The Wiles of the Wicked Part 18

In her chat with me she had no design formed or conclusion previously drawn, but her intuitive quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, caused her to half-confide in me her deep sorrow. Her compa.s.sionate disposition, her exceeding gentleness, which gave the prevailing tone to her character, her modesty, her tenderness, her grace, her almost ethereal refinement and delicacy, all showed a true poetic nature within, while her dark, fathomless eyes betrayed that energy of pa.s.sion which gave her character its concentrated power.

Was it any wonder, even though she might have been betrayed into a momentary tergiversation, that I bowed down and wors.h.i.+pped her? She was my ideal; her personal beauty and the tender sweetness of her character were alike perfect. Therefore my love for her was a pa.s.sion--that headlong vehemence, that fluttering and hope, fear and transport, that giddy intoxication of heart and sense which belongs to the novelty of true love which we feel once, and but once, in our lives.

Yet I was held perplexed and powerless by her unexpected and unacknowledged identification of that clue to the unknown dead.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

A REVELATION.

Although many days pa.s.sed, no word of apology came from my mysterious correspondent for not having kept the appointment. I watched every post for nearly a fortnight, and as I received no explanation, my suspicion regarding Mabel's connexion with the strange affair became, of course, strengthened.

With heart-sinking I had taken leave of her on the kerb in Kensington High Street on that well-remembered evening, feeling that the likelihood of our frequent meeting was very remote, especially now that she apparently held me in suspicion. In this case, however, I was mistaken, for within a week we met again quite accidentally in Bond Street, and, finding her disposed to accept my companions.h.i.+p, I accompanied her shopping, and spent an extremely pleasant afternoon. Her mother was rather unwell, she explained, and that accounted for her being alone.

She was dressed entirely in black, but with a quiet elegance that was surprising. I had never known before that day how smart and _chic_ a woman could appear in a gown of almost funereal aspect. Her manner towards me retained nothing of its previous suspicion; she was bright and merry, without that cloud of unhappiness that had so strangely overshadowed her on the last occasion we had been together. She possessed a clever wit, and gossiped and joked amusingly as we went from shop to shop, ordering fruit for dessert, and flowers for table-decoration. That her mother was wealthy appeared certain from the extravagant prices which she gave for fruits out of season and choice hothouse flowers. She bought the best she could procure, and seemed utterly regardless of expense.

I remarked how dear were some grapes which she had ordered, but she only smiled and gave her shoulders a little shrug.

This recklessness was not done to impress me, for I was quick to detect that the shopkeepers knew her as a good customer, and brought forward their most expensive wares as a matter of course.

Although at first she declined my invitation, as though she considered it a breach of the _convenances_, I at length persuaded her to take some tea with me at Blanchard's, and we continued our gossip as we sat together at one of the little tables surrounded by other ladies out shopping with their male enc.u.mbrances.

I had, rather unwisely, perhaps, pa.s.sed a critical remark regarding a lady who had entered in an unusually striking toilette, in which she looked very hot and extremely uncomfortable, and laughing at what I had said, she replied--

"You are certainly right. We women always overweigh ourselves in our garments, to say nothing of other and more fatiguing things. Half of life's little worries accrue from our clothes. From tight collar to tight shoe, and not forgetting a needlessly befeathered hat, we take unto ourselves burdens that we should be much happier without."

"I agree entirely," I said, smiling at her philosophy. "Some blatant crank bent on self-advertis.e.m.e.nt might do worse than found an Anti-ornamental Dress League. Just think how much of life's trials would at once slip off a man if he wore neither collar nor tie-- especially the dress-tie!"

"And off a woman, if she wore neither belt, gloves, nor neck arrangement!"

"Exactly. It would be actually making us a present for life of nearly an hour a day. That would be seven hours a week, or nearly a fortnight a year," I said. "It's worth consideration."

"Do you remember the derision heaped upon that time-saving arrangement of our ancestors, the elastic-side boot?" she observed, with a merry smile. "But just fancy the trouble they must have saved in lacing and b.u.t.toning! Sewing on shoe-b.u.t.tons ought always to be done by criminals condemned to hard labour. b.u.t.ton-sewing tries the conscientiousness and thoroughness of the work more than anything else, and I'm certain oak.u.m-picking can't be worse. It also tries the quality of the thread more than anything else; and as to cottons, well, it treats them as Samson did the withs."

The carriage met her outside the Stores in the Haymarket at five o'clock, and before she took leave of me she mischievously asked--

"Well, and how do you find me when I wear my mask?"

"Charming," I responded with enthusiasm. "Mask or no mask, you are always the same to me, the most charming friend I have ever had."

