The Romance of His Life Part 22

Had she seen the black cat?

No.

"The truth is, Janet," she said, "I have had a most terrible dream. I feel sure it was a warning, and I really don't know whether I ought to call for it or not."

"Call for what?"

"The bag."

"Was the dream about the bag?"

"What else could it be about? I took one of my little bromides last night, for I knew I had not a chance of sleep after the agitation of the day. And I fell asleep at once. And I dreamed that it was morning, and I was in my outdoor things going to Brown and Prodgers for the bag. And the black cat walked all the way before me with its tail up. But it did not come in. And when I got there I told a shopwalker who was standing near the door what I had come about. He was a tall, dark man with a sort of down look. He bowed and said, 'Follow me, madam.' And I followed him.

And we went through the--ahem! the gentlemen's underclothing, which I make a point of never going through, I always go round by the artificial flowers, until we came to a gla.s.s door near the lift. And he unlocked the door and I went in, and there on the table lay my bag. I was so delighted I ran to take it. But he stopped me, and I saw then what an evil-looking man he was. And he said, 'Look well at this bag, madam. Do you recognise it as yours?' And I looked and I said I did. There was the place where you had mended the handle.

"Then he took it up, and put it in my hand, and said, 'Look well at the contents, madam, and verify that they are all there.'

"So I looked at them, and they were all there, the tradesmen's books and everything. And I counted the money and it came right. The only thing I could not be sure about was the number of the meat lozenges. I thought one might have been stolen.

"Then when I had finished he said, 'Look well at me, madam, for I am your murderer.' And I was so terrified that I dropped the bag and woke with a scream. Now, Janet, don't you think it would be flying in the face of Providence to go there this morning? Dreams like that are not sent for nothing."

"Well, perhaps it would be better not," I said maliciously, for I knew very well that Aunt p.u.s.s.y would risk any form of death rather than lose twenty pounds.

"I thought perhaps you would not mind getting it for me. The danger would not be the same for you."

"I should not mind in the least, but they will only give it up to you."

Aunt p.u.s.s.y's superst.i.tion struggled with her miserliness throughout her frugal breakfast. Need I say her miserliness won. Had it ever sustained one defeat in all her life! But she remained agitated and nervous to an extreme degree. I offered to go with her, but she felt that was not protection enough. So I telephoned to Mark, and presently he arrived and Aunt p.u.s.s.y solemnly recapitulated her dream, and we all three set out together, she walking a little ahead, evidently on the look-out for the black cat.

Mark whispered to me that the portent about the black cat was being verified for us, not her, and that the shopwalker was evidently a very decent fellow, and that if he did his duty by us he should certainly ask him to be best man at our wedding. He had not made up his mind how deep his mourning ought to be for a murdered aunt-in-law, and was, to use his own expression, still poised like a humming-bird between a grey silk tie and a black one with a white spot, when we reached the shop.

It was early, and there were very few customers about. A tall dark man was walking up and down. Aunt p.u.s.s.y instantly clutched my arm, and whispered, "It's him!"

He saw us looking at him, and came up to us, a melancholy downcast, unprepossessing-looking man. As Aunt p.u.s.s.y could only stare at him, Mark, who had spoken to him the day before, told him the lady had come to identify the bag lost on the previous afternoon. The man bowed to Aunt p.u.s.s.y, and said, "Follow me, madam," and we followed him through several departments.

"Gentlemen's outfitting!" hissed Aunt p.u.s.s.y suddenly in my ear, pointing with a trembling finger at a line of striped and ta.s.selled pyjamas which she had avoided for many years.

Presently we came to a gla.s.s door, and the man took a key from his pocket, opened the door, and ushered us in. And there on a small table lay a bag--_the_ bag--Aunt p.u.s.s.y's bag, with the mended handle. She groaned.

The man fixed his eyes on her and said:

"Look well at this bag, madam. Do you recognise it as yours?"

"I do," said Aunt p.u.s.s.y, as inaudibly as a bride at the altar.

He then asked her what the contents were, and she described them categorically. He then took up the bag, put it into her hand, and said, "Look well at the contents, madam, and verify that they are all there."

They were all there. As Aunt p.u.s.s.y was too paralysed to utter another word I said so for her.

There was a long pause. The man looked searchingly from one to the other of us, and sighed. If he expected a tip he was disappointed. After a moment he moved towards Aunt p.u.s.s.y to open the door behind her. As he did so she gave a faint scream, and subsided on the floor in a swoon.

When we had resuscitated and conveyed her home, and Mark had gone, she said in a hollow voice:

"Wasn't it enough to make anybody faint?"

I said cheerfully that I did not see any cause for alarm; that the man no doubt always used exactly the same formula whenever lost property had to be identified.

"But why should he have said just at the last moment, 'Look well at me, madam, I am your murderer?'"

"Dear Aunt p.u.s.s.y, of course he never said any such thing!"

