaggio was selected, and Louisa accompanied her. They stayed at the
best hotels both in Bellaggio and in Brussels, where Lady Ryder had
several friends whom she wished to visit before she went home.
Nothing whatever happened that should not have happened; everything
was orderly and well managed; the courier and the maid saw to tickets
and to luggage, to hotel rooms and sleeping compartments. It was
obviously their mission in life to see that nothing untoward or
unexpected happened, but only the obvious.
It was clearly not their fault that Miss Harris had seen a cab in
which an unknown man happened to have been murdered.
Louisa, with a view to preventing her aunt from going to sleep after
dinner and thereby spoiling her night's rest, had told her of the
incident which she had witnessed in the Boulevard Waterloo, and Lady
Ryder was genuinely shocked. She vaguely felt that her niece had done
something unladylike and odd, which was so unlike Louisa.
The latter had amused herself by scanning a number of English papers
in order to find out what was said in London about that strange crime,
which she had almost witnessed--the man stabbed through the neck, from
ear to ear, and the wound so small it might have been done with a
skewer. But, with characteristic indifference, London paid but little
heed to the mysterious dramas of a sister city. A brief account of the
gruesome discovery--a figurative shrug of the shoulders as to the
incompetence of the Belgian police, who held neither a clue to the
perpetrator of the crime nor to the identity of the victim. Just a
stranger--an idler. Brussels was full of strangers just now. His
nationality? who knows? His individuality? there seemed no one to
care. The police were active no doubt, but so far they had discovered
nothing.
Two men, the murderer and the murdered, engulfed in that great
whirlpool known as humanity, small units of no importance, since no
one seemed to care. Interesting to the detective whose duty it was to
track the crime to its perpetrator. Interesting to the reporter who
could fill a column with accounts of depositions, of questionings, of
examinations. Interesting to the after-dinner talker who could
expatiate over the moral lessons to be drawn from the conception of
such a crime.
But the murdered man goes to his grave unknown: and the murderer
wanders Cain-like on the face of the earth--as mysterious, as unknown,
as silent as his victim.
CHAPTER III
AND NOW ALMOST LIKE A DREAM
Everything went on just as convention--whose mouth-piece for the
moment happened to be Lady Ryder--desired; just as Louisa surmised
that everything would; the letters of congratulations; the stately
visits from and to Lord Radclyffe, Luke's uncle; the magnificent
diamond tiara from the latter; the rope of pearls from Luke; the
silver salvers and inkstands and enamel parasol handles from everybody
who was anybody in London society.
Louisa's portrait and that of Luke hastily and cheaply reproduced in
the halfpenny dailies, so that she looked like a white negress with a
cast in her eye, and he like the mutilated hero of _L'Homme Qui Rit_;
the more elegant half-tone blocks in the sixpenny weeklies under the
popular if somewhat hackneyed heading of "The Earl of Radclyffe's heir
and his future bride, Miss Louisa Harris"; it was all there, just as
it had been for hundreds of other girls and hundreds of other young
men before Louisa had discovered that there was only one man in the
whole wide world, and that, beyond the land of diamond tiaras and of
society weddings, there was a fairy universe, immense and illimitable,
whereon the sun of happiness never set and whither no one dared
venture alone, only hand in hand with that other being, the future
mate, the pupil and teacher of love, the only one that mattered.
And the wedding was to be in four weeks from this day. The invitations
were not out yet, for Louisa, closely pressed by Luke, had only just
made up her mind half an hour ago about the date. Strangely enough she
had been in no hurry for the wedding day to come. Luke had been so
anxious, so crestfallen when she put him off with vague promises, that
she herself could not account for this strange reticence within
her--so unworthy a level-headed, conventional woman of the world.
But the outer lobby of the fairy universe was surpassingly beautiful,
and though the golden gates to the inner halls beyond were ajar and
would yield to the slightest pressure of Louisa's slender fingers, yet
she was glad to tarry awhile longer. Were they not hand in hand? What
mattered waiting since eternity called beyond those golden gates?
This morning, however, convention--still voiced by Lady Ryder--was
more vigorous than was consistent with outward peace. Louisa, worried
by aunt, and with the memory of Luke's expression of misery and
disappointment when last night she had again refused to fix the
wedding day, chided herself for her silly fancies, and at eleven
o'clock set out for a stroll in Battersea Park, her mind made up, her
unwonted fit of sentimentality smothered by the louder voice of
common-sense.
She and Luke always took their walks abroad in Battersea Park. In the
morning hours they were free there from perpetual meetings with
undesired company--all outside company being undesirable in the lobby
of the fairy universe. Louisa had promised to meet Luke in the
tropical garden at half-past eleven. She was always punctual, and he
always before his time; she smart and businesslike in her neat,
tailor-made gown and close hat which defied wind and rain, he always a
little shamefaced when he took her neatly gloved hand in his, as most
English young men are apt to be when sentiment for the first time
happens to overmaster them.
To-day she saw him coming toward her just the same as on other days.
He walked just as briskly and held himself as erect as he always did,
but the moment that he was near enough for her to see his face she
knew that there was something very wrong in the world and with him.
Some one from the world of eternity beyond had seen fit to push the
golden gates closer together, so that now they would not yield quite
so easily to the soft pressure of a woman's hand.
"What is it, Luke?" she asked very quietly, as soon as her fingers
rested safely between his.
"What is what?" he rejoined foolishly and speaking like a child, and
with a forced, almost inane-looking, smile on his lips.
"What has happened?" she reiterated more impatiently.
"Nothing," he replied, "that need worry you, I think. Shall we sit
down here? You won't catch cold?" and he indicated a seat well
sheltered against the cold breeze and the impertinent gaze of the
passers-by.
"I never catch cold," said Louisa, smiling in spite of herself at
Luke's funny, awkward ways. "But we won't sit down. Let us stroll up
and down, shall we? You can talk better then, and tell me all about
it."
"There's not much to tell at present. And no occasion to worry."
"There's nothing that worries me so much as your shilly-shallying,
Luke, or the thought that you are making futile endeavours to keep
something from me," she retorted almost irritably this time, for,
strangely enough, her nerves--she never knew before this that she had
any--were slightly on the jar this morning.
"I don't want to shilly-shally, little girl," he replied gently, "nor
to keep anything from you. There, will you put your hand on my arm?
'Arry and 'Arriet, eh? Well! never mind. There's no one to see."
He took her hand--that neatly gloved, small hand of hers--and put it
under his arm. For one moment it seemed as if he would kiss that tiny
and tantalizing place just below the thumb where the pink palm shows
in the opening of the glove. Luke was not a demonstrative lover, he
was shy and English and abrupt; but this morning--was it the breath of
spring in the air, the scent of the Roman hyacinths in that bed over
there, or merely the shadow of a tiny cloud on the uniform blue of his
life's horizon that gave a certain rugged softness to his touch, as
his hand lingered over that neat glove which nestled securely in among
the folds of his coat sleeve?
"Now," she said simply.
"Have you," he asked with abrupt irrelevance, "read your paper all
through this morning?"
"Not all through. Only the important headlines."
"And you saw nothing about a claim to a peerage?"
"Nothing."
"Well! that's all about it. A man has sprung up from nowhere in
particular, who claims to be my uncle Arthur's son, and, therefore,
heir presumptive to the title and all."
Luke heaved a deep sigh, as if with this brief if ungrammatical
statement, his own heart had been unburdened of a tiresome load.
"Your uncle Arthur?" she repeated somewhat bewildered.
"Yes. You never knew him, did you?"
"No," she said, "I never knew him, though as a baby I must have seen
him. I was only three, I think, when he died. But I never heard that
he had been married. I am sure father never knew."
"Nor did I, nor did Uncle Rad, nor any of us. The whole thing is
either a thunderbolt or . . . an imposture."
"Tell me," she said, "a little more clearly, Luke dear, will you? I am
feeling quite muddled." And now it was she who led the way to the
isolated seat beneath that group of silver birch, whose baby leaves
trembled beneath the rough kiss of the cool April breeze.
They sat down together and on the gravelled path in front of them a
robin hopped half shyly, half impertinently, about and gazed with
tiny, inquisitive eyes on the doings of these big folk. All around
them the twitter of bird throats filled the air with its magic, its
hymn to the reawakened earth, and drowned in this pleasing solitude
the distant sounds of the busy city that seemed so far away from this
secluded nook inhabited by birds and flowers, and by two dwellers in
Fata Morgana's land.
"Tell me first," said Louisa, in her most prosy, most matter of fact
tone of voice, "all that is known about your uncle Arthur."
"Well, up to now, I individually knew very little about him. He was
the next eldest brother to Uncle Rad, and my father was the youngest
of all. When Uncle Rad succeeded to the title, Arthur was
heir-presumptive of course. But as you know he died--as was supposed
unmarried--nineteen years ago, and my poor dear father was killed in
the hunting field the following year. I was a mere kid then and the
others were babies--orphans the lot of us. My mother died when Edith
was born. Uncle Rad was said to be a confirmed bachelor. He took us
all to live with him and was father, mother, elder brother, elder
sister to us all. Bless him!"
Luke paused abruptly, and Louisa too was silent. Only the song of a
thrush soaring upward to the skies called for that blessing which
neither of them at that moment could adequately evoke.
"Yes," said Louisa at last, "I knew all that."
Lord Radclyffe and his people were all of the same world as herself.
She knew all about the present man's touching affection for the
children of his youngest brother, but more especially for Luke on whom
he bestowed an amount of love and tender care which would have shamed
many a father by its unselfish intensity. That affection was a
beautiful trait in an otherwise not very lovable character.
"I daresay," resumed Luke after a little while, "that I have been
badly brought up. I mean in this way, that if--if the whole story is
true--if Uncle Arthur did marry and did have a son, then I should have
to go and shift for myself and for Jim and Frank and Edith. Of course
Uncle Rad would do what he could for us, but I should no longer be his
heir--and we couldn't go on living at Grosvenor Square and----"
"Aren't you rambling on a little too fast, dear?" said Louisa gently,
whilst she beamed with an almost motherly smile--the smile that a
woman wears when she means to pacify and to comfort--on the troubled
face of the young man.
"Of course I am," he replied more calmly, "but I can't help it. For
some days now I've had a sort of feeling that something was going to
happen--that--well, that things weren't going to go right. And this
morning when I got up, I made up my mind that I would tell you."
"When did you hear first, and from whom?"
"The first thing we heard was last autumn. There came a letter from
abroad for Uncle Rad. It hadn't the private mark on it, so Mr. Warren
opened it along with the rest of the correspondence. He showed it to
me. The letter was signed Philip de Mountford, and began, 'My dear
uncle.' I couldn't make head or tail of it; I thought it all twaddle.
You've no idea what sort of letters Uncle Rad gets sometimes from
every kind of lunatic or scoundrel you can think of, who wants to get
something out of him. Well, this letter at first looked to me the same
sort of thing. I had never heard of any one who had the right to say
'dear uncle' to Uncle Rad--but it had a lot in it about blood being
thicker than water and all the rest of it, with a kind of request for
justice and talk about the cruelty of Fate. The writer, however,
asserted positively that he was the only legitimate son of Mr. Arthur
de Mountford, who--this he professed to have only heard recently--was
own brother to the earl of Radclyffe. The story which he went on to
relate at full length was queer enough in all conscience. I remember
every word of it, for it seemed to get right away into my brain, then
and there, as if something was being hammered or screwed straight
into one of the cells of my memory never really to come out again."
"And yet when--when we were first engaged," rejoined Louisa quietly,
"you never told me anything about it."
"I'll tell you directly how that was. I remembered and then forgot--if
you know what I mean--and now it has all come back. At the time I
thought the letter of this man who called himself Philip de Mountford
nothing but humbug. So did Mr. Warren, and yet he and I talked it over
and discussed it between us for ever so long. It all sounded so
strange. Uncle Arthur--so this man said who called himself Philip de
Mountford--had married in Martinique a half-caste girl named Adeline
Petit, who was this same Philip's mother. He declares that he has all
the papers--marriage certificates or whatever they are called--to
prove every word he says. He did not want to trouble his uncle much,
only now that his mother was dead, he felt all alone in the world and
longed for the companionship and affection of his own kith and kin.
All he wanted he said, was friendship. Then he went on to say that of
course he did not expect his lordship to take his word for all this,
he only asked for an opportunity to show his dear uncle all the papers
and other proofs which he held that he was in real and sober truth the
only legitimate son of Mr. Arthur de Mountford, own brother to his
lordship."
"How old is this man--this Philip de Mountford--supposed to be?"
"Well, he said in that first letter that the marriage took place in
the parish church of St. Pierre in Martinique on the 28th of August,
1881; that he himself was born the following year, and christened in
the same church under the name of Philip Arthur, and registered as
the son of Mr. Arthur Collingwood de Mountford of Ford's Mount in the
county of Northampton, England, and of Adeline de Mountford, née
Petit, his wife."
"Twenty-four years ago," said Louisa thoughtfully, "and he only claims
kinship with Lord Radclyffe now?"
"That's just," rejoined Luke, "where the curious part of the story
comes in. This Philip de Mountford--I don't know how else to call
him--said in his first letter that his mother never knew that Mr.
Arthur de Mountford was anything more than a private English gentleman
travelling either for profit or pleasure, but in any case not
possessed of either wealth or social position. Between you and me,
dear, I suppose that this Adeline Petit was just a half-caste girl,
without much knowledge of what goes on in the world, and why she
should have married Uncle Arthur I can't think."
"If she did marry him, you mean."
"If she did marry him, as you say," said Luke with a singular want of
conviction, which Louisa was not slow to remark.
"You think that this young man's story is true then?"
"I don't know what to think, and that's the truth."
"Tell me more," added Louisa simply.
"Well, this Philip's story goes on to say that his father--Uncle
Arthur--apparently soon tired of his exotic wife, for it seems that
two years after the marriage he left Martinique and never returned to
it to the day of his death."
"Pardon," said Louisa in her prim little way, "my interrupting you:
but have any of you--Lord Radclyffe I mean, or any of your
friends--any recollection of your uncle Arthur living at Martinique
for awhile? Two years seems a long time----"
"As a matter of fact, Uncle Arthur was a bit of a wastrel you know. He
never would study for anything. He passed into the navy--very well,
too, I believe--but he threw it all up almost as soon as he got his
commission, and started roaming about the world. I do know for a fact
that once his people had no news of him for about three or four years,
and then he turned up one fine day as if he had only been absent for a
week's shooting."
"When was that?"
"I can't tell you exactly. I was only a tiny kid at the time, not more
than three years old I should say. Yes, I do remember, now I come to
think of it, that Uncle Arthur was home the Christmas after my third
birthday. I have a distinct recollection of my dad telling me that
Uncle Arthur was one of my presents from Father Christmas, and of my
thinking what a rotten present it was. Later on in the nursery all of
us children were rather frightened of him, and we used to have great
discussions as to where this uncle came from. The Christmas present
theory was soon exploded, because of some difficulty about Uncle
Arthur not having been actually found in a stocking, and his being too
big anyway to be hidden in one, so we fell back on Jim's suggestion
that he was the man in the moon come down for a holiday."
"You," she said, "had your third birthday in 1883."
"Yes."
"That was the year, then, that your uncle Arthur came home from his
wanderings about the world, during which he had never given any news
of himself or his doings to any member of his family."
"By Jove, Lou, what a splendid examining magistrate you'd make!" was
Luke's unsophisticated comment on Louisa's last remark.
But she frowned a little at this show of levity, and continued
quietly:
"And your uncle, according to this so-called Philip de Mountford, was
married in 1881 in Martinique, his son was born in 1882, and he left
Martinique in 1883 never to return."
"Hang it all, Lou!" exclaimed the young man almost roughly, "that is
all surmise."
"I know it is, dear; I was only thinking."
"Thinking what?"
"That it all tallies so very exactly and that this--this Philip de
Mountford seems in any case to know a great deal about your Uncle
Arthur, and his movements in the past."
"There's no doubt of that; and----"
Luke paused a moment and a curious blush spread over his face. The
Englishman's inborn dislike to talk of certain subjects to his women
folk had got hold of him, and he did not know how to proceed.
As usual in such cases the woman--unmoved and businesslike--put an end
to his access of shyness.
"The matter is--or may be--too serious, dear, for you to keep any of
your thoughts back from me at this juncture."
"What I meant was," he said abruptly, "that this Philip might quite
well be Uncle Arthur's son you know; but it doesn't follow that he has
any right to call himself Philip de Mountford, or to think that he is
Uncle Rad's presumptive heir."
"That will of course depend on his proofs--his papers and so on," she
assented calmly. "Has any one seen them?"
"At the time--it was sometime last November--that he first wrote to
Uncle Rad, he had all his papers by him. He wrote from St. Vincent;
have I told you that?"
"No."
"Well, it was from St. Vincent that he wrote. He had left Martinique,
I understand, in 1902, when St. Pierre, if you remember, was totally
destroyed by volcanic eruption. It seems that when Uncle Arthur left
the French colony for good, he lodged quite a comfortable sum in the
local bank at St. Pierre in the name of Mrs. de Mountford. Of course
he had no intention of ever going back there, and anyhow he never did,
for he died about three years later. The lady went on living her own
life quite happily. Apparently she did not hanker much after her
faithless husband. I suppose that she never imagined for a moment that
he meant to stick to her, and she certainly never bothered her head as
to what his connections or friends over in England might be. Amongst
her own kith and kin, the half-caste population of a French
settlement, she was considered very well off, almost rich. After a
very few years of grass-widowhood, she married again, without much
scruple or compunction, which proves that she never thought that her
English husband would come back to her. And then came the
catastrophe."
"What catastrophe?"
"The destruction of St. Pierre. You remember the awful accounts of it.
The whole town was destroyed. Every building in the place--the local
bank, the church, the presbytery, the post-office--was burned to the
ground; everything was devastated for miles around. And thousands
perished, of course."
"I remember."
"Mrs. de Mountford and her son Philip were amongst the very few who
escaped. Their cottage was burned to the ground, but she, with all a
Frenchwoman's sense of respect for papers and marks of identification,
fought her way back into the house, even when it was tottering above
her head, in order to rescue those things which she valued more than
her life, the proofs that she was a respectable married woman and that
Philip was her lawfully begotten son. Her second husband--I think from
reading between the lines that he was a native or at best a
half-caste--was one of the many who perished. But Mrs. de Mountford
and Philip managed to reach the coast unhurt and to put out to sea in
an open boat. They were picked up by a fishing smack from Marie
Galante and landed there. It is a small island--French settlement, of
course--off Guadeloupe. They had little or no money, and how they
lived I don't know, but they stayed in Marie Galante for some time.
Then the mother died, and Philip made his way somehow or other to
Roseau in Dominica and thence to St. Vincent."
"When was that?"
"Last year I suppose."
"And," she said, meditating on all that she had heard, "it was in St.
Vincent that he first realized who he was--or might be?"
