“For a little time,” she answered. “I meant to say good-bye to you to-night. Or, after all, is it worth while? The Channel is a little broader than the Boulevards—but one crosses it sometimes.”
He looked at her with white, set face.
“Yes,” he said, “I shall come. That is very certain. But, after all, it will be different. I think that I have become a drug drinker. I need you every day. In the mornings I find labour easy because I am going to see you. In the afternoon my brain and fingers leap to their work because you have been with me. Anna, you shall not go. I cannot let you go.”
She threw away the end of her cigarette. Without turning or looking in his direction she leaned forwards, her head supported upon her fingers, her elbows upon her knees. She gazed steadily out of the window at that arc of glittering lights. He made a quick movement towards her, but she did not flinch. His arm fell to his side. The effort of self-repression cost him a sob.
“David,” she said, “you are not a coward, are you?”
“I do not know,” he muttered. “The bravest of us have joints in our armour.”
“You are not a coward,” she repeated, “or you would not be my friend. A woman may choose any one for her lover, but for her friend she makes no mistake. You are not a coward David, and you must not talk like one. Put out your hand and bid me God-speed. It is the only way.”
“I cannot do it!” he cried hoarsely. “I cannot part with you. You have grown into my life. Anna——”
Again she stopped him, but this time it was not so easy. The man’s passion became almost unbearable at the thought of losing her. And yet, as she rose slowly to her feet and stood looking at him with outstretched hands, a strange mixture of expressions shining in her wonderful eyes, he realized in some measure the strength of her determination, felt the utter impotence of anything which he could say to her. He forgot for the moment his own self-pity, the egotism of his own passionate love. He took her hands firmly in his and raised them to his lips.
“You shall go,” he declared. “I will make of the days and weeks one long morning, but remember the afternoon must come. Always remember that.”
Her hands fell to her side. She remained for a few moments standing as though listening to his retreating footsteps. Then she turned, and entering the inner room, commenced to dress hastily for the street.
The little man with the closely-cropped beard and hair looked at her keenly through his gold eye-glasses. He sat before a desk littered all over with papers and official looking documents. The walls of the room were lined with shelves, on which were glass jars, retorts, countless bottles and many appliances of surgical science. A skeleton was propped against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere seemed heavy with the odour of drugs.
“You are Mademoiselle Pellissier?” he asked, without rising to his feet.
Anna admitted the fact.
“We sent for you several hours ago,” he remarked.
“I came directly I was disengaged,” Anna answered. “In any case, there is probably some mistake. I have very few friends in Paris.”
He referred to a sheet of paper by his side.
“Your name and address were upon an envelope found in the pocket of an Englishman who was brought here late last night suffering from serious injuries,” he said in a dry official tone. “As it is doubtful whether the man will live, we should be glad if you would identify him.”
“It is most unlikely that I shall be able to do so,” Anna answered. “To the best of my belief, I have not a single English acquaintance in the city.”
“My dear young lady,” the official said irritably, “this man would not have your name and address in his pocket without an object. You cannot tell whether you know him or not until you have seen him. Be so good as to come this way.”
With a little shrug of the shoulders Anna followed him. They ascended by a lift to one of the upper floors, passed through a long ward, and finally came to a bed in the extreme corner, round which a screen had been arranged. A nurse came hurrying up.
“He is quiet only this minute,” she said to the official. “All the time he is shouting and muttering. If this is the young lady, she can perhaps calm him.”
Anna stepped to the foot of the bed. An electric light flashed out from the wall. The face of the man who lay there was clearly visible. Anna merely glanced at the coarse, flushed features, and at once shook her head.
“I have never seen him in my life,” she said to the official. “I have not the least idea who he is.”
Just then the man’s eyes opened. He saw the girl, and sprang up in bed.
“Annabel at last,” he shouted. “Where have you been? All these hours I have been calling for you. Annabel, I was lying. Who says that I am not Meysey Hill? I was trying to scare you. See, it is on my cards—M. Hill, Meysey Hill. Don’t touch the handle, Annabel! Curse the thing, you’ve jammed it now. Do you want to kill us both? Stop the thing. Stop it!”
Anna stepped back bewildered, but the man held out his arms to her.
“I tell you it was a lie!” he shouted wildly. “Can’t you believe me? I am Meysey Hill. I am the richest man in England. I am the richest man in the world. You love money. You know you do, Annabel. Never mind, I’ve got plenty. We’ll go to the shops. Diamonds! You shall have all that you can carry away, sacks full if you like. Pearls too! I mean it. I tell you I’m Meysey Hill, the railway man. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me in this beastly thing. Annabel! Annabel!”
His voice became a shriek. In response to an almost imperative gesture from the nurse, Anna laid her hand upon his. He fell back upon the pillows with a little moan, clutching the slim white fingers fiercely. In a moment his grasp grew weaker. The perspiration stood out upon his forehead. His eyes closed.
Anna stepped back at once with a little gasp of relief. The hand which the man had been holding hung limp and nerveless at her side. She held it away from her with an instinctive repulsion, born of her unconquerable antipathy to the touch of strangers. She began rubbing it with her pocket-handkerchief. The man himself was not a pleasant object. Part of his head was swathed in linen bandages. Such of his features as were visible were of coarse mould. His eyes were set too close together. Anna turned deliberately away from the bedside. She followed the official back into his room.
