The manservant, with his plain black clothes and black tie, had entered the room with a deferential little gesture.
“You will pardon me, sir,” he said in a subdued tone, “but I think that you have forgotten to look at your engagement book. There is Lady Arlingford’s reception to-night, ten till twelve, and the Hatton House ball, marked with a cross, sir, important. I put your clothes out an hour ago.”
Nigel Ennison looked up with a little start.
“All right, Dunster,” he said. “I may go to Hatton House later, but you needn’t wait. I can get into my clothes.”
The man hesitated.
“Can I bring you anything, sir—a whisky and soda, or a liqueur? You’ll excuse me, sir, but you haven’t touched your coffee.”
“Bring me a whisky and soda, and a box of cigarettes,” Ennison answered, “and then leave me alone, there’s a good fellow. I’m a little tired.”
The man obeyed his orders noiselessly and then left the room.
Ennison roused himself with an effort, took a long drink from his whisky and soda, and lit a cigarette.
“What a fool I am!” he muttered, standing up on the hearthrug, and leaning his elbows upon the broad mantelpiece. “And yet I wonder whether the world ever held such another enigma in her sex. Paris looms behind—a tragedy of strange recollections—here she emerges Phœnix-like, subtly developed, a flawless woman, beautiful, self-reliant, witty, a woman with the strange gift of making all others beside her seem plain or vulgar. And then—this sudden thrust. God only knows what I have done, or left undone. Something unpardonable is laid to my charge. Only last night she saw me, and there was horror in her eyes.... I have written, called—of what avail is anything—against that look.... What the devil is the matter, Dunster?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” the man answered, “there is a lady here to see you.”
Ennison turned round sharply.
“A lady, Dunster. Who is it?”
The man came a little further into the room.
“Lady Ferringhall, sir.”
“Lady Ferringhall—alone?” Ennison exclaimed.
“Quite alone, sir.”
Ennison was dismayed.
“For Heaven’s sake, Dunster, don’t let her out of the carriage, or hansom, or whatever she came in. Say I’m out, away, anything!”
“I am sorry, sir,” the man answered, “but she had sent away her hansom before I answered the bell. She is in the hall now. I——”
The door was thrown open. Annabel entered.
“Forgive my coming in,” she said to Ennison. “I heard your voices, and the hall is draughty. What is the matter with you?”
Dunster had withdrawn discreetly. Ennison’s manner was certainly not one of a willing host.
“I cannot pretend that I am glad to see you, Lady Ferringhall,” he said quietly. “For your own sake, let me beg of you not to stay for a moment. Dunster shall fetch you a cab. I——”
She threw herself into an easy chair. She was unusually pale, and her eyes were brilliant. Never had she seemed to him so much like Anna.
“You needn’t be worried,” she said quietly. “The conventions do not matter one little bit. You will agree with me when you have heard what I have to say. For me that is all over and done with.”
“Lady Ferringhall! Anna!” he exclaimed.
She fixed her brilliant eyes upon him.
“Suppose you call me by my proper name,” she said quietly. “Call me Annabel.”
He started back as though he had been shot.
“Annabel?” he exclaimed. “That is your sister’s name.”
“No, mine.”
It came upon him like a flash. Innumerable little puzzles were instantly solved. He could only wonder that this amazing thing had remained so long a secret to him. He remembered little whispered speeches of hers, so like the Annabel of Paris, so unlike the woman he loved, a hundred little things should have told him long ago. Nevertheless it was overwhelming.
“But your hair,” he gasped.
“Dyed!”
“And your figure?”
“One’scorsetièrearranges that. My friend, I am only grieved that you of all others should have been so deceived. I have seen you with Anna, and I have not known whether to be glad or sorry. I have been in torment all the while to know whether it was to Anna or to Annabel that you were making love so charmingly. Nigel, do you know that I have been very jealous?”
He avoided the invitation of her eyes. He was indeed still in the throes of his bewilderment.
“But Sir John?” he exclaimed. “What made you marry him? What made you leave Paris without a word to any one? What made you and your sister exchange identities?”
“There is one answer to all those questions, Nigel,” she said, with a nervous little shudder. “It is a hateful story. Come close to me, and let me hold your hand, dear. I am a little afraid.”
There was a strange look in her face, the look of a frightened child. Ennison seemed to feel already the shadow of tragedy approaching. He stood by her side, and he suffered her hands to rest in his.
“You remember the man in Paris who used to follow me about—Meysey Hill they called him?”
He nodded.
“Miserable bounder,” he murmured. “Turned out to be an impostor, too.”