"Well, in a British colony it was bound to happen. Whether somebody
put him up to it out there, or whether he merely sucked the
information in from nowhere in particular, I can't say: certain it is
that he did soon discover that the name he bore was one of the best
known in England, and that his father must, as a matter of fact, have
been own brother to the earl of Radclyffe. So he wrote to Uncle Rad."
Louisa was silent. She was absorbed in thought and for the moment Luke
had come to the end of what he had to say--or, rather, of what he
meant to say just now. That there was more to come, Louisa well knew.
Commonplace women have a way of intuitively getting at the bottom of
the thoughts of people for whom they care. Louisa guessed that beneath
Luke's levity and his school-boyish slang--which grew more apparent as
the man drew to the end of his narrative--that beneath his outward
flippancy there lay a deep substratum of puzzlement and anxiety.
The story as told by Luke sounded crude enough, almost melodramatic,
right out of the commonplace range of Louisa's usual every-day life.
Whilst she sat listening to this exotic tale of secret and incongruous
marriage and of those earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which had
seemed so remote when she had read about them nine years ago in the
newspapers, she almost thought that she must be dreaming; that she
would wake up presently in her bed at the Langham Hotel where she was
staying with aunt, and that she would then dress and have her
breakfast and go out to meet Luke, and tell him all about the idiotic
dream she had had about an unknown heir to the Earldom of Radclyffe,
who was a negro--or almost so--and was born in a country where there
were volcanoes and earthquakes.
How far removed from her at this moment did aunt seem, and father, and
the twins! Surely they could not be of the same world as this exotic
pretender to Uncle Radclyffe's affection, and to Luke's hitherto
undisputed rights. And as father and aunt and Mabel and Chris were
very much alive and very real, then this so-called Philip de Mountford
must be a creature of dreams.
"Or else an imposter."
She had said this aloud, thus breaking in on her own thoughts and his.
A feeling of restlessness seized her now. She was cold, too, for the
April breeze was biting and had searched out the back of her neck
underneath the sable stole and caused her to shiver in the spring
sunshine.
"Let us walk," she said, "a little--shall we?"
CHAPTER IV
NOTHING REALLY TANGIBLE
They walked up the gravelled walk under the chestnut trees, whereon
the leaf buds, luscious looking, with their young green surface
delicately tinged with pink, looked over ready to burst into
fan-shaped fulness of glory. The well-kept paths, the orderly flower
beds, and smoothly trimmed lawns looked all so simple, so obvious
beside the strange problem which fate had propounded to these two
young people walking up and down side by side--and with just a certain
distance between them as if that problem was keeping them apart.
And that intangible reality stood between them, causing in Luke a
vague sense of shamefacedness, as if he were guilty toward Louisa, and
in her a feeling of irritation against the whole world around her, for
having allowed this monstrous thing to happen--this vague shadow on
life's pathway, on the life of the only man who mattered.
People passed them as they walked: the curious, the indifferent: men
with bowler hats pulled over frowning brows, boys with caps carelessly
thrust at the back of their heads, girls with numbed fingers thrust in
worn gloves, tip-tilted noses blue with cold, thin, ill-fitting
clothes scarce shielding attenuated shoulders against the keen spring
blast.
Just the humdrum, every-day crowd of London: the fighters, the
workers, toiling against heavy odds of feeble health, insufficient
food, scanty clothing, the poor that no one bothers about, less
interesting than the unemployed labourer, less picturesque, less
noisy, they passed and had no time to heed the elegantly clad figure
wrapped in costly furs, or the young man in perfectly tailored coat,
who was even now preparing himself for a fight with destiny, beside
which the daily struggle for halfpence would be but a mere skirmish.
Instinctively they knew--these two--the society girl and the
easy-going wealthy man--that it was reality with which they would have
to deal. That instinct comes with the breath of fate: a warning that
her decrees are serious, not to be lightly set aside, but pondered
over; that her materialized breath would not be a phantom or a thing
to be derided.
Truth or imposture? Which?
Neither the man nor the girl knew as yet, but reality--whatever else
it was.
They walked on for awhile in silence. Another instinct--the
conventional one--had warned them that their stay in the park had been
unduly prolonged: there were social duties to attend to, calls to
make, luncheon with Lord Radclyffe at Grosvenor Square.
So they both by tacit consent turned their steps back toward the town.
A man passed them from behind, walking quicker than they did. As he
passed, he looked at them both intently, as if desirous of arresting
their attention. Of course he succeeded, for his look was almost
compelling. Louisa was the first to turn toward him, then Luke did
likewise: and the passer-by raised his hat respectfully with a slight
inclination of head and shoulders that suggested foreign upbringing.
Once more convention stepped in and Luke mechanically returned the
salute.
"Who was that?" asked Louisa, when the passer-by was out of ear shot.
"I don't know," replied Luke. "I thought it was some one you knew. He
bowed to you."
"No," she said, "to you, I think. Funny you should not know him."
But silence once broken, constraint fled with it. She drew nearer to
Luke and once more her hand sought his coat sleeve, with a light
pressure quickly withdrawn.
"Now, Luke," she said, abruptly reverting to the subject, "how do you
stand in all this?"
"I?"
"Yes. What does Lord Radclyffe say?"
"He laughs the whole thing to scorn, and declares that the man is an
impudent liar."
"He saw," she asked, "the first letter? The one that came from St.
Vincent?"
"Yes. Mr. Warren and I did not think we ought to keep it from him."
"Of course not," she assented. "Then he said that the letter was a
tissue of lies?"
"From beginning to end."
"He refused," she insisted, "to believe in the marriage of your uncle
Arthur out there in Martinique?"
"He didn't go into details. He just said that the whole letter was an
impudent attempt at blackmail."
"And since then?"
"He has never spoken about it."
"Until to-day?" she asked.
"He hasn't spoken," he replied, insisting on the word, "even to-day.
Two or three times I think letters came for him in the same
handwriting. Mr. Warren did not open them, of course, and took them
straight to Uncle Rad. They always bore foreign postmarks, some from
one place, some from another; but Uncle Rad never referred to them
after he had read them, nor did he instruct Mr. Warren to reply. Then
the letters ceased, and I began to forget the whole business. I didn't
tell you, because Uncle Rad told me not to talk about the whole thing.
It was beneath contempt, he said, and he didn't want the tittle-tattle
to get about."
"Then," she asked, "what happened?"
"A week ago a letter came with a London postmark on it. The address
and letter were both type-written, and the latter covered four sheets
of paper, and was signed Philip de Mountford. Bar the actual story of
the marriage and all that, the letter was almost identical to the
first one which came from St. Vincent. Mr. Warren had opened it, for
it looked like a business one, and he waited for me in his office to
ask my opinion about it. Of course we had to give it to Uncle Rad. It
had all the old phrases in it about blood being thicker than water,
and about longing for friendship and companionship, and all that.
There was no hint of threats or demand for money or anything like
that."
"Of course not," she said. "Whilst Lord Radclyffe is alive, the young
man has no claim."
"Only," he rejoined, "that of kinship."
"Lord Radclyffe need not do anything for him."
Already there was a note of hostility in Louisa's even voice. The
commonplace woman was donning armour against the man who talked of
usurping the loved one's privileges.
"I wish," he insisted, "that I could have got the letter from Uncle
Rad to show you. It was so simple and so sensible. All he asks is just
to see Uncle Rad personally, to feel that he has kindred in the world.
He knows, he says, that, beyond good-will, he has no claim now. As a
matter of fact, he has something more substantial than that, for Uncle
Arthur had a little personal property, about fifteen thousand pounds,
which he left to us four children--Jim and Frank and Edie and me, and
which I for one wouldn't touch if I knew for certain that this Philip
was his son."
"But," she argued, "you say that the man does not speak of money."
She hated the talk about money: for she had all that contempt for it
which women have who have never felt the want of it. It would have
been so simple if the intruder had only wanted money. She would not
have cared a little bit if Luke had none, or was not going to have
any. It was his right which she would not hear of being questioned;
his right in Lord Radclyffe's affections, in his household, and also
his rights in the future when Lord Radclyffe would be gone.
"You are sure," she insisted, "that he does not want money?"
"I don't think," he replied, "that he does, just now. He seems to have
a little; he must have had a little, since he came over from St.
Vincent and is staying at a moderately good hotel in London. No. He
wants to see Uncle Rad, because he thinks that, if Uncle Rad saw him,
blood would cry out in response. It appears that now he has lodged all
his papers of identification with a London lawyer--a very good firm,
mind you--and he wants Uncle Rad's solicitor to see all the papers and
to examine them. That seems fair to me, doesn't it to you?"
"Very fair indeed," she mused.
"What I mean," he added with great conviction, "is that if those
papers weren't all right, he wouldn't be so anxious for Uncle Rad's
solicitors to have a look at them, would he?"
"No."
And after awhile she reiterated more emphatically.
"Certainly not."
"I must say," he concluded, "that the whole thing simply beats me."
"But what does Lord Radclyffe say now?"
"Nothing."
"How do you mean nothing?"
"Just what I say. He won't talk about the thing. He won't discuss it.
He won't answer any question which I put to him. 'My dear boy, the man
is a palpable, impudent impostor, a blackmailer' and that's all I can
get out of him."
"He won't see the man?"
"Won't hear of it."
"And won't he let his solicitor--Mr. Dobson, isn't it?--meet the other
lawyer?"
"He says he wouldn't dream of wasting old Dobson's time."
"Then what's going to happen?"
"I don't see," he said, "what is going to happen."
"Won't you have a talk about it all with Mr. Dobson, and see what he
says?"
"I can't very well do that. Strictly speaking it's none of my
business--as yet. I couldn't consult Uncle Rad's lawyers, without
Uncle Rad's consent."
"Another one then."
He shrugged his shoulders, obviously undecided what to do. He had
thought very little about himself or his future in all this: his
thoughts had dwelt mostly on Lord Radclyffe--father, mother, brother,
sister to them all. Bless him! And then he had thought of her. He
looked round him with eyes that scarcely saw, for they really were
turned inward to his own simple soul, and to his loving heart. Right
up against that very simplicity of soul, a duty stood clear and
uncompromising. A duty yet to be performed, the real aim and end of
all that he had said so far. But he did not know how best to perform
such a duty.
Simple souls--unlike the complex psychological phenomena of modern
times--are apt to be selfless, to think more of the feelings of
others, than of analyzing their own various sensations; and Luke knew
that what he considered his duty would not be quite so obvious to
Louisa, and that by fulfilling it he would give her pain.
CHAPTER V
JUST AN OBVIOUS DUTY
But it was she who gave him an opening.
"Luke," she said, "it's all very well, but the matter does concern you
in a way; far more so, in fact, than it does Lord Radclyffe. Nothing
can make any difference to Lord Radclyffe, but if what this young man
asserts is all true, then it will make a world of difference to you."
"I know that. That's just the trouble."
"You were thinking of yourself?"
"No. I was thinking of you."
"Of me?"
"Yes," he said now very abruptly, quite roughly and crudely, not
choosing his words lest they helped to betray what he felt, and all
that he felt. "If what this man says is true, then I am a penniless
nonentity whom you are not going to marry."
"You are talking nonsense, Luke, and you know it," was all she said.
And she said it very quietly, very decisively. He was talking
nonsense, of course, for, whatever happened or didn't happen, there
was one thing in the world that was absolutely, undeniably impossible,
and that was that she should not marry Luke.
Whilst she Louisa Harris, plain, uninteresting, commonplace Louisa
Harris was of this world, her marriage with Luke must be. People, in
this present day, matter-of-fact world, didn't have their hearts
wrenched out of them; they were not made to suffer impossible and
unendurable tortures; then why should she Louisa Harris, be threatened
with such a cataclysm?
"I am not," he was saying rather tonelessly, "talking nonsense, Lou. I
have thought all that over. It's over eight days since that letter
came; eight times twenty-four hours since I seemed in a way to see all
my future through a thick, black cloud, and I've had time to think. I
saw you too, through that thick, black cloud--I saw you just as you
are, exquisite, beautiful, like a jewel that should forever remain in
a perfect setting. I----"
He broke off abruptly, and, mechanically, his hand went up to his
forehead and eyes. Where was he? He gave a sudden, quaint laugh.
"What a drivelling fool you must think me, Lou."
She looked straight at him, pure of soul, simple of heart, with a
passion of tenderness and self-abnegation as yet dormant beneath the
outer crust of a conventional education and of commonplace
surroundings, but with the passion there nevertheless. And it was
expressed in the sudden, strange luminosity of her eyes--I would not
have you think that they were tears--as they met and held his own.
They didn't say anything more just then. People of their type and
class in England do not say much, you know, under such circumstances.
They have been drilled not to: drilled and drilled from childhood
upward, from the time when, after a fall and a cut lip or broken
tooth, the tears have to be held back, lest the words "snivel" or
"cry-baby" be mentioned. But quietude does not necessarily mean
freedom from pain. A cut lip hurts worse when it is not wetted with
tears.
It was only the shadow that was hovering over these two as yet:
nothing really tangible. And the shadow was not between them. She
would not let it come between them. If it covered him, it should wrap
her too. The commonplace woman had no fear of its descent, only as far
as it affected him.
"Nothing," she said after awhile, "could make a difference to our
marriage, Luke. Except, of course, if you ceased to care."
"Or you, Lou," he suggested meekly.
"Do you think," she retorted, "that I should? Just because you had no
money?"
"Not," he owned, "because of that. But I should be such a nonentity. I
have no real profession, and there are the others. Jim in the Blues
costs a fearful lot a year, and Frank in the diplomatic service must
have his promised allowance. I have read for the bar, but beyond that
what am I?"
"Your uncle's right hand," she retorted firmly, "his agent, his
secretary, his factotum, all rolled into one. You manage his estates,
his charities, his correspondence. You write his speeches and control
his household. Lord Radclyffe--every one says it in London--would not
be himself at all without Luke de Mountford behind him."
"That's not what I mean, Lou."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that--"
He paused a moment then added with seeming irrelevance:
"We all know that Uncle Rad is a curious kind of man. If this story
turns out to be true, he would still say nothing, but he would fret
and fret and worry himself into his grave."
"The story," she argued obstinately, "will not turn out to be true.
It's not like you, Luke, to jump at conclusions, or to be afraid of a
nightmare."
"I am not afraid," he rejoined simply. "But I must look at
possibilities. Yes, dear," he continued more forcibly, "it is possible
that this story is true. No good saying that it is impossible:
improbable if you like, but not impossible. Look at it how you like,
you must admit that it is not impossible. Uncle Arthur may have
married in Martinique; he was out there in 1881; he may have had a
son; his telling no one about his marriage is not to be wondered at;
he was always reticent and queer about his own affairs. This Philip
may possibly be Uncle Rad's sole and rightful heir, and I may possibly
be a beggar."
She uttered an exclamation of incredulity. Luke, a beggar! Luke the
one man in all the world, different from every other man! Luke ousted
by that stranger upstart!
God hath too much sense of humour to allow so ridiculous a Fate to
work her silly caprice.
"And," she said with scorn, "because of all these absurd possibilities
you talk of breaking off your engagement to me. Do you care so little
as all that, Luke?"
He did not reply, but continued to walk beside her, just a yard or so
apart from her, turning his steps in the direction of the gates,
toward the Albert Bridge, their nearest way home. She--meekly now, for
already she was sorry--turned to look at him. Something in his
attitude, the stoop of the shoulders, usually so square and erect,
the hands curiously clasped behind his back, told her that her
shaft--very thoughtlessly aimed--had struck even deeper than it
should.
"I am so sorry, dear," she said gently.
His look forgave her, even before the words were fully out of her
mouth, but with characteristic reticence, he made no reply to her
taunt. Strangely enough she was satisfied that he should say nothing.
The look, which did not reproach even whilst it tried to conceal the
infinite depth of the wound so lightly dealt, had told her more than
any words could do. Whatever Luke decided to do, it would be from a
sense of moral obligation, that desire for doing the right thing--in
the worldly sense of the term--which is inherent in Englishmen of a
certain class. No sentiment save that of a conventional one of honour
would be allowed to sway her destiny and his.
Conventionality--that same strained sense of honour and duty--decreed
that under certain mundane circumstances a man and woman should not
mate. Differences of ancestry, of parentage, of birth and of country,
divergence of taste, of faith, of belief--all these matter not one
jot. But let the man be beggared and the woman rich, and convention
steps in and says, "It shall not be!"
These two bowed to that decree: unconventional, in so far that they
both made the sacrifice out of the intense purity of their sentiment
to one another. They made an absolutely worldly sacrifice for a wholly
unworldly motive. Luke would as soon have thought of seeing Louisa in
a badly fitting serge frock, and paying twopence for a two-mile ride
in an omnibus, as he would expect to see a diamond tiara packed in a
card-board box, it would be unfair on the jeweller who had made the
tiara thus to subject it to rough treatment; and it would be equally
unfair on the Creator of Louisa to let her be buffeted about by the
cruder atoms of this world.
Louisa only thought of Luke and that perhaps he would feel happier in
his mind if she allowed him to make this temporary sacrifice.
There is such wonderful balm in self-imposed sacrifice.
"What," she asked simply, "do you want me to say, Luke?"
"Only that--that you won't give me up altogether unless----"
Here he checked himself abruptly. Was there ever an Englishman born
who could talk sentiment at moments such as this? Luke was no
exception to that rule. There was so much that he wanted to say to
Louisa, and yet the very words literally choked him before he could
contrive to utter them.
"Don't," she said quietly, "let us even refer to such things, Luke. I
do not believe in this shadow, and I cannot even understand why you
should worry about it. But whatever happens, I should never give you
up. Never. We will put off fixing the day of our wedding; since we
have made no announcement this won't matter at all: but I only agree
to this because I think that it is what you would like. I fancy that
it would ease your mind. As for breaking our engagement in the
future--in case the worst happens--well it shall not be with my
consent, Luke, unless you really cease to care."
They had reached the gate close to the bridge. Life pulsated all round
them, the life of the big city, callous, noisy, and cruel. Omnibuses,
cabs, heavy vans, rattled incessantly past them. People jostled one
another, hurrying and scurrying, pigmies and ants adding their tiny
load of work, of care, of sorrow to the titanic edifice of this living
world.
Louisa's last words remained unanswered. Luke had, by his silence,
said everything there was to say. They stood on the pavement for a
moment, and Luke hailed a passing taxicab.
At the corner opposite, an omnibus pulled up on its way westward. A
man stepped off the curb ready to enter it. Louisa caught his eye, and
he raised his hat--the man who had passed them in the park just now.
CHAPTER VI
JUST A DISAGREEABLE OLD MAN
The luncheons at Grosvenor Square were always rather dull and formal,
but Louisa did not mind that very much. She was used to dull and
formal affairs: they were part and parcel of her daily life. London
society is full of it. The dull and formal dominate; the
others--vulgar if more lively--were not worth cultivating.
Then, she almost liked Lord Radclyffe, because he was so fond of Luke.