“Well?” he asked her tersely.
“I can only repeat what I said before,” she declared. “To the best of my belief, I have never seen the man in my life.”
“But he recognized you,” the official objected.
“He fancied that he did,” she corrected him coolly. “I suppose delusions are not uncommon to patients in his condition.”
The official frowned.
“Your name and address in his pocket was no delusion,” he said sharply. “I do not wish to make impertinent inquiries into your private life. Nothing is of any concern of ours except the discovery of the man’s identity. He was picked up from amongst the wreckage of a broken motor on the road to Versailles last night, and we have information that a lady was with him only a few minutes before the accident occurred.”
“You are very unbelieving,” Anna said coldly. “I hope you will not compel me to say again that I do not know the man’s name, nor, to the best of my belief, have I ever seen him before in my life.”
The official shrugged his shoulders.
“You decline to help us in any way, then,” he said. “Remember that the man will probably die. He had little money about him, and unless friends come to his aid he must be treated as a pauper.”
“I do not wish to seem unfeeling,” Anna said, slowly, “but I can only repeat that I am absolutely without concern in the matter. The man is a stranger to me.”
The official had no more to say. Only it was with a further and most unbelieving shrug of the shoulders that he resumed his seat.
“You will be so good as to leave us your correct name and address, mademoiselle,” he said curtly.
“You have them both,” Anna answered.
He opened the door for her with a faint disagreeable smile.
“It is possible, mademoiselle,” he said, “that this affair is not yet ended. It may bring us together again.”
She passed out without reply. Yet she took with her an uneasy consciousness that in this affair might lie the germs of future trouble.
As she crossed the square, almost within a stone’s throw of her lodgings, she came face to face with Courtlaw. He stopped short with a little exclamation of surprise.
“My dear friend,” she laughed, “not so tragic, if you please.”
He recovered himself.
“I was surprised, I admit,” he said. “You did not tell me that you were going out, or I would have offered my escort. Do you know how late it is?”
She nodded.
“I heard the clock strike as I crossed the square,” she answered. “I was sent for to go to the Hospital St. Denis. But what are you doing here?”
“Old Père Runeval met me on your doorstep, and he would not let me go. I have been sitting with him ever since. The Hospital St. Denis, did you say? I hope that no one of our friends has met with an accident.”
She shook her head.
“They wanted me to identify some one whom I had certainly never seen before in my life, and to tell you the truth, they were positively rude to me because I could not. Have you ever heard the name of Meysey Hill?”
“Meysey Hill?” He repeated it after her, and she knew at once from his tone and his quick glance into her face that the name possessed some significance for him.
“Yes, I have heard of him, and I know him by sight,” he admitted. “He was a friend of your sister’s, was he not?”
“I never heard her mention his name,” she answered. “Still, of course, it is possible. This man was apparently not sure whether he was Meysey Hill or not.”
“How long had he been in the hospital?” Courtlaw asked.
“Since last night.”
“Then, whoever he may be, he is not Meysey Hill,” Courtlaw said. “That young man was giving a luncheon party to a dozen friends at the Café de Paris to-day. I sat within a few feet of him. I feel almost inclined to regret the fact.”
“Why?” she asked.
“If one half of the stories about Meysey Hill are true,” he answered, “I would not stretch out my little finger to save his life.”
“Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“I am an extreme person at times. This man has an evil reputation. I know of scandalous deeds which he has done.”
Anna had reached the house where she lodged, but she hesitated on the doorstep.
“Have you ever seen Annabel with him?” she asked.
“Never.”
“It is odd that this man at the hospital should call himself Meysey Hill,” she remarked.
“If you wish,” he said, “I will go there in the morning and see what can be done for him.”
“It would be very kind of you,” she declared. “I am only sorry that I did not ask you to go with me.”
She rang the bell, and he waited by her side until she was admitted to the tall, gloomy lodging-house. And ever after it struck him that her backward smile as she disappeared was charged with some special significance. The door closed upon her, and he moved reluctantly away. When next he asked for her, some twelve hours later, he was told that Mademoiselle had left. His most eager inquiries and most lavish bribes could gain no further information than that she had left for England, and that her address was—London.
“Anna!”
Anna kissed her sister and nodded to her aunt. Then she sat down—uninvited—and looked from one to the other curiously. There was something about their greeting and the tone of Annabel’s exclamation which puzzled her.
“I wish,” she said, “that you would leave off looking at me as though I were something grisly. I am your very dutiful niece, aunt, and your most devoted sister, Annabel. I haven’t murdered any one, or broken the law in any way that I know of. Perhaps you will explain the state of panic into which I seem to have thrown you.”
Annabel, who was looking very well, and who was most becomingly dressed, moved to a seat from which she could command a view of the road outside. She was the first to recover herself. Her aunt, a faded, anæmic-looking lady of somewhat too obtrusive gentility, was still sitting with her hand pressed to her heart.
Annabel looked up and down the empty street, and then turned to her sister.
“For one thing, Anna,” she remarked, “we had not the slightest idea that you had left, or were leaving Paris. You did not say a word about it last week, nor have you written. It is quite a descent from the clouds, isn’t it?”
“I will accept that,” Anna said, “as accounting for the surprise. Perhaps you will now explain the alarm.”