“He imposed on me,” Annabel continued. “I believed that he was the great multi-millionaire. He worried me to marry him. I let him take me to the English Embassy, and we went through some sort of a ceremony. I thought it would be magnificent to have a great house in Paris, and more money than any other woman. Afterwards we started fordéjeunerin a motor. On the way he confessed. He was not Meysey Hill, but an Englishman of business, and he had only a small income. Every one took him for the millionaire, and he had lost his head about me. I—well, I lost my temper. I struck him across the face, twisted the steering wheel of the motor, sprang out myself, and left him for dead on the road with the motor on top of him. This is the first act.”
“Served the beast right,” Ennison declared. “I think I can tell you something which may be very good news for you presently. But go on.”
“Act two,” she continued. “Enter Sir John, very honest, very much in love with me. I thought that Hill was dead, but I was frightened, and I wanted to get away from Paris. Sir John heard gossip about us—about Anna the recluse, a paragon of virtue, and Annabel alias ‘Alcide’ a dancer at thecafés chantants, and concerning whom there were many stories which were false, and a few—which were true. I—well, I borrowed Anna’s name. I made her my unwilling confederate. Sir John followed me to London and married me. To this day he and every one else thinks that he married Anna.
“Act three. Anna comes to London. She is poor, and she will take nothing from my husband, the man she had deceived for my sake, and he, on his part, gravely disapproves of her as ‘Alcide.’ She tries every way of earning a living and fails. Then she goes to a dramatic agent. Curiously enough nothing will persuade him that she is not ‘Alcide.’ He believes that she denies it simply because owing to my marriage with Sir John, whom they call the ‘Puritan Knight,’ she wants to keep her identity secret. He forces an engagement upon her. She never calls herself ‘Alcide.’ It is the Press who find her out. She is the image of what I was like, and she has a better voice. Then enter Mr. Hill again—alive. He meets Anna, and claims her as his wife. It is Anna again who stands between me and ruin.”
“I cannot let you go on,” Ennison interrupted. “I believe that I can give you great news. Tell me where the fellow Hill took you for this marriage ceremony.”
“It was behind the Place de Vendome, on the other side from the Ritz.”
“I knew it,” Ennison exclaimed. “Cheer up, Annabel. You were never married at all. That place was closed by the police last month. It was a bogus affair altogether, kept by some blackguard or other of an Englishman. Everything was done in the most legal and imposing way, but the whole thing was a fraud.”
“Then I was never married to him at all?” Annabel said.
“Never—but, by Jove, you had a narrow escape,” Ennison exclaimed. “Annabel, I begin to see why you are here. Think! Had you not better hurry back before Sir John discovers? You are his wife right enough. You can tell me the rest another time.”
She smiled faintly.
“The rest,” she said, holding tightly to his hands,“is the most important of all. You came to me, you wished me to speak to Anna. I went to her rooms to-night. There was no one at home, and I was coming away when I saw that the door was open. I decided to go in and wait. In her sitting-room I found Montague Hill. He had gained admission somehow, and he too was waiting for Anna. But—he was cleverer than any of you. He knew me, Nigel. ‘At last,’ he cried, ‘I have found you!’ He would listen to nothing. He swore that I was his wife, and—I shot him, Nigel, as his arms were closing around me. Shot him, do you hear?”
“Good God!” he exclaimed, looking at her curiously. “Is this true, Annabel? Is he dead?”
She nodded.
“I shot him. I saw the blood come as he rolled over. I tore the marriage certificate from his pocket and burnt it. And then I came here.”
“You came—here!” he repeated, vaguely.
“Nigel, Nigel,” she cried. “Don’t you understand? It is I whom you cared for in Paris, not Anna. She is a stranger to you. You cannot care for her. Think of those days in Paris. Do you remember when we went right away, Nigel, and forgot everything? We went down the river past Veraz, and the larks were singing all over those deep brown fields, and the river further on wound its way like a coil of silver across the rich meadowland, and along the hillside vineyards. Oh, the scent of the flowers that day, the delicious quiet, the swallows that dived before us in the river. Nigel! You have not forgotten. It was the first day you kissed me, under the willows, coming into Veraz. Nigel, you have not forgotten!”
“No,” he said, with a little bitter smile. “I have never forgotten.”
She suddenly caught hold of his shoulders and drew him down towards her.
“Nigel, don’t you understand. I must leave England to-night. I must go somewhere into hiding, a long, long way off. I killed him, Nigel. They will say that it was murder. But if only you will come I do not care.”
He shook her hands off almost roughly. He stood away from her. She listened with dumb fear in her eyes.
“Listen, Annabel,” he said hoarsely.“We played at love-making in Paris. It was very pretty and very dainty while it lasted, but we played it with our eyes open, and we perfectly understood the game—both of us. Other things came. We went our ways. There was no broken faith—not even any question of anything of the sort. I met you here as Lady Ferringhall. We have played at a little mild love-making again. It has been only the sort of nonsense which passes lightly enough between half the men and women in London. You shall know the truth. I do not love you. I have never loved you. I call myself a man of the world, a man of many experiences, but I never knew what love meant—until I met your sister.”