"He did! I heard him! That was why I fainted."

It was in vain I a.s.sured her that she was mistaken. She only became hysterical and said I was deceiving her; that she saw I had heard it, too. She had been eccentric before, but from this time onwards she became even more so. She would not deal at Brown and Prodgers any more.

She would not even pa.s.s the shop. She became more penurious than ever.

We could hardly persuade servants to stay with us so rigid was she about the dripping. It was all I could do to obtain the necessary money for our economical housekeeping. As the lease of our house was drawing to a close, she decided to move into a flat, thinking it might be cheaper.

But when it was all arranged and the lease signed, she refused to go in, because the man who met us there with a selection of wallpapers was, she averred, the same man whom she always spoke of as her murderer.

And I believe she was right. I thought I recognised him myself. I asked him if he had not formerly been at Brown and Prodgers, and he replied that he had; but was now employed by Whisk and Blake. After this encounter nothing would induce Aunt p.u.s.s.y to enter her new home. She had to pay heavily for her changeableness, but she only wrung her hands and paid up. The poor little woman had a hunted look. She evidently thought she had had a great escape.

Mark, who did not grow more rational with increasing years, said that this was obviously the psychological moment for us to marry, and drew a vivid picture of the group at the altar--the blus.h.i.+ng bridegroom and determined bride, and how when Aunt p.u.s.s.y saw her murderer step forward as the best man, with a gardenia in his b.u.t.tonhole, she would die of shock on the spot. And after handsomely remunerating our benefactor, he and I should whisk away in a superb motor, with a gross of s.h.i.+lling cigars on an expensive honeymoon.

Six months pa.s.sed, and there was no talk of any honeymoons. And then the lease of our house came to an end, and Aunt p.u.s.s.y, having refused to allow any other house or flat to be taken, she was forced to warehouse her furniture, and we had recourse to the miseries of hotel life.

Needless to say, we did not go to a quiet residential hotel, but to one of those monster buildings glued on to a railway station, where the inmates come and go every day.

Strangely enough, the galvanised activity of hotel existence pleased Aunt p.u.s.s.y. She called it "seeing life." She even made timid advances to other old ladies, knitting and dozing in the airless seclusion of the ladies' drawing-room, for, of course, we had no sitting-room. I saw plainly enough that we should live in those two small adjoining bedrooms under the roof, looking into a tiled air-shaft, for the remainder of Aunt p.u.s.s.y's life.

Three months we lived there, and then at the cheapest time in the year, when the hotel was half empty and the heat of our rooms appalling, she consented to move for a short time into the two rooms exactly below ours, which looked on the comparatively balmy open of the August thoroughfare, and had a balcony.

I had realised by this time that Aunt p.u.s.s.y was no longer responsible for her long cruelty to Mark and me, and my old affection for her revived somewhat with her pathetic dependence on me. She could hardly bear me out of her sight.

A certain Mrs. Curtis, a benevolent old Australian widow, living in rooms next ours on this lower floor, showed us great kindness. She grasped at once what Aunt p.u.s.s.y was, and she would sit with her by the hour, enabling me to go out in the air. She took me for drives. She soon discovered there was a Mark in the background, and often asked us to dine at her table, and invited him too.

She was said to be enormously wealthy, and she certainly wore a few wonderful jewels, but she was always shabbily dressed. Aunt p.u.s.s.y became very fond of her, and must have been a great trial to her, running in and out of her rooms at all hours. She gave us tea in her sitting-room next door to us, and this gave Aunt p.u.s.s.y special satisfaction, as we, having no sitting-room, could not possibly, as she constantly averred, return the civility.

Towards the end of September the hotel began to fill again, and the prices of the lower rooms were raised. So we moved back to our old quarters, and Mrs. Curtis, who had a noisy bedroom, took for herself and her son the two we had vacated. Her son was expected, and I have never forgotten her face of joy when she received a telegram from him during dinner saying he had reached Calais, and should arrive next morning.

We were dining early, for the kind old woman was taking Mark and me to the play. The play was delightful, and he and I, sitting together laughing at it, forgot our troubles, forgot that our youth was irretrievably gone, and that we were no nearer happiness than we had been thirteen years before. Our little friend in her weird black gown, with her thin fingers covered with large diamonds clutching an opera gla.s.s, looked at us with pained benevolence.

Mark saw us back to the door of our hotel, and after he was gone Mrs.

Curtis took my arm as we mounted the steps and said gently:

"You and that nice absurd man must keep your courage up. I waited seventeen years for my husband, and when it was over it was only like a day."

The night porter appeared at the lift door, and we got in. He stood with his back to me, and I did not look at him till he said: "What floor?"

The servants knew us so well that I was surprised at the question, and glanced at him. It was Aunt p.u.s.s.y's murderer. I recognised him instantly, and I will own my first thought was one of self-congratulation.

"Now we shall leave this horrible place," I thought. "She will never stay another day if he is here."