"No, no," she laughed. "It isn't good form to flatter. Good-bye."

And she stretched forth her small hand, which I pressed warmly, with deep regret at parting. A moment later the footman in his brown livery a.s.sisted her into the carriage. Then she smiled merrily, and bowed as I raised my hat, and she was borne away westward in the stream of fine equipages, hers the smartest of them all.

A week later, having seen nothing further of her, I wrote and received a prompt response. Then in the happy autumn days that followed we contrived to meet often, and on each occasion I grew deeper and deeper in love with her. Since that evening when we had stood together beneath the street lamp in Kensington, she had made no mention of the pencil-case or of its owner. Indeed, it seemed that her sudden identification of it had betrayed her into acknowledging that its owner had been her lover, and that now she was trying to do all she could to remove any suspicion from my mind.

Nevertheless, the remembrance of that crime and of all the events of that midnight adventure was ever within my mind, and I had long ago determined to make its elucidation the chief object of my life. I had placed myself beneath the thrall of some person unknown, and meant to extricate myself and become again a free agent at all costs.

On several occasions I had seen the cabman West on the rank at Hyde Park Corner, but although he had constantly kept his eyes open in search of Edna, his efforts had all been in vain. I had seen also the old cab-driver who bore the nickname "Doughy," but it turned out that it had not been his cab which my mysterious protectress had taken after parting from me. One point, however, I settled satisfactorily. On one of our walks together I contrived that, the man West should see Mabel, but he afterwards declared that the woman of whom he was in search did not in the least resemble her. Therefore, it was certain that Mabel and Edna were not, as I had once vaguely suspected, one and the same person.

Sometimes I would meet my idol after her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and accompany her across the park; at others we would stroll together in the unfrequented part of Kensington Gardens, or I would walk with her shopping and carry her parcels, all our meetings being, of course, clandestine ones.

One morning in the middle of November I was overfed at receiving an invitation from Mrs Anson to dine at The Boltons, and a couple of days later the sum of my happiness was rendered complete by finding myself seated beside Mabel in her own home.

The house possessed an air of magnificence and luxury which I scarcely expected. It was furnished with great elegance and taste, while the servants were of an even more superior character than the house itself.

Among the homes of my many friends in the West End this was certainly the most luxurious, for money seemed to have been literally squandered upon its appointments, and yet withal there was nothing whatever garish nor any trace of a plebeian taste. There was a combined richness and quietness about the whole place which impressed one with an air of severity, while the footman who ushered me in was tall, almost a giant in stature, and solemn as a funeral mute.

Mrs Anson rose and greeted me pleasantly, while Mabel, in a pretty gown of coral-pink, also shook my hand and raised her fine dark eyes to mine with a glance of pleasure and triumph. It was, no doubt, due to her that I had been bidden there as guest. A red-headed, ugly-faced man named Hickman, and a thin, angular, irritating woman, introduced to me as Miss Wells, were my only fellow-guests. The man regarded me with some suspicion as I entered, and from the first I took a violent dislike to him. It may have been his forbidding personal appearance which caused my distrust. Now that I reflect, I think it was. His face was bloated and deeply furrowed, his eyes large, his lips thick and flabby, his reddish beard was ill-trimmed and scanty. He was thick-necked; his face was further disfigured by a curious dark-blue scar upon the left jaw, and I could not help remarking within myself, that if some faces resembled those of animals, his was closely allied to that of a savage bulldog. Indeed, I had never before seen such an eminently ugly face as his.

Yet he spoke with the air and perfect manner of a gentleman. He bowed with refined dignity as I was introduced, although I thought his smile seemed supercilious, while I was almost certain that he exchanged a curious, contemptuous look with Mabel, who stood behind me.

Was he aware of our little exchanges of confidences? Had he secretly watched us in our walks along the leafy byways of Kensington Gardens, and detected that I loved her? It seemed very much as though he had, and that he had endeavoured to disparage me in her eyes.

At Mrs Anson's invitation, I took Mabel in to dinner, and sat next her, while opposite us sat the dog-faced man with the irritating spinster.

The latter was a fitting companion for him, bony of countenance, her back straight as a board, her age uncertain, and her voice loud, high-pitched, and rasping. She wore a number of bangles on her left wrist; one of them had pigs and elephants hanging on it, with hearts, crosses, bells, and framed and glazed shamrock leaves mixed in. That would not have mattered much had she not been eating, but as dinner progressed the room grew a trifle warm, and she unfortunately had a fan as well as those distressing bangles, which fan she rhythmically waved to and fro, playing the orchestra softly when fanning herself, or loudly as she plied her knife and fork "click-clack, jingle-jingle, tinkle-tinkle, click-clack!" until the eternal music of those pigs, elephants, crosses, hearts and bells prevented anything beyond a jerky conversation. She turned and twisted and toyed with her _menu_, tinkling and jingling the whole time like a coral consoler or an infant's rattle. Little wonder, I thought, that she remained a spinster. With such an irritating person to head his household, the unfortunate husband would be a candidate for Colney Hatch within a month. Yet she was evidently a very welcome guest at Mrs Anson's table, for my hostess addressed her as "dear," and seemed to consider whatever positive opinion she expressed as entirely beyond dispute.