“You love—Anna?” she exclaimed.
“I do,” he answered. “I always shall. Now if you are ready to go with me, I too am ready. We will go to Ostend by the early morning boat and choose a hiding place from there. I will marry you when Sir John gets his divorce, and I will do all I can to keep you out of harm. But you had better know the truth to start with. I will do all this not because I love you, but—because you are Anna’s sister.”
Annabel rose to her feet.
“You are magnificent,” she said, “but the steel of your truth is a little oversharpened. It cuts. Will you let your servant call me a hansom,” she continued, opening the door before he could reach her side. “I had no idea that it was so abominably late.”
He scarcely saw her face again. She pulled her veil down, and he knew that silence was best.
“Where to?” he asked, as the hansom drove up.
“Home, of course,” she answered. “Eight, Cavendish Square.”
“You!”
David Courtlaw crossed the floor of the dingy little sitting-room with outstretched hands.
“You cannot say that you did not expect me,” he answered. “I got Sydney’s telegram at ten o’clock, and caught the ten-thirty from the Gare du Nord.”
“It is very nice of you,” Anna said softly.
“Rubbish!” he answered. “I could not have stayed in Paris and waited for news. Tell me exactly what has happened. Even now I do not understand. Is this man Hill dead?”
She shook her head.
“He was alive at four o’clock this afternoon,” she answered, “but the doctors give little hope of his recovery.”
“What is there to be feared?” he asked her quietly.
She hesitated.
“You are my friend,” she said, “if any one is. I think that I will tell you. The man Hill has persecuted me for months—ever since I have been in England. He claimed me for his wife, and showed to every one a marriage certificate. He shot at me at the ‘Unusual,’ and the magistrates bound him over to keep the peace. I found him once in my rooms, and I believe that he had a key to my front door. Last night Mr. Brendon and I returned from the ‘Unusual,’ and found him lying in my room shot through the lungs. In the grate were some charred fragments of a marriage certificate. We fetched the doctor and the police. From the first I could see that neither believed my story. I am suspected of having shot the man.”
“But that is ridiculous!” he exclaimed.
She laughed a little bitterly.
“I am under police surveillance,” she said. “So is Mr. Brendon.”
“But there is not a shadow of evidence against you,” he objected.“The man alone could supply any, and if he recovers sufficiently to say anything, what he would say would exonerate you.”
“Yes.”
There was a moment’s silence. Anna’s face was half turned from him, but her expression, and the tone of her monosyllable puzzled him. He stepped quickly towards her. Her eyes seemed to be looking backwards. She distinctly shivered as he forced her to look at him. He was bewildered.
“Anna!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Look at me. What is it? Good God!”
An unhappy little smile parted her lips. She clenched her hands together and leaned forward in her chair, gazing steadily into the fire.
“I think,” she said, “that I will tell you everything. I must tell somebody—and you would understand.”
“I am your friend,” he said slowly, “whatever you may have to tell me. You can trust me, Anna. You know that. I will be as silent as the grave.”
“Not long ago,” she said, “you left me in anger, partly because of this exchange of identities between Annabel and myself. You said that it would bring trouble. It has.”
“Yes.”
“Annabel’s real reason for wishing to leave Paris, the real reason she married Sir John Ferringhall, was because of a very foolish thing which she did. It was—in connection with this man Hill. He personated over there a millionaire named Meysey Hill, and it seems that he induced Annabel to go through some sort of marriage with him at the Embassy.”
“Where?” Courtlaw asked quickly.
“In Paris.”
Courtlaw seemed about to say something. He changed his mind however, and simply motioned to her to proceed.
“Then there was a motor accident only an hour or so after this ceremony, and Hill was reported to be killed. Annabel believed it, came to England and married Sir John. Now you can understand why I have been obliged to——”
“Yes, yes, I understand that,” Courtlaw interrupted. “But about last night.”
“Annabel knew where I lived,” Anna continued slowly. “She has been to my flat before. I saw her come out from the flat buildings two minutes before we entered it last night. I picked up her handkerchief on the floor.”
“You mean—you think——”
“Hush! I think that he was concealed in my room, and Annabel and he met there. What passed between them I cannot think—I dare not. The pistol was his own, it is true, but it was one which was taken from him when he forced his way in upon me before. Now you can understand why every minute is a torture to me. It is not for myself I fear. But if he speaks—I fear what he may tell.”
“You have been to her?” he asked.
“I dare not,” she answered.
“I will go,” he said. “She must be warned. She had better escape if she can.”
