The Hillman Part 29

It was twenty minutes past two o'clock when John left Grosvenor Square, and it was twenty minutes to five when a sleepy hall-porter took him up in the lift to his rooms on the fourth floor at the Milan. The intervening s.p.a.ce of time was never anything to him but an ugly and tangled sheaf of memories.

His first overwhelming desire had been simply to escape from that enervating and perfervid atmosphere, to feel the morning air cool upon his forehead, to drink in great gulps of the fresh, windy sweetness. He felt as if poison had been poured into his veins, as if he had tampered with the unclean things of life.

He found himself, after a few minutes' hurried walking, in Piccadilly.

The shadows that flitted by him, lingering as he approached and offering their stereotyped greeting, filled him with a new horror. He turned abruptly down Duke Street and made his way to St. James's Park. From here he walked slowly eastward. When he reached the Strand, however, the storm in his soul was still unabated. He turned away from the Milan. The turmoil of his pa.s.sions drove him to the thoughts of flight. Half an hour later he entered St. Pancras Station.

"What time is the next train north to Kendal or Carlisle?" he inquired.

The porter stared at him. John's evening clothes were spattered with mud, the rain-drops were glistening on his coat and face, his new silk hat was ruined. It was not only his clothes, however, which attracted the man's attention. There was the strained look of a fugitive in John's face, a fugitive flying from some threatened fate.

"The newspaper train at five thirty is the earliest, sir," he said. "I don't know whether you can get to Kendal by it, but it stops at Carlisle."

John looked at the clock. There was an hour to wait. He wandered about the station, gloomy, chill, deserted. The place sickened him, and he strolled out into the streets again. By chance he left the station by the same exit as on the day of his arrival in London. He stopped short.

How could he have forgotten, even for a moment? This was not the world which he had come to discover. This was just some plague-spot upon which he had stumbled. Through the murky dawn and across the ugly streets he looked into Louise's drawing-room. She would be there waiting for him on the morrow!

Louise! The thought of her was like a sweet, purifying stimulant. He felt the throbbing of his nerves soothed. He felt himself growing calm.

The terror of the last few hours was like a nightmare which had pa.s.sed.

He summoned a taxicab and was driven to the Milan. His wanderings for the night were over.

XVIII

Sophy Gerard sat in the little back room of Louise's house, which the latter called her den, but which she seldom entered. The little actress was looking very trim and neat in a simple blue-serge costume which fitted her to perfection, her hair very primly arranged and tied up with a bow. She had a pen in her mouth, there was a sheaf of bills before her, and an open housekeeping-book lay on her knee. She had been busy for the last half-hour making calculations, the result of which had brought a frown to her face.

"There is no doubt about it," she decided. "Louise is extravagant!"

The door opened, and Louise herself, in a gray morning gown of some soft material, with a bunch of deep-red roses at her waist, looked into the room.

"Why, little girl," she exclaimed, "how long have you been here?"

"All the morning," Sophy replied. "I took the dogs out, and then I started on your housekeeping-book and the bills. Your checks will have to be larger than ever this month, Louise, and I don't see how you can possibly draw them unless you go and see your bankers first."

Louise threw herself into an easy chair.

"Dear me!" she sighed. "I thought I had been so careful!"

"How can you talk about being careful?" Sophy protested, tapping the little pile of bills with her forefinger. "You seem to have had enough asparagus and strawberries every day for at least half a dozen people.

As for the butcher, I am going this afternoon to tell him exactly what I think of him. And there are several matters here," she went on, "concerning which you must really talk to the cook yourself. For instance--"

"Oh, please don't!" Louise broke in. "I know I am extravagant. I suppose I always shall be; but if there is one thing in the world I will not do, it is talk to the cook! She might insist upon going, and I have never known any one who made such entrees. Remember, child, it will be full salary in a fortnight's time."

"You will have to go and see your bankers, anyhow," Sophy declared.

"It's no use my writing out these checks for you. Unless you have paid in some money I don't know anything about, you seem to be overdrawn already."

"I will see to that," Louise promised. "The bank manager is such a charming person. Besides, what are banks for but to oblige their clients? How pale you look, little girl! Were you not late last night?"

Sophy swung round in her place.

"I am all right. I spent the evening in my rooms and went to bed at eleven o'clock. Who's lunching with you? I see the table is laid for two."

Louise glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece.

"Mr. Strangewey," she replied. "I suppose he will be here in a minute or two."

Sophy dropped the housekeeping-book and jumped up.

"I'd better go, then."

"Of course not," Louise answered. "You must stay to lunch. Ring the bell and tell them to lay a place for you. Afterward, if you like, you may come in here and finish brooding over these wretched bills while Mr.

Strangewey talks to me."

Sophy came suddenly across the room and sank on the floor at Louise's feet.

"What are you going to do about Mr. Strangewey, Louise?" she asked wistfully.

"What am I going to do about him?"

"He is in love with you," Sophy continued. "I am sure--I am almost sure of it."

Louise's laugh was unconvincing.

"I do not think," she said, "that he quite knows what it means to be in love."

Sophy suddenly clasped her friend's knees.

"Dear," she whispered, "perhaps I am a little fool, but tell me, please!"

Louise, for a moment, was startled. Then she leaned forward and kissed the eager, upturned face.

"You foolish child!" she exclaimed. "I believe that you have been worrying. Why do you think so much about other people?"

"Please tell me," Sophy begged. "I want to understand how things really are between you and John Strangewey. Are you in love with him?"

Louise's eyes were soft and dreamy.

"I wish I knew," she answered. "If I am, then there are things in life more wonderful than I have ever dreamed of. He doesn't live in our world--and our world, as you know, has its grip. He knows nothing about my art, and you can guess what life would be to me without that. What future could there be for him and for me together? I cannot remake myself."

There was something in Sophy's face which was almost like wonder.

"So this is the meaning of the change in you, Louise! I knew that something had happened. You have seemed so different for the last few months."

Louise nodded.

"London has never been the same place to me since I first met him in c.u.mberland," she admitted. "Sometimes I think I am--to use your own words--in love with John. Sometimes I feel it is just a queer, indistinct, but pa.s.sionate appreciation of the abstract beauty of the life he seems to stand for."