'Don't love me at all,Or love me all in all.'"
'Don't love me at all,Or love me all in all.'"
Anne winced, but recovered herself instantly.
"It's like that with me," continued Janet. "It's all in all. And then I am afraid thatislaying up treasures on earth, isn't it?"
"Not if you love God more because you love George."
Janet ruminated. You could almost hear her mind at work upon the suggestion, as you hear a coffee-mill respond to a handful of coffee berries.
"I think I do," she said at last, and she added below her breath, "I thank God allthe time for sending George, and I pray I may be worthy of him."
Anne's eyes filled with sudden tears—not for herself.
"I hope you will be very happy," she said, laying her hand on Janet's. It seemed to Anne a somewhat forlorn hope.
Janet's hand closed slowly over Anne's.
"I think we shall," she said. "And yet I sometimes doubt, when I remember that I am not his equal. I knew that in a way from the first, but I see it more and more since I came here. I don't wonder Mrs Trefusis doesn't think me good enough."
"Mrs Trefusis does not take fancies quickly."
"It is not that," said Janet. "There's two ways of not being good enough. Till now I have only thought of one way, of not being good enoughin myself, like such things as temper. I'm not often angry, but if I am I stay angry. I don't alter. I was once angry with Fred for a year. I've thought a great deal about that since I've cared for George. And sometimes I fancyI'm rather slow. I daresay you haven't noticed it, but Mrs Smith often remarks upon it. She always has something to say on any subject, just like you have; but somehow I haven't."
"I don't know Mrs Smith."
"I wish you did. She's wonderful. She says she learnt it when she went out so much in the West End before her marriage."
"Indeed!"
"But since I've been here I see there's another way I'm not good enough, which sets Mrs Trefusis against me. I don't think she would mind if I told lies and had a bad temper, and couldn't talk like Mrs Smith, if I was good enough inherway—I mean if I was high-born like you."
The conversation seemed to contain as many pins as a well-stocked pincushion. The expression "high-born" certainly had a sharp point, but Anne made no sign as it was driven in. She considered a moment, and then said, as if she had decided torisk something: "You are right. Mrs Trefusis would have been pleased if you had been my sister. You perhaps think that very worldly. I think it is very natural."
"I wish I were your sister," said Janet, who might be reckoned on for remaining half a field behind.
Anne sighed, and leaned back in her chair.
"If I were your sister," continued Janet, wholly engrossed in getting her slow barge heavily under way, "you would have told me a number of little things which—I don't seem to know."
"You could easily learn some of them," said Anne, "and that would greatly please Mrs Trefusis."
"Could you tell me of anything in especial?"
"Well! For instance—I don't mind myself in the least—but it would be better not to call me 'Lady Varney.'"
"I did not know you would like me to call you 'Anne.'"
"You are quite right. We do not know each other well enough."
"Then what ought I to call you?"
"My friends call me 'Lady Anne.'"
"Dear me!" said Janet, astonished. "There's Lady Alice Thornton. She married Mr Thornton, our member. Fred sold him a hunter. And she is sometimes called 'Lady Alice Thornton' and sometimes 'Lady Thornton.' Mrs Smith says——"
"Then," continued Anne, who seemed indisposed to linger on the subject, "it would please Mrs Trefusis if you came into a room with more courage."
Janet stared at her adviser round-eyed.
"It is shy work, isn't it?" said Anne. "I always had a great difficulty in getting into a room myself when I was your age. (O Anne! Anne!) I mean, in getting well into the middle. But I saw I ought to try, and not to hesitate near the door, because, you see, it obliges old ladies, and people like Mrs Trefusis, who is rather lame, to come nearly to the door to meet us. And we young ones ought to goup to them, even if it makes us feel shy."
"I never thought of that," said Janet. "I will remember those two things always. Mrs Smith always comes in very slow, but then she's a married woman, and she says she likes to give people time to realise her. I will watch how you come in. I will try and copy you in everything. And if I am in doubt, may I ask you?"
Anne laughed, and rose lightly.
"Do," she said, "if you think I could be of any use on these trivial matters. I live among trivialities. But remember always that theyaretrivial. The only thing that is of any real importance in this uphill world is to love and be loved. You will know that when you are my age."
And Anne put her arm round the tall young figure for a moment, and kissed her. And then suddenly, why she knew not, Janet discovered, even while Anne stood smiling at her, that the interview was over.
It seemed a pity, for, when Janet had reached her own room, she remembered that she had intended to consult Anne as to the advisability of cutting her glorious hair into a fringe, like Mrs Smith's.
Anne and Janet travelled together to London next day, and on the journey Janet laid before Anne, in all its bearings, the momentous question of her hair. Fred had said she would never look up to date till she cut a fringe. George had opined that her hair looked very nice as it was, while Mrs Smith had asseverated that it was impossible to mix in good society, or find a hat to suit the face, without one.
Anne settled once and for all that Janet's hair, parted and waving naturally, like the Venus of Milo's, was not to be touched. She became solemnly severe on the subject, as she saw Janet was still wavering. And she even offered to help Janet with her trousseau, to take her to Vernon, her own tailor, and to her own hatter and dress-maker. Janet had no conception what a sacrifice of time that offer meant to a person of endless social engagements like Anne, who was considered one of the best-dressed women in London.
But to Anne's secret amusement and thankfulness, this offer was gratefully declined in an embarrassed manner.
Janet's great friend, Mrs Macalpine Brand, to whose flat in Lowndes Mansions she was now on her way, had offered to help her with her trousseau. Did Lady Var—Anne know Mrs Macalpine Brand? She went out a great deal in London, so perhaps she might have met her. And she was always beautifully dressed.