And even then "almost" was a big word. No one--except Luke--could
really like the old man. He was very bad tempered, very dictatorial, a
perfect tyrant in his own household. His opinions no one dared
contradict, no one cared to argue with him, and his advanced Tory
views were so rabid that he almost made perverts from the cause, of
all those whom he desired to convince.
And even these were few, for Lord Radclyffe had no friends and very
few acquaintances. He had a strange and absolute dislike for his
fellow men. He did not like seeing people, he hated to exchange
greetings, to talk or to mingle with any crowd that was purely on
pleasure bent. He went up to the House and made speeches--political,
philanthropic, economic speeches--which Luke prepared for him, and
which he spoke without enthusiasm or any desire to please. This he
did, not because he liked it or took any interest in things political,
philanthropic or economic, but only because he considered that a man
in his position owed certain duties to the State--duties which it
would be cowardly to shirk.
But he really cared nothing for the thoughts of others, for their
opinions, their joys, or their sorrows. He had schooled himself not to
care, to call philanthropy empty sentiment, politics senseless
ambition, economics grasping avarice.
His was a life entirely wrapped up in itself. In youth he had been
very shy: a shyness caused at first by a serious defect of speech
which, though cured in later years, always left an unconquerable
diffidence, an almost morbid fear of ridicule in its train.
Because of this, I think, he had never been a sportsman--or, rather,
had never been an athlete, for he was splendid with a gun and the
finest revolver shot in England, so I've been told, and an
acknowledged master of fence, but with bat, ball, or racquet he was
invariably clumsy.
He had always hated to be laughed at, and therefore had never gone
through the rough mill of a tyro in athletics or in games. Arthur, one
of his brothers, had been a blue at Oxford; the other one, James--you
remember James de Mountford? was the celebrated cricketer; but he, the
eldest, always seemed to remain outside that magic circle of sport,
the great ring of many links which unites Englishmen one to another in
a way that no other conformity of tastes, of breeding, or of religion
can ever do.
Because of this diffidence too, no doubt, he had never married. I was
told once by an intimate friend of his, that old Rad--as he was
universally called--had never mustered up sufficient courage to
propose to any woman. And as he saw one by one the coveted
matrimonial prizes--the pretty girls whom at different times he had
admired sufficiently to desire for wife--snapped up by more
enterprising wooers, his dour moroseness grew into positive chronic
ill-humour.
He liked no one and no one liked him: and during sixty years of life
he had succeeded in eliminating from his entire being every feeling of
sentiment save one. He had to all appearances an absolutely callous
heart: he cared neither for dog nor horse--he ordered a splendid mare
to be shot without the slightest compunction after she had carried him
in the hunting field and in the park faithfully and beautifully for
over eight years, just because she had shied at a motor-car and nearly
thrown him. He was not cruel, you know, just callous in all respects
save one: void of all sentiment--he called it sentimentality--save in
his affection for Luke.
Luke had been--ever since he was a growing lad--the buffer in the
establishment between the irascible master and the many subordinates.
From Mr. Warren--the highly paid and greatly snubbed secretary--down
to the maids below stairs, one and all brought troubles, complaints,
worries to Mr. Luke. No one dared approach his lordship. A word out of
season brought instant dismissal, and no one thought of leaving a
place where, besides excellent wages, there was the pleasure of
waiting on Mr. Luke. Never Mr. de Mountford, you notice, always Mr.
Luke. He had grown up amongst the household; Winston, the old
coachman, had taught him to ride; Mary, now housekeeper, then a nurse,
had bathed him in a wash-hand basin when he was less than eighteen
inches long.
Therefore the atmosphere of the gloomy old house pleased Louisa
Harris. With the perfect and unconscious selfishness of a woman in
love, she gauged everything in life just as it affected Luke. She even
contrived to like Lord Radclyffe. He trod on every one of her moral
and spiritual corns, it is true; he had that lofty contempt for the
entire feminine sex which pertains to the Oriental, more than to the
more civilized Western races; he combated her opinions, both religious
and political, without any pretence at deference; he smoked very
strong cigars in every room in the house, without the slightest regard
for the feelings of his lady visitors; he did or left undone a great
many other things which would tend to irritate and even to offend a
woman accustomed to the conventional courtesies of daily social life;
but when Luke entered a room, where, but a moment ago, Lord Radclyffe
had been venting his chronic ill-humour on an offending or innocent
subordinate, the old man's dour face would become transfigured,
irradiated with a look of pride and of joy at sight of the man on whom
he had lavished all the affection of which his strong nature was
capable.
Luke could do no wrong. Luke was always right. He could argue with his
lordship, contradict him, obtain anything he liked from him. Eternal
contradictions of human nature: the childless man in perfect adoration
before a brother's son; the callous, hard-hearted misanthrope soft as
wax in the hands of one man.
CHAPTER VII
THE PART PLAYED BY A FIVE-POUND NOTE
And it was into this atmosphere of gloom and of purposeless
misanthropy that Louisa Harris brought this morning the cheering
sunshine of her own indomitable optimism.
She knew of course from the first that the subject which interested
every one in the house more than any other subject could ever do was
not to be mentioned in Lord Radclyffe's presence. But she was quite
shrewd enough to see that dear old Luke--unsophisticated and none too
acute an observer--had overestimated his uncle's indifference to the
all-absorbing matter.
The old man's face--usually a mirror of contemptuous cynicism--looked,
to the woman's keener insight, distinctly troubled, and his surly
silence was even more profound than hitherto.
He hardly did more than bid Louisa a curt, "How de do?" when she
entered, and then relapsed into moroseness wholly unbroken before
luncheon was announced.
Jim--"in the Blues"--was there when she arrived, and Edie came in a
few moments later, breathless and with hat awry and tawny hair flying
in all directions, straight from a tussle with the dogs and the sharp
wind in the park.
Evidently no secret had been made before these two of the strange
events which had culminated this very morning in their brother's
avowal to Louisa, and the postponement _sine die_ of the wedding. But
equally evidently these young creatures absorbed in their own life,
their own pursuits and amusements, were not inclined to look on the
matter seriously.
Their sky had been so absolutely cloudless throughout their lives that
it was impossible for them at the moment to realize that the dark
shadow on the distant horizon might possibly conceal thunder in its
filmy bosom.
Edie--just over twenty years of age and already satiated with the
excitement of three London seasons, her mind saturated with novel
reading and on the lookout for some new sensations--was inclined to
look on the affair as an exhilarating interlude between the Shrove
Tuesday dance at Wessex House and the first Drawing-Room in May.
Jim--"in the Blues"--very eligible as a possible husband for the
daughters of ambitious mammas, a trifle spoiled, a little slow of wit,
and not a little self-satisfied--dismissed the whole incident as
"tommy-rot."
When Louisa first greeted them, Edie had whispered excitedly:
"Has he told you?"
And without waiting for a direct reply had continued, with unabated
eagerness:
"Awful exciting, don't you think?"
But Jim with the elegant drawl peculiar to his kind had suppressed
further confidences by an authoritative:
"Awful rot I call it, don't you? Luke is soft to worry about it."
Strangely enough, at luncheon it was Lord Radclyffe who brought up
the subject matter. Edie with the tactlessness of youth had asked a
point-blank question:
"Well," she said, "when is that wedding to be? and what are we
bridesmaids going to wear? I warn you I won't have white--I hate a
white wedding."
Then as no answer came she said impatiently:
"I wish you'd name the day, you two stupids. Awfully soft I call it
hanging about like this."
Luke would have said something then, but Louisa interposed.
"It is all my fault, Edie," she said. "You know I want to take the
twins out myself this season. I must give them a real good time before
I marry."
"Bosh!" remarked Edith unceremoniously. "Mabel and Chris will have a
far better time when you are married and can present them yourself.
Tell them from me that its no fun being 'out' and the longer they put
it off the better they'll enjoy themselves later on. Besides, Colonel
Harris will take them about."
"Father hates sitting up late--" hazarded Louisa, somewhat lamely.
"The truth of the matter is," here broke in Lord Radclyffe dryly,
"that Luke had persuaded you to put off the wedding because of this
d----d impostor who seems to have set you all off by the ears."
Edie laughed and said, "Bosh!" Jim growled and murmured, "Rot!"
Luke and Louisa were silent, the while Lord Radclyffe's closely-set,
dark, piercing eyes, wandered from one young face to the other.
Louisa, feeling uncomfortable beneath that none too amiable scrutiny,
did not know what to say, but Luke quietly remarked after awhile:
"You're right, uncle. It is my doing, but Lou agrees with me, and we
are going to wait until this cloud is properly cleared up."
If any one else had spoken so clearly and decisively in direct
contradiction to the old man's obvious wishes in the matter, the
result would have been an outburst of ill-humour and probably a volley
of invectives, not unmixed with more forcible language. But since it
was Luke who had spoken--and Luke could do no wrong--Lord Radclyffe
responded quite gently:
"My dear boy," he said, and it was really touching to hear the hard
voice soften and linger on the endearing words, "I have told you once
and for all that the story of this so-called Philip de Mountford is a
fabrication from beginning to end. There is absolutely no reason for
you to fret one single instant because of the lies a blackmailer
chooses to trump up. As for your putting off your wedding one single
hour because of this folly, why, it is positive nonsense. I should
have thought you had more common-sense--and Miss Harris, too, for a
matter of that."
Luke was silent for a moment or two while Edie tossed her
irresponsible young head with the gesture of an absolute "I told you
so." Jim muttered something behind his heavy cavalry moustache.
Louisa, with head bent and fingers somewhat restless and fidgety,
waited to hear what Luke would say.
"If only," he said, "you would consent, Uncle Rad to let Mr. Dobson go
through this man's papers."
"What were the good of wasting Mr. Dobson's time?" retorted Lord
Radclyffe with surprising good humour. "I know that the man is an
impostor. I don't think it," he reiterated emphatically, "I know it."
"How?"
Before the old man had time to reply, the butler--sober, solemn
Parker--came in with a card on a salver, which he presented to his
master. Lord Radclyffe took up the card and grunted as he glanced at
it. He always grunted when he was threatened with visitors.
"Why," he said gruffly, and he threw the card back onto the salver,
"haven't you told Mr. Warren?"
"Mr. Warren," said solemn Parker, "is out, my lord."
"Then ask Mr. Dobson to call another time."
"It's not Mr. Dobson hisself, my lord. But a young gentleman from his
office."
"Then tell the young gentleman from the office that I haven't time to
bother about him."
"Shall I see him, sir?" asked Luke, ready to go.
"Certainly not," retorted the irascible old man. "Stay where you are.
You have got Miss Harris to entertain."
"The young gentleman," resumed Parker with respectful insistence,
"said he wouldn't keep your lordship five minutes. He said he'd
brought some papers for your lordship's signature."
"The Tower Farm lease, Uncle Rad," remarked Luke.
"I think, Mr. Luke," assented the butler, "that the young gentleman
did mention the word lease."
"Why has that confounded Warren taken himself off just when I want
him?" was Lord Radclyffe's gruff comment as he rose from the table.
"Let me go, sir," insisted Luke.
"No, hang it, boy, you can't sign my name--not yet anyway. I am not
yet a helpless imbecile. Show the young man into the library, Parker.
I can't think why Dobson is always in such a confounded hurry about
leases--sending a fool of a clerk up at most inconvenient hours."
Still muttering half audibly, he walked to the library door, which
Parker held open for him, and even this he did not do without
surreptitiously taking hold of Luke's hand and giving it a friendly
squeeze. For a moment it seemed as if Luke would follow him, despite
contrary orders. He paused, undecided, standing in the middle of the
room, Louisa's kind gray eyes following his slightest movement.
Jim stolidly pulled the cigar box toward him, and Edie, with chin
resting in both hands, looked sulky and generally out of sorts.
Parker--silent and correct of mien--had closed the library door behind
his master, and now with noiseless tread he crossed the dining-room
and opened the other door--the one that gave on the hall. Louisa
instinctively turned her eyes from Luke and saw--standing in the
middle of the hall--a young man in jacket suit and overcoat, who had
looked up, with palpitating eagerness expressed in his face, the
moment he caught sight of Parker.
It was the same man who had lifted his hat to Luke and to herself in
Battersea Park this very morning. Luke saw him too and apparently also
recognized him.
"That's why he bowed to us, Luke--in the park--you remember?" she said
as soon as the door had once more closed on Parker and the visitor.
"Funny that you didn't know him," she continued since Luke had made no
comment.
"I didn't," he remarked curtly.
"Didn't what?"
"I did not and do not know this man."
"Not Mr. Dobson's clerk?"
Luke did not answer but went out into the hall. Parker was standing
beside the library door which he had just closed, having introduced
the visitor into his lordship's presence.
"Parker," said Luke abruptly, "what made you tell his lordship that
that young gentleman came from Mr. Dobson?"
The question had come so suddenly that Parker--pompous, dignified
Parker--was thrown off his balance, and the reply which took some time
in coming, sounded unconvincing.
"The young gentleman," he said slowly, "told me, Mr. Luke, that he
came from Mr. Dobson."
"No, Parker," asserted Luke unhesitatingly, "he did nothing of the
sort. He wanted to see his lordship and got you to help him concoct
some lie whereby he could get what he wanted."
A grayish hue spread over Parker's pink and flabby countenance.
"Lord help me, Mr. Luke," he murmured tonelessly, "how did you know?"
"I didn't," replied Luke curtly. "I guessed. Now I know."
"I didn't think I was doing no harm."
"No harm by introducing into his lordship's presence strangers who
might be malefactors?"
Already Luke, at Parker's first admission, had gone quickly to the
library door. Here he paused, with his hand on the latch, uncertain if
he should enter. The house was an old one, well-built and stout; from
within came the even sound of a voice speaking quite quietly, but no
isolated word could be distinguished. Parker was floundering in a
quagmire of confused explanations.
"Malefactor, Mr. Luke!" he argued, "that young man was no malefactor.
He spoke ever so nicely. And he had plenty of money about him. I
didn't see I was doing no harm. He wanted to see his lordship and
asked me to help him to it----"
"And," queried Luke impatiently, "paid you to help him, eh?"
"I thought," replied the man loftily ignoring the suggestion, "that
taking in one of Mr. Dobson's cards that was lying in the tray could
do no harm. I thought it couldn't do no harm. The young gentleman said
his lordship would be very grateful to me when he found out what I'd
done."
"And how grateful was the young gentleman to you, Parker?"
"To the tune of a five-pound note, Mr. Luke."
"Then as you have plenty of money in hand, you can pack up your things
and get out of this house before I've time to tell his lordship."
"Mr. Luke----"
"Don't argue. Do as I tell you."
"I must take my notice from his lordship," said Parker, vainly trying
to recover his dignity.
"Very well. You can wait until his lordship has been told."
"Mr. Luke----"
"Best not wait to see his lordship, Parker. Take my word for it."
"Very well, Mr. Luke."
There was a tone of finality in Luke's voice which apparently Parker
did not dare to combat. The man looked confused and troubled. What had
seemed to him merely a venial sin--the taking of a bribe for a trivial
service--now suddenly assumed giant proportions--a crime almost,
punished by a stern dismissal from Mr. Luke.
He went without venturing on further protest, and Luke, left standing
alone in the hall, once more put his hand on the knob of the library
door. This time he tried to turn it. But the door had been locked from
the inside.
CHAPTER VIII
AND THUS THE SHADOW DESCENDED
From within the hum of a man's voice--speaking low and
insistently--still came softly through. Luke, with the prodigality of
youth, would have given ten years of his life for the gift of
second-sight, to know what went on between those four walls beyond the
door where he himself stood expectant, undecided, and more than
vaguely anxious.
"Luke!"
It was quite natural that Louisa should stand here beside him, having
come to him softly, noiselessly, like the embodiment of moral
strength, and a common-sense which was almost a virtue.
"Uncle Rad," he said quietly, "has locked himself in with this man."
"Who is it, Luke?"
"The man who calls himself Philip de Mountford."
"How do you know?"
"How does one," he retorted, "know such things?"
"And Parker let him in?"
"He gave Parker a five-pound note. Parker is only a grasping fool. He
concocted the story of Mr. Dobson and the lease. He is always
listening at key-holes, and he knows that Mr. Dobson often sends up a
clerk with papers for Uncle Rad's signature. Those things are not
very difficult to manage. If one man is determined, and the other
corruptible, it's done sooner or later."
"Is Lord Radclyffe safe with that man, do you think?"
"God grant it," he replied fervently.
Jim and Edie made a noisy irruption into the hall, and Luke and Louisa
talked ostentatiously of indifferent things--the weather, Lent, and
the newest play, until the young people had gathered up coats and hats
and banged the street door to behind them, taking their breeziness,
their optimism, away with them out into the spring air, and leaving
the shadows of the on-coming tragedy to foregather in every angle of
the luxurious house in Grosvenor Square.
And there were Luke de Mountford and Louisa Harris left standing alone
in the hall; just two very ordinary, very simple-souled young people,
face to face for the first time in their uneventful lives with the
dark problem of a grim "might be." A locked door between them and the
decisions of Fate; a world of possibilities in the silence which now
reigned beyond that closed door.
They were--remember--wholly unprepared for it, untrained for any such
eventuality. Well-bred and well-brought up, yet were they totally
uneducated in the great lessons of life. It was as if a man absolutely
untutored in science were suddenly to be confronted with a
mathematical problem, the solution or non-solution of which would mean
life or death to him. The problem lay in the silence beyond the locked
door--silence broken now and again by the persistently gentle hum of
the man's voice--the stranger's--but never by a word from Lord
Radclyffe.
"Uncle Rad," said Luke at last in deep puzzlement, "has never raised
his voice once. I thought that there would be a row--that he would
turn the man out of the house. Dear old chap! he hasn't much patience
as a rule."
"What shall we do, Luke?" she asked.
"How do you mean?"
"You can't go on standing like that in the hall as if you were
eavesdropping. The servants will be coming through presently."
"You are right, Lou," he said, "as usual. I'll go into the
dining-room. I could hear there if anything suspicious was happening
in the library."
"You are not afraid, Luke?"
"For Uncle Rad, you mean?"
"Of course."
"I hardly know whether I am or not. No," he added decisively after a
moment's hesitation, "I am not afraid of violence--the fellow whom we
saw in the park did not look that sort."
He led Louisa back into the dining-room, where a couple of footmen
were clearing away the luncheon things. The melancholy Parker placed
cigar box and matches on a side table and then retired--silent and
with a wealth of reproach expressed in his round, beady eyes.
Soon Luke and Louisa were alone. He smoked and she sat in a deep
arm-chair close to him saying nothing, for both knew what went on in
the other's mind.
Close on an hour went by and then the tinkle of a distant bell broke
the silence. Voices were heard somewhat louder of tone in the library,
and Lord Radclyffe's sounded quite distinct and firm.
"I'll see you again to-morrow," he said, "at Mr.---- Tell me the name
and address again, please."
The door leading from library to hall was opened. A footman helped the
stranger on with coat and hat. Then the street door banged to again,
and once more the house lapsed into silence and gloom.