Anna shook her head.
“She will take her risk,” she answered. “I am sure of it. If he recovers he may not accuse her. If he dies she is safe.”
He paced the room for a minute or two restlessly.
“There are some people,” he said at last, “who seem fated to carry on their shoulders the burdens of other people. You, Anna, are one of them. I know in Paris you pinched and scraped that your sister might have the dresses and entertainments she desired. You fell in at once with her quixotic and damnable scheme of foisting her reputation and her follies upon your shoulders whilst she marries a rich man and commences all over again a life of selfish pleasure. You on the other hand have to come to London, a worker, with the responsibility of life upon your own shoulders—and in addition all the burden of her follies.”
“You forget,” she said, looking up at him with a faint smile, “that under the cloak of her name I am earning more money a week than I could ever have earned in a year by my own labours.”
“It is an accident,” he answered. “Besides, it is not so. You sing better than Annabel ever did, you have even a better style. ‘Alcide’ or no ‘Alcide,’ there is not a music hall manager in London or Paris who would not give you an engagement on your own merits.”
“Perhaps not,” she answered. “And yet in a very few weeks I shall have done with it all. Do you think that I shall ever make an actress, my friend?”
“I doubt it,” he answered bluntly. “You have not feeling enough.”
She smiled at him.
“It is like old times,” she said, “to hear these home truths. All the same, I don’t admit it.”
He shook his head.
“To be an actress,” he said, “you require a special and peculiar temperament. I do not believe that there has ever lived a really great actress whose moral character from the ordinary point of view would bear inspection.”
“Then I,” she said, “have too much character.”
“Too much character, and too little sentiment,” he answered. “Too much sensibility and too cold a heart. Too easily roused emotions and too little passion. How could you draw the curtain aside which hides the great and holy places of life—you, who have never loved?”
“You have become French to the core,” she murmured. “You would believe that life is kindled by the passions alone.”
There was silence between them. Then a servant girl brought in a telegram. Anna tore it open and passed it to Courtlaw. It was from Brendon.
“Hill gradually recovering consciousness. Doctor says depositions to-night. Recovery impossible.—Brendon.”
“Hill gradually recovering consciousness. Doctor says depositions to-night. Recovery impossible.—Brendon.”
He looked at her gravely.
“I think,” he said, “that some one ought to warn her.”
“It is Number 8, Cavendish Square,” she answered simply.
Courtlaw found himself ushered without questions into Annabel’s long low drawing-room, fragrant with flowers and somewhat to his surprise, crowded with guests. From the further end of the apartment came the low music of a violin. Servants were passing backwards and forwards with tea and chocolate. For a moment he did not recognize Annabel. Then she came a few steps to meet him.
“Mr. Courtlaw, is it not,” she remarked, with lifted eyebrows. “Really it is very kind of you to have found me out.”
He was bereft of words for a moment, and in that moment she escaped, having passed him on deftly to one of the later arrivals.
“Lady Mackinnor,” she said, “I am sure that you must have heard of Mr. David Courtlaw. Permit me to make him known to you—Mr. Courtlaw—Lady Mackinnor.”
With a murmured word of excuse she glided away, and Courtlaw, who had come with a mission which seemed to him to be one of life or death, was left to listen to the latest art jargonfrom Chelsea. He bore it as long as he could, watching all the time with fascinated eyes Annabel moving gracefully about amongst her guests, always gay, with a smile and a whisper for nearly everybody. Grudgingly he admired her. To him she had always appeared as a mere pleasure-loving parasite—something quite insignificant. He had pictured her, if indeed she had ever had the courage to do this thing, as sitting alone, convulsed with guilty fear, starting at her own shadow, a slave to constant terror. And instead he found her playing the great lady, and playing it well. She knew, or guessed his mission too, for more than once their eyes met, and she laughed mockingly at him. At last he could bear it no longer. He left his companion in the midst of a glowing eulogy of Bastien Leparge, and boldly intercepted his hostess as she moved from one group to join another.
“Can you spare me a moment?” he asked. “I have a message from your sister.”
“Are you in a hurry,” she asked carelessly. “A lot of these people will be going presently.”
“My message is urgent,” he said firmly. “If you cannot listen to me now it must remain undelivered.”
She shrugged her shoulders and led him towards a small recess. “So you come from Anna, do you?” she remarked. “Well, what is it?”
“Montague Hill is recovering consciousness,” he said. “He will probably make a statement to-night.”
“That sounds very interesting,” she answered coolly. “Perhaps I should better be able to understand its significance if you would explain to me who Mr. Montague Hill is.”
“Your husband,” he answered bluntly.
She did not wince. She laughed a little contemptuously.