Anne remembered vaguely a certain overdressed, would-be-smart, insufferable Mrs Brand, who had made bare-faced but fruitless attempts to scrape acquaintance with herself when she and Anne had been on the same committee.
"I have met a very pretty Mrs Brand," she said, "when I was working with Mrs Forrester. She had an excellent head forbusiness—and had she not rather a peculiar Christian name?"
"Cuckoo."
"Yes, that was it. She helped Mrs Forrester's charity most generously when it was in debt."
"She is my greatest friend," said Janet, beaming. "I shall be staying with her all this next fortnight. May I bring her with me when I come to tea with you?"
Anne hesitated half a second before she said, "Do."
She was glad afterwards that she had said it, for it pleased Janet, and poor little Mrs Macalpine Brand never took advantage of it. Even at that moment as they spoke of her, she was absorbed, to the shutting out even of plans for social advancement, in more pressing subjects.
The two girls parted at Victoria, and the last time Anne saw Janet's face, in its halo of happiness, was as Janet nodded to her through the window of the four-wheeler, which bore her away to her friend Mrs Brand.
"Tous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards, hypocrites, orgueilleux, ou lâches, méprisables et sensuels: toutes les femmes sont perfides, artificieuses, vaniteuses, curieuses et dépravées: ... mais il y a au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c'est l'union de deux de ces êtres si imparfaits et si affreux."—Alfred de Musset.
"Tous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards, hypocrites, orgueilleux, ou lâches, méprisables et sensuels: toutes les femmes sont perfides, artificieuses, vaniteuses, curieuses et dépravées: ... mais il y a au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c'est l'union de deux de ces êtres si imparfaits et si affreux."
—Alfred de Musset.
As the four-wheeler neared Lowndes Square the traffic became blocked, not by carriages, but by large numbers of people on foot. At last the cabman drew to the side, uncorked himself from the box, and came to the window.
"Is it Lowndes Mansions as you're a-asking for?" he said.
"Yes," said Janet.
"Why, it's there as the fire was yesterday."
"The fire!"
"Yes! The top floors is mostly burnt out. You can't get a wehicle near it."
"Were any lives lost?" said Janet. The Brands lived on one of the upper floors.
"No, miss," said a policeman, approaching, urbane, helpful, not averse to imparting information.
Janet explained that she was on her way to stay in the Mansions, and the policeman, who said that other "parties" had already arrived with the same object but could not be taken in, advised her to turn back and go with her luggage to one of the private hotels in Sloane Street, until she could, as he expressed it, "turn round."
Janet did as she was bid, and half an hour later made her way on foot through the crowd to the entrance of Lowndes Mansions.
The hall porter recognised her, for she had frequently stayed with the Brands, and Janet's face was not quickly forgotten. He bade the policeman who barred the entrance let her pass.
The central hall, with its Oriental hangings and sham palms, was crowded with people. Idle, demoralized housemaids belonging tothe upper floors, whose sphere of work was gone, stood together in whispering groups watching the spectacle. Grave men in high hats and over-long buttoned-up frock-coats greeted each other silently, and then produced passes which admitted them to the jealously guarded iron staircase. The other staircase was burnt out at the top, though from the hall it showed no trace of anything but of the water which yesterday had flowed down it in waves, and which still oozed from the heavy pile stair-carpet, which the salvage men were beginning to take up.
The hall porter and the unemployed lift man stood together, silent, stupefied, broken with fatigue, worn out with answering questions.
"Are Mr and Mrs Brand all right?" gasped Janet, thrilled by the magnitude of the unseen disaster above, which seemed to strike roots of horror down to the basement.
"Every one is all right," said the lift man automatically. "No lives lost. Two residents shook. One leg brokehamong the hemployees—compound fracture."
"Mrs Brand was shook," said the hall porter callously. "She had a fall."
"Where is she now?" enquired Janet.
The hall porter looked at her apathetically, and continued: "Mr Brand was taking 'orse exercise in the Park. Mrs Brand was still in her bedroom. The fire broke out, cause unbeknownst, at ten o'clock yesterday morning precisely. Ten by the barracks clock it was. The hemployees worked the hose until the first hingine arrived at quarter past."
"Twenty past," corrected the lift man.
"And Mrs Brand?" said Janet again.
"Mrs Brand must 'ave been dressing, for she was in her dressing-gown, and she must ha' run down the main staircase afore it got well alight; at least, she was found unconscious-like three flights down. Some say as she was mazed by the smoke, and some say as she fell over the banisters."
"The banisters is gone," said the lift man.
"Where is she now? Where is Mr Brand? I must see him at once," said Janet, at last realizing that the history of the fire would go on for ever.
"Mrs Brand was took into the billiard-room," said the lift man. "Mr Brand is with her, and the doctor. There! The doctor is coming out now."
A grey-haired man shot out through the crowd, ran down the steps, and disappeared into a brougham privileged to remain at the entrance.
"Take me to Mr Brand this instant," said Janet, shaking the hall porter by the arm.
The man looked as if he would have been surprised at her vehemence if there were any spring of surprise left in him, but it had obviously run down from overwinding. He slowly led the way through a swing door, and down a dark passage lit by electric light. At a large ground-glass door with "Billiard-Room" on it he stopped, and tapped.
There was no answer.
Janet opened the door, went in, and closed it behind her.
She almost stumbled against Mr Brand, who was standing with his back towards her, his face to the wall, in the tiny antechamber, bristling with empty pegs, which led into the billiard-room.
It was dark save for the electric light in the passage, which shone feebly through the ground-glass door.
Mr Brand turned slowly as Janet almost touched him. His death-white face was the only thing visible. He did not speak. Janet gazed at him horror-struck.