"I think I had better go now."
Louisa rose, and Luke said in matter-of-fact tones:
"I'll put you into a cab."
"No," she said, "I prefer to walk. I am going straight back to the
Langham. Will you go to the Ducies' At Home to-night?"
"Yes," he said, "just to see you."
"You'll know more by then."
"I shall know all there is to know."
"Luke," she said, "you are not afraid?"
It was the second time she had put the question to him, but this time
its purport was a very different one. He understood it nevertheless,
for he replied simply:
"Only for you."
"Why for me?"
"Because, Lou, you are just all the world to me--and a man must feel a
little afraid when he thinks he may lose the world."
"Not me, Luke," she said, "you would not lose me--whatever happened."
"Let me get you a cab."
He was English, you see, and could not manage to say anything just
then. The floodgates of sentiment might burst asunder now with the
slightest word uttered that was not strictly commonplace. Louisa
understood, else she had not loved him as she did. It never occurred
to her to think that he was indifferent. Nay more! his sudden
transition from sentiment to the calling of a cab--from sentiment to
the trivialities of life pleased her in its very essence of
incongruity.
"I said I would walk," she reminded him, smiling.
Then she gave him her hand. It was still gloveless and he took it in
his, turning the palm upward so that he might bury his lips in its
delicately perfumed depths. His kiss almost scalded her flesh, his
lips were burning hot. Passion held in check will consume with inward
fire, whilst its expression often cools like the Nereid's embrace.
He went to the door with her and watched her slender, trim figure
walking rapidly away until it disappeared round the corner of the
Square.
When he turned back into the hall, he found himself face to face with
Lord Radclyffe. Not Uncle Rad--but an altogether different man, an old
man now with the cynical lines round the mouth accentuated and
deepened into furrows, the eyes hollow and colourless, the shoulders
bent as if under an unbearable load.
"Uncle Rad," said Luke speaking very gently, forcing his voice to
betray nothing of anxiety or surprise, "can I do anything for you?"
But even at sight of his nephew, of the man who had hitherto always
succeeded in dissipating by his very presence every cloud on the
misanthrope's brow, even at sight of him Lord Radclyffe seemed to
shrink within himself, his face became almost ashen in its pallor, and
lines of cruel hardness quite disfigured his mouth.
"I want to be alone to-day," he said dryly. "Tell them to send me up
some tea in the afternoon. I'll go to my room now--I shan't want any
dinner."
"But, sir, won't you----?"
"I want to be alone to-day," the old man reiterated tonelessly, "and
to be left alone."
"Very well, sir."
Lord Radclyffe walked slowly toward the staircase. Luke--his heart
torn with anxiety and sorrow--saw how heavy was the old man's step,
how listless his movements. The younger man's instinct drew him
instantly to the side of the elder. He placed an affectionate hand on
his uncle's shoulder.
"Uncle Rad," he said appealingly, "can't I do anything for you?"
Lord Radclyffe turned and for a moment his eyes softened as they
rested on the face he loved so well. His wrinkled hand sought the
firm, young one which lingered on his shoulder. But he did not take
it, only put it gently aside, then said quietly:
"No, my boy, there's nothing you can do, except to leave me alone."
Then he went up stairs and shut himself up in his own room, and Luke
saw him no more that day.
CHAPTER IX
WHICH TELLS OF THE INEVITABLE RESULT
And now a month and more had gone by, and the whole aspect of the
world and of life was changed for Luke. Not for Louisa, because she,
woman-like, had her life in love and love alone. Love was unchanged,
or if changed at all it was ennobled, revivified, purified by the halo
of sorrow and of abnegation which glorified it with its radiance.
For Luke the world had indeed changed. With the advent of Philip de
Mountford that spring afternoon into the old house in Grosvenor
Square, life for the other nephew--for Luke, once the dearly
loved--became altogether different.
That one moment of softness, when Lord Radclyffe--a bent and broken
old man--went from the library up the stairs to his own room,
determined to be alone, and gently removed Luke's affectionate hand
from his own bowed shoulders, that one moment of softness was the last
that passed between uncle--almost father--and nephew. After that,
coldness and cynicism; the same as the old man had meted out to every
one around him--save Luke--for years past. Now there was no exception.
Coldness and cynicism to all; and to the intruder, the new comer, to
Philip de Mountford, an unvarying courtesy and constant deference that
at times verged on impassive submission.
And the change, I must own, did not come gradually. Have I not said
that only a month had gone by, and Arthur's son, from the land of
volcanoes and earthquakes, had already conquered all that he had come
to seek? He who had been labelled an impostor and a blackmailer
took--after that one interview--his place in the old man's mind, if
not in his heart. Heaven only knows--for no one else was present at
that first interview--what arguments he held, what appeals he made. He
came like a thief, bribing his way into his uncle's presence, and
stayed like a dearly loved son, a master in the house.
And Luke was shut out once and for all from Lord Radclyffe's mind and
heart. Can you conceive that such selfless affection as the older man
bore to the younger can live for a quarter of a century and die in one
hour? Yet so it seemed. Luke was shut out from that innermost recess
in Uncle Rad's heart which he had occupied, undisputed, from childhood
upward. Now he only took his place amongst the others; with Jim and
Edie and Frank, children of the younger brother, of no consequence in
the house of the reigning peer.
Luke with characteristic pride--characteristic indolence, mayhap,
where his own interests were at stake--would not fight for his
rightful position--his by right of ages, twenty years of affection, of
fidelity, and comradeship.
The day following the first momentous interview, Lord Radclyffe spent
in lawyers' company--Mr. Davies in Finsbury Court, then Mr. Dobson in
Bedford Row. The latter argued and counselled. Though papers might be
to all appearances correct and quite in order, there was no hurry to
come to a decision. But Lord Radclyffe--with that same dictatorial
obstinacy with which he had originally branded the claimant as an
impostor and a blackmailer--now clung to his reversed opinion.
Convinced--beyond doubt, apparently--that Philip de Mountford was his
brother Arthur's son, he insisted on acknowledging him openly as his
heir, and on showering on him all those luxuries and privileges which
Luke had enjoyed for so many years.
Indignant and mentally sore, Jim and Edie protested with all the
violence of youth, violence which proved as useless as it was
ill-considered. Luke said nothing, for he foresaw that the end was
inevitable. He set about making a home for his younger brothers and
sister to be ready for them as soon as the cataclysm came, when Philip
de Mountford, usurping every right, would turn his cousins out of the
old home.
Frank, absent at Santiago--a young attaché out at his first post--had
been told very little as yet. Luke had tried to break the news to him
in a guarded letter, which received but the following brief and
optimistic answer:
"Why, old man! what's the matter with you? worrying over such rubbish?
Take my advice and go to Carlsbad. Your liver must be out of order."
But the catastrophe came, nevertheless; sooner even than was expected.
Edie's language grew very unguarded in Philip's presence, and Jim--"in
the Blues"--did not watch over his own manners when the new cousin was
in the house.
One evening when Luke was absent--as was very often the case now--and
the family gathering consisted of Lord Radclyffe--sullen and morose;
Philip, pleasantly condescending; and Jim and Edie, snubbed and
wrathful, a difference in political opinion between the young people
set a spark to the smouldering ashes.
Philip--still pleasantly condescending--did not say much that evening,
though he had been called a cad and an upstart, and told to go back to
his nigger relations; but the next morning Jim and Edie received a
curt admonition from Lord Radclyffe, during which they were told that
if such a disgraceful exhibition of impertinence occurred again, they
would have to go and pitch their tent elsewhere.
They brought their grievance to Luke; told him all that they had
treasured up in their rebellious young hearts against the usurper, and
much that they had hitherto kept from the elder brother, who already,
God knows! had a sufficient load of disappointment to bear.
What could Luke do but promise that Jim and Edie should in future have
a house of their own, wherein neither usurper nor upstarts would have
access, and where they could nurse their wrath in peace and unsnubbed.
For the first time since many, many days Luke was alone with his uncle
in the library. Philip was out, and Lord Radclyffe was taken unawares.
What Luke would never have dreamed of doing for himself he did for his
brothers and sister; he made appeal to his uncle's sense of right, of
justice, and of mercy.
"Uncle Rad," he said, "you have told us all so often that this should
be a home for us all. It doesn't matter about me, but the others--Jim
and Edie--they haven't offended you, have they?"
Lord Radclyffe was fretful and irritable. When Luke first came in, it
had almost seemed as if he would order him to go. Such an old man he
looked--sour and morose--his clothes hung more loosely than before on
an obviously attenuated frame. He seemed careworn and worried, and
Luke's heart, which could not tear itself away from the memories of
past kindness, ached to see the change.
"Would you," he asked insistently, "would you rather we went away,
Uncle Rad?"
The old man shifted about uneasily in his chair. He would not meet
Luke's eyes any more than he would take his hand just now.
"Jim and Edie," he said curtly, "are very ill-mannered, and Philip
feels----"
He passed his tongue over his lips which were parched and dry. A
look--it was a mere flash--almost of appeal passed from his eyes to
Luke.
"Then," said Luke simply, "it is this--this Philip whom Jim and Edie
have offended? Not you, Uncle Rad?"
"Philip is your uncle Arthur's son," rejoined Lord Radclyffe, speaking
like a fretful child in a thin voice that cracked now and again. "He
will be the head of the family presently----"
"Not," interposed Luke earnestly, "before many years are past, I trust
and pray for all our sakes, Uncle Rad----"
"The sooner," continued the old man, not heeding the interruption,
"those young jackanapes learn to respect him, the better it will be
for them."
"Jim and Edie have been a little spoiled by your kindness, sir. They
are finding the lesson a little hard to learn. Perhaps they had better
go and study elsewhere."
Lord Radclyffe made no reply. Silence was full of potent meaning; of
submission to another's more dominant personality, of indifference to
everything save to peace and quiet.
Suppressing a sigh of bitter disappointment, Luke rose to go.
"Then," he said, "the sooner I make all arrangements the better.
There's only the agreement for the flat to sign and we can move in
next week."
"Where's the flat?" queried the old man hesitatingly.
"In Exhibition Road, Kensington, close to the park. Edie loves the
park, and it won't be far from barracks for Jim."
"But you've no furniture. How will you furnish a flat? Don't go yet,"
continued Lord Radclyffe seeing that Luke was preparing to take his
leave. "Philip won't be here till tea time."
"I am afraid, sir, that I don't care to steal a few minutes of your
company, just when Philip is absent. I would rather not see you at all
than see you on sufferance."
"You are very obstinate and tiresome--and you make it so difficult for
me. I want to hear about the furniture--and how you are going to
manage."
"Lou is helping Edie to get what is wanted," replied Luke, smiling
despite the heavy weight of disappointment in his heart. It was
pitiable to see the old man's obvious feeling of relief in the absence
of the man who was exercising such boundless influence over him.
"But have you money, Luke?" he asked.
"Not overmuch, sir, but enough."
"The fifteen thousand pounds your father left you?"
"Yes. And that's about all."
"And the fifteen thousand pounds from your uncle Arthur?"
"I don't know about that, sir. I think that should go back to Uncle
Arthur's son."
"Nonsense, nonsense!" retorted Lord Radclyffe querulously. "I've
talked to Dobson about that. Your uncle Arthur left that money to
you--and not to his son. He had his own reasons for doing this. Dobson
thinks so too."
"It is very kind of Mr. Dobson to trouble about my affairs but----"
"The money was left to you," persisted the old man, "and to Jim and
Edie and Frank."
"They will do whatever they like with their share, but I could not
touch a penny of Uncle Arthur's money."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know yet, uncle. I have only had a month in which to think of
so much--and there was the new flat to see to."
Lord Radclyffe rose and shuffled toward Luke. He dropped his voice,
lest the library walls had ears.
"I'll not forget you, Luke--presently--when I am gone--and that won't
be long--I'll provide for you--my will----"
"Don't, Uncle Rad, for God's sake," and the cry was wrung from a heart
overburdened with pity and with shame.
And without waiting to take more affectionate leave, Luke hurried from
the room.
CHAPTER X
LIFE MUST GO ON JUST THE SAME
They met at dances and at musical At Homes, for the world wagged just
as it had always done, and here--don't you think?--lies the tragedy of
the commonplace. Luke and Louisa, with the whole aspect of life
changed for them, with a problem to face of which hitherto they had no
conception, and the solution of which meant a probing of soul and
heart and mind--Luke and Louisa had to see the world pass them by the
same as heretofore, with laughter and with tears, with the weariness
of pleasure, and the burdens of disappointment.
The world stared at them--curious and almost interested--searching
wounds that had only just begun to ache, since indifferent hands had
dared to touch them. And convention said: "Thou shalt not seem to
suffer; thou shalt pass by serene and unmoved; thou shalt dance and
sing and parade in park or ball room; thou art my puppet and I have
nought to do with thy soul."
So Luke and Louisa did as convention bade them, and people stared at
them and asked them inane questions that were meant to be delicate,
but were supremely tactless. People too wondered what they meant to
do, when the engagement would be duly broken off, or what Colonel
Harris's--Louisa's father--attitude would be in all this. Somehow
after the first excitement consequent on Lord Radclyffe's open
acknowledgment of the claimant things had tamed off somewhat; Luke de
Mountford looked just the same as before, although awhile ago he had
been heir to one of the finest peerages in England and now was a
penniless son of a younger son. I don't know whether people thought
that he ought to look entirely different now, or whether he should
henceforth wear shabby dress clothes and gloves that betrayed the dry
cleaner; certain it is that when Luke entered a reception room, a
dozen lips were ready--had they dared or good-breeding allowed--to
frame the question:
"Well, and what are you going to do now?"
Or,
"Do tell us how it feels to find one's self a beggar all of a sudden."
Enterprising hostesses made great attempts to gather all parties in
their drawing rooms. With strategy worthy of a better cause they
manoeuvred to invite Philip de Mountford and Lord Radclyffe, and Luke
and Louisa--all to the same dinner party--promising themselves and
their other guests a subtle enjoyment at sight of these puppets
dancing to rousing tunes, beside which the most moving problem play
would seem but tame entertainment.
But Philip de Mountford--though as much sought after now as Luke had
been in the past--declined to be made a show of for the delectation of
bored society women; he declined all invitations on his own and Lord
Radclyffe's behalf.
So people had to be content to watch Luke and Louisa.
They were together at the Ducies' At Home. There was a crush, a
Hungarian band from Germany, a Russian singer from Bayswater, a great
many diamonds, and incessant gossip.
"Luke de Mountford is here--and Miss Harris. Have you seen them?"
"Oh, yes! we met on the stairs, and had a long chat."
"How do they seem?"
"Oh! quite happy."
"They don't care."
"Do they mean to break off the engagement?"
"I have heard nothing. Have you?"
"Louisa Harris has a nice fortune of her own."
"And Lord Radclyffe will provide for Luke."
"I don't think so. He practically turned him out of the house, you
know."
"Not really?"
"I know it for a positive fact. My sister has just got a new butler,
who left Lord Radclyffe's service the very day Philip de Mountford
first walked into the house."
"Old Parker, I remember him."
"He says Lord Radclyffe turned all the family out, bag and baggage.
They were so insolent to Philip."
"Then it's quite true?"
"That this Philip is the late Arthur de Mountford's son?"
"Quite true, I believe. Lord Radclyffe openly acknowledges it. He is
satisfied apparently."
"So are the lawyers, I understand."
"Oh! how do you do, Miss Harris? So glad to see you looking so well."
This, very pointedly, as Louisa, perfectly gowned, smiling serenely,
ascended the broad staircase.
"I have not been ill, Lady Keogh."
"Oh, no! of course not. And how is Mr. de Mountford?"
"You can ask him yourself."
And Louisa passed on to make way for Luke. And the same remarks and
the same question were repeated _ad infinitum_, until a popular waltz
played by the Hungarian gentlemen from Germany drew the fashionable
crowd round the musicians' platform.
Then Luke and Louisa contrived to make good their escape, and to reach
the half-landing above the heads of numerous young couples that
adorned the stairs. The hum of voices, the noise of shrill laughter,
and swish of skirts and fans masked their own whisperings. The couples
on the stairs were absorbed in their own little affairs; they were
sitting out here so that they might pursue their own flirtations.
Luke and Louisa could talk undisturbed.
They spoke of the flat in Exhibition Road and of the furniture that
Louisa had helped Edie to select.
"There are only a few odds and ends to get now," Louisa was saying,
"coal scuttles and waste-paper baskets; that sort of thing. I hope you
don't think that we have been extravagant. Edie, I am afraid, had
rather luxurious notions----"
"Poor Edie!"
"Oh! I don't think she minds very much. Life at Grosvenor Square in
the past month has not been over cheerful."
Then as Luke made no comment she continued in her own straightforward,
matter-of-fact way--the commonplace woman facing the ordinary duties
of life:
"Now that the flat is all in order, you can all move in whenever you
like--and then, Luke, you must begin to think of yourself."
"Of you, Lou," he said simply.
"Oh! there's nothing," she said, "to think about me."
"There you are wrong, Lou, and you must not talk like that. Our
engagement must be officially broken off. Colonel Harris has been too
patient as it is."
"Father," she rejoined, "does not wish the engagement broken off."
"All these people," he said, nodding in the direction of the crowd
below, "will expect some sort of announcement."
"Let them."
"Lou, you must take back your word."
"How does one take back one's word, Luke? Have you ever done it? I
shouldn't know how to."
She looked at him straight, her eyes brilliant in the glare of the
electric lamps, not a tear in them or in his, her face immovable, lest
indifferent eyes happened to be turned up to where these two
interesting people sat. Only a quiver round the lips, a sign that
passion palpitated deep down within her heart, below the Bond Street
gown and the diamond collar, the soul within the puppet.
She held his glance, forcing him into mute acknowledgment that his
philosophy, his worldliness, was only veneer, and that he had not
really envisaged the hard possibility of actually losing her.
Oh, these men of this awful conventional world! How cruel they can be
in that proud desire to do what is right!--what their code tells them
is right!--no law of God or nature that!--only convention, the
dictates of other men! Hard on themselves, selfless in abnegation, but
not understanding that the dearest gift they can bestow on a woman is
the right for her to efface herself, the right for her to be the giver
of love, of consolation, of sacrifice.
Commonplace, plain, sensible Louisa understood everything that Luke
felt; those great luminous eyes of hers, tearless yet brilliant, read
every line on that face drilled into impassiveness.
No one else could have guessed the precise moment at which softness
crept into the hard determination of jaw and lips; no ear but hers
could ever have perceived the subtle change in the quivering breath,
from hard obstinacy that drew the nostrils together, and set every
line of the face, to that in-drawing of the heavy air around caused by
passionate longing which hammered at the super-excited brain, and made
the sinews crack in the mighty physical effort at self-repression.
But to all outward appearance perfect calm, correct demeanour, the
attitude and tone of voice prescribed by the usages of this so-called
society.