Miss Pellissier was beginning to recover herself. She too at once developed an anxious interest in the street outside.
“I am sure, Anna,” she said, “I do not see why we should conceal the truth from you. We are expecting a visit from Sir John Ferringhall at any moment. He is coming here to tea.”
“Well?” Anna remarked calmly.
“Sir John,” her aunt repeated, with thin emphasis, “is coming to see your sister.”
Anna drummed impatiently with her fingers against the arm of her chair.
“Well!” she declared good-humouredly. “I shan’t eat him.”
Miss Pellissier stiffened visibly.
“This is not a matter altogether for levity, Anna,” she said. “Your sister’s future is at stake. I imagine that even you must realize that this is of some importance.”
Anna glanced towards her sister, but the latter avoided her eyes.
“I have always,” she admitted calmly, “taken a certain amount of interest in Annabel’s future. I should like to know how it is concerned with Sir John Ferringhall, and how my presence intervenes.”
“Sir John,” Miss Pellissier said impressively, “has asked your sister to be his wife. It is a most wonderful piece of good fortune, as I suppose you will be prepared to admit. The Ferringhalls are of course without any pretence at family, but Sir John is a very rich man, and will be able to give Annabel a very enviable position in the world. The settlements which he has spoken of, too, are most munificent. No wonder we are anxious that nothing should happen to make him change his mind.”
“I still——”
Anna stopped short. Suddenly she understood. She grew perhaps a shade paler, and she glanced out into the street, where her four-wheeler cab, laden with luggage, was still waiting.
“Sir John of course disapproves of me,” she remarked slowly.
“Sir John is a man of the world,” her aunt answered coldly. “He naturally does not wish for connexions which are—I do not wish to hurt you feelings, Anna, but I must say it—not altogether desirable.”
The irrepressible smile curved Anna’s lips. She glanced towards her sister, and curiously enough found in her face some faint reflection of her own rather sombre mirth. She leaned back in her chair. It was no use. The smile had become a laugh. She laughed till the tears stood in her eyes.
“I had a visit from Sir John in my rooms,” she said. “Did he tell you, Annabel?”
“Yes.”
“He mentioned the matter to me also,” Miss Pellissier remarked stiffly. “The visit seems to have made a most painful impression upon him. To tell you the truth, he spoke to me very seriously upon the subject.”
Anna sprang up.
“I will be off,” she declared. “My cab with all that luggage would give the whole show away. Good-bye, aunt.”
Miss Pellissier tried ineffectually to conceal her relief.
“I do not like to seem inhospitable, Anna,” she said hesitatingly.“And of course you are my niece just as Annabel is, although I am sorry to learn that your conduct has been much less discreet than hers. But at the same time, I must say plainly that I think your presence here just now would be a great misfortune. I wish very much that you had written before leaving Paris.”
Anna nodded.
“Quite right,” she said. “I ought to have done. Good-bye aunt. I’ll come and see you again later on. Annabel, come to the door with me,” she added a little abruptly. “There is something which I must say to you.”
Annabel rose and followed her sister from the room. A maidservant held the front door open. Anna sent her away.
“Annabel,” she said brusquely. “Listen to me.”
“Well?”
“Sir John came to me—that you know—and you can guess what I told him. No, never mind about thanking me. I want to ask you a plain question, and you must answer me faithfully. Is all that folly done with—for ever?”
Annabel shivered ever so slightly.
“Of course it is, Anna. You ought to know that. I am going to make a fresh start.”
“Be very sure that you do,” Anna said slowly. “If I thought for a moment that there was any chance of a relapse, I should stop here and tell him the truth even now.”
Annabel looked at her with terrified eyes.
“Anna,” she cried, “you must believe me. I am really in earnest. I would not have him know—now—for the world.”
“Very well,” Anna said. “I will believe you. Remember that he’s not at all a bad sort, and to speak frankly, he’s your salvation. Try and let him never regret it. There’s plenty to be got out of life in a decent sort of way. Be a good wife to him. You can if you will.”
“I promise,” Annabel declared. “He is very kind, Anna, really, and not half such a prig as he seems.”
Anna moved towards the door, but her sister detained her.
“Won’t you tell me why you have come to England?” she said. “It was such a surprise to see you. I thought that you loved Paris and your work so much.”
A momentary bitterness crept into Anna’s tone.
“I have made no progress with my work,” she said slowly, “and the money was gone. I had to ask Mr. Courtlaw for his true verdict, and he gave it me. I have given up painting.”
“Anna!”
“It is true, dear. After all there are other things. All that I regret are the wasted years, and I am not sure that I regret them. Only of course I must begin something else at once. That is why I came to London.”
“But what are you going to do—where are you going to live?” Annabel asked. “Have you any money?”
“Lots,” Anna answered laconically. “Never mind me. I always fall on my feet, you know.”
“You will let us hear from you—let us know where you are, very soon?” Annabel called out from the step.
Anna nodded as she briskly crossed the pavement.
“Some day,” she answered. “Run in now. There’s a hansom coming round the corner.”
Anna sat back in her cab, but found it remain stationary.
“Gracious!” she exclaimed to herself. “I don’t know where to go to.”
The cabman, knocking with the butt end of his whip upon the window, reminded her that he was in a similar predicament.