Gradually, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she saw the little dapper, familiar figure, with its immaculate frock-coat, and corseted waist, and the lean, sallow, wrinkled face, with its retreating forehead and dyed hair, and waxed, turned-up moustaches. One of the waxed ends had been bent, and drooped forlornly, grotesquely. It was perhaps inevitable that the money-lender should be nicknamed "Monkey Brand,"a name pronounced by many with a sneer not devoid of fear.
"How is she?" said Janet at last.
"She is dying," said Monkey Brand, his chin shaking. "Her back is broken."
A nurse in cap and apron silently opened the inner door into the billiard-room.
"Mrs Brand is asking for you, sir," she said gently.
"I will come," he said, and he went back into the billiard-room.
The nurse looked enquiringly at Janet.
"I am Mrs Brand's friend," said Janet. "She is expecting me."
"She takes it very hard now, poor thing," said the nurse; "and she was so brave at first."
And they both went into the billiard-room, and remained standing at the further end of it.
It was a large, gaudily-decorated room, adorned with sporting prints, and lit by a skylight, on to which opaque bodies, evidently fallen from a height, lay in blots, starring the glass.
The billiard-table was littered with doctors' appliances, and at the end near the door the nurse had methodically arranged a line of towels and basins, with a tin can of hot water and a bucket swathed in flannel with ice in it.
The large room, with its glaring upper light, was hot and still, and smelt of stale smoke and chloroform.
At the further end, on an improvised bed of mattresses and striped sofa cushions, a white, rigid figure was lying, the eyes fixed on the skylight.
Monkey Brand knelt down by his wife, and bending over her, kissed, without raising it, one of the pale clenched hands.
"Cuckoo," he said, and until she heard him speak it seemed to Janet that she had never known to what heights tenderness can reach.
His wife turned her eyes slowly upon him, and looked at him. In her eyes, dark with coming death, there was a great yearning towards her husband, andbehind the yearning an anguish unspeakable. Janet shrank before it. The fear of death never cut so deep as that.
A cry, uncouth, terrible, as of one pushed past the last outpost of endurance to the extremity of agony, rent the quiet room.
"I cannot bear it," she wailed. And she, who could not raise her hands, to which death had come already, raised them once above her head.
They fell heavily, lifelessly, striking her husband's face.
"I would die for you if I might," said Monkey Brand, and he hid his face against the hand that had struck him.
Cuckoo looked at the bowed, blue-black head, and her wide eyes wandered away past it, set in the vacancy of despair. They fell on Janet.
"Who is that?" she said suddenly.
The nurse brought Janet forward.
"You remember me, Cuckoo?" said Janet gently, her calm smile a little tremulous, her face white and beautiful as that of an angel.
"It is Janet. Thank God!" said Cuckoo, and she suddenly burst into tears.
They passed quickly.
"I have no time for tears," said Cuckoo, smiling faintly at her husband, as he wiped them away with a shaking brown hand. "Janet is come. I must speak to her a little quite alone."
"You would not send me from you?" said Monkey Brand, his face twitching. "You would not be so hard on me, Cuckoo?"
"Yes," she said, "I would."
The pretty, vulgar, dying face, under its crooked fringe, was illuminated. A sort of shadow of Cuckoo's hard little domineering manner had come back to her.
"I must be alone with Janet for a little bit, quite alone. You and the nurse will go outside, and wait till Janet comes to you. And then," she looked at her husband with tender love, "you will come back to me, and stay with me to the last."
He still hesitated.
"Go now, Arthur," she said, "and take nurse with you."
The habit of obedience to her whim, her fancy, her slightest wish, was ingrained years deep in him. He got upon his feet, signed to the nurse, and left the room with her.
"Is the door shut?" said Cuckoo.
"Yes."
"Go and make sure."
Janet went to the door, and came back.
"It is shut."
"Kneel down by me. I can't speak loud."
Janet knelt down.
"Now listen to me. I'm dying. I'm not going to die this minute, because I won't; but all the same it's coming. I can't hold on. There is no time for being surprised, or for explanations. There's no time for anything, except for you to listen to me, and do something for me quickly. Will you do it?"
"Yes," said Janet.
Cuckoo looked for a moment at the innocent, fair face above her, and a faint colour stained her cheek. But she remembered her husband, and summoned her old courage. She spoke quickly, with the clearness and precision which had made her such an excellent woman of business, so invaluable on the committees of fashionable charities.
"I am a bad woman, Janet. I have concealed it from you, and from every one. Arthur—has never guessed it. Don't shudder. Don't turn away. There's not time. Keep all that for later—when I'm gone. And don't drive me to distraction by thinking this is a dying hallucination. I know what I am saying, and I, who have lied so often, am driven to speak the truth at last."
"Don't," said Janet. "If it's true, don't say it, but let it die with you. Don't break Mr Brand's heart now at the last moment."
Cuckoo's astute eyes dwelt on Janet's face. How slow she was! What ablunt instrument had Fate vouchsafed to her.
"I speak to save him," she said. "Don't interrupt again, but listen. It all goes back a long way. I was forced into marrying Arthur. I disliked him, for I was in love with some one else—some one, as I see now, not fit to black his boots. I was straight when I married Arthur, but—I did not stay straight afterwards. Arthur is a hard man, but he was good and tender to me always, and he trusted me absolutely. I deceived him—for years. The child is not Arthur's. Arty is not Arthur's. I never was really sorry until a year ago, when he—the other—left me for some one else. He said he had fallen in love with a good woman—a snowflake." Even now Cuckoo set her teeth at the remembrance of that speech. But she hurried on. "That was the time I fell ill. And Arthur nursed me. You don't know what Arthur is. I never seemed to have noticed before. Other people fail, but Arthur never fails. And I seemedto come to myself. I could not bear him out of my sight. And ever since I have loved him, as I thought people only loved in poetry books. I saw he was the only one. And I thought he would never know. If he did, it would break his heart and mine, wherever I was."