“You and Anna,” she said, “seem to have stumbled upon a mare’s nest. If that is my sister’s message, pray return to her and say that the doings and sayings of Mr. Montague Hill do not interest me in the least.”
“Don’t be foolish,” he said sharply. “You were seen to leave the flat, and your handkerchief was found there. Very likely by this time the whole truth is known.”
She smiled at him, an understanding smile, but her words defied him.
“What a beautiful mare’s nest!” she exclaimed.“I can see you and Anna groaning and nodding your grave heads together. Bah! She does not know me very well, and you—not at all. Do have some tea, won’t you? If you must, go then.”
Courtlaw was dismissed. As he passed out he saw in the hall a quietly dressed man with keen grey eyes, talking to one of the footmen. He shivered and looked behind as he stepped into his hansom. Had it come already?
“Confess, my dear husband,” Annabel said lightly, “that you are bewildered.”
Sir John smiled.
“My dear Anna,” he answered. “To tell you the truth, it has seemed just lately as though we were becoming in some measure estranged. You certainly have not shown much desire for my society, have you?”
“You have been wrapped up in your politics,” she murmured.
He shook his head.
“There have been other times,” he said a little sadly.
Her little white hand stole across the table. There was a look in her eyes which puzzled him.
“I have been very selfish,” she declared. “But you must forgive me, John.”
“I would forgive you a great deal more,” he answered readily, “for the sake of an evening like this. You have actually given up a dinner-party to dine alone with me.”
“And made you give up a political meeting,” she reminded him.
“Quite an unimportant one,” he assured her. “I would have given up anything to see you your old self again—as you are this evening.”
“I am afraid I have not been very nice,” she said sadly. “Never mind. You must think of this evening, John, sometimes—as a sort of atonement.”
“I hope,” he answered, looking at her in some surprise, “that we shall have many more such to think about.”
They were lingering over their dessert. The servants had left the room. Annabel half filled her glass with wine, and taking a little folded packet from her plate, shook the contents into it.
“I am developing ailments,” she said, meeting his questioning eyes. “It is nothing of any importance. John, I have something to say to you.”
“If you want to ask a favour,” he remarked smiling,“you have made it almost impossible for me to refuse you anything.”
“I am going to ask more than a favour,” she said slowly. “I am going to ask for your forgiveness.”
He was a little uneasy.
“I do not know what you mean,” he said, “but if you are referring to any little coolness since our marriage let us never speak of it again. I am something of an old fogey, Anna, I’m afraid, but if you treat me like this you will teach me to forget it.”
Annabel looked intently into her glass.
“John,” she said, “I am afraid that I am going to make you unhappy. I am very, very sorry, but you must listen to me.”
He relapsed into a stony silence. A few feet away, across the low vases of pink and white roses, sat Annabel, more beautiful to-night perhaps than ever before in her life. She wore a wonderful dress of turquoise blue, made by a great dressmaker for a function which she knew very well now that she would never attend. Her hair once more was arranged with its old simplicity. There was a new softness in her eyes, a hesitation, a timidity about her manner which was almost pathetic.
“You remember our first meeting?”
“Yes,” he answered hoarsely. “I remember it very well indeed. You have the look in your eyes to-night which you had that day, the look of a frightened child.”
She looked into her glass.
“I was frightened then,” she declared. “I am frightened now. But it is all very different. There was hope for me then. Now there is none. No, none at all.”
“You talk strangely, Anna,” he said. “Go on!”
“People talked to you in Paris about us,” she continued, “about Anna the virtuous and Annabel the rake. You were accused of having been seen with the latter. You denied it, remembering that I had called myself Anna. You went even to our rooms and saw my sister. Anna lied to you, I lied to you. I was Annabel the rake, ‘Alcide’ of the music halls. My name is Annabel, not Anna. Do you understand?”
“I do not,” he answered. “How could I, when your sister sings now at the ‘Unusual’ every night and the name ‘Alcide’ flaunts from every placard in London?”
“The likeness between us,” she said,“before I began to disfigure myself with rouge and ill-dressed hair, was remarkable. Anna failed in her painting, our money was gone, and she was forced to earn her own living. She came to London, and tried several things without any success.”
“But why——”
Sir John stopped short. With a moment of inward shame he remembered his deportment towards Anna. It was scarcely likely that she would have accepted his aid. Some one had once, in his hearing, called him a prig. He remembered it suddenly. He thought of his severe attitude towards the girl who was rightly and with contempt refusing his measured help. He looked across at Annabel, and he groaned. This was his humiliation as well as hers.