“Drive towards St. Pancras,” she directed, promptly. “I will tell you when to stop.”
The cab rumbled off. Anna leaned forward, watching the people in the streets. It was then for the first time she remembered that she had said nothing to her sister of the man in the hospital.
Northwards, away from the inhospitality of West Kensington, rumbled the ancient four-wheel cab, laden with luggage and drawn by a wheezy old horse rapidly approaching its last days. Inside was Anna, leaning a little forward to watch the passers-by, bright-eyed, full to the brim of the insatiable curiosity of youth—the desire to understand and appreciate this new world in which she found herself. She was practically an outcast, she had not even the ghost of a plan as to her future, and she had something less than five pounds in her pocket. She watched the people and hummed softly to herself.
Suddenly she thrust her head out of the window.
“Please stop, cabman,” she ordered.
The man pulled up. It was not a difficult affair.
“Is this Montague Street, W.C.?” she asked.
The man looked as though he would have liked to deny it, but could not.
“Stay where you are for a moment,” she directed. “I want to find an address.”
The man contented himself with a nod. Anna rummaged about in her dressing-case, and finally drew out a letter. On the envelope was written—
Sydney Courtlaw, Esq.,
13, Montague St.
She put her head out of the window.
“Number 13, please, cabman.”
“We’ve come past it, miss,” the man answered, with a note of finality in his gruff voice.
“Then turn round and go back there,” she directed.
The man muttered something inaudible, and gathered up the reins. His horse, which had apparently gone to sleep, preferred to remain where he was. After a certain amount of manœuvring, however, he was induced to crawl around, and in a few minutes came to stop again before a tall brightly-painted house, whichseemed like an oasis of colour and assertive prosperity in a long dingy row. This was number 13, Montague Street, familiarly spoken of in the neighbourhood as “White’s.”
Anna promptly alighted with the letter in her hand. The door was opened for her by a weary-looking youth in a striped jacket several sizes too large for him. The rest of his attire was nondescript.
“Does Mr. Courtlaw, Mr. Sydney Courtlaw, live here, please?” Anna asked him.
“Not home yet, miss,” the young man replied. “Generally gets here about seven.”
Anna hesitated, and then held out the letter.
“I think that I will leave this letter for him,” she said. “It is from his brother in Paris. Say that I will call again or let him know my address in London.”
The young man accepted the letter and the message, and seemed about to close the door when a lady issued from one of the front rooms and intervened. She wore a black satin dress, a little shiny at the seams, a purposeless bow of white tulle at the back of her neck, and a huge chatelaine. She addressed Anna with a beaming smile and a very creditable mixture of condescension and officiousness. Under the somewhat trying incandescent light her cheeks pleaded guilty to a recent use of the powder puff.
“I think that you were inquiring for Mr. Courtlaw,” she remarked. “He is one of our guests—perhaps I should say boarders here, but he seldom returns before dinner-time. We dine at seven-thirty. Can I give him any message for you?”
“Thank you,” Anna answered. “I have a letter for him from his brother, which I was just leaving.”
“I will see that he gets it immediately on his return,” the lady promised. “You did not wish to see him particularly this evening, then?”
Anna hesitated.
“Well, no,” she answered. “To tell you the truth though, I am quite a stranger in London, and it occurred to me that Mr. Courtlaw might have been able to give me an idea where to stop.”
The lady in black satin looked at the pile of luggage outside and hesitated.
“Were you thinking of private apartments, a boarding-house or an hotel?” she asked.
“I really had not thought about it at all,” Anna answered smiling. “I expected to stay with a relation, but I found that their arrangements did not allow of it. I have been used to living in apartments in Paris, but I suppose the system is different here.”
The lady in black satin appeared undecided. She looked from Anna, who was far too nice-looking to be travelling about alone, to that reassuring pile of luggage, and wrinkled her brows thoughtfully.
“Of course,” she said diffidently, “this is a boarding-house, although we never take in promiscuous travellers. The class of guests we have are all permanent, and I am obliged to be very careful indeed. But—if you are a friend of Mr. Courtlaw’s—I should like to oblige Mr. Courtlaw.”
“It is very nice of you to think of it,” Anna said briskly. “I should really like to find somewhere to stay, if it was only for a few nights.”
The lady stood away from the door.
“Will you come this way,” she said, “into the drawing-room? There is no one there just now. Most of my people are upstairs dressing for dinner. The gentlemen are so particular now, and a good thing too, I say. I was always used to it, and I think it gives quite a tone to an establishment. Please sit down, Miss—dear me, I haven’t asked you your name yet.”
“My name is Pellissier,” Anna said, “Anna Pellissier.”
“I am Mrs. White,” the lady in black satin remarked. “It makes one feel quite awkward to mention such a thing, but after all I think that it is best for both parties. Could you give me any references?”
“There is Mr. Courtlaw,” Anna said, “and my solicitors, Messrs. Le Mercier and Stowe of St. Heliers. They are rather a long way off, but you could write to them. I am sorry that I do not know any one in London. But after all, Mrs. White, I am not sure that I could afford to come to you. I am shockingly poor. Please tell me what your terms are.”
“Well,” Mrs. White said slowly, “it depends a good deal upon what rooms you have. Just now my best ones are all taken.”
“So much the better,” Anna declared cheerfully. “The smallest will do for me quite well.”