Cuckoo waited a moment, and then went on with methodical swiftness:
"But I never burnt the—the other one's letters. I always meant to, and I always didn't. It has been in my mind ever since I was ill to burn them. I never thought I should die like this. I put it off. The truth is, I could not bear to look at them, and remember how I'd—but I meant to do it. I knew when I came to myself at the foot of the stairs that I was dying, but I did not really mind—except for leaving Arthur, for he told me all our flat was burnt and everything in it, and I only grieved at leaving him. But this morning, when the place was cold enough for people to go up, Arthur told me—he thought it wouldplease me—that my sitting-room, and part of the other rooms, were still standing with everything in them, and he heard that my picture was not even touched. It hangs over the Italian cabinet. But when I heard it I thought my heart would break, for the letters are in the Italian cabinet, and I knew that some day when I am gone—perhaps not for a long time, but some day—Arthur would open that cabinet—my business papers are in it, too—and would find the letters."
Cuckoo's weak, metallic voice weakened yet more.
"And he would see I had deceived him for years, and that Arty is not his child. Arthur was so pleased when Arty was born."
There was an awful silence; the ice dripped in the pail.
"I don't mind what happens to me," said Cuckoo, "or what hell I go to, if only Arthur might stay loving me when I'm gone, as he always has—from the very first."
"What do you want me to do?" said Janet.
"I want you to go up to the flat without being seen, and burn those letters. Try and go up by the main staircase. They may let you if you bluff them; I could do it;—and it may not be burnt out at the top as they say. If it really is burnt out, you must go up by the iron staircase. If they won't let you pass, bribe the policeman: you must go up all the same. The letters are in the lowest left-hand drawer of the Italian cabinet. The key—O my God! The key! Where is the key?"
Cuckoo's mind, brought to bay, rose unflinching.
"The key is on the pearl chain that I wear every day. But where is the chain? Let me think. I had it on. I know I had it on. I wear the pearls against my neck, under my gown. I was in my dressing-gown. Then I had it on. Look on the billiard-table."
Janet looked.
"Look on the mantelpiece. I saw the nurse put something down there which she took off me."
Janet looked. "There is a miniature of Arty on a ribbon."
"I had it in my hand when the alarm reached me. Look on me. Perhaps I have got it on still."
Janet unfastened the neck of the dressing-gown, which, though lacerated by the nurse's scissors, still retained the semblance of a garment. After an interminable moment she drew out a pearl chain.
"Thank God!" said Cuckoo. "Don't raise my head; I might die if you did, and I can't die yet. Break the chain. There! Now the key slips off. Take it, go up, and burn the letters. There are a good many, but you will know them because they are tied with my hair. The lowest left-hand drawer, remember. You will burn them—there are some matches on the mantelpiece behind Arthur's photograph—and wait till they are really burnt. Will you do this, Janet?"
"I will."
"And will you promise me that, whatever happens, you will never tell any one that you have burnt anything?"
"I promise."
"You swear it?"
"I swear it."
"Let me see; you must have some reason for going, in case you are seen. If you are asked, say I sent you to see if my picture was uninjured. I am a vain woman. Anyone will believe that. Stick to that if you are questioned. And now go. Go at once. And throw away the key when you have locked up the cabinet. I shall not be able to be alone with you again, Janet. Arthur won't leave me a second time. When you come back, stand where I can see you; and if you have destroyed everything put your hand against your forehead. I shall understand. I shall not be able to thank you, but I shall thank you in my heart, and I shall die in peace. Now go, and tell Arthur to come back to me."
Janet found Monkey Brand in the antechamber, his ashen, ravaged face turned with dog-like expectancy towards the billiard-room door, waiting for it to open. Without a word, he went back to his wife.
"... a strong man from the North,Light-locked, with eyes of dangerous grey."
"... a strong man from the North,Light-locked, with eyes of dangerous grey."
"... a strong man from the North,Light-locked, with eyes of dangerous grey."
It was a little after twelve as Janet entered the central hall, and the salvage men were coming down for their dinner. A cord had been stretched across the foot of the grand staircase, and a policeman guarded it. As Janet hesitated, a young man and woman came boldly up to him, and demanded leave to pass.
"I can't let you up, sir," said the policeman. "It ain't safe."
"I have the right to go up to my own flat on the fourth floor," said the man. "Here is my card. You will observe my address of these Mansions is printed on it."
"Yes, my lord; certainly, my lord," said the policeman, looking at the card with respect. "The fire ain't touched anything lower than the fifth floor; but we have to keep a sharp look-out, as a many strange characters are about trying to get up, to see what they can lay hands on."
Janet had drawn up close behind the young couple, and when the cord was withdrawn went upstairs as if with them. They did not even see her. They were talking eagerly to each other. When they reached the first landing she slackened her pace, and let them go on in front.
The fire had broken out on the seventh floor of the great block of buildings, and had raged slowly downwards to the sixth and fifth. But at first, as Janet mounted the sodden staircase, there was hardly any trace of the devastation save in the wet, streaked walls, and the constant dropping of water from above.
But the fourth floor bore witness. The ceilings were scored with great cracks. Theplaster had fallen in places, and everything—walls, ceilings, doors, and passages—was blackened as if licked by great tongues of smoke.
The young couple were standing at the further end of a long empty passage, trying to open a door. As Janet looked, she saw the man put his shoulder to it. Then she turned once more to the next flight of the staircase. It was strewn with wreckage. The bent iron banisters, from which the lead hung in congealed drops, supported awkwardly the contorted remains of the banisters from above, which had crashed down upon them. The staircase had ceased to be a staircase. It was a steep, sliding mass of fallendébris, down which the demon of fire had hurled, as into a well, the ghastly entrails of the havoc of his torture chambers above.