"Lou," he said, "it is not fair to tempt me. I should be a miserable
cur if I held you to your word. I am a penniless beggar--a wastrel
now, without a profession, without prospects, soon to be without
friends."
He seemed to take pleasure in recalling his defects, and she let him
ramble on; women who are neither psychological puzzles nor interesting
personalities have a way of listening patiently whilst a tortured soul
eases its burden by contemplating its own martyrdom.
"I am a penniless beggar," he reiterated. "I have no right to ask any
woman to share my future dull and humdrum existence. A few thousands
is all I have. I think that Edie will marry soon and then I can go
abroad--I must go abroad--I must do something----"
"We'll do it together, Luke."
"I feel," he continued, rebellious now and wrathful, all the primary
instincts alive in him of self-preservation and the desire to destroy
an enemy, "I feel that if I stayed in England I should contrive to be
even with that blackguard. His rights? By God! I would never question
those. The moment I knew that he was Uncle Arthur's son I should have
been ready to shake him by the hand, to respect him, to stand aside as
was his due. But his attitude!--the influence he exercises over Uncle
Rad!--his rancour against us all! Jim and Edie! what had they done to
be all turned out of the house like a pack of poor relations--and poor
Uncle Rad----"
He checked himself, for she had put a hand on his coat sleeve.
"Luke, it is no use," she said.
"You are right, Lou! and I am a miserable wretch. If you only knew how
I hate that man----"
"Don't," she said, "let us think of him."
"How can I help it? He robs me of you."
"No," she rejoined, "not that."
Her hand still rested on his arm, and he took it between both his. The
couples in front of them all down the length of stairs paid no heed to
them, and through the hum of voices, from a distant room beyond, came
softly wafted on the hot, still air the strains of the exquisite
barcarolle from the "Contes d' Hoffmann."
Louisa smiled confidently, proudly. He held her hand and she felt that
his--hot and dry--quivered in every muscle at her touch. The
commonplace woman had opened the magic book of Love. She had turned
its first pages, the opening chapters had been simple, unruffled,
uncrumpled by the hand of men or of Fate. But now at last she read the
chapter which all along she knew was bound to reach her ken. The
leaves of the book were crumpled; Fate with cruel hand had tried to
blur the writing; the psychological problem of to-day--the one that
goes by the name of "modern woman"--would no doubt ponder ere she
tried to read further; she would analyze her feelings, her thoughts,
her sensations; she would revel over her own heartache and delight in
her own soul agony. But simple-minded, conventional Louisa did none of
these things. She neither ruffled her hair, nor dressed in ill-made
serge clothes; her dress was perfect and her hand exquisitely gloved.
She did nothing out of the way; she only loved one man altogether
beyond herself, and she understood his passionate love for her, and
all that troubled him in this world in which they both lived.
"I love that barcarolle, don't you?" she said after awhile.
"I did not hear it," he replied.
"Luke."
"It's no use, Lou," he said under his breath. "You must despise me for
being a drivelling fool, but I have neither eyes nor ears now. I would
give all I have in the world to lie down there on the floor now before
you and to kiss the soles of your feet."
"How could I despise you, Luke, for that?"
"Put your hand on my knee, just for a moment, Lou. I think I shall go
mad if I don't feel your touch."
She did as he asked her, and he was silent until the last note of the
barcarolle died away in a softly murmured breath.
"What a cowardly wretch I am," he said under cover of the wave of
enthusiastic applause which effectually covered the sound of his voice
to all ears save hers. "I think I would sell my soul for a touch of
your hand, and all the while I know that with every word I am playing
the part of a coward. If Colonel Harris heard me he would give me a
sound thrashing. A dog whip is what I deserve."
"I have told you," she rejoined simply, "that father does not wish our
engagement to be broken off. He sticks to your cause and will do so
through thick and thin. He still believes that this Philip is an
impostor, and thinks that Lord Radclyffe has taken leave of his
senses."
She spoke quite quietly, matter-of-factly now, pulling, by her serene
calm, Luke's soul back from the realms of turbulent sensations to the
prosy facts of to-day. And he--in answer to her mute dictate and with
a movement wholly instinctive and mechanical--drew himself upright,
and passed his hand over his ruffled hair, and the jeopardized
immaculateness of shirt front and cuffs.
"Philip de Mountford," he said simply, "is no impostor, Lou. He has
been perfectly straightforward; and Mr. Dobson for one, who has seen
all his papers, thinks that there is no doubt whatever that he is
Uncle Arthur's son. His clerk--Mr. Downing--went out to Martinique,
you know, and his first letters came a day or two ago. All inquiries
give the same result, and Downing says that it is quite easy to trace
the man's life, step by step, from his birth in St. Pierre, past the
dark days of the earthquake and the lonely life at Marie-Galante.
Mrs. de Mountford was a half-caste native, as we all suspected, but
the marriage was unquestionably legal. Downing has spoken to people in
Martinique and also in Marie-Galante, who knew her and her son, or at
any rate, of them. I cannot tell you everything clearly, but there are
a great many links in a long chain of evidence, and so far Mr. Dobson
and his clerk have not come across a broken one. That the Mrs. de
Mountford who died at Marie-Galante was Uncle Arthur's wife, and that
Philip is his son, I am afraid no one can question. He has quite a
number of letters in his possession which Uncle Arthur wrote after he
had practically abandoned wife and child. I think it was the letters
that convinced Uncle Rad."
"Lord Radclyffe," she remarked dryly, "has taken everything far too
much for granted."
"He is convinced, Lou--and that's all about it."
"He is," she retorted more hotly than was her wont, "acting in a cruel
and heartless manner. Even if this Philip is your uncle Arthur's son,
even if he is heir to the peerage and the future head of the family,
there was no reason for installing him in your home, Luke, and turning
you and the others out of it."
"I suppose," rejoined Luke philosophically, "the house was never
really our home. What Uncle Rad gave freely, he has taken away again
from us. I don't suppose that we have the right to complain."
"But what will become of you all?"
"We must scrape along. Frank must have his promised allowance or he'll
never get along in the service, and five hundred pounds a year is a
big slice out of a thousand. Jim, too, spends a great deal. Uncle Rad
never stinted him with money, for it was he who wanted Jim to be in
the Blues. Now he may have to exchange into a less expensive regiment.
I think Edie will marry soon--Reggie Duggan has been in love with her
for the past two years--she may make up her mind now."
"But you, Luke?"
He did not know if he ought to tell her of his plans. The ostrich farm
out in Africa--the partnership offered to him by a cousin of his
mother's who was doing remarkably well, but who was getting old and
wanted the companionship of one of his kind. It was a living
anyway--but a giving up of everything that had constituted life in the
past--and the giving up of his exquisite Lou. How could he ask her to
share that life with him?--the primitive conditions, the total absence
of luxuries, the rough, every-day existence?
And Lou, so perfectly dressed, so absolutely modern and dainty, waited
on hand and foot----
But she insisted, seeing that he was hesitating and was trying to keep
something from her.
"What about you, Luke?"
He had not time to reply, for from the hall below a shrill voice
called to them both by name.
"Mr. de Mountford, Miss Harris, the young people want to dance. You'll
join in, won't you?"
Already he was on his feet, every trace of emotion swept away from his
face, together with every crease from his immaculate dress clothes,
and every stray wisp of hair from his well-groomed head. Not a man,
torn with passion, fighting the battle of life against overwhelming
odds, casting away from him the hand which he would have given his
last drop of blood to possess--only the man of the world, smiling
while his very soul was being wrung--only the puppet dancing to the
conventional world's tune.
"Dancing?" he said lightly: "Rather--Lady Ducies may I have this first
waltz? No?--Oh! I say that's too bad. The first Lancers then? Good!
Lou, may I have this dance?"
And the world went on just the same.
CHAPTER XI
AND THERE ARE SOCIAL DUTIES TO PERFORM
The first November fog.
The world had wagged on its matter-of-fact way for more than six
months now, since that day in April when Philip de Mountford--under
cover of lies told by Parker--had made his way into Lord Radclyffe's
presence: more than five months since the favoured nephew had been so
unceremoniously thrust out of his home.
Spring had yielded to summer, summer given way to autumn, and already
winter was treading hard on autumn's heels. The autumn session had
filled London with noise and bustle, with political dinner parties and
monster receptions, with new plays at all the best theatres, and
volumes of ephemeral literature.
And all that was--to-night--wrapped in a dense fog, the first of the
season, quite a stranger, too, in London, for scientists had asserted
positively that the era of the traditional "pea-souper" was over; the
metropolis would know it no more.
Colonel Harris was in town with his sister, Lady Ryder, and Louisa,
and swearing at London weather in true country fashion. He declared
that fogs paralyzed his intellect that he became positively imbecile,
not knowing how to fight his way in the folds of such a black pall.
Taxicab drivers he mistrusted; in fact, he had all an old sportsman's
hatred of mechanically propelled vehicles, whilst he flatly refused to
bring valuable horses up to town, to catch their death of cold whilst
waiting about in the fog.
So Luke had promised to pilot the party as far as the Danish Legation,
where they were to dine to-night. This was the only condition under
which Colonel Harris would consent to enter one of those confounded
motors.
Colonel Harris had remained loyal to the core to Luke and to his
fortunes. It is a way old sportsmen have, and he had never interfered
by word or innuendo in Louisa's actions with regard to her engagement.
His daughter was old enough, he said, to know her own mind. She liked
Luke, and it would be shabby to leave him in the lurch, now that the
last of the society rats were scurrying to leave the sinking ship.
They were doing it, too, in a mighty hurry. The invitations which the
penniless younger son received toward the end of the London season
were considerably fewer than those which were showered on him at its
beginning before the world had realized that Philip de Mountford had
come to stay, and would one day be Earl of Radclyffe with a rent roll
of eighty thousand pounds a year, and the sore need of a wife.
It had all begun with the bridge parties. Luke would no longer play,
since he could no longer afford to lose a quarter's income at one
sitting. Uncle Rad used to shrug indifferent shoulders at such losses,
and place blank checks at the dear boy's disposal. Imagine then how
welcome Luke was at bridge parties, and how very undesirable now.
Then he could no longer make return for hospitable entertainments. He
had no home to which to ask smart friends. Lord Radclyffe though a
monster of ill-humour, gave splendid dinner parties at which Luke was
quasi host. Now it was all give and no take; and the givers retired
one by one, quite unregretted by Luke, who thus was spared the
initiative of turning his back on his friends. They did the turning,
quite politely but very effectually. Luke scarcely noticed how he was
dropping out of his former circle. He was over-absorbed and really did
not care. Moreover his dress clothes were getting shabby.
To-night at the Langham, when he arrived at about seven o'clock so as
to have an undisturbed half hour with Lou, Colonel Harris greeted him
with outstretched hand and a cordial welcome.
"Hello, Luke, my boy! how goes it with you?"
Louisa said nothing, but her eyes welcomed him, and she drew him near
her, on to the sofa in front of the fire, and allowed her hand to rest
in his, for she knew how he loved the touch of it. People were
beginning to say that Louisa Harris was getting old: she never had
been good-looking, poor thing, but always smart, very smart--now she
was losing her smartness, and what remained?
She had come up to town this autumn in last autumn's frocks! and the
twins were after all being chaperoned by their aunt. Would that absurd
engagement never be broken off? Fancy Louisa Harris married to a poor
man! Why, she did not know how to do her hair, and dresses were still
worn fastened at the back, and would be for years to come! Louisa
Harris and no French maid! Cheap corsets and cleaned gloves! It was
unthinkable.
Perhaps the engagement was virtually broken off--anyhow the wedding
could never take place.
Unless Philip de Mountford happened to die.
But it did not look as if the engagement was broken off. Not at any
rate on this raw November evening, when there was a dense fog outside,
but a bright, cheery fire and plenty of light in the little sitting
room at the Langham, and Luke sat on the sofa beside Louisa, and plain
Louisa--in last autumn's gown--looking at him with her candid,
luminous eyes.
"How is Lord Radclyffe?" asked Colonel Harris.
"Badly," replied Luke, "I am afraid. He looks very feeble, and his
asthma I know must bother him. He was always worse in foggy weather."
"He ought to go to Algeciras. He always used to."
"I know," assented Luke dejectedly.
"Can't something be done? Surely, Luke, you haven't lost all your
influence with him."
"Every bit, sir. Why, I hardly ever see him."
"Hardly ever see him?" ejaculated Colonel Harris, and I am afraid that
he swore.
"I haven't been to Grosvenor Square for over six weeks. I am only
allowed to see him when Philip is out, or by special permission from
Philip. I won't go under such conditions."
"How that house must have altered!"
"You wouldn't know it, sir: All the old servants have gone, one after
the other; they had rows with Philip and left at a month's notice. I
suppose he has no idea how to set about getting new ones--I know I
shouldn't! There's only a man and his wife, a sort of charwoman who
cleans and cooks, and the man is supposed to look after Uncle Rad; but
he doesn't do it, for he is half seas over most of the time."
"Good God!" murmured Colonel Harris.
"They have shut up all the rooms, except the library where Uncle Rad
and Philip have their meals when they are at home. But they lunch and
dine at their club mostly."
"What club do they go to? I called in at the Atheneum last night,
thinking to find Radclyffe there, but the hall porter told me that he
never went there now."
"No. He and Philip have joined some new club in Shaftesbury
Avenue--The Veterans' I think it is called."
"Some low, mixed-up kind of place! Old Radclyffe must be out of his
senses!"
"He likes it, so he tells me, because people don't come and bother him
there."
"I should think not indeed. I wouldn't set foot in such a place."
"He goes there most evenings, and so does Philip--and it's so bad for
Uncle Rad to be out late these foggy nights."
"You ought to make an effort and stop it, Luke."
"I have made many efforts, sir. But, as a matter of fact, I had made
up my mind to make a final one to-night. Uncle Rad ought to go abroad,
and I thought I would try to impress this on Philip. He can't be a bad
man."
"Oh! can't he?" was Colonel Harris's muttered comment.
"At any rate, if I have no influence, he has, and he must exert it and
get Uncle Rad down to Algeciras or anywhere he likes so long as it is
well south."
Luke paused awhile, his face flushed with this expression of
determination which must have caused his pride many a bitter pang.
Then he resumed more quietly:
"It's rather humiliating, isn't it, to go to that man as a
suppliant?"
"Don't go as a suppliant, my boy. You must insist on your uncle being
properly looked after."
Colonel Harris thought all that sort of thing so easy. One always does
before one has had a genuine tussle with the unpleasant realities of
life; to the good country squire with an assured position, an assured
income, assured influence, it seemed very easy indeed to insist. He
himself never had to insist; things occurred round him and at his
word, as it were, of themselves.
But Louisa, knowing how matters stood, made no suggestion. She knew
that Luke would do his best, but that that best was of little avail
now; as Philip de Mountford arranged so it would all come about.
Friends and well-wishers could but pray that the intruder was not a
bad man, and that he had his uncle's health at heart.
She gave the signal to go, saying simply,
"We mustn't be late for dinner, father, must we?"
And she rose to go, held back by the hand, by Luke's fervent
insistence.
He could not accustom himself to part from her, as he often had to do.
It seemed absurd, but undeniable. He was supremely happy in her
company, and snatched as much of it as ever he could; but the wrench
was always awful and Louisa--subtly comprehensive--was conscious of
the terrible pain which she gave him at every parting. She felt the
repercussion of it in all her nerves, although her sound common-sense
condemned the sensation as unreal.
To-night the feeling was even stronger than it had ever been before.
At her first suggestion that it was time to go, an elusive current
passed from him to her. He had been holding her hand, and his had
been cool and only slightly on the quiver from time to time when her
own fingers pressed more markedly against his. But now, all at once it
seemed as if a sudden current of lava had penetrated his veins; his
hand almost scorched her own, and though visibly it did not move, yet
she felt the pulses throbbing and trembling beneath the flesh. The
look of misery in his face made her own heart ache though she tried to
smile with easy gaiety.
"To-morrow we go to the Temple Show together; don't forget, Luke."
Her words seemed to recall him from another world, and he quickly
enough pulled himself together and helped her on with her cloak.
Colonel Harris with the gentle tactfulness peculiar to kind hearts had
loudly announced that he would be waiting in the hall.
"Anything the matter, Luke?" she asked as soon as her father had gone
from the room.
He contrived to smile and to look unconcerned.
"Not particularly," he replied.
"You seem different to-night, somehow."
"How different?"
"I can't explain. But you are not yourself."
"Myself more than ever. My adoration for you is more
uncontrolled--that is all."
She wrapped herself up in her furs, for it was silence that gave the
best response. And then he said quite calmly:
"Will you go first. I'll switch off the light."
"Father will be waiting down stairs," she rejoined.
Then she went past him and out through the door, and he had to go back
to the mantel-piece where one of the electric light switches was. He
turned off the light; the room remained in darkness save where the
dying embers of the fire threw a red glow on the sofa where she had
sat with him, and the footstool on which her evening shoe had rested.
And the conventional man of the world, schooled from childhood onward
to discipline and self-control, fell on both knees against that mute
footstool, and leaning forward he pressed his burning lips against the
silk cushions of the sofa, which still bore the impress and the
fragrance of her exquisite shoulders.
Then he, too, went out of the room.
CHAPTER XII
SHALL A MAN ESCAPE HIS FATE?
On the way to the Danish Legation, Colonel Harris asked Luke what his
plans were for the evening.
"I shall," replied Luke, "call at Grosvenor Square. I may find Uncle
Rad, or Philip, or both at home. I mean to have a good tussle about
this wintering abroad. It's really most important."
"I call it criminal," retorted Colonel Harris, "keeping a man in
London who has been used to go south in the winter for the past twenty
years at least."
"Uncle Rad is still fairly well now, though I do think he looks more
feeble than usual. He ought to go at once."
"But," suggested Louisa, "he oughtn't to go alone."
"No. He certainly ought not."
"Would Mr. de Mountford go with him?"
"I don't think so."
"This new man of his, then?"
"That," said Luke hotly, "would be madness. The man is really a
drunkard."
"But somebody ought to go."
"Edie would be only too willing--if she is allowed."
"Edie?" exclaimed Louisa.
And she added with a smile:
"What will Reggie Duggan have to say to that?"
"Nothing," he replied quietly. "Reggie Duggan has cried off."
"You don't mean that."
"He has given up Edie who has little or nothing a year, and become
engaged to Marian Montagu who has eight thousand pounds a year of her
own."
"Poor Edie!" murmured Louisa, whilst Colonel Harris's exclamation was
equally to the point and far more forcible, and more particularly
concerned the Honourable Reginald Duggan.
"Yes," rejoined Luke, "it has hit her hard, coming on the top of other
things. There's no gainsaying the fact, is there, Colonel Harris, that
we four brothers and sister owe something to Uncle Arthur's son?"
"The handle of a riding whip," came from out the depths of Colonel
Harris's fur coat. "Stupid way parsons have of saying that to wish a
man dead is tantamount to murder. I am committing murder now for a
matter of that, for I wish that blackguard were buried in one of his
native earthquakes."