Mrs. White looked mysteriously about the room as though to be sure that no one was listening.
“I should like you to come here,” she said. “It’s a great dealfor a young lady who’s alone in the world, as I suppose you are at present, to have a respectable home, and I do not think in such a case that private apartments are at all desirable. We have a very nice set of young people here too just at present, and you would soon make some friends. I will take you for thirty-five shillings a week. Please don’t let any one know that.”
“I have no idea what it costs to live in London,” Anna said, “but I should like very much to come for a short time if I might.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. White said. “Two days’ notice shall be sufficient on either side.”
“And I may bring my luggage in and send that cabman away?” Anna asked. “Dear me, what a relief! If I had had any nerves that man would have trampled upon them long ago.”
“Cabmen are so trying,” Mrs. White assented. “You need have no further trouble. The manservant shall bring your trunks in and pay the fare too, if you like.”
Anna drew out her purse at once.
“You are really a good Samaritan,” she declared. “I am perfectly certain that that man meant to be rude to me. He has been bottling it up all the way from West Kensington.”
Mrs. White rang the bell.
“Come upstairs,” she said, “and I will show you your room. And would you mind hurrying a little. You won’t want to be late the first evening, and it’s ten minutes past seven now. Gracious, there’s the gong. This way, my dear—and—you’ll excuse my mentioning it, but a quiet blouse and a little chiffon, you know, will be quite sufficient. It’s your first evening, and early impressions do count for so much. You understand me, I’m sure.”
Anna was a little puzzled, but she only laughed.
“Perhaps, as I’ve only just arrived,” she remarked, “I might be forgiven if I do not change my skirt. I packed so hurriedly that it will take me a long time to find my things.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. White assured her. “Certainly. I’ll mention it. You’re tired, of course. This is your room. The gong will go at seven-thirty. Don’t be late if you can help it.”
Anna was not late, but her heart sank within her when sheentered the drawing-room. It was not a hopeful looking group. Two or three podgy-looking old men with wives to match, half-a-dozen overdressed girls, and a couple of underdressed American ones, who still wore the clothes in which they had been tramping half over London since breakfast time. A sprinkling of callow youths, and a couple of pronounced young Jews, who were talking loudly together in some unintelligible jargon of the City. What had she to do with such as these? She had hard work to keep a smiling face, as Mrs. White, who had risen to greet her, proceeded with a formal, and from Anna’s point of view, a wholly unnecessary round of introductions. And then suddenly—a relief. A young man—almost a boy, slight, dark, and with his brother’s deep grey eyes—came across the room to her.
“You must be the Miss Pellissier of whom David has told me so much,” he said, shyly. “I am very glad that you have come here. I heard from David about you only this morning.”
“You are marvellously like your brother,” Anna said, beaming upon him. “I have a letter for you, and no end of messages. Where can we sit down and talk?”
He led her across the room towards a window recess, in which a tall, fair young man was seated with an evening paper in his hand.
“Let me introduce my friend to you,” Courtlaw said. “Arthur, this is Miss Pellissier—Mr. Brendon. Brendon and I are great chums,” he went on nervously. “We are clerks in the same bank. I don’t think that the rest of the people here like us very well, do they, Arthur, so we’re obliged to be friends.”
Anna shook hands with Brendon—a young man also, but older and more self-possessed than Sydney Courtlaw.
“Sydney is quite right, Miss Pellissier,” he said. “He and I don’t seem to get on at all with our fellow-guests, as Mrs. White calls them. You really ought not to stay here and talk to us. It is a most inauspicious start for you.”
“Dear me,” Anna laughed, “how unfortunate! What ought I to do? Should I be forgiven, do you think, if I were to go and hold that skein of wool for the old lady in the yellow cap?”
“Don’t speak of her irreverently,” Brendon said, in an awed whisper. “Her husband was a county councillor, and she has a niece who comes to see her in a carriage. I wish she wouldn’t look like that at us over her glasses.”
Horace, the manservant, transformed now into the semblance of a correctly garbed waiter, threw open the door.
“Dinner is served, ma’am,” he announced to Mrs. White.
There was no rush. Everything was done in a genteel and ordinary way, but on the other hand, there was no lingering. Anna found herself next Sydney Courtlaw, with his friend close at hand. Opposite to her was a sallow-visaged young man, whose small tie seemed like a smudge of obtusively shiny black across the front of a high close-drawn collar. As a rule, Courtlaw told her softly, he talked right and left, and to everybody throughout the whole of the meal—to-night he was almost silent, and seemed to devote his whole attention to staring at Anna. After the first courses however she scarcely noticed him. Her two new friends did their best to entertain her.
“I can’t imagine, Miss Pellissier,” Brendon said, leaning towards her, “whatever made you think of coming to stay if only for a week at a Montague Street boarding-house. Are you going to write a novel?”
“Not I,” she answered gaily. “I came to London unexpectedly, and my friends could not take me in. I had a vague sort of idea that this was the region where one finds apartments, so I told my cabman to drive in this direction while I sat inside his vehicle and endeavoured to form a plan of campaign. He brought me past this house, and I thought I would call and leave your brother’s letter. Then I saw Mrs. White——”
“No more,” Sydney Courtlaw begged, laughingly. “You were booked of course. An unexpected vacancy, wasn’t it? Every one comes in on unexpected vacancy.”
