The Red Symbol Part 47

I started up at that.

"Fraulein Pendennis!" I gasped. "You know her?"

"I should do so, after nursing her through such an illness,--and so short a time since!"

"But,--when did you nurse her,--where?"

"Why, here; not in this room, but in the hotel. It is three--no, nearer four months since; she also was taken ill on her way from Russia. There is a strange coincidence! But hers was a much more severe illness. We did not think she could possibly recover; and for weeks we feared for her brain. She had suffered some great shock; though the Herr, her father, would not say what it was--"

She looked at me interrogatively; but I had no mind to satisfy her curiosity, though I guessed at once what the "shock" must have been, and that Anne had broken down after the strain of that night in the forest near Petersburg and all that had gone before it. She had never referred to this illness; that was so like her. Anything that concerned herself, personally, she always regarded as insignificant, but I thought now that it had a good deal to do with her worn appearance.

"And Herr Pendennis, where is he?" I demanded next.

"I do not know; they left together, when the Fraulein was at last able to travel. Ah, but they are devoted to each other, those two! It is beautiful to see such affection in these days when young people so often seem to despise their parents."

It was strange, very strange. The more I tried to puzzle things out, the more hopeless the tangle appeared. Why had Pendennis allowed her to return alone to Russia, especially after she had come through such a severe illness? Of course he might be attached to some other branch of the League, but it seemed unlikely that he would allow himself to be separated from her, when he must have known that she would be surrounded by greater perils than ever. I decided that I could say nothing to this garrulous woman--kindly though she was--or to any other stranger. I dreaded the time when I would have to tell Mary something at least of the truth; though even to her I would never reveal the whole of it.

The manager came to my room presently, bringing my money and papers, and the miniature, which he had taken charge of; lucky it was for me that I had fallen into honest hands when I reached Berlin!

He addressed me as "Herr Gould" of course, and was full of curiosity to know how I got through, and if things were as bad in Warsaw as the newspapers reported. Berlin was full of Russian refugees; but he had not met one from Warsaw.

"They say the Governor will issue no pa.s.sports permitting Poles to leave the city," he said. "But you are an American, which makes all the difference."

"I guess so," I responded, wondering how Loris had managed to obtain that pa.s.sport, and if it would have served to get me through if I had started from the city instead of making that long _detour_ to Kutno.

I a.s.sured my host that the state of affairs in the city of terror I had left was indescribable, and I'd rather not discuss it. He seemed quite disappointed, and with a queer flash of memory I recalled how the little chattering woman--I forget her name--had been just as disappointed when I didn't give details about Ca.s.savetti's murder on that Sunday evening in Mary's garden. There are a lot of people in this world who have an insatiable appet.i.te for horrors,--when they can get them at second-hand.

"They say it's like the days of the terror in the 'sixties' over again,--tortures and shootings and knoutings; and that the Cossacks stripped a woman and knouted her to death one day last week; did you hear of that?"

"I tell you I don't mean to speak of anything that I've seen or heard!"

I said, feeling that I wanted to kick him. He apologized profusely, and then made me wince again by referring to the miniature, with more apologies for looking at it, when he thought it necessary to take possession of it.

"But we know the so-amiable Fraulein and Herr Pendennis so well; they have often stayed here," he explained. "And it is such a marvellous likeness; painted quite recently too, since the illness from which the Fraulein has so happily recovered!"

I muttered something vague, and managed to get rid of him on the plea that I felt too bad to talk any more, which drew fresh apologies; but when he had gone I examined the miniature more closely than I'd had an opportunity of doing since Loris gave it me.

It was not recently painted, I was quite sure of that, and yet it certainly did show her as I had known her during these last few weeks, before death printed that terrible change on her face,--and not as she was in London. But that must be my imagination; the artist had caught her expression at a moment when she was grave and sad; no, not exactly sad, for the lips and eyes were smiling,--a faint, wistful, inscrutable smile like the smile of the Sphinx, as it gazes across the desert--across the world, into s.p.a.ce, and eternity.

As I gazed on the brave sweet face, the sordid misery that had enveloped my soul ever since that awful moment when I saw her dead body borne past, in the square, was lifted; and I knew that the last poignant agony was the end of a long path of thorns that she had trodden unflinchingly, with royal courage and endurance for weary months and years; that she was at peace, purified by her love, by her suffering, from all taint of earth.

"Dumb lies the world; the wild-yelling world with all its madness is behind thee!"

I started for England next evening, and travelled right through. I sent one wire to Jim from Berlin and another from Flus.h.i.+ng,--where I found a reply from him waiting me. "All well, meeting you."