Janet looked carefully at the remnants of the staircase. The heat had reached it, but not the fire. She climbed half way up it, securing a foothold where she could among thedébris. But, halfway, the banisters from above blocked her passage, tiltedcrazily towards her, insurmountable. She dared not touch them for fear of bringing them, and an avalanche of piled rubbish behind them, down upon her. She turned back a few steps, deliberately climbed, in her short country skirt, over the still standing banisters, and, holding firmly by them, went up the remainder of the flight, cautious step by step, as she and Fred had done as children, finding a foothold where she could, and not allowing her eyes to look down into the well below her. At the next landing she climbed over the banisters again, felt them for a sickening moment give under her weight, and stopped to take breath and look round her.
She was on the fifth floor.
Even here the fire had not actually been, but the heaps of sodden ashes, the gaping, burst panels, the seared doors, the blackness of the disfigured passages, the long, distraught wires of the electric lighting, showed that heat had been here; blinding, scorching, blistering heat.
The Brands' flat was on the sixth floor.
Janet looked up once more, and even her steady eyes were momentarily daunted.
The staircase was gone. A raging fire had swept up its two last flights as up a chimney, and had carried all before it. What the fire had refused it had flung down, choking up the landing below. Nothing remained of the staircase save the iron supports, sticking out of the wall like irregular, jagged teeth, and marking where each step of the stairs had been.
Higher still a zinc bath remained sticking against the charred, naked wall. The bathroom had fallen from it. The bath and its twisted pipes remained. And above all the blue sky peered down as into a pit's mouth.
Janet looked fixedly at the iron supports, and measured them with her eye. Her colour did not change, nor her breath quicken. She felt her strength in her. Then, hugging the black wall till it crumbled against her, and shading her eyes till they could see only where to tread, she went swiftly up those awful stairs, and reached the sixth floor.
Then her strength gave way, and she sank down upon something soft, and shuddered. A faint sound made her look back.
One of the supports, loosened by her footstep, stirred, and then fell. It fell a long way.
Even her marvellous inapprehensiveness was shaken. But her still courage returned to her, the quiet confidence that enabled her to break in nervous horses with which her recklessly foolhardy brother could do nothing.
Janet rose slowly to her feet, catching them as she did so in something soft. Stamped into the charred grime of the concrete floor by the feet of the firemen were the remains of a sable cloak, which, as her foot touched it, showed a shred of rose-coloured lining. A step further her foot sank into a heap of black rags, evidently hastily flung down by one in headlong flight, through the folds of which gold embroidery and a pair of jewelled clasps gleamed faintly.
Janet stood still a moment in what had been the heart of the fire. The blast of the furnace had roared down that once familiar passage, leaving a charred, rent hole, half filled up and silted out of all shape by ashes. Nevertheless her way lay down it.
She crept stumbling along it with bent head. Surely the Brands' flat was exactly here, on the left, near the head of the staircase. But she could recognise nothing.
She stopped short at a gaping cavity that had once been a doorway, and looked through it into what had once been a bedroom. The fire had swept all before it. If there had once been a floor and walls, and ceiling and furniture, all was gone, leaving a seared, egg-shaped hole. From its shelving sides three pieces of contorted iron had rolled into the central puddle—all that was left of the bed.
Couldthisbe the Brands' flat?
Janet passed on, and peered through the next doorway. Here the flames had not raged so fiercely. The blackened semblanceof a room was still there, but shrunk like a mummy, and ready to crumble at a touch. It must have been a servant's bedroom. The chest of drawers, the bed, were still there in outline, but all ashes. On pegs on the wall hung ghosts of gowns and hats, as if drawn in soot. On the chest of drawers stood the effigy of a bedroom candlestick, with the extinguisher over it.
Yes, it was the Brands' flat. The outer door and little entrance hall had been wiped out, and she was inside it. This evidently had been the drawing-room. Here were signs as of some frightful conflict, as if the room had resisted its fate to the death, and had only been overpowered after a hideous struggle.
The wall-paper hung in tatters on the wall. Remnants of furniture were flung about in all directions. The door was gone. The windows were gone. The bookcase was gone, leaving no trace, but the books it had contained had been thrown all over the room in its downfall, and layfor the most part unscorched, pell-mell, one over the other. Among the books crouched an agonised tangle of wires—all that was left of Cuckoo's grand piano. The pictures had leapt wildly from the walls to join in the conflict. A few pieces of strewed gilding, as if torn asunder with pincers, showed their fate. Horror brooded over the place as over the dead body of one who had fought for his life, and died by torture, whom the destroyer had not had time to mutilate past recognition.
Had the wind changed, and had the fiend of fire been forced to obey it, and leave his havoc unfinished? Yes, the wind must have changed, for at the next step down the passage, Janet reached Cuckoo's boudoir.
The door had fallen inward, and by some miracle the whole strength of the flames had rushed down the passage, leaving even the door unburnt. Janet walked over the door into the little room and stood amazed.
The fire had passed by on the other side. Everything here was untouched, unchanged. The yellow china cat with an immenselylong neck was still seated on its plush footstool on the hearthrug. On the sofa lay an open fashion paper, where Cuckoo had laid it down. On every table photographs of Cuckoo smiled in different attitudes. The gaudy room, with its damask panels, bore no trace of smoke, nor even of heat, save that the two palms in tubs, and the hydrangeas in the fireplace, were shrivelled up, and in the gilt bird-cage in the window was a tiny, motionless form, with outstretched wings, that would fain have flown away.