“And they go?”
“When they get the chance. It really isn’t so easy to go as it seems. We have come to the conclusion, Brendon and I, that Mrs. White is psychologically gifted. She throws a sort of spell over us all. We struggle against it at first, but in the end we have to submit. She calls us her guests, but in reality we are her prisoners. We simply can’t get away. There’s that old gentleman at the end of the table—Bullding his name is. He will tell you confidentially that he simply hates the place. Yet he’s been here for six years, and he’s as much a fixture as that sham mahogany sideboard. Everyone will grumble to you confidentially—Miss Ellicot, she’s our swagger young lady, you know—up there, next to Miss White, she will tell you that it is so out of the world here, so far away from everyone one knows. Old Kesterton, choleric-looking individual nearly opposite, will curse the cookingtill he’s black in the face, but he never misses a dinner. The Semitic looking young man opposite, who seems to have been committing you to memory piecemeal, will tell you that he was never so bored in all his life as he has been here. Yet he stays. They all stay!”
“And you yourself?”
Brendon laughed.
“Oh, we are also under the spell,” he declared, “but I think that we are here mainly because it is cheap. It is really cheap, you know. To appreciate it you should try rooms.”
“Is this a fair sample of the dinner?” Anna asked, who had the healthy appetite of a strong young woman.
“It is, if anything, a little above the average,” Brendon admitted.
Anna said nothing. The young man opposite was straining his ears to listen to their conversation. Mrs. White caught her eye, and smiled benignly down the table.
“I hope that Mr. Courtlaw is looking after you, Miss Pellissier,” she said.
“Admirably, thank you,” Anna answered.
The young lady with frizzled hair, whom Brendon had pointed out to her as Miss Ellicot, leaned forward from her hostess’s side. She had very frizzy hair indeed, very black eyebrows, a profusion of metallic adornments about her neck and waist, and an engaging smile.
“We are so interested to hear, Miss Pellissier,” she said, “that you have been living in Paris. We shall expect you to tell us all what to wear.”
Anna smiled very faintly, and shook her head.
“I have come from a very unfashionable quarter,” she said, “and I do not think that I have been inside a milliner’s shop for a year. Besides, it is all reversed now, you know. Paris copies London.”
Brendon leaned over confidentially.
“You are in luck, Miss Pellissier,” he declared. “Your success here is absolutely meteoric. Miss Ellicot has spoken to you, the great Mr. Bullding is going to. For five minutes he has been trying to think of something to say. I am not sure, but I believe that he has just thought of something.”
“May I be prepared?” Anna asked. “Which is Mr. Bullding?”
“Stout old gentleman four places down on the left. Look out, it’s coming.”
Anna raised her eyes, and caught the earnest gaze of an elderly gentleman with a double chin, a protuberant under lip, and a snuff-stained coat.
“I was in Paris four years ago,” Mr. Building announced solemnly. “It rained the whole of the time, but we saw all the sights, and the place never seemed dull.”
“It takes a great deal of bad weather to depress the true Parisian,” Anna admitted.
“A volatile temperament—yes, a volatile temperament,” Mr. Bullding repeated, rather struck with the phrase. “It is a pity that as nations we are not more friendly.”
Anna nodded and turned again to Courtlaw.
“I will not be drawn into a conversation with Mr. Bullding,” she declared. “I believe that he would bore me. Tell me, what are these bananas and nuts for?”
“Dessert.”
Anna laid down her serviette.
“Let us escape,” she said. “Couldn’t we three go out and have some coffee somewhere? The thought of that drawing-room paralyses me.”
Brendon laughed softly.
“We can,” he said, “and we will. But it is only fair to warn you that it isn’t expected. Mrs. White is proud of her drawing-room evenings. There is a musical programme, and we have the windows open and blinds up, and a pink lamp shade over the piano lamp—a sort of advertisement of the place, you know. Strangers look in and long, and neighbours are moved to envy.”
Anna hesitated no longer. She almost sprang to her feet. Conscious of Mrs. White’s surprise as she swung easily down the room, followed by the two young men, she smiled a careless explanation at her.
“I am dying to renew my acquaintance with London, Mrs. White,” she remarked.
“You are not going out—this evening, I trust,” that lady asked, a trifle dismayed.
Anna did not pause, but she looked over her shoulder with slightly lifted eyebrows.
“Why not? They tell me that London is impossible till after ten, and I want my first impressions to be favourable.”
“There will be some coffee and music in the drawing-room in a few minutes,” Mrs. White said.
“Thanks, I’m not very fond of coffee,” Anna answered, “and I hate music. Good night.”
Mrs. White gasped, and then stiffened. Miss Ellicot, who sang ballads, and liked Brendon to turn over the pages for her, tossed her head. Anna passed serenely out.
Anna sat in a chair in her room and sighed. She was alone, and the mask of her unchanging high spirits was for the moment laid aside. She was a little paler than when she had come to London, a little paler and a little thinner. There were dark rims under her eyes, soft now with unshed tears. For this three weeks had been the hardest of her life. There had been disappointments and humiliations, and although she hated to admit it even to herself, she was in desperate straits. Nevertheless, she was still fighting.
“There is one thing I must concentrate on at the moment,” she told herself, “and that is how to pay my next week’s bill to Mrs. White. It ought not to be much. I have gone without dinner for three nights, and—come in.”