"Would to God," added Luke, "that wishing alone would do it."
There was so much wrath, such hatred and contempt in those words that
Louisa instinctively whispered:
"Hush, Luke! don't talk like that."
And Colonel Harris somewhat ostentatiously cleared his throat and
said:
"Don't let us think of that confounded Philip."
Luke took leave of Colonel Harris and of Louisa at the door of the
Danish Legation. He waited on the carpeted curb beneath the awning
until he saw her white evening cloak disappear in the door-way.
The fog had become very dense. Just here where a number of carriage
lamps threw light around, one could distinguish faces and forms
immediately close to one, but as Luke turned away from the brilliant
lights, he realized how thick was the pall which enveloped London
to-night. He looked at his watch; it was close upon eight. The next
few minutes brought him to the door of Lord Radclyffe's house.
He rang but obtained no answer. He rang again and again and finally
came to the conclusion that his uncle and cousin were as usual dining
out and that the elderly couple who did perfunctory service in the
house were either asleep or out of ear-shot or had taken the
opportunity of seeking amusement in a neighbouring public house.
But Luke was worried about Lord Radclyffe; moreover he had made up his
mind that he would speak to him and to Philip to-night, with regard to
the imperative wintering abroad for the old man.
The Veterans' Club was unknown to Luke, but Shaftesbury Avenue was
not. He turned into Oxford Street and as taxicabs were now a forbidden
luxury he hailed a passing omnibus and jumped into it, and thus was
rapidly conveyed into the very heart of the fog which had found its
haven around Piccadilly Circus.
CHAPTER XIII
THEY HAVE NO HEART
As to what occurred in the heart of the fog on that night in November
four years ago, most of you no doubt will remember. Those who do not I
must refer to the morning papers of the following day.
A perfect harvest for journalists. Gossip and detail sufficient to
fill column upon column of newspaper: gossip that grew as the hours
sped on, and the second day of fog pursued its monotonous course.
A man had been found murdered in a taxicab, his throat stabbed through
from ear to ear, the jugular pierced, life absolutely extinct; the
murderer vanished.
Drama in the midst of reality.
Such things are, you know. No amount of so-called realistic
literature, no amount of sneers at what is dubbed melodrama, will
prevent this fact occurring--and occurring very frequently in the
streets of a mighty city.
Just a man murdered and the murderer disappeared. A very real thing
that, and London has had to face such facts often enough, more often
than has an audience at Drury Lane or the Adelphi. The superior-minded
critic who spells British Drama with a capital B and D, and pronounces
it Pritish Trama sat in the stalls of a London theatre on this very
same foggy evening in November, four years ago. The play was one that
did not appeal to the superior-minded critic: it was just a simple
tale of jealousy which led to the breaking of that great commandment:
"Thou shalt do no murder!"
And the superior-minded critic yawned behind a well gloved hand and
dubbed the play melodramatic, unreal, and stagey, quite foreign to the
life of to-day. But just at that hour--between nine and ten o'clock--a
man was murdered in a taxicab, and his murderer vanished in the fog.
London doesn't dub such events melodrama; she does not sneer at them
or call them unreal. She knows that they are real: there is nothing
stagey or artificial about them: they have even become commonplace.
They occur so often! And most often whilst society dines or dances and
the elect applaud with languid grace the newest play by Mr. Bernard
Shaw.
Only in this case, the event gained additional interest. The murdered
man was a personality. Some one whom everybody that was anybody had
talked about, gossiped, and discussed for the past six months. Some
one whom few had seen but many had heard about--Philip de
Mountford--the son of the late Arthur de Mountford--Radclyffe's newly
found heir, you know.
The news spread as only such news can spread, and when Society poured
out from theatres, from houses in Grosvenor Square, or from the
dining-room of the Carlton, every one had heard the news.
It was as if the sprite of gossip had been busy whispering in
over-willing ears.
"Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"He was found in a taxicab; his throat was cut from ear to ear."
"No! no! not cut, I understand. Pierced through with a sharp
instrument--a stiletto, I presume."
"How horrible!"
"Poor Lord Radclyffe--such a tragedy----"
"He'll never live through it."
"He has looked very feeble lately."
"The scandal round the late Arthur's name broke him up, I think."
"It seems Arthur de Mountford had married a negress."
"No! no! Philip did not look like a half-caste. I saw him once or
twice. He was dark but nice looking."
"Still, there was some scandal about the marriage!"
"Nothing to what this scandal will be!"
"What scandal?"
"Seek whom the crime benefits, you know."
"Then you think?--You really think Luke de Mountford did it?"
"I thought so the moment I heard the story."
"I've always thought that Luke de Mountford a queer sort of fellow."
"And he took his cousin's advent very badly."
"Well one can't wonder at that exactly--to lose a future peerage all
of a sudden--and he has no private fortune either----"
"Poor beggar."
"I heard there were awful rows between the cousins until Lord
Radclyffe himself turned Luke and the others out of the house."
"And now Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"And the police will seek him whom the crime benefits."
"It certainly looks very suspicious."
"A real _cause célèbre_! Won't it be exciting."
"Something to read about in one's morning papers."
"I shall try and get reserved seats for the trial. I hate a crush,
don't you?"
"Will they hang him, do you think?"
"If he is found guilty--English justice is no respecter of persons."
"How awful."
And tittle-tattle, senseless talk, inane remarks, were wafted on the
grimy wings of the fog. They penetrated everywhere, in the lobbies of
the theatres, the boudoir of madame and the smoking room of my lord.
They penetrated to the magnificent reception rooms of the Danish
Legation, and Louisa heard the remarks even before she knew the full
details of the story. Louisa had a well-trained contralto voice, and
had been asked to sing, in the course of the evening. Just as she
stood in an outer room selecting her music, she heard a group of
idlers--men and women--talking over the mysterious murder in the
taxicab.
They had at first been unconscious of her presence. She had her back
toward them, turning over the leaves of of her song. Suddenly there
was a hush in the conversation; one of the chatterboxes must have
pointed her out to the others.
Whereupon Louisa, serene and smiling, a roll of music in her hand,
joined the merry group.
"Please," she said, "don't stop. I have heard nothing yet. And of
course I want to know."
One of the men laughed inanely and the ladies murmured silly nothings.
"Oh!" said some one, "it mayn't be true. Such lots of wild rumours get
about."
"What," asked Louisa placidly, "mayn't be true? Some one said just now
that Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"Well," murmured one of the ladies, "they say it was Mr. de Mountford;
but they can't be sure, can they?"
The group was dissolving: almost, it seemed, as if it had vanished
into thin air. When Louisa first heard them talking there were about a
dozen men and women, a brilliant throng of gaily plumaged birds; now
the ladies remembered that they wanted to hear the latest infant
prodigy who had been engaged to entertain the guests at the
post-dinner reception to-night, and the men too, feeling uncomfortable
and awkward, made good their escape.
People--the pleasure-loving people of to-day--have no use for latent
tragedy. Excitement, yes! and drama; but only from the secure distance
of a private seat at an Old Bailey trial. The murder of Philip de
Mountford could be discussed with quite an amount of enjoyment between
a dinner party and a ball supper, but not in Louisa Harris's presence!
By Gad! too much of a good thing you know!
Within a very few minutes Louisa found herself almost alone, just the
one or two near her to whom she had directly spoken
and--fortunately--Colonel Harris in the door-way, come to look for his
daughter.
"The infant with the violin," he said as soon as he caught sight of
Louisa, "is just finishing his piece, poor little rat! You promised
you would sing next, Lou. What songs have you got?"
"I was just making a selection when you came, father. What would you
like me to sing?"
With an unexpressed sigh of relief the last two of the original group
of gossips dwindled away into the reception room beyond,
congratulating themselves on having successfully engineered their
exit.
"Dooced awkward, don't you know, Miss Harris asking questions."
"I suppose she doesn't realize----"
"She will soon enough----"
"She ought to have broken off her engagement long ago."
"Isn't it awful?--Poor thing."
Louisa, left alone with her father, could allow her nerves to ease
their fearful tension. She had no need to hide from him the painful
quiver of her lips, or the anxious frown across her brow.
"Do you know," she asked, "anything about this awful business,
father?"
"There's a lot of gossip," he replied: his voice was not only gruff
but hoarse, which showed that he was strangely moved.
"But," she insisted, "some truth in the gossip?"
"They say Philip de Mountford has been murdered."
"Who says so?"
"Some people have come on from the theatres, and men from the clubs.
The streets are full of it--and evening papers have brought out
midnight editions which are selling like hot cakes."
"And do they say that Luke has killed Philip de Mountford?"
"No"--with some hesitation--"they don't say that."
"But they hint at it."
"Newspaper tittle-tattle."
"How much is actual fact?"
"I understand," he explained, "that at nine o'clock or thereabouts two
men in evening dress hailed a passing taxicab just outside the Lyric
Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and told the chauffeur to drive to Hyde
Park corner, just by the railings of the Green Park. The driver drew
up there and one of the two men got out. As he reclosed the door of
the cab he leaned toward the interior and said cheerfully, "S'long old
man. See you to-morrow." Then he told the chauffeur to drive on to 1
Cromwell Road opposite the museum, and turning on his heel disappeared
in the fog. When the chauffeur drew up for the second time no one
alighted from the cab. So he got down from his box and opened the
door."
"The other man," murmured Louisa vaguely, "was in the cab--dead!"
"That's about it."
"With his throat pierced from ear to ear by a sharp instrument which
might have been a skewer."
"You have heard it all then?"
"No, no!" she said hurriedly.
The room was swaying round her: the furniture started hopping and
dancing. Louisa, who had never fainted in her life, felt as if the
floor was giving way under her feet. Memory was unloading one of her
storehouses, looking over the contents of a hidden cell, wherein she
had put away a strange winter scene in Brussels, a taxicab, the
ill-lighted boulevard, the chauffeur getting down from his box and
finding a man crouched in the farther corner of the cab--dead--with
his throat pierced from ear to ear by an instrument which might have
been a skewer. And memory was raking out that cell, clearing it in
every corner, trying to find the recollection of a certain morning in
Battersea Park a year ago, when Louisa recounted her impressions of
that weird scene and told the tale of this crime which she had almost
witnessed. Memory found a distinct impression that she had told the
tale at full length and with all the details which she knew. She
remembered talking it all over, and, that when she did so, the ground
in Battersea Park was crisp with the frost under her feet, and an
inquisitive robin perched himself on the railings and then flew away
accompanying her and another all the way along as far as the gates.
Two pictures, vivid and distinct: that evening in Brussels, and the
morning in Battersea Park, her first meeting with Luke after his
letter to her--the letter which had come to her in the Palace Hotel
and which had made her the happiest woman in all the world.
Memory--satisfied--had at last emptied the storehouse of that one cell
and left Louisa Harris standing here, staring at her father, her ears
buzzing with the idle and irresponsible chatter of society jackdaws,
her mind seeing all that had happened outside 1 Cromwell Road: the cab
stopping, the chauffeur terrified, the crowd collecting, the police
taking notes. Her mind saw it as if her bodily eyes had been there,
and all that her father told her seemed but the recapitulation of what
she knew already.
"Where," she said after awhile, "is the dead man now?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I should imagine they would keep the
body at the police station until the morning. I don't suppose they'd
be such mugs as to disturb Lord Radclyffe at this time of night; the
shock might kill the old man."
"I suppose they are quite sure that it is Philip de Mountford who was
killed?"
"Why, yes; he had his pocket-book, his cards, his letters on him, and
money too--robbery was not the object of the crime."
"It was Philip de Mountford then?"
"Good God, yes! Of whom were you thinking?"
"I was thinking of Luke," she replied simply.
The old man said nothing more. Had he spoken at all then it would have
been to tell her that he, too, was thinking of Luke and that there was
perhaps not a single person in the magnificent house at that moment
who was not--in some way or another--thinking of Luke.
The hostess came in, elegant and worldly, with banal words to request
the pleasure of hearing Miss Harris sing.
"It is so kind of you," she said, "to offer. I have never heard you,
you know, and people say you have such a splendid voice. But perhaps
you would rather not sing to-night?"
She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight Scandinavian
intonation, which seemed to soften the banality of her words. Being
foreign, she thought less of concealing her sympathy, and was much
less fearful of venturing on delicate ground.
She held out a small, exquisitely gloved hand and laid it almost
affectionately on the younger woman's arm.
"I am sure you would rather not sing to-night," she said kindly.
"Indeed, Countess, why should you think that?" retorted Louisa
lightly. "I shall be delighted to sing. I wonder which of these new
songs you would like best. There is an exquisite one by Guy
d'Hardelot. Shall I sing that?"
And Her Excellency, who so charmingly represented Denmark in English
society, followed her guest into the reception room: she admired the
elegant carriage of the English girl, the slender figure, the soft
abundant hair.
And Her Excellency sighed and murmured to herself:
"They are stiff, these English! and oh! they have no feeling, no
sentiment!"
And a few moments later when Louisa Harris's really fine voice, firm
and clear, echoed in the wide reception room, Her Excellency
reiterated her impressions:
"These English have no heart! She sings and her lover is suspected of
murder! Bah! they have no heart!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE TALE HAD TO BE TOLD
And whilst the morning papers were unfolded by millions of English men
and women, and the details of the mysterious crime discussed over eggs
and bacon and buttered toast, Philip de Mountford, the newly found
heir presumptive to the Earldom of Radclyffe, was lying in the gloomy
mortuary chamber of a London police court, whither he had been
conveyed in the same cab whose four narrow walls jealously guarded the
secret of the tragedy which had been enacted within their precincts.
Lord Radclyffe had been aroused at ten o'clock the previous night by
representatives of the police, who came to break the news to him. It
was not late, and the old man was not yet in bed. He had opened the
front door of his house himself, his servants--he explained
curtly--were spending their evening more agreeably elsewhere.
The house--even to the police officers--appeared lonely and gloomy in
the extreme, and the figure of the old man, who should have been
surrounded by every luxury that rank and wealth can give, looked
singularly pathetic as he stood in his own door-way, evidently
unprotected and uncared for, and suspiciously demanding what his late
visitors' business might be.
Very reluctantly on hearing the latter's status he consented to admit
them. He did not at first appear to suspect that anything wrong might
have happened, or that anything untoward could occasion this nocturnal
visit: in fact, he seemed unconscious of the lateness of the hour.
He walked straight into the library, where he had obviously been
sitting, for an arm-chair was drawn to the fire, a reading lamp was
lighted on the table, and papers and magazines lay scattered about.
The police officer in plain clothes, who stood with his subordinate,
somewhat undecided, hardly knew how to begin. It was a hard task to
break such awful news to this lonely old man.
At last it was done; the word "accident" and "your nephew" were
blurted out by the man in command. But hardly were these out of his
lips than Lord Radclyffe--livid and trembling--had jumped to his feet.
"Luke!" he contrived to exclaim, and his voice was almost choked, his
lips and hands trembled, beads of perspiration stood upon his
forehead. "Something has happened to Luke."
"No, no, my lord! that's not the name--Philip was on the card and on
the letters--Philip de Mountford--that was, I think, the poor
gentleman's name."
"And an accident has happened to Mr. Philip de Mountford?"
The voice was quite different now. No longer choked with anxiety, calm
and as if mildly interested in passing events. It was obvious even to
the strangers present that one nephew was of far greater moment than
the other.
"I am afraid, my lord, that it's worse than an accident----"
The officer paused a moment, satisfied that he was doing all that was
necessary and possible to mitigate the suddenness of the blow.
"It's foul play," he said at last; "that's what it was."
"Foul play? What do you mean by that?"
"Mr. Philip de Mountford has been murdered, my lord--his body now lies
at the police station--would you wish him conveyed home at once, my
lord--or wait until after the inquest?"
There was silence in the room for a moment or two, while the
old-fashioned clock ticked stolidly on. At the awful announcement,
which indeed might have felled a younger and more vigorous man, Lord
Radclyffe had not moved. He was still standing, his hand resting on
the table beside the piled up newspapers. The light of the lamp veiled
by a red shade illumined the transparent delicacy of the high-bred
hand, the smooth black surface of the coat, and the glimmering
whiteness of the shirt front with its single pearl stud. The face
itself was in shadow, and thus the police officer saw little or
nothing of that inward struggle for self-mastery which was being put
so severely to the test.
Lord Radclyffe, face to face with the awful event, strove by every
power at his command to remain dignified and impassive. The lessons
taught by generations of ancestors had to bear fruit now, when a
representative of the ancient name stood confronting the greatest
crisis that one of his kind has ever had to face--the brutal, vulgar
fact of a common murder. The realities of a sordid life brought within
the four walls of a solemn, aristocratic old house.
For a moment before he spoke again the old man looked round about
him, the tall mahogany bookcases filled with silent friends, the busts
of Dryden and of Milton, the globes in their mahogany casings: all
heirlooms from the generations of de Mountfords who had gone before.
It seemed as if the present bearer of the historic name called all
these mute things to witness this present degradation. A crime had
smirched the family escutcheon, for to some minds--those who dwell on
empyrean heights to which the matter-of-fact sordidness of every-day
life never reaches--to those minds the victim is almost as horrible as
the assassin.
Lord Radclyffe however fought his own battle silently. Not with one
tremor or one gasp would he let the two men see what he felt.
Conventionality wielded her iron rod in this shabby old library, just
as she had done in the ball room of the Danish Legation, and whilst
not two hundred yards away Louisa Harris sang Guy d'Hardelot's songs
and smilingly received praise and thanks for her perfect performance,
so here the old man never flinched.
He gave to his nerves the word of command, and as soon as he had
forced them to obey, he looked straight at the police officer and said
quite calmly:
"Please tell me all that I ought to know."
He sat in his high-backed chair, curtly bidding the two men to sit
down; he made no attempt to shade his face and eyes; once the battle
fought and won he had nothing more to hide: his own face, rigid and
still, his firm mouth, and smooth brow were mask enough to conceal the
feelings within.
The officer gave the details at full length: he told Lord Radclyffe
all that was known of the mysterious crime. The old man listened in
silence until the man had finished speaking, then he asked a few
questions:
"You have a clue of course?"
"I think so, my lord," replied the officer guardedly.
"Can I help in any way?"
"Any information, my lord, that you think might help us would of
course be gladly welcomed."
"The man who hailed the cab in Shaftesbury Avenue--what was he like? I
could help you if I knew."
"I'll have his description properly written out, my lord, and bring it
you in the morning."
"Can't you tell me now? Every moment lost is irretrievable in cases
like these."
"I am afraid, my lord, that I cannot tell you definitely now. There's
a dense fog outside--and----"
"The chauffeur's descriptions are vague," interposed Lord Radclyffe
with a sneer, "the eternal excuses for incompetence."
"My lord!" protested the man.
"All right! all right! No offence meant I assure you. You must pardon
an old man's irritability--the news you have brought me does not make
for evenness of temper. I rely on your department to clear this matter
up with the least possible scandal."