For a moment Janet forgot everything except the bullfinch—the piping bullfinch that Monkey Brand had given to his wife. She ran to the cage, brushing against the palms, which made a dry rustling as she passed, and bent over the little bird.
"Bully," she said. "Bully!" For that was the name which, after much thought, Monkey Brand had bestowed upon it.
But "Bully" did not move. He was pressed against the bars of his Chinese pagoda, with his head thrown back and hisbeak open. "Bully" had known fear before he died.
Janet suddenly remembered the great fear which some one else was enduring, to whom death was coming, and she turned quickly from the window.
De Rivaz's extraordinary portrait of Cuckoo smiled at Janet from the wall, in all its shrewd, vulgar prettiness. The hard, calculating blue eyes, which could stare down the social ladder so mercilessly, were mercilessly portrayed. The careful touch of rouge on the cheek and carmine on the lip were faithfully rendered. The manicured, plebeian hands were Cuckoo's, and none but Cuckoo's. The picture was a studied insult, save in the eyes of Monkey Brand, who saw in it the reflection, imperfect and inadequate, but still the reflection of the one creature whom, in his money-getting life, he had found time to love.
Janet never could bear to look at it, and she turned her eyes away.
Directly underneath the picture stood the Italian cabinet, with its ivory figures let intoebony. It was untouched, as Cuckoo had feared. The mermaid was still tranquilly riding a whale on the snaffle, in the midst of a sea with a crop of dolphins' tails sticking up through it.
Janet fitted the key into the lock, and then instinctively turned to shut the door. But the door lay prone upon the floor. She stole into the passage and listened.
There were voices somewhere out of sight. Human voices seemed strangely out of place in this cindered grave. They came nearer. A tall, heavily-built man came stooping round the corner, with another shorter, slighter one behind him.
"The floors are concrete; it's all right," said the first man.
Janet retreated into the room again, to wait till they had passed. But they were in no hurry. They both glanced into the room, and, seeing her, went on.
"Here you have one of the most extraordinary effects of fire," said the big man, stopping at the next doorway. "This was once a drawing-room. If youwant to paint a realistic picture, here is your subject."
"I would rather paint an angel in the pit's mouth," said the younger man significantly, leaning his delicate, artist hand against the charred doorpost. "Do you think, Vanbrunt, this is a safe place for angels without wings to be going about alone? You say the floors are safe, but are they?"
Stephen Vanbrunt considered a moment.
Then he turned back to the room where Janet was. He did not enter it, but stood in the doorway, nearly filling it up—a tall, powerfully-built, unyouthful-looking man with shaggy eyebrows and a grim, clean-shaved face and heavy jaw. You may see such a face and figure any day in the Yorkshire mines or in a stone-mason's yard.
The millionaire took off his hat with a large blackened hand, and said to Janet: "I trust the salvage men have warned you that the passages on your right are unsafe?" He pointed towards the wayby which she had come. It was evidently an effort to him to speak to her. He was a shy man.
His voice was deep and gentle. It gave the same impression of strength behind it that a quiet wave does of the sea. He stood with his head thrown slightly back, an austere, massive figure, not without a certain dignity. And as he looked at Janet, there was just room in his narrow, near-sighted slits of eyes for a stern kindliness to shine through. Children and dogs always made a bee-line for Stephen.
As Janet did not answer, he said again.
"I trust you will not attempt to go down the passage to your right. It is not safe."
"No," said Janet, and she remembered her instructions. "I am only here to see if De Rivaz' picture of Mrs Brand is safe."
"Here is De Rivaz himself," said Stephen. "May we come in a moment and look at it? I am afraid I came in without asking last night, with the police inspector."
"Do come in," said Janet.
The painter came in, and glanced at the picture.
"It's all right," he said indifferently. "Not even a lick of smoke. But," he added, looking narrowly at Janet, "if Mr Brand wishes it I will send a man I can trust to revarnish it."
"Thank you," said Janet.
"Here is my card," he continued, still looking at her.
"Thank you," said Janet again, wondering when they would go.
"You are, no doubt, a relation of the Brands?" he continued desperately.
"I am a friend."
"I will come and see Mr Brand about the picture," continued the young man, stammering. "May I ask you to be so kind as to tell him so?"
"I will tell him," said Janet; and she became very pale. While this man was manufacturing conversation Cuckoo was dying—was dying, waiting with her eyes on the door. She turned instinctively to Stephen for help.
But he had forgotten her. He was looking intently at the dead bird in the cage, was touching its sleek head with a large gentle finger.
"You are well out of it, my friend," he said below his breath. "It is not good to be afraid, but it was a short agony. And it is over. You will not be afraid again. You are well out of it. No more prison bars. No more stretching of wings to fly with that may never fly. No more years of servitude for a cruel woman's whim. You are well out of it."
He looked up and met Janet's eyes.
"We are trespassers," he said instantly. "We have taken a mean advantage of your kindness in letting us come in. De Rivaz, I will show you a background for your next picture a few yards further on. Mr Brand knows me," he continued, producing a card in his turn. "We do business together. He is my tenant here. Will you kindly tell him I ventured to bring Mr De Rivaz into the remains of his flat to make a sketch of the effects of fire?"
"I will tell him," said Janet, only half attending, and laying the card beside De Rivaz'. Would they never go?
They did go immediately, Stephen peremptorily aiding the departure of the painter.
When they were in the next room De Rivaz leaned up against the blackened wall, and said hoarsely: "Vanbrunt, did you see her?"
"Of course I saw her."
"But I must paint her. I must know her. I shall go back and ask her to sit to me."