I liked Mrs Anson. Although of that extremely frigid type of mother, very formal and unbending, observing all the rules of society to the letter, and practically making her life a burden by the conventionalities, she possessed, nevertheless, a warm-hearted affection for her child, and seemed constantly solicitous of her welfare. She spoke with the very faintest accent with her "r's," and I had, on the first evening we had met at the colonel's, wondered whether she were of Scotch, or perhaps foreign, extraction. The general conversation in the interval of the Irritating Woman's orchestra turned upon foreign travel, and incidentally, in answer to an ingenious question I put to her, she told me that her father had been German, but that she had nearly all her life lived in England.

The Irritating Woman spoke of going to the Riviera in December, whereupon Mabel remarked--

"I hope mother will go too. I'm trying to persuade her. London is so dull and miserable in winter compared with Cannes or Nice."

"You know the Riviera well, I suppose?" I inquired of her.

"Oh, very well," she responded. "Mother and I have spent four winters in the south. There's no place in Europe in winter like the Cote d'Azur--as the French call it."

"I much prefer the Italian Riviera," chimed Miss Wells's high-pitched voice. She made it a point of honour to differ with everybody. "At Bordighera, Ospedaletti, San Remo, and Ala.s.sio you have much better air, the same warmth, and at about half the price. The hotels in Nice and Cannes are simply ruinous." Then, turning to Mrs Anson, she added, "You know, dear, what you said last year."

"We go to the Grand, at Nice, always," answered Mrs Anson. "It is dear, certainly, but not exaggeratedly so in comparison with the other large hotels."

"There seems of late to have been a gradual rise in prices all along the Riviera," remarked Hickman. "I've experienced it personally. Ten or twelve years ago lived in Nice for the season for about half what it costs me now."

"That exactly bears out my argument," exclaimed the Irritating Woman, in triumph. "The fact is that the French Riviera has become far too dear, and English people are, fortunately for themselves, beginning to see that by continuing their journey an extra twenty miles beyond Nice they can obtain just as good accommodation, live better, breathe purer air, and not be eternally worried by those gaudy tinsel-shows called Carnivals, or insane attempts at hilarity miscalled Battles of Flowers."

"Oh, come, Miss Wells," protested Mabel, "surely you won't condemn the Battles of Flowers at Nice! Why, they're acknowledged to be amongst the most picturesque spectacles in the world!"

"I consider, my dear, that they are mere rubbishy ruses on the part of the Nicois to cause people to buy their flowers and throw them into the roadway. It's only a trick to improve their trade."

We all laughed.

"And the Carnival?" inquired Hickman, much amused.

"Carnival!" she snorted. "A disgraceful exhibition of a town's lawlessness. A miserable pageant got up merely to attract the unsuspecting foreigner into the web spread for him by extortionate hotel-keepers. All the so-called fun is performed by paid mountebanks; the cars are not only inartistic, but there is always something extremely offensive in their character, while the orgies which take place at the masked b.a.l.l.s at the Casino are absolutely disgraceful. The whole thing is artificial, and deserves no support at all from winter visitors."

Mrs Anson, for once, did not agree with this sweeping condemnation, while Mabel declared that she always enjoyed the fun of the battles of flowers and paper confetti, although she admitted that she had never had the courage to go out on those days when the pellets of lime, or "harp confetti," are permitted. Both Hickman and myself supported Mabel in defence of the annual fetes at Nice as being unique in all the world.

But the Irritating Woman was not to be convinced that her opinions were either ill-formed or in the least distorted. She had never been present at a Carnival ball, she admitted, but it had been described to her by two estimable ladies who had, and that was, for her, sufficient. They were a pair of pious souls, and would, of course, never exaggerate to the length of a lie.

Dinner over, the ladies retired, and Hickman and myself were left to smoke and gossip. He was certainly a very ugly man, and at times a.s.serted an overbearing superiority in conversation; but having watched him very closely, I at length arrived at the conclusion that this was his natural manner, and was not intended to be offensive. Indeed, ever since that first moment when I had entered and been introduced, he had shown himself to be very pleasant and affable towards me.