"I am afraid that scandal is inevitable," retorted the officer dryly,
for he still felt sore at Lord Radclyffe's ill-tempered thrust. "We
shall have to rake up a great deal of what might be unpleasant to many
parties."
"Why should it be unpleasant?"
"We shall have to know something of the murdered man's past, of his
associates before--before he was able to establish his claim to your
lordship's consideration."
"I have no doubt that the late Philip de Mountford had many
undesirable associates in the past," remarked Lord Radclyffe curtly.
The silence which followed was tantamount to a dismissal. The officer
rose to go. He felt nettled at the old man's obvious sneers: they had
been like a cold douche over his enthusiasm, for the case had already
drifted into his hands and it promised to be the most interesting and
most sensational criminal case of modern times.
"You have not," he said before taking his leave, "told me, my lord,
what you wish done about the body."
"Surely," replied Lord Radclyffe querulously, "it is too late now to
make any arrangements. What is the time?"
"Half past ten, my lord."
"Surely to-morrow morning we can discuss all that."
"Just as you wish, of course."
"To-morrow morning--as early as you like. My servants will be at home
then--the house will be ready--and I can make arrangements--or else
we'll wait, as you say, until after the inquest."
The sound of a bell broke the silence that ensued.
"You must excuse me," said his lordship dryly, "my servants are out,
and there's some one at the front door."
"I can hear footsteps below stairs, my lord," remarked the officer.
"Ah! I believe you're right. Those two blackguards must have come home
and I didn't know it. They do pretty much as they like."
Shuffling, uncertain footsteps were heard across the hall. The officer
said hurriedly:
"One more thing, my lord--you will pardon me asking but--you had not
thought of--er--offering a reward?"
"What for?"
"The apprehension of the murderer, or useful information that would
lead to conviction."
"Oh! Ah, yes; a reward by all means! Of course I'll give a reward to
stimulate incompetence, eh?"
"What will your lordship make it?" asked the officer, determined this
time to show no resentment.
"Two hundred--five hundred--have what you like--so long as you get
that brute."
"Five hundred, my lord, would stimulate us all."
"Very well," said Lord Radclyffe briefly. "Good evening."
"Good evening, my lord. And to-morrow morning we'll be ready for the
body to be taken away, if you wish it. But the inquest will be the day
after, so perhaps it might be best to wait until then. At the
coroner's court, Victoria, my lord--South Kensington, you
know--everything will be all right. Good evening, my lord."
The two men took their leave, glad enough to have done with the
unpleasant interview.
As they walked to the door that gave from the library on the hall it
was opened from the outside, and a seedy-looking man, dressed in
shabby evening clothes that bore many traces of past libations, walked
unceremoniously midway into the room.
"Will you see Mr. Luke de Mountford?" he muttered addressing his
master.
"Certainly not," replied his lordship. "It's much too late. Ask Mr.
Luke to call again to-morrow. And you and your wife can go to bed."
CHAPTER XV
AND MANY MUST BE QUESTIONED
By the time the police officers reached the outer hall door, Luke had
received his order of dismissal. He stood on the step for a moment,
undecided what to do, and saw the two men coming out of his uncle's
study.
They raised their hats as they met him on the door step, and one of
them said politely:
"Mr. Luke de Mountford?"
"That is my name," replied Luke.
"Mine is Travers--attached to Scotland Yard. Could I ask you a few
questions?"
"Certainly, but not in my uncle's house, I think."
"Of course not; where do you suggest?"
"Here on the door step if you like."
"Hardly. Might I trouble you to step into a cab with me and to come as
far as Victoria police court?"
"It's very late, isn't it? I have an engagement at eleven close by
here."
He was going to fetch Colonel Harris and Louisa at the Danish Legation
and pilot them home to the Langham.
"It's an important matter, Mr. de Mountford," retorted the man. "Are
you lodging anywhere near here?"
"In Exhibition Road, Kensington."
"Ah, close to Cromwell Road?"
"Not far."
"Then where shall it be, Mr. de Mountford?"
"Why not in the cab?" remarked Luke.
"Just as you like."
The taxicab which had brought the police officers was standing some
few paces farther on, its strong lights only just piercing the
intensity of the fog, and its throbbings, as the taximeter marked off
twopences with unerring rapidity, filled the night with their
strangely familiar sound.
The three men got into the cab, the officer telling the chauffeur to
remain stationary until told to move on.
"I know very little about the business, Mr.--er--Travers," remarked
Luke as soon as all three of them had stowed themselves fairly
comfortably in the interior of the vehicle. "I suppose it is about
this ghastly affair that you wanted to speak to me."
"Yes, sir. It was about that. I thought you could give us some
information about the late Mr. de Mountford's past life, or his former
friends."
"I know nothing," retorted Luke dryly, "of my cousin's past or present
life. He did not confide in me."
"But you were good friends?" interposed the other quickly.
"We knew each other very little."
"And to-night?"
"I saw him at his club."
"Where was that?"
"The Veterans' in Shaftesbury Avenue."
"About what time?"
"Between eight and nine."
"You had some talk with him?"
"Yes."
"Pleasant talk?" asked the officer indifferently.
"Family affairs," rejoined Luke dryly.
"And you parted from him?"
"Somewhere about nine."
"In the club?"
"In the club."
"The door steps?"
"No. The lobby."
"He was alone then? I mean--besides yourself was no one with him?"
"No one. The hall porter stood there of course."
"No one joined him afterward?"
"That I cannot say. When I parted from him he was alone."
"You know that Mr. Philip de Mountford was murdered in a taxicab
between Shaftesbury Avenue and Hyde Park Corner, soon after nine
o'clock?"
"I have heard most of the details of that extraordinary crime.
"And you can throw no light on it at all?"
"None. How could I?"
"Nothing," insisted the police officer, "occurs to you at this moment
that might help us in any way to trace the murderer?"
"Nothing whatever."
The man was silent. It seemed as if he was meditating how best to put
one or more questions. Up to now these had been curt and to the point,
and as they followed one another in quick succession there was a
marked difference in the attitude both of the questioner and the
questioned. The police officer had started by being perfectly
deferential--just like a man accustomed to speak with people whose
position in the world compelled a certain regard. He had originally
addressed Luke as "sir," just as he had invariably said "my lord" to
Lord Radclyffe, but now he spoke much more curtly. There was a note of
demand in every question which he put, a peremptoriness of manner
which did not escape the observation of his interlocutor.
As the one man became more aggressive so did Luke also change his
manner. There had been affable courtesy in his first reply to the
questions put to him, a desire to be of help if help was needed, but
with his senses attuned by anxiety and nerve strain to distinguish
subtle difference of manner and of intention, he was quick enough to
notice that he himself was as it were in a witness box, with a counsel
ready enough to bully, or to trip up any contradictory statement.
Not that Luke realized the reason of this change. The thought that he
could be suspected of a crime was as far removed from his ken as the
desire to visit the moon. He could not understand the officer's
attitude; it puzzled him, and put him on his guard--but it was just
the instinct of self-preservation, of caution, which comes to men who
have had to fight the world, and who have met enemies where they least
expected to find one.
"Do you remember," now resumed Travers after that slight pause, which
had seemed very long to Luke, but as a matter of fact had only lasted
a short minute, "whether you saw Mr. Philip de Mountford speaking with
any one when you left him in the lobby of the club?"
"I told you," said Luke impatiently, "that he was alone, except for
the hall porter."
"Alone in the whole club house?"
"Alone," reiterated Luke with measured emphasis, "in the lobby of the
Veterans' Club."
"How many rooms has the club?"
"I don't know; it was the first time I had ever been there."
"Did you know any of the staff?"
"No--since I had never been there before."
"You were not known to any member of the staff?"
"Not that I know of."
"You were shown into the club rooms without being known there at all?"
"The Veterans' Club is a new one, and its rules apparently are not
very strict. I asked if Mr. de Mountford was in the club and was told
that I should find him in the smoking room, and I did."
"How long did your interview with Mr. de Mountford last?"
"About three quarters of an hour I should say."
"And it was of a perfectly amicable nature?"
"Of a perfectly indifferent nature," corrected Luke.
"And after the interview what did you do?"
"I walked out of the club."
"But after that?"
"I walked about."
"In the fog?" This in an undisguised tone of surprise.
"In the fog."
"In what direction?"
"Really," here rejoined Luke with a sudden show of resentment,
"Mr.--er--Travers, I fail to see how my movements can be of concern to
you."
He was certainly not going to tell this man that he had made his way
through the fog as far as the residence of the Danish Minister, and
that he had walked up and down for over an hour outside that house
like a love-sick fool, like a doting idiot, because he knew that if he
waited patiently he would presently hear the faint echo of a
well-trained contralto voice whose mellowness would come to him
through the closed windows of the brilliantly illumined mansion, and
would ease for a moment the wild longing of his heart.
What the man near him said in answer to his retort he really could not
say. He had not heard, for in a moment his thoughts had flashed back
to that lonely vigil in the fog, to the sound of her voice, which
came, oh! so faintly, to his ear, and then to the first breath of
gossip that came from the passers-by, the coachmen and chauffeurs who
had drawn up in long rows along the curb, the idlers who always hang
about outside in the cold and the damp when a society function is in
progress, the pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, lost or willingly
bestowed.
From these he had first heard the news: vaguely at first, for he did
not--could not--realize that the amazing thing which was being
commented on and discussed had anything to do with him. The talk was
of murder, and soon the name of de Mountford was mentioned. The
details he got were very confused, and the open allusions as to "seek
whom the crime will benefit" never really reached his brain, which was
almost numb with the violence of the shock.
His first thought after that was to go and see Uncle Rad: he had, for
the moment, almost forgotten Louisa. Every other interest in life sank
to nothingness beside the one clear duty: Uncle Rad would be alone;
the awful news must be broken very gradually to Uncle Rad. He had
hurried to Grosvenor Square, only to find that emissaries of the
police had forestalled him in his duty.
All this he could not explain to the man Travers. It would have
sounded lame and barely plausible. Nowadays men do not walk outside
houses wherein their liege lady dwells, and, if they do, they do not
choose a foggy night for the sentimental dalliance. He was thankful,
therefore, that Travers put no further questions to him, and merely
said with a return to his original politeness:
"I am greatly obliged to you, sir. I don't think I need detain you any
longer. You said you had an engagement later on; won't you keep this
cab?"
Luke thanked him, but refused the offer of the cab.
"It is close by," he said.
"May I call on you to-morrow morning, sir?"
"If it is necessary."
"I am afraid so. You see we don't like to trouble Lord Radclyffe and
we must try and obtain knowledge of certain facts and verify others."
"Quite so. Well, to-morrow then."
"Thank you, sir. Your address is----?"
"Fairfax Mansions, Exhibition Road."
"Such a nice neighbourhood. No fog there to-night I think."
"I hope not. Good night."
"Good night, sir."
Luke made his escape from the cab. He was afraid of missing Louisa and
her father. His thoughts were somewhat in a whirl, and--being
overburdened with matters of paramount importance--were inclined to
dwell on trifles.
"I ought," he reflected, "to have taken that man's cab. It might be
difficult to get another and Colonel Harris hates waiting in a crowded
hall."
CHAPTER XVI
AND THE PUPPETS DANCED
And so he went to meet Louisa and Colonel Harris at the Danish
Legation, and found them a taxicab and generally saw to their
comparative comfort.
There was no restraint between the three of them. It was as natural to
them all to avoid speaking of important matters on the door step of a
neighbour's house, as it was to eat or drink or breathe. So Luke asked
if the dinner had been enjoyable and the reception crowded, and
Colonel Harris comfortably complained of both. He hated foreign
cooking, and society crushes, and had endured both to-night. No doubt
the terrible events of this night, as yet mere shadows--hardly
admitted to be real--were weighing on the kind old man's usual hearty
spirits.
But so versed were they all in the art of make believe that each one
individually was able to register in the innermost depths of an
anxious heart the firm conviction that the other "had not heard."
Luke was convinced that the gruesome and sordid news could not have
penetrated within the gorgeous mansion where Lou in an exquisite gown
had sung modern songs in her pure contralto voice. He felt sure that
neither Lou nor Colonel Harris had heard that Philip de Mountford had
been murdered in a taxicab and that police officers had thought fit
to speak to him--Luke--in tones of contemptuous familiarity. Nay more!
now that he himself sat thus opposite good-natured, prosy, sensible
Colonel Harris, he began to think that he must have been dreaming,
that the whole thing could not have occurred, but that he had imagined
it all whilst leaning against the garden-railings trying to strain his
ears so that they should hear the soft faint echo of that pure
contralto voice.
Perhaps the wish had been father to the thought; whilst gazing up at
those brilliantly illumined windows, he might in his heart of hearts
have wished the non-existence of Philip--not his death, but the
annihilation of the past few months, the non-advent of the intruder:
and, thus wishing, he may have imagined the whole thing--the murder in
the cab, the police officer on the door step of the old home in
Grosvenor Square.
A sense of supreme well-being encompassed him now. Lou sat opposite to
him. He could not distinguish her face in the gloom, only the outline
of her head with the soft brown hair perfectly dressed by the hand of
an accomplished maid: Lou, the personification of modernity, of
ordinary commonplace life, but exquisite--just the woman whom he loved
with every fibre of his heart, every tendril of his being and every
sense within him. A soft perfume of sweet peas clung to her gown and
was wafted to his nostrils. He closed his eyes, and drew in a long
breath of supreme delight. Now and then as the cab gave a jerk his
knee came in contact with hers, and down on the ground quite close to
his own there rested a small neatly shod foot, the sole of which he
would have given his heart's blood to kiss.
Oh, yes; he was quite, quite happy: this was reality: his exquisite
Louisa, the outline of her perfect head, the touch of her knee, the
scent of sweet peas which intoxicated him and whipped his senses to
madness and to dreams. It was reality and the other was only the wild
phantasmagoria of a wild imagination--the insane thought born of
insane desire. In the darkness which enveloped him and Lou, he could,
you see, give free rein to himself. The world was not gaping;
conventionality held no sway within these four narrow walls; the
puppet could loosen the string which had forced it to dance, it could
lie placid for awhile, dead to the world, but enjoying its own
existence and its own vitality.
And Lou, watching him in that same darkness which concealed him
entirely, save to her eyes of watchfulness, believed that he had heard
nothing as yet. She vaguely combated the desire to tell him everything
then and there, so that he should hear the worst and the best from her
lips rather than through indifferent channels later on.
But with that subtle perception peculiar to her--the modern,
commonplace woman of the world--she divined that he was living for the
moment in a world of his own, from which it was sacrilege to try and
drag him away.
Just then the cab drew up outside the Langham Hotel. The every-day
world had returned with its flaring electric lights, its hall porters,
its noise and bustle, and chased away the illusions of the past few
moments. Luke jumped out, ready to help Lou down--a happy second that,
for her hand must needs rest in his.
The glare of the electric lamp above fell full on his face, which was
serene, placid, the usual mask of supreme indifference: only Louisa
read beyond the mask, and as her hand rested in his for just a thought
longer than conventionality allowed, she realized that he knew
everything: the murder, the horror, and the suspicion which had
touched him already with the tip of its sable wing.
Her eyes, and the pressure of her hand bade him "good-night" and she
passed on into the lighted hall of the hotel. He followed Colonel
Harris into the lobby.
"You have heard?" he asked quickly and in a whisper, lest Lou should
hear.
"Yes," replied the other.
"And Louisa? Does she know?"
"Gossip was all over the confounded place," was Colonel Harris's
muttered comment.
"But you've heard no details?"
"No. Have you?"
"Very little. Only what the police officer chose to tell me."
"Then," queried the older man, "it's an absolute fact?"
"Absolute, unfortunately."
"Hm! As to that--have you seen your uncle?"
"No. I went round as soon as I knew, but the police had forestalled me
and broken the news to him."
"But why didn't you see him?"
"He sent word that he would rather I come back in the morning.
Philip's influence still prevalent, you see."
"Well, it's a confounded business," ejaculated Colonel Harris with
hearty conviction, "but I'm not going to lament over it. After all's
said and done it's a very simple way out of an impossible situation."
"A very horrible way."
"Bah!"
And the good-natured old man shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of
supreme indifference.
"Well," said Luke quietly, "it's late now, sir. You'll want to get to
bed."
"Well," retorted the other with quite a touch of joviality "it's an
ill wind--you know."
"Good night, sir."
"Good night, my boy. How will you get back?"
"Oh, a taxi is the quickest. Edie might have heard something, and be
anxious. I must hurry home now."
Louisa was standing in the hall at the top of the steps. Luke raised
his hat to her and having shaken hands with Colonel Harris quietly
turned to go, and was soon lost in the gloom beyond.
No one who had been standing in the lobby of the hotel would have
guessed that these three people who had talked and bowed and shaken
hands so quietly were facing one of life's most appalling, most
overwhelming tragedies.
The world's puppets had been strung up again, because indifferent eyes
were there to watch and gape, and in the presence of these modern
Bulls of Bashan the puppets danced to the prevalent tune.
CHAPTER XVII
AND WHAT OF THE SECRET?
When Luke arrived at his uncle's house early the next morning, he was
met in the hall by Doctor Newington, who was descending the stairs and
who gravely beckoned to the young man to follow him into the library.
"They called me in last night," he said in reply to Luke's quick and
anxious query. "The butler--or whatever he may be--told me that he was
busy fastening up the front door preparatory to going to bed when he
heard a heavy thud proceeding from the library. He found his master
lying full length on the floor: the head had come in violent contact,
as he fell, with the corner of this table; blood was trickling from a
scalp wound, and Lord Radclyffe himself was apparently in a swoon. The
man is a regular coward and a fool besides. He left his master lying
just as he had fallen, but fortunately he knew me and knew where to
find me, and within ten minutes I was on the spot, and had got Lord
Radclyffe into bed."
"Is it," asked Luke, "anything serious?"
"Lord Radclyffe has not been over strong lately. He has had a great
deal to put up with, and at his age the system is not sufficiently
elastic or--how shall I put it?--sufficiently recuperative to stand
either constant nerve strain or nagging worries."
"I don't know," interposed Luke stiffly, "that my uncle has had either
nerve strain or worry to put up with."
"Oh," rejoined the doctor, whose gruff familiarity seemed to Luke's
sensitive ear to be tainted with the least possible note of
impertinence, "I am an old friend of your uncle, you know, and of all
your family; there isn't much that has escaped my observation during
the past year."
"You have not yet told me, doctor," said Luke, a shade more stiffly
than before, "what is the matter with Lord Radclyffe."
There was distinct emphasis on the last two words.
Doctor Newington shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly.