“Anna of course would not accept any money from us,” she continued. “She tried everything, and last of all she tried the stage. She went to a dramatic agent, and he turned out to be the one who had heard me sing in Paris. He refused to believe that Anna was not ‘Alcide.’ He thought she wished to conceal her identity because of the connexion with you, and he offered her an engagement at once. She was never announced as ‘Alcide,’ but directly she walked on she simply became ‘Alcide’ to every one. She had a better voice than I, and the rest I suppose is only a trick. The real ‘Alcide’,” she wound up with a faint smile across the table at him, “is here.”
He sat like a man turned to stone. Some part of the stiff vigour of the man seemed to have subsided. He seemed to have shrunken in his seat. His eyes were fixed upon her face, but he opened his lips twice before he spoke.
“When you married me——”
Her little hand flashed out across the table.
“John,” she said, “I can spare you that question. I had been about as foolish and selfish as a girl could be. I had done the most compromising things, and behaved in the most ridiculous way. But from the rest—you saved me.”
Sir John breathed a long deep sigh. He sat up in his chair again, the colour came back to his cheeks.
“John, don’t!” she cried. “You think that this is all. You are going to be generous and forgive. It isn’t all. There is worse to come. There is a tragedy to come.”
“Out with it, then,” he cried, almost roughly. “Don’t you know, child, that this is torture for me? What in God’s name more can you have to tell me?”
Her face had become almost like a marble image. She spoke with a certain odd deliberation carefully chosen words which fell like drops of ice upon the man who sat listening.
“Before I met you I was deluded into receiving upon friendly terms a man named Hill, who passed himself off as Meysey Hill the railway man, but who was in reality an Englishman in poor circumstances. He was going to settle I forget how many millions upon me, and I think that I was dazzled. I went with him to what I supposed to be the British Embassy, and went through a ceremony which I understood to be the usual form of the marriage one used there. Afterwards we started for a motor ride to a place outside Paris fordéjeuner, and I suppose the man’s nerve failed him. I questioned him too closely about his possessions, and remarked upon the fact that he was a most inexpert driver, although Meysey Hill had a great reputation as a motorist. Anyhow he confessed that he was a fraud. I struck him across the face, jumped out and went back by train to Paris. He lost control of the machine, was upset and nearly killed.”
“Did you say,” Sir John asked, “that the man’s name was Hill?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“The man who was found dead in your sister’s room was named Hill?”
“It is the man,” she answered. “I killed him.”
Sir John clutched at the table with both hands. A slow horror was dawning in his fixed eyes. This was not the sort of confession which he had been expecting. Annabel had spoken calmly enough and steadily, but his brain refused at first to accept the full meaning of her words. It seemed to him that a sort of mist had risen up between them. Everything was blurred. Only her face was clear, frail and delicate, almost flower-like, with the sad haunting eyes ever watching his. Annabel a murderess! It was not possible.
“Child!” he cried. “You do not know what you say. This is part of a dream—some evil fancy. Think! You could not have done it.”
She shook her head deliberately, hopelessly.
“I think that I know very well what I am saying,” she answered.“I went to Anna’s rooms because I felt that I must see her. He was there concealed, waiting her return. He recognized me at once, and he behaved like a madman. He swore that I was his wife, that chance had given me to him at last. John, he was between me and the door. A strong coarse man, and there were things in his eyes which made my blood run cold with terror. He came over to me. I was helpless. Beside me on Anna’s table was a pistol. I was not even sure whether it was loaded. I snatched it up, pointed it blindly at him, and fired.”
“Ah!” Sir John exclaimed.
“He fell over at my feet,” she continued. “I saw him stagger and sink down, and the pistol was smoking still in my hand. I bent over him. Anna had told me that he carried always with him this bogus marriage certificate. I undid his coat, and I took it from his pocket. I burned it.”
“But the marriage itself?” Sir John asked. “I do not understand.”
“There was no marriage,” she answered. “I was very foolish to have been deceived even for a moment. There was no marriage, and I hated, oh, how I hated the man.”
“Did any one see you leave the flat?” he asked.
“I do not know. But David Courtlaw has been here. To-night they say he will be conscious. He will say who it was. So there is no escape. And listen, John.”
“Well?”
“I went from Anna’s flat to Nigel Ennison’s rooms. I told him the truth. I asked him to take me away, and hide me. He refused. He sent me home.”
Sir John’s head bent lower and lower. There was nothing left now of the self-assured, prosperous man of affairs. His shoulders were bent, his face was furrowed with wrinkles. He looked no longer at his wife. His eyes were fixed upon the tablecloth.
There was a gentle rustling of skirts. Softly she rose to her feet. He felt her warm breath upon his cheek, the perfume of her hair as she leaned over him. He did not look up, so he did not know that in her other hand she held a glass of wine.
“Dear husband,” she murmured. “I am so very, very sorry. I have brought disgrace upon you, and I haven’t been the right sort of wife at all. But it is all over now, and presently there will be some one else. I should like to have had you forgive me.”