Sydney Courtlaw followed his timid knock. Anna raised her eyebrows at the sight of him. He was in evening dress: swallow-tailed coat and white tie.
“Is this a concession to Mrs. White?” she asked, laughing. “How gratified she must have been! If only I had known I would have made an effort to get home in time for dinner.”
“Not exactly,” he answered nervously. “Please forgive me coming up, Miss Pellissier, but you have not been down to dinner for three nights, and—Brendon and I—we were afraid that you might be unwell.”
“Never better in my life,” Anna declared briskly. “I had lunch very late to-day, and I did not get home in time for dinner.”
She smiled grimly at the recollection of that lunch—tea and roll at a cheap café. Sydney was watching her eagerly.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, “because we want you to do us a favour. Brendon’s had an awful stroke of luck.”
“I’m delighted,” she exclaimed. “Do tell me all about it.”
“He only heard this afternoon,” Sydney continued. “An uncle in New York is dead, and has left him loads of money. A lawyer has come all the way from America about it. We want to celebrate, and we want you to help us. Brendon suggests supper at the Carlton. We meant to make it dinner and atheatre, but you were not home. We thought of starting in half an hour’s time, and trying for a theatre somewhere on the way.”
“How delightful!” exclaimed Anna. “I should love to come. It is very sweet of you to have waited for me. Run away now, please. I must see if I have a gown fit to wear.”
“This,” Anna declared, as she sipped her wine and looked around her, “reminds me more of Paris than any place I have yet seen. I suppose it is the mirrors and decorations.”
“And the people?” Brendon asked. “What do you think of them?”
Anna extended her critical survey and shrugged her shoulders.
“What can one say?” she exclaimed. “Did you ever see women so weary-looking and so dowdy? They do not talk. They seem to spend their time yawning and inspecting their neighbour’s dresses through those hateful glasses. It never seems to enter their heads to try and amuse their menkind.”
Two young men on their way down the room came suddenly to a standstill before Anna. The foremost, tall, clean-shaven, perfectly groomed, half extended his hand with a smile of recognition.
“Miss Pellissier, isn’t it?” he said. “Glad to see you in London. No idea that you were here, though.”
Anna looked up with a doubtful smile of non-recognition.
“My name is certainly Pellissier,” she said, “but I am very sorry—I do not recognize you in the least.”
The tall young man dropped his eye-glass and smiled.
“Had the pleasure of dining with you at the ‘Ambassador’s’ one night, before the show, you know—last September I think it was. Charley Pevenill was our host. My name is Armytage—Lord Ernest Armytage.”
Anna had suddenly stiffened. She regarded the young man coldly. Her tone was icy.
“I am afraid that you are making a mistake,” she said. “I was never at any such dinner, and I am quite sure that I do not know you.”
“Perhaps you remember me, Miss Pellissier,” the second young man interposed. “I had the pleasure of—er—meeting you more than once, I believe.”
A spot of colour flared in Anna’s cheek as she glanced towards the speaker. Something in his smile, in the cynical suggestiveness of his deferential tone, maddened her.
“To the best of my belief,” she said, with quiet dignity, “I have never seen either of you before in my life.”
For a fraction of a second the two young men hesitated. Then the foremost bowed and passed on.
“I am exceedingly sorry,” he said. “Pray accept my apologies.”
“And mine,” murmured his companion, with the smile still lingering upon his lips.
They took their places at a distant table. Anna sat quite still for a moment, and then the colour suddenly returned to her cheeks. She laughed softly, and leaned across the table.
“Do not look so uncomfortable, both of you,” she begged. “Those young men startled me at first, because they knew my name. I am quite sure though that they did not mean to be rude.”
“Impudent beggars,” Sydney growled. “I never wanted to kick any one so much in my life as that second fellow.”
“I think,” Anna said, “that it was only his manner. Do look at this tragedy in mauve, who has just come in. What can she be? The wife of a country tradesman, or a duchess? And such a meek little husband too. What can she have done to deserve such a fate? Oh!”
They both turned round at Anna’s exclamation. A familiar figure was making his way towards them. Sydney sprang up.
“Why, it’s David!” he exclaimed. “Hullo!”
Courtlaw, haggard, his deep-set eyes more brilliant than ever, took Anna’s hand into his, and breathed a little close drawn sigh of content. He was introduced to Brendon, and a chair was brought by an attentive waiter. He declined supper, but took wine.
“Have you dropped from the skies?” Sydney asked wonderingly. “It was only yesterday I had your letter, and you never mentioned coming over.”
“I had some unexpected business,” Courtlaw answered shortly.
“And how did you find us here?”
“I called at Montague Street a few minutes after you had left. Mrs. White told me where to find you.”
He leaned back in his chair as though wearied. Yet either the rest or the wine seemed already to have done him good. The lines about his mouth gradually softened. He talked very little and rather absently. In no way could he be said to contribute to the gaiety of the little party. But when they were on their way out he whispered in Anna’s ear.
“Please let me drive you home. I want to talk to you, and I must return to-morrow.”
Anna hesitated.
“We are Mr. Brendon’s guests,” she said, “and I scarcely think it would be nice of me to leave him alone with Sydney.”
Courtlaw turned abruptly to Brendon.