That "all well" rea.s.sured me, for now that I had leisure to think, my conscience told me how badly I'd treated him and Mary. It's true that before I started from London with Mishka I wrote saying that I was off on secret service and they must not expect to hear from me for a time, but I should be all right. That was to smooth Mary down, for I knew what she was,--dear little soul,--and I didn't want her to be fretting about me. If she once got any notion of my real destination, she'd have fretted herself into a fever. But if she hadn't guessed at the truth, I might be able to evade telling her anything at all; perhaps I might pitch a yarn about having been to Tibet, or Korea, for she would certainly want to know something of the reason for my changed appearance. I scarcely recognized myself when I looked at my reflection in the bedroom mirror at Berlin. A haggard, unkempt ruffian, gray-haired, and with hollow eyes staring out of a white face, disfigured by a half-healed cut across the forehead. I certainly was a miserable looking object, even when I'd had my hair cut and my beard shaved, since I no longer needed it as a disguise. Mary had always disliked that beard, but I doubted if she'd know me, even without it.

I landed at Queensboro' on a typical English November afternoon; raw and dark, with a drizzle falling that threatened every moment to thicken into a regular fog. There were very few pa.s.sengers, and I thought at first I was going to have the compartment to myself; but, at the last moment, a man got in whom I recognized at once as Lord Southbourne. I hadn't seen him on the boat; doubtless he'd secured a private stateroom.

He just glanced at me casually,--I had my fur cap well pulled down,--settled himself in his corner, and started reading a London paper,--one of his own among them. He'd brought a sheaf of them in with him; though I'd contented myself with _The Courier_. It was pleasant to see the familiar rag once more. I hadn't set eyes on a copy since I left England.

I didn't speak to Southbourne, though; I don't quite know why, except that I felt like a kind of Rip van Winkle, though I'd only been away a little more than a couple of months. And somehow I dreaded that lazy but penetrating stare of his, and the questions he would certainly fire off at me. So I lay low and said nothing; keeping the paper well before my face, till we stopped at Herne Hill for tickets to be taken. As the train started again, he threw down his paper, and moved opposite me, and held out his hand.

"h.e.l.lo, Wynn!" he drawled. "Is it you or your ghost? Didn't you know me?

Or do you mean to cut me? Why, man alive, what's wrong?" he added, with a quick change of tone. I'd only heard him speak like that once before,--in the magistrate's room at the police court, after the murder charge was dismissed.

"Nothing; except that we've had a beastly crossing," I answered, with a poor attempt at jauntiness.

"Where have you come from,--Russia?" he demanded.

I nodded.

"H'm! So you went back, after all. I thought as much! Who's had your copy?"

"I've sent none; I went on private business," I protested hotly. It angered me that he should think me capable of going back on him.

"I oughtn't to have said that; I apologize," he said stiffly, still staring at me intently. "But--what on earth have you been up to? More prison experiences? Well, keep your own counsel, of course. I've kept it for you,--as far as I knew it. Mrs. Cayley believes I've sent you off to the ends of the earth; and I've been mendaciously a.s.suring her that you're all right,--though Miss Pendennis has had her doubts, and nearly bowled me out, once or twice."

"Miss--_who_?" I shouted.

"Miss Pendennis, of course. Didn't you know she was staying with your cousin again? A queer coincidence about that portrait! h.e.l.lo, here we are at Victoria. And there's Cayley!"

CHAPTER LI

THE REAL ANNE

"It's incredible!" I exclaimed.

"Well, it's true, anyhow!" Jim a.s.serted. "And I don't see myself where the incredibility comes in."

"You say that Mr. Pendennis wrote from Berlin not a week after I left England, and that he and Anne--_Anne_--are at this moment staying with you in Chelsea? When I've been constantly with her,--saw her murdered in the streets of Warsaw!"

"That must have been the other woman,--the woman of the portrait, whoever she may be. No one seems to know, not even Pendennis. We've discussed it several times,--not before Anne. We don't think it wise to remind her of that Russian episode; it upsets her too much; for she's not at all the thing even yet, poor girl."

He seemed quite to have changed his mental att.i.tude towards Anne, and spoke of her as kindly as if she had been Mary's sister.

"It's another case of mistaken ident.i.ty based on an extraordinary likeness," he continued. "There have been many such,--more in fact than in fiction. Look at the Bancrofts and their 'doubles,' for instance, a pair of them, husband and wife, who pa.s.sed themselves off as Sir Squire and Lady Bancroft innumerable times a few years back, and were never discovered. And yet, though it mightn't be difficult for a clever impersonator to make up like Bancroft, it seems incredible that he could find a woman who could pose successfully as the incomparable Marie Wilton. You should have seen her in her prime, my boy--the most fascinating little creature imaginable, and the plainest, if you only looked at her features! It must have been a jolly sight harder to represent her, than if she'd been a merely beautiful woman, like Anne.

She's an uncommon type here in England, but not on the Continent. I don't suppose it would be difficult to find half a dozen who would answer to the same description,--if one only knew where to look for 'em."

"It wasn't the resemblance of a type,--eyes and hair and that sort of thing,"--I said slowly; "the voice, the manner, the soul; why--_she_--knew me, recognized me even with my beard--spoke of Mary--"

"She must have been an astonis.h.i.+ngly clever woman, poor soul! And one who knew a lot more about Anne than Anne and her father know of her.

Well, you'd soon be able to exchange notes with Pendennis himself, and perhaps you'll hit on a solution of the mystery between you. What's that?"