He did not move. He seemed to be thinking hard. She paused for a moment. Then she raised the glass nearer to her lips.
“Good-bye, John,” she said simply.
Something in her tone made him look up. In a second the glass lay shattered upon the carpet. There was a stain of wine upon her dress.
“God in Heaven, Annabel!” he cried. “What were you doing?”
Her voice was a little hysterical. Her unnatural calm was giving way.
“It was poison—why not?” she answered. “Who is there to care and—John.”
His arms were around her. He kissed her once on the lips with a passion of which, during all their days of married life, he had given no sign.
“You poor little girl!” he cried. “Forgive you, indeed. There isn’t a husband breathing, Annabel, who wouldn’t have blessed that pistol in your hands, and prayed God that the bullet might go straight. It is no crime, none at all. It is one of God’s laws that a woman may defend her honour, even with the shedding of blood. While you talked I was only making our plans. It was necessary to think, and think quickly.”
She was altogether hysterical now.
“But I—I went to Nigel Ennison for help. I asked him—to take me away.”
She saw him flinch, but he gave no sign of it in his tone.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I have been to blame. It must be my fault that you have not learnt that your husband is the man to come to—at such a time as this. Oh, I think I understand, Annabel. You were afraid of me, afraid that I should have been shocked, afraid of the scandal. Bah. Little woman, you have been brave enough before. Pull yourself together now. Drink this!”
He poured out a glass of wine with a firm hand, and held it to her lips. She drank it obediently.
“Good,” he said, as he watched the colour come back to her cheeks. “Now listen. You go to your room and ring for your maid. I received a telegram, as you know, during dinner. It contains news of the serious illness of a near relation at Paris. Your maid has twenty minutes to pack your dressing case for one night, and you have the same time to change into a travelling dress. In twenty minutes we meet in the hall, remember. I will tell you our plans on the way to the station.”
“But you,” she exclaimed, “you are not coming. There is the election——”
He laughed derisively.
“Election be hanged!” he exclaimed.“Don’t be childish, Annabel. We are off for a second honeymoon. Just one thing more. We may be stopped. Don’t look so frightened. You called yourself a murderess. You are nothing of the sort. What you did is called manslaughter, and at the worst there is only a very slight penalty, nothing to be frightened about in the least. Remember that.”
She kissed him passionately, and ran lightly upstairs. In the hall below she could hear his firm voice giving quick commands to the servants.
There was a strange and ominous murmur of voices, a shuffling of feet in the gallery, a silence, which was like the silence before a storm. Anna, who had sung the first verse of her song, looked around the house, a little surprised at the absence of the applause which had never yet failed her. She realized in a moment what had happened. Even though the individual faces of her audience were not to be singled out, she had been conscious from the first moment of her appearance that something was wrong. She hesitated, and for a moment thought of omitting her second verse altogether. The manager, however, who stood in the wings, nodded to her to proceed, and the orchestra commenced the first few bars of the music. Then the storm broke. A long shrill cat-call in the gallery seemed to be the signal. Then a roar of hisses. They came from every part, from the pit, the circle and the gallery, even from the stalls. And there arose too, a background of shouts.
“Who killed her husband?”
“Go and nurse him, missus!”
“Murderess!”
Anna looked from left to right. She was as pale as death, but she seemed to have lost the power of movement. They shouted to her from the wings to come off. She could not stir hand or foot. A paralyzing horror was upon her. Her eardrums were burning with the echoes of those hideous shouts. A crumpled-up newspaper thrown from the gallery hit her upon the cheek. The stage manager came out from the wings, and taking her hand led her off. There was more shouting.
The stage manager reappeared presently, and made a speech. He regretted—more deeply than he could say—the occurrence of this evening. He fancied that when they had had time to reflect, they would regret it still more. (“No, no.”) They had shown themselves grossly ignorant of facts. They had chosen to deliberately and wickedly insult a lady who had done her best to entertain them for many weeks. He could not promise that she would ever appear again in that house.(“Good job.”) Well, they might say that, but he knew very well that before long they would regret it. Of his own certain knowledge he could tell them that. For his own part he could not sufficiently admire the pluck of this lady, who, notwithstanding all that she had been through, had chosen to appear this evening rather than break her engagement. He should never sufficiently be able to regret the return which they had made to her. He begged their attention for the next turn.
He had spoken impressively, and most likely Anna, had she reappeared, would have met with a fair reception. She, however, had no idea of doing anything of the sort. She dressed rapidly and left the theatre without a word to any one. The whole incident was so unexpected that neither Courtlaw nor Brendon were awaiting. The man who sat behind a pigeon-hole, and regulated the comings and goings, was for a moment absent. Anna stood on the step and looked up and down the street for a hansom. Suddenly she felt her wrist grasped by a strong hand. It was Ennison, who loomed up through the shadows.