"Your uncle has had something in the nature of a stroke," he said
bluntly, and he fixed keen light-coloured eyes on those of Luke,
watching the effect which the news--baldly and crudely put--would have
on the young man's nerves. He was a man with what is known as a
fashionable practice. He lived in Hertford Street and his rounds were
encircled by the same boundaries as those of the rest of Mayfair. He
had had plenty of opportunity of studying those men and women who
compose the upper grades of English society. They and their perfect
_sang-froid_, their well-drilled calm under the most dire calamities,
or most unexpected blows had often caused him astonishment when he was
a younger man, fresh from hospital work, and from the haunts of
humbler folk, who had no cause or desire to hide the depth of their
feelings. Now he was used to his fashionable patients and had ceased
to wonder, and Luke's impassiveness on hearing of his uncle's sudden
illness did not necessarily strike him as indifference.
"Is it serious?" asked Luke.
"Serious. Of course," assented the doctor.
"Do you mean that Lord Radclyffe's life is in danger?"
"At sixty years of age, life is always in danger."
"I don't mean that," rejoined Luke with a slight show of impatience.
"Is Lord Radclyffe in immediate danger?"
"No. With great care and constant nursing, he may soon rally, though I
doubt if he will ever be as strong and hearty as he was this time last
year."
"Then what about a nurse?"
"I'll send one down to-day, but----"
"Yes?"
"Lord Radclyffe's present household is--well, hardly adequate to the
exigencies of a long and serious illness--he ought to have a day and a
night nurse. I can send both, but they will want some waiting on and
of course proper meals and ordinary comforts----"
"I can see to all that. Thank you for your advice."
"A good and reliable cook is also necessary--who understands invalid
cooking--all that is most important."
"And shall be attended to at once. Is there anything else?"
"Perfect rest and quiet of course are the chief things."
"I shan't worry him, you may be sure, and no one else is likely to
come near him."
"Except the police," remarked the doctor dryly.
"The police?"
The grave events of the night before, and those that were ready to
follow one another in grim array for the next few days had almost fled
from Luke's memory in face of the other--to him more
serious--calamity--his uncle's illness.
"Oh! Ah, yes!" he said vaguely. "I had forgotten."
"The nurses," rejoined the doctor with a pompousness which somehow
irritated Luke, "will have my authorization to forbid any one having
access to Lord Radclyffe for the present. I will write out the
certificate now, and this you can present to any one who may show a
desire to exercise official authority in the matter of interviewing my
patient."
"I daresay that I can do all that is necessary at the inquest and so
on--Lord Radclyffe need not be worried."
"He mustn't be worried. To begin with he would not know any one, and
he is wholly unable to answer questions."
"That settles the matter of course. So, if you will write the
necessary certificate, I'll see the police authorities at once on the
subject. Would Lord Radclyffe know me, do you think?" added the young
man after a slight pause of hesitancy.
"Well," replied the doctor evasively, "I don't think I would worry him
to-day. We'll see how he gets on."
"He'll probably ask for me."
"That is another matter, and if he does, you must of course see him.
But unless there is a marked improvement during the day, he won't ask
for any one."
Luke was silent a moment or two while the doctor sat down at the
writing table and sought for pen and ink.
"Very well," he said after awhile, "we'll leave it at that. Lord
Radclyffe--I can promise you this--shall on no account be disturbed
without permission from you. How soon will the nurse arrive?"
"Within the hour. The night nurse will come after tea."
Doctor Newington wrote out and signed the usual medical certificate to
the effect that Lord Radclyffe's state of health demanded perfect
quietude and rest and that he was unable to see any one or to answer
any questions. He read his own writing through very carefully, then
folded the paper in half and handed it to Luke.
"This," he said, "will make everything all right. And I'll call again
in a couple of hours' time. You won't forget the cook?"
"No, I won't forget the cook."
When the doctor had taken his leave, Luke stood for a moment quietly
in the library: he folded up the medical certificate which he had
received at the hands of Doctor Newington, and carefully put it away
in his pocket-book.
"You won't forget the cook?"
I don't think that ever in his life before had Luke realized the
trivialities of life as he did at this moment. Remember that he was
quite man of the world enough, quite sufficiently sensible and shrewd
and English, to have noticed that the degree of familiarity in the
doctor's manner had passed the borderland of what was due to himself;
the tone of contemptuous indifference savoured of impertinence. And
there was something more than that.
Last night when Luke wandered up and down outside the brilliantly
lighted windows of the Danish Legation, trying to catch a few muffled
sounds of the voice he so passionately loved to hear, he heard the
first rumours that an awful crime had been committed which, for good
or ill, would have such far-reaching bearings on his own future; but
he had also caught many hints, vague suggestions full of hidden
allusions, of which the burden was: "Seek whom the crime benefits."
Luke de Mountford was no fool. Men of his stamp--we are accustomed to
call them commonplace--take a very straight outlook on life. They are
not hampered by the psychological problems which affect the moral
balance of a certain class of people of to-day; they have no sexual
problems to solve. Theirs is a steady, wholesome, and clean life, and
the mirrors of nature have not been blurred by the breath of
psychologists.
Luke had never troubled his head about his neighbour's wife, about his
horse, or his ass, or anything that is his; therefore his vision about
the neighbour himself had remained acute.
Although I must admit that at this stage the thought that he might
actually be accused of a low and sordid crime never seriously entered
his head, he nevertheless felt that suspicion hovered round him, that
some people at any rate held it possible that since he would benefit
by the crime, he might quite well have contemplated it.
The man Travers thought so certainly; the doctor did not deem it
impossible--and, of course, there would be others.
No wonder that he stood and mused. Once more the aspect of life had
changed for him. He was back in that position from which the advent of
the unknown cousin had ousted him so easily--the cousin who had come,
had seen, and had conquered the one thing needful--the confidence and
help of Uncle Rad.
By what means he had succeeded in doing that had been the great
mystery which had racked Luke's mind ever since he felt his uncle's
affection slipping away from him.
Uncle Rad who had loudly denounced the man as an impostor and a
blackmailer before he set eyes on him, was ready to give him love and
confidence the moment he saw him: and Luke was discarded like an old
coat that no longer fitted. The affection of years was turned to
indifference; and what meant more still the habits of a lifetime were
changed. Lord Radclyffe, tyrannical and didactic, became a nonentity
in his own household. The grand seigneur, imbued with every instinct
of luxury and refinement, became a snuffy old hermit, uncared for, not
properly waited on, feeding badly, and living in one room.
All this Philip de Mountford had accomplished entirely by his mere
presence. The waving of a wand--a devil's wand--and the metamorphosis
was complete! What magic was there in the man himself? What in the
tale which he told? What subtle charm did he wield, that the news of
his terrible death should strike the old man down as some withered old
tree robbed of its support?
Now he lay dead, murdered, only God knew as yet by whom. People
suspected Luke, because Fate had given a fresh turn to her wheel and
reinstated him in the pleasing position from which the intruder had
ousted him.
Luke de Mountford was once more heir presumptive to the earldom of
Radclyffe, and the stranger had taken the secret of his success with
him to the grave.
CHAPTER XVIII
IT WOULD NOT DO, YOU KNOW
Since Lord Radclyffe was too ill to attend to anything, or to see any
one, it devolved upon Luke to make what arrangements he thought
fitting for the lying in state and the subsequent obsequies of the
murdered man. For the present, Philip de Mountford lay in the gloomy
mortuary chamber of the Victoria police court. Luke had sent over
massive silver candelabra, flowers and palms and all the paraphernalia
pertaining to luxurious death.
The dead man lay--not neglected--only unwatched and alone, surrounded
by all the evidences of that wealth which he had come a very long way
to seek, but which Fate and a murderer's hand had snatched with
appalling suddenness from him.
And in the private sitting room at the Langham, Louisa Harris sat
opposite her father at breakfast, a pile of morning papers beside her
plate, she herself silent and absorbed.
"That's a queer tale," Colonel Harris was saying, "the papers tell
about that murder in Brussels a year ago--though I must say that to my
mind there appears some truth in what they say. What do you think,
Louisa?"
"I hardly know," she replied absently, "what to think."
"The details of that crime, which was committed about a year ago, are
exactly the same as those which relate to this infernal business of
last night."
"Are they really?"
No one could have said--and Louisa herself least of all--why she was
unwilling to speak on that subject. She had never told her father, or
any one for a matter of that, except----that she had been so near to
the actual scene of that mysterious crime in Brussels, and that she
had known its every detail.
"And I must say," reiterated Colonel Harris emphatically, "that I
agree with the leading article in the _Times_. One crime begets
another. If that hooligan--or whatever he was--in Brussels had not
invented this new and dastardly way of murdering a man in a cab and
then making himself scarce and sending the cab spinning on its way, no
doubt Philip de Mountford would be alive now. Not that that would be a
matter for great rejoicings. Still a crime is a crime, and if we were
going to allow blackguards to be murdered all over the place by other
blackguards, where would law and order be?"
He was talking more loudly and volubly than was his wont, and he took
almost ostentatiously quantities of food on his plate, which it was
quite obvious he never meant to eat. He also steadily avoided meeting
his daughter's eyes. But at this juncture she put both elbows on the
table, rested her chin in her hands, and looked straight across at her
father.
"It's no use, dear," she said simply.
"No use what?" he queried with ungrammatical directness.
"No use your pretending to talk at random and to be eating a hearty
breakfast, when your thoughts are just as much absorbed as mine are."
"Hm!" he grunted evasively, but was glad enough to push aside the
plateful of eggs and bacon which, indeed, he had no desire to eat.
"You have," she continued gently, "read all the papers, just as I
have, and you know as well as I do what to read between the lines when
they talk of 'clues' and of 'certain sensational developments.'"
"Of course I do," he retorted gruffly, "but it's all nonsense."
"Of course it is. But worrying nevertheless."
"I don't see how such rubbish can worry you."
"Not," she said, "for myself. But for Luke. He must have got an
inkling by now of what is going on."
"Of course he has. And if he has a grain of sense he'll treat it with
the contempt it deserves."
"It's all very well, father. But just think for a moment. Place
yourself in Luke's position. The very idea that you might be suspected
must in itself be terrible."
"Not when you are innocent," he rejoined with the absolute certitude
of a man who has never been called upon to face any really serious
problem in life. "I shouldn't care what the rabble said about me, if I
had a clear conscience."
Louisa was silent for a moment or two, then she said:
"Luke is different somehow. He has been different lately."
"He has a lot to put up with, with old Radclyffe going off his head in
that ridiculous way."
But Louisa did not reply to that suggestion. She knew well enough
that it was neither Lord Radclyffe's unkindness, nor the arrogance of
the new cousin that had changed and softened Luke's entire nature.
The day that he had sat beside her on the stain at Lady Ducies' ball,
the completeness of the change had been fully borne in on her. When
Luke said to her: "I would give all I have in the world to lie on the
ground before you and to kiss the soles of your feet," she knew that
Love had wrought its usual exquisite miracle, the absorption of self
by another, the utter sinking of the ego before the high altar of the
loved one. She knew all that, but dear old Colonel Harris had
forgotten--perhaps he had never known.
That knowledge comes to so few nowadays. Life, psychology, and sexual
problems have taken the place of the divine lesson which has glorified
the world since the birth of Lilith.
All that Louisa now remarked to her kind and sensible father was----
"You know, dear, suspicion has killed a man before now. It was but a
very little while ago that a noble-hearted gentleman preferred death
to such dishonour."
"You've got your head," he retorted, "full of nonsense, Lou. Try and
be a sensible woman now, and think of it all quietly. Is there
anything you would like me to do, for instance?"
"Yes, if you will."
"What is it?"
"Couldn't you see Uncle Ryder?"
"At Scotland Yard, you mean?"
"He is at the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, isn't
he?"
"I've always understood so."
"Would he see you, do you think, at his office?"
"Tom not see me?" exclaimed Colonel Harris. "Of course he would. What
do you want me to see him about?"
"He could tell you exactly how matters stood with regard to--to Luke,
couldn't he?"
"He could. But would he?"
"You can but try."
"It's a great pity your aunt is out of town; you might have heard a
good deal from her."
"Oh, Sir Thomas never tells aunt anything that's professional," said
Louisa with a smile. "She'd be forever making muddles."
"I am sure she would," he assented with deep conviction.
"Do you think I might go with you?"
"What? To Tom's? I don't think he would like that, Lou: and it
wouldn't quite do you know."
"Perhaps not," she agreed with hardly even a sigh of disappointment.
She was so accustomed, you see, to being thwarted by convention,
whenever impulse carried her out of the bounds which the world had
prescribed. Moreover, she expected to see Luke soon. He would be sure
to come directly after an early visit to Grosvenor Square.
She helped her father on with his coat. She was almost satisfied that
he should go alone. She would have an hour with Luke, if he came
early, and it was necessary that she should have him to herself,
before too many people had shouted evil and good news,
congratulations, opprobrium, and suspicions at him.
Colonel Harris, she knew, would get quite as much if not more
information out of his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Ryder, than he could
do if she--a mere woman--happened to be present at the interview. Sir
Thomas would trust Colonel Harris with professional matters which he
never would confide to a woman, and Louisa trusted her father
implicitly.
She knew that, despite the grumblings and crustiness peculiar to every
Englishman, when he is troubled with domestic matters whilst sitting
at his own breakfast table, her father had Luke's welfare just as much
at heart as she had herself.
CHAPTER XIX
NOT ALL ABOUT IT
Colonel Harris sent in his card to Sir Thomas Ryder. He had driven
over from the Langham in a hansom--holding taxicabs in even more
whole-hearted abhorrence than before. He inquired at once if Sir
Thomas was in his private sanctum, and if so whether he might see him.
Curiously enough the chief, usually quite inaccessible to the casual
visitor--whether relative or stranger--received his brother-in-law
immediately.
"Hello, Will," he said by way of greeting, the way Englishmen have of
saying that they are pleased to see one another.
"Hello," responded Colonel Harris in the same eloquent tone.
And the two old boys shook hands.
Sir Thomas then resumed his official chair behind his huge desk and
motioned his brother-in-law to an arm-chair close by.
"Have a cigar," said the host.
"Thanks," rejoined the other.
The box was handed across, a Havana selected.
The cigars were lighted, and for quite three minutes the two men
smoked in silence. One of them had come here to find out how much of
his daughter's happiness lay in jeopardy; the other knew what was in
the balance, the danger to his niece's happiness, the terrible abyss
of misery which yawned at her feet.
But both sat there and enjoyed their cigars. They were dressed with
scrupulous care, in the uniform prescribed by the world in which they
lived as being suitable for gentlemen of their position and of their
age; frock coats and dark gray trousers, immaculate collar, and tie
with pearl pin. Both wore a seal ring on the little finger of the left
hand, and a watch chain of early Victorian design. They might be twins
but for their faces. Convention had put a livery on them which they
would on no account have discarded.
But the faces were very different. Colonel Harris carried his sixty
years as easily as if they had been forty. There were not many lines
on his round, chubby face, with its red cheeks, and round, child-like
eyes. The heavy cavalry moustache, once auburn, now almost white, hid
the expression of the mouth, but one felt, judging by the eyes and the
smooth forehead, which continued very far now onto the back of his
head, that if one were allowed a peep below that walrus-like face
adornment one would see a mouth that was kind and none too firm, the
mouth of a man who had led other men perhaps but who had invariably
been led by his women folk.
Now Sir Thomas Ryder was--or rather is, for he is still in perfect
health and full vigour--a very different type of man. You have no
doubt seen him about town--for he takes a constitutional in the park
every day on his way to his work, and he goes to most first nights at
the theatres--and if so you will have admired the keen, sharp face,
the closely set eyes, the mobile mouth free from moustache or beard:
the face is furrowed all over, especially round the eyes, yet he does
not look old. That is because of the furrows; they form a wonderful
net-work round his eyes, giving them an expression of perpetual keen
amusement. The hair is pale in colour--not white but faded--and
scanty. Sir Thomas wears it carefully brushed across the top of his
head, with a parting on the left side.
He has a trick when he is thinking deeply of passing his hand--which
is white, slender and tapering--over that scanty covering of what, but
for it, would be a bald cranium.
Some people said that Sir Thomas Ryder was a man without any
sentiment; others that he was a slave to red tape; but no one denied
the uncontrovertible fact that he was the right man in the right
place.
He looked the part and always acted it, and fewer blunders had
undoubtedly been committed in the detective department of the
metropolitan police since Sir Thomas Ryder took the guiding reins in
hand.
"I suppose," he said at last, "that you've come to see me about this
de Mountford business."
"I have," replied Colonel Harris simply.
"Well, it's not a pleasant business."
"I know that. The papers are full of it, and it's all a confounded
damnable business, Tom, and that's all about it."
"Unfortunately it's not 'all about it,'" rejoined Sir Thomas dryly.
"That's what Louisa says. Women are so queer about things of that
sort, and the papers are full of twaddle. She is anxious about Luke."
"I don't wonder."
"But it's all nonsense, isn't it?"
"What is?"
Colonel Harris did not reply immediately; for one thing, he did not
know exactly how to put his own fears and anxieties into words. They
were so horrible and so farfetched that to tell them plainly and
baldly to his brother-in-law, to this man with whom he was soberly
smoking a cigar in a sober-looking office, whilst hansoms and taxicabs
were rattling past in the street below within sight and hearing,
seemed little short of idiocy. He was not a man of deep
penetration--was Colonel Harris--no great reader of thoughts or of
character. He tried to look keenly at Sir Thomas's shrewd face, but
all he was conscious of was a net-work of wrinkles round a pair of
eyes which seemed to be twinkling with humour.
Humour at this moment? Great Heavens above!
"I wish," he blurted out somewhat crossly at last, "you'd help me out
a bit, Tom. Hang it all, man, all this officialism makes me dumb."
"Don't," said Sir Thomas blandly, "let it do that, Will," and the
speaker's eyes seemed to twinkle even more merrily than before.
"Well then tell me something about Luke."
"Luke de Mountford," mused the other as if the name recalled some
distant impression.
"Yes, Luke de Mountford, who is engaged to Louisa, your niece, man,
and she's breaking her heart with all the drivel these newspapers talk
and I couldn't bear it any longer; so I've come to you, Tom, and you
must tell me what truth there is in the drivel, and that's all I want
to know."
Sir Thomas Ryder seemed, whilst the other thus talked volubly, to have
suddenly made up his mind to say more than had originally been his
intention. Anyway, he now said with abrupt directness:
"If, my good Will, by 'drivel' you mean that in the matter of the
assassination of Philip de Mountford, in a taxicab last night, grave
suspicion rests on his cousin Luke, then there's a great deal of truth
in the drivel."
Colonel Harris received the sudden blow without much apparent emotion.
He had been sitting in an arm-chair with one hand buried in his
trousers pocket, the other holding the cigar.
Now he merely glanced down at the cigar for a moment and then conveyed
it to his lips.
"What," he asked, "does that mean exactly?"
"That unless Luke de Mountford will, within the next forty-eight
hours, answer certain questions more satisfactorily than he has done
hitherto, he will be arrested on a charge of murder."
"That is impossible," protested Colonel Harris hotly.
"Impossible? Why?"
"Because--because--hang it all, man! you know Luke de Mountford. Do
you believe for a moment that he would commit such a dastardly crime?
Why, the boy wouldn't know how to plan such vil
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