“Mr. Brendon,” he said, “may I rob you of your guest just for the drive home? I have only a few hours in England, and Miss Pellissier is an old friend.”
“By all means,” Brendon answered. “We will follow you in another cab.”
They passed out on to the pavement, and the commissionaire called a hansom. The man looked closely at Anna as she crossed the footway, and as he held her skirt from the wheel he pressed something into her hand. Her fingers closed upon it instinctively. It was a letter. She slipped it calmly into her pocket. The commissionaire smiled. It was a sovereign easily earned.
The hansom drove off. Suddenly Anna felt her hand seized and imprisoned in Courtlaw’s burning fingers. She glanced into his face. It was enough.
“I have stood it for a month, Anna,” he exclaimed. “You will not even answer my letters. I could not keep away any longer.”
“Do you think that it was wise of you, or kind to come?” she asked quietly.
“Wise! Kind! What mockery words are! I came because I had to. I cannot live without you, Anna. Come back—you must come back. We can be married to-morrow in Paris. There! You are trying to take your hand away.”
“You disappoint me,” she said wearily. “You are talking like a boy. What is the use of it? I do not wish to marry you. I do not wish to return to Paris. You are doing your best to break our friendship.”
“It is you,” he cried, “you, who are talking folly, when you speak of friendship between you and me. It is not the woman who speaks there. It is the vapouring school girl. I tell you that I love you, Anna, and I believe that you love me. You are necessary to me. I shall give you my life, every moment and thought of my life. You must come back. See what you have made of me. I cannot work, I cannot teach. You have grown into my life, and I cannot tear you out.”
Anna was silent. She was trembling a little. The man’spassion was infectious. She had to school herself to speak the words which she knew would cut him like a knife.
“You are mistaken, David. I have counted you, and always hoped to count you, the best of my friends. But I do not love you. I do not love any one.”
“I don’t believe it,” he answered hoarsely. “We have come too close together for me to believe it. You care for me a little, I know. I will teach you how to make that little sufficient.”
“You came to tell me this?”
“I came for you,” he declared fiercely.
The hansom sped through the crowded streets. Anna suddenly leaned forward and looked around her.
“We are not going the right way,” she exclaimed.
“You are coming my way,” Courtlaw answered. “Anna,” he pleaded, “be merciful. You care for me just a little, I know. You are alone in the world, you have no one save yourself to consider. Come back with me to-night. Your old rooms are there, if you choose. I kept them on myself till the sight of your empty chair and the chill loneliness of it all nearly sent me mad.”
Anna lifted her hand and pushed open the trap door.
“Drive to 13, Montague Street, cabman,” she ordered.
The man pulled up his horse grumbling, and turned round. Courtlaw sat with folded arms. He said nothing.
“My friend,” she said, “no! Let me tell you this. Nothing would induce me to marry you, or any man at present. I am a pauper, and as yet I have not discovered how to earn money. I am determined to fight my own little battle with the world—there must be a place for me somewhere, and I mean to find it. Afterwards, it may be different. If I were to marry you now I should feel a dependent being all my life—a sort of parasitical creature without blood or muscle. I should lose every scrap of independence—even my self-respect. However good you were to me, and however happy I was in other ways, I should find this intolerable.”
“All these things,” he muttered bitterly, “this desperate resolve to take your life into your own hands, your unnatural craving for independence, would never trouble you for a moment—if you really cared.”
“Then perhaps,” she answered, with a new coldness in her tone, “perhaps I really do not care. No, don’t interrupt me. I think that I am a little disappointed in you. You appear to be amongst those strong enough in all ordinary matters, but whoseem to think it quite natural and proper to give in at once and play the weakling directly—one cares. Do you think that it makes for happiness to force oneself into the extravagant belief that love is the only thing in the world worth having, and to sacrifice for it independence, self-respect, one’s whole scheme of life. I cannot do it, David. Perhaps, as you say, I do not really care—but I cannot do it.”
He was strangely silent. He did not even reply to her for several minutes.
“I cannot reason with you,” he said at last wearily. “I speak from my heart, and you answer from your brain.”
“Believe me that I have answered you wisely,” she said, in a gentler tone, “wisely for you too, as well as myself. And now you must go back, take up your work and think all this over. Presently you will see that I am right, and then you shall take your vacation over here, and we will be good comrades again.”
He smiled bitterly as he handed her from the cab. He declined to come in.
“Will you tell Sydney that I will see him in the morning,” he said. “I am staying at the Savoy. He can come round there.”
“You will shake hands with me, please,” she begged.
He took her fingers and lifted his eyes to hers. Something he saw there made him feel for a moment ashamed. He pressed the long shapely hand warmly in his.
“Good-bye,” he said earnestly. “Please forgive me. You are right. Quite right.”
She was able to go straight to her room without delay, and she at once locked the door with a little sigh of relief. She found herself struggling with a storm of tears.
A sob was strangled in her throat. She struggled fiercely not to give way.
“Oh, I am lonely,” she moaned. “I am lonely. If I could but——”
To escape from her thoughts she began to undress, humming a light tune to herself, though her eyes were hot with unshed tears, and the sobs kept rising in her throat. As she drew off her skirt she felt something in the pocket, and remembered the letter which the commissionaire at the Carlton had given her. She tore open the envelope and read it.