"You will do no such thing. You will immediately apply yourself to this scene of desolation, or I shall take you away. Look at this charnel-house. What unchained devils have raged in it! It is jealousy made visible. What is the use of a realistic painter like yourself, who can squeeze all romance out of life till the whole of existence is as prosaic as a string of onions; what is the use of a wretched worm like you making oneof your horrible portraits of that beautiful, innocent face?"
"I shall paint her if I live," said De Rivaz, glaring at his friend. "I know beauty when I see it."
"No, you don't. You see everything ugly, even beauty of a high order. Look at your picture of me."
Both men laughed.
"I will paint her," said De Rivaz. "Half the beauty of so-called beautiful women is loathsome to me because of the sordid or frivolous soul behind it. But I will paint a picture of that woman which will show to the world, and even to rhinoceros-hided sceptics like you, Vanbrunt, that I can make the beauty of the soul shine through even a beautiful face, as I have made mean souls shine through lovely faces. I shall fall damnably in love with her while I do it, but that can't be helped. And the picture will make her and me famous."
"Doch wenn du sagst, 'Ich liebe dich,'Dann muss Ich weinen bitterlich."
"Doch wenn du sagst, 'Ich liebe dich,'Dann muss Ich weinen bitterlich."
"Doch wenn du sagst, 'Ich liebe dich,'Dann muss Ich weinen bitterlich."
Janet listened to the retreating footsteps, and then flew to the cabinet.
The key would not turn, and for one sickening moment, while she wrenched clumsily at it, she feared she was not going to succeed in opening the cabinet. Janet had through life a great difficulty in all that involved delicate manipulation, except a horse's mouth. If a lock resisted, she used force, generally shooting it; if the hinge of a door gave, she jammed it. But in this instance, contrary to her usual experience, the lock did turn at last, and the whole front of the cabinet, dolphins and mermaid and all, came suddenly forwards towards her, disclosing within a double tier of ebony drawers, all exquisitely inlaid with ivory, and each having its tiny, silver-scrolled lock.
Some water had dripped on to the cabinet from a damp place in the ceiling, and a few drops had penetrated down to the inner drawers, rusting the silver of the lowest drawer—the left-hand one.
Janet fitted the key into it. It turned easily, but the drawer resisted. It came out a little way, and then stuck. It was quite full. Janet gave another pull, and the narrow, shallow drawer came out, with difficulty—but still, it did come out.
On the top, methodically folded, were some hand-written directions for fancy work. Cuckoo never did any needlework. Janet raised them, and looked underneath. Where was the packet tied with hair? It was nowhere to be seen. There were a quantity of letters loosely laid together. Could these be they? Evidently they had not been touched for a long time, for the grime of London air and fog had settled on them. Janet wiped the topmost with her handkerchief, and a few words came clearly out: "My darling. My treasure." Her handkerchief had touched somethingloose in the corner of the drawer. Could this dim, moth-fretten lock have once been Cuckoo's yellow hair? Even as she looked, out of it came a moth, dragging itself slowly over the face of the letter, opening its unused wings. It crawled up over the rusted silver scroll-work, and flew away into the room.
Yes. These must be the letters. They had been tied once, and the moth had eaten away the tie. She took them carefully up. There were a great many. She gathered them all together, as she thought; looked again at the back of the drawer to make sure, and found a few more, with a little gilt heart rusted into them. Then she replaced the needlework directions, pushed to the drawer—which resisted again, and then went back into its place—locked it, extracted the key, locked the cabinet, and threw the key out of a broken pane of the window. She saw it light on the roof lower down, and slide into the safe keeping of the gutter.
Then she moved away the shrivelled hydrangeas which stood in the fire-place, and put the letters into the empty grate. Once more she went to the door and listened. All was quite still. She came back. On the chimney-piece stood a photograph of Monkey Brand grinning smugly through its cracked glass. Behind it was a silver match-box with a pig on it, and "Scratch me" written on it. Cuckoo affected everything she called "quaint."
Janet struck a match, knelt down, and held it to the pile of letters.
But love-letters never yet burned easily. Perhaps they have passed through the flame of life, and after that no feebler fire can reach them quickly. The fire shrank from them, and match after match went out, flame after flame wavered, and refused to meddle with them.
After wasting time in several exactly similar attempts when one failure would have been sufficient, Janet opened and crumpled some of them to let the air get to them. The handwriting was strangely familiar.She observed the fact without reasoning on it. Then she sprinkled the remainder of the letters on the top of the crumpled ones, and again set the pile alight.
The fire got hold now. It burned up fiercely, bringing down upon itself the upper letters, which toppled into the heart of the miniature conflagration much as the staircase must have toppled on to the stairs below, in the bigger conflagration of yesterday. How familiar the handwriting was! How some of the sentences shone out as if written in fire on black sheets: "Love like ours can never fade." The words faded out at once, as the dying letters gave up the ghost—the ghost of dead love. Janet gazed fascinated. Another letter fell in, opening as it fell, disclosing a photograph. Fred's face looked full at Janet for a moment out of the little greedy flames that licked it up. Janet drew back trembling, suddenly sick unto death.
Fred's face! Fred's writing!
She trembled so violently that she did not notice that the smoke was no longer going up the chimney, but was filling the room.The chimney was evidently blocked higher up.
She was so paralysed that she did not notice a light footfall in the passage, and a figure in the doorway. Janet was not of those who see behind their backs. The painter, alarmed by the smoke, stood for a moment, brush in hand, looking fixedly at her. Then his eye fell on the smoking papers in the grate, and he withdrew noiselessly.
It was out now. The second fire was out. What violent passions had been consumed in it! That tiny fire in the grate seemed to Janet more black with horror than the appalling scene of havoc in the next room. She knelt down and parted the hot films of the little bonfire. There was no scrap of paper left. The thing was done.
Then she noticed the smoke, and her heart stood still.