“Anna! Thank God I have found you at last. But you have not finished surely. Your second turn is not over, is it?”
She laughed a little hardly. Even now she was dazed. The horror of those few minutes was still with her.
“Have you not heard?” she said. “For me there is no second turn. I have said good-bye to it all. They hissed me!”
“Beasts!” he muttered. “But was it wise to sing to-night?”
“Why not? The man was nothing to me.”
“You have not seen the evening paper?”
“No. What about them?”
He called a hansom.
“They are full of the usual foolish stories. To-morrow they will all be contradicted. To-night all London believes that he was your husband.”
“That is why they hissed me, then?”
“Of course. To-morrow they will know the truth.”
She shivered.
“Is this hansom for me?” she said. “Thank you—and good-bye.”
“I am coming with you,” he said firmly.
She shook her head.
“Don’t!” she begged.
“You are in trouble,” he said. “No one has a better right than I to be with you.”
“You have no right at all,” she answered coldly.
“I have the right of the man who loves you,” he declared. “Some day you will be my wife, and it would not be well for either of us to remember that in these unhappy days you and I were separated.”
Anna gave her address to the driver. She leaned back in the cab with half-closed eyes.
“This is all madness,” she declared wearily. “Do you think it is fair of you to persecute me just now?”
“It is not persecution, Anna,” he answered gently. “Only you are the woman I love, and you are in trouble. And you are something of a heroine, too. You see, my riddle is solved. I know all.”
“You know all?”
“Your sister has told me.”
“You have seen her—since last night?”
“Yes.”
Anna shivered a little. She asked no further questions for the moment. Ennison himself, with the recollection of Annabel’s visit still fresh in his mind, was for a moment constrained and ill at ease. When they reached her rooms she stepped lightly out upon the pavement.
“Now you must go,” she said firmly. “I have had a trying evening and I need rest.”
“You need help and sympathy more, Anna,” he pleaded, “and I have the right, yes I have the right to offer you both. I will not be sent away.”
“It is my wish to be alone,” she said wearily. “I can say no more.”
She turned and fitted the latchkey into the door. He hesitated for a moment and then he followed her. She turned the gas up in her little sitting-room, and sank wearily into an easy chair. On the mantelpiece in front of her was a note addressed to her in Annabel’s handwriting. She looked at it with a little shudder, but she made no motion to take it.
“Will you say what you have to say, please, and go. I am tired, and I want to be alone.”
He came and stood on the hearthrug close to her.
“Anna,” he said, “you make it all indescribably hard for me. Will you not remember what has passed between us? I have the right to take my place by your side.”
“You have no right at all,” she answered.“Further than that, I am amazed that you should dare to allude to those few moments, to that single moment of folly. If ever I could bring myself to ask you any favour, I would ask you to forget even as I have forgotten.”
“Why in Heaven’s name should I forget?” he cried. “I love you, Anna, and I want you for my wife. There is nothing but your pride which stands between us.”
“There is great deal more,” she answered coldly. “For one thing I am going to marry David Courtlaw.”
He stepped back as though he had received a blow.
“It is not possible,” he exclaimed.
“Why not?”
“Because you are mine. You have told me that you cared. Oh, you cannot escape from it. Anna, my love, you cannot have forgotten so soon.”
He fancied that she was yielding, but her eyes fell once more upon that fatal envelope, and her tone when she spoke was colder than ever.
“That was a moment of madness,” she said. “I was lonely. I did not know what I was saying.”
“I will have your reason for this,” he said. “I will have your true reason.”
She looked at him for a moment with fire in her eyes.
“You need a reason. Ask your own conscience. What sort of a standard of life yours may be I do not know, yet in your heart you know very well that every word you have spoken to me has been a veiled insult, every time you have come into my presence has been an outrage. That is what stands between us, if you would know—that.”
She pointed to the envelope still resting upon the mantelpiece. He recognized the handwriting, and turned a shade paler. Her eyes noted it mercilessly.
“But your sister,” he said. “What has she told you?”
“Everything.”
He was a little bewildered.
“But,” he said, “you do not blame me altogether?”
She rose to her feet.
“I am tired,” she said, “and I want to rest. But if you do not leave this room I must.”
He took up his hat.
“Very well,” he said. “You are unjust and quixotic, Anna, you have no right to treat any one as you are treating me. And yet—I love you. When you send for me I shall come back. I do not believe that you will marry David Courtlaw. I do not think that you will dare to marry anybody else.”
He left the room, and she stood motionless, with flaming cheeks, listening to his retreating footsteps. When she was quite sure that he was gone she took her sister’s note from the mantelpiece and slowly broke the seal.