She pushed the cinders into the back of the grate with her hands, replaced the hydrangeas in the fire-place, and ran to the window. But the wood-work was warpedby the heat. It would not open. She wasted time trying to force it, and then broke the glass and let in the air. But the air only blew the smoke out into the passage. It was like a bad dream. She seized the prostrate door, and tried to raise it. But it was too heavy for her.
She stood up panting, watching the telltale smoke curl lightly through the doorway.
More steps in the passage.
She went swiftly into the next room, and stood in the doorway. The lift man came cautiously down the passage, accompanied by an alert, spectacled young man, notebook in hand. The lift man bore the embarrassed expression of one whose sense of duty has succumbed before too large a tip. The young man had the decided manner of one who intends to have his money's worth.
"Where are we now?" he said, scribbling for dear life, his spectacles turning all ways at once. "I don't like this smoke. Can the beastly place be on fire still?"
But the lift man had caught sight of Janet, and the sight of her was obviously unwelcome.
"The floors ain't safe here," he said confusedly. "There's a deal more damage to be seen in the left wing."
"Is there?" said the young man drily. "We'll go there next"; and he went on peering and scribbling.
A voice in the distance shouted imperiously, "Number Two, where does this smoke come from?"
There was a plodding of heavy, hastening feet above.
In an instant the young man and the lift man had disappeared round the corner.
Janet ran swiftly down the black passage along which they had come, almost brushing against the painter in her haste, without perceiving him. She flew on, recognising by instinct the once familiar way to the central hall on each landing. Here it was at last. She paused a moment by the gaping lift, and then walked slowly to the head of the iron outer staircase.
A policeman was speaking austerely to a short, stout, shabbily-dressed woman of determined aspect, who bore the unmistakable stamp of those whose unquenchable desire it is to be where their presence is not desired, where it is even deprecated.
"Only ladies and gents with passes is admitted," the policeman was saying.
"But how can I get a pass?"
"I don't precisely know," said the policeman cautiously, "but I know it must be signed by Mr Vanbrunt or Mr Brown."
"I am the Duchess of Quorn, and I am an intimate friend of Mr Vanbrunt."
Janet passed the couple with a beating heart. But apparently there were no restrictions about persons going out, only about those trying to get in. The policeman made way for her at once, and she went down unchallenged.
In the billiard-room time was waxing short; was obviously running out.
The child had arrived from the countrywith his nurse. Monkey Brand took him in his arms at the door, and knelt down with him beside Cuckoo.
"Arty has come to say 'good-morning' to Mammy," he said, in a strangled, would-be cheerful voice.
Cuckoo looked at the child wildly for a moment, as the little laughing face came within the radius of her fading sight. She suffered the cool, flower-like cheek to touch hers, but then she whispered to her husband, "Take him away. I want only you."
He took Arty back to his nurse, holding him closely to him, and returned to her.
Death seemed to have advanced a step nearer with the advent of the child.
They both waited for it in silence.
"Don't kneel, Arthur," said Cuckoo at last. "You will be so tired."
He obediently drew up a little stool, and crouched hunched up upon it, her cold hand between his cold hands.
"Is there any one at the door?" she asked, after an age of silence.
"No one, dearest; we are quite alone."
"I should like to see Janet to say 'good-bye.'"
"Must I go and look for her?"
"No. I sent her to see if my picture was really safe. It is all you will have to remember me by. She will come and tell me directly."
"I do not want any picture of you, Cuckoo."
Another silence.
"I can't wait much longer," said Cuckoo below her breath; but he heard it. "Are you sure there is no one at the door, Arthur?"
"No one."
Silence again.
"Ask God to have pity on me," said Cuckoo faintly. "Isn't there some one coming in now?"
"No one."
"Ask God to have pity on us both," said Cuckoo again. "Pray so that I can hear."
But apparently Monkey Brand could not pray aloud.
"Say something to make the time pass," she whispered.
"The Lord is my Shepherd," said Monkey Brand brokenly, his mind throwing back thirty years; "I shall not want. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He——"
"I seem to hear steps," interrupted Cuckoo.
"He leadeth me beside the still waters. Yea, though I walk"—the voice broke down—"though I walk in the valley of the shadow of——"
"Some one is coming in now," said Cuckoo, in a faint, acute voice.
"It is Janet."
"I can't see her plainly. Tell her to come nearer."
He beckoned to Janet.
"I can see her now," said Cuckoo, the blindness of death in her wide eyes, which stared vacantly where Janet was not; "at least, I see some one. Isn't she holding her hand to her forehead?"
"Yes."
The last tears Cuckoo was destined to shed stood in her blind eyes.
"Good-bye, dear Janet," she gasped.
"Good-bye, Cuckoo."
"Send her away. Is she quite gone, Arthur?"
"Yes, dearest."
"I must go too. I don't know how to leave you, but I must. I cannot see you, but you are with me in the darkness. Take me in your arms and let me die in them. Is that your cheek against mine? How cold it is! Hold your dear hands to my face that I may kiss them too. They have been kind, kind hands to me. How my poor Arthur trembles! You were too good for me, Arthur. You have been the only real friend I've ever had in the world. More than father and mother to me. More than any one."
"You did love me, little one?"
"Yes."
"Only me?"
"Only you."
He burst into a passion of tears.
"Forgive me for having doubted you," he said hoarsely.
"Did you ever doubt me?"
"Yes, once. I ought to have known better. I can't forgive myself. Forgive me, my wife."
Cuckoo was silent. Death was hard upon her, heavy on voice and breath.
"Say, 'Arthur, I forgive you,'" whispered her husband through the darkness.
"Arthur, I forgive you," said Cuckoo with a sob. And her head fell forward on his breast.