The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe white countessThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The white countessAuthor: Florence WardenRelease date: October 13, 2023 [eBook #71864]Most recently updated: December 2, 2023Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: John Long, 1907Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE COUNTESS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The white countessAuthor: Florence WardenRelease date: October 13, 2023 [eBook #71864]Most recently updated: December 2, 2023Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: John Long, 1907Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
Title: The white countess
Author: Florence Warden
Author: Florence Warden
Release date: October 13, 2023 [eBook #71864]Most recently updated: December 2, 2023
Language: English
Original publication: London: John Long, 1907
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE COUNTESS ***
ByFlorence Warden
LondonJohn LongNorris Street, HaymarketAll Rights ReservedFirst Published in1907
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
“Oh, Gerard, what a long face! What’s the matter? Have you had your pocket picked?”
It was Gerard Angmering’s beautiful young wife who put these laughing questions to him, on the threshold of the modest little flat in West Kensington where, like most young couples of moderate means nowadays, they had set up their tent and expected to find peace and joy and all the comforts of home in a jerry-built “mansion” where they paid a hundred a year for the privilege of hearing the conversation of their underneath neighbour up the chimney, and being overheard in like manner by their neighbours overhead and on each side.
Gerard, whose face had instinctively softened at the very first word from his wife, said “Sh—sh,” pushed her inside their little drawing-room, and shut the door.
“There’s trouble at the bank,” said he. “I didn’t want to have to tell you. But since you’ve found me out, why, I suppose I must.”
“Oh, Gerard, what do you mean? What trouble?”
“There, there, don’t look so frightened, child. It will be all right, all right. At least—I suppose it will, I hope it will. You’ve heard me speak of Sir Richmond Hornthwaite, the old gentleman who gives us so much trouble—always sending imperative messages for us to go and see him, because he’s forgotten something he had to say, or because he wants to have something done for him in a hurry?”
“Yes, oh, yes, the old man who lives at Chislehurst.”
“Yes. Well, he’s just discovered—or thinks he’s discovered, that three cheques have been paid against his account which he never signed, which are, in fact, forgeries.”
“Oh, dear! And the bank people are very much upset about it, of course!”
Gerard, who was very pale, nodded. There was a long silence, and Audrey, who was still clinging to her husband, perceived, with a sickening sense of distress and terror, that she had not yet heard the worst.
“Well,” she said, quite querulously, “and what else?”
Gerard Angmering turned upon her suddenly eyes in which agony revealed itself unmistakably, appallingly. He tried to speak, but could not. Audrey clung more closely to his arm, put her right hand round his neck, held him close to her, comforting, encouraging, knowing with a loving woman’s instinctive knowledge that the worst would be tragically awful to hear.
Not one word did she utter, yet he knew she knew what was coming. So well did he know it that he prefaced his speech, when he got back some remnants of husky, audible voice, by a grave, slow nod of the head.
“Yes,” whispered he brokenly, “yes, he accuses me, Audrey. He says—says—I took the cheques from his cheque-book—says I stole them. Good God!”
He staggered to the little sofa, and fell on it, still with those clinging arms tightening round him, with the beautiful appealing eyes of his wife fixed in passionate tenderness and distress upon his face.
But after the first few moments of dumb horror she rebelled at the thought that they could misjudge her Gerard so wickedly. She raised her head quickly, her eyes flashed, she laughed discordantly, angrily, as she looked into his open and still almost boyish face.
“Gerard, Gerard, why do you trouble yourself about it? It’s ridiculous, you know! It’s farcical! You a thief!You!It isn’t as if they didn’t know you! Why, this old Sir Richmond knows you too! Knows you and likes you! Or why should it always be you he sends for when he wants some one from the bank?”
The young man looked up. Depressed, downcast, overwhelmed as he was, he felt the comfort of this indignation, of this amazement. He turned to her and took her lovely face in his hands, staring down tenderly into the big blue eyes, at the red, parted lips, at the soft waves of golden hair which had got loosened round her forehead.
“Bless your little heart, Audrey, your anger does me good! Upon my word, when they all looked at me as they did, and questioned me as they did, and put it to me that Imusthave been to blame somehow or other in this awful business, I—I—I almost began to think, at last, that I had!”
“Gerard! How can you?”
“Well, it came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, you know, that I felt as if the heavens had fallen, or that I must be somebody else. I could only stare, and stammer, and behave, I suppose, just as a thorough-paced rascal would have done!”
“Oh, Gerard!”
“Well, I couldn’t help it. I was struck dumb.”
“You should have been indignant. You should have told them what you thought of them!”
“Well, I couldn’t. I was too much occupied with what they thought of me!”
“Tell me just what they said.”
“Well, they asked me who it was that took Sir Richmond his last cheque-book down. I said it was I. Then they asked me when it was, and if I remembered any of the circumstances of the journey. And after a little help—for I’ve been down there so often on one errand or another that it was difficult to find the exact date—I found that it was on a Saturday that I took the cheque-book, and that I came back home to have luncheon on my way. Then came a torrent of questions as to the time I stayed in the flat, and as to the people in it, and so on. They wanted to know whether any one was in the flat except you and me. There wasn’t, was there?”
Audrey was too much disturbed to remember. But the two set their memories to work, and consulted the servant who formed the whole of their modest staff, and finally they ascertained that, if anybody but themselves had been in the flat on the particular Saturday in question, it was either old Mrs. Webster, a neighbour, or Mr. Candover, a rich friend who had a handsome flat in Victoria Street, and who sometimes brought his motor-car round on Saturdays to take them for a spin into the country.
Both these people being beyond suspicion, the young people, after a few moments of silent dismay and perplexity, turned their thoughts again to what had happened at the office.
“Go on with what they said,” said Audrey in a frightened whisper.
“Well, it seems that Sir Richmond, in taking out his cheque-book yesterday, found that a cheque was missing, with the blank counterfoil left in the book. This made him examine the cheque-book, and he found that there were two others missing, in different parts of the book. Then he remembered, or thought he remembered, having noticed, when I gave it to him, that one end of the long envelope it was in was only half gummed. Now he thinks that some one must have opened the envelope—that could be easily done over hot water, of course—and torn out the three cheques.”
“But what does that matter? Cheques are numbered, aren’t they? Can’t they be stopped?”
Gerard shook his head.
“Sir Richmond wired up for his pass-book, and found that the three missing chequeshadbeen paid in, without any doubt being roused as to the genuineness of the signature. One was for five hundred and sixty pounds and the other two for more. Altogether he has been robbed of nearly three thousand pounds.”
“Oh, Gerard, how dreadful! But still he ought not to be so wicked and unfair as to blame you. How could you help it? Of course it’s some one in his own house who has stolen the cheques and forged his name!”
“Well, he denies the possibility of that. He’s an old fidget, and his secretary, a woman, is never allowed to touch his keys, so he says, or to go near the safe where he keeps his cheque-books and his money.”
“And who were the cheques made out to?”
“The names are all unknown, made up, they think. Not one of the cheques was crossed; they were all paid in, all properly endorsed. But the endorsements are not much of a clue, so they say, because they believe the names to be fictitious.”
“And didn’t the large sums excite suspicion?” said Audrey.
“Oh, no. Sir Richmond is well known for his charities, and we cash large cheques of his to people we’ve never heard of often enough. The whole thing is a ghastly mystery, a puzzle from beginning to end.”
“Look here, Gerard, I suppose we’re alarming ourselves too much. The truth must be found out presently; they’ll have clever detectives at work, and I daresay they’ll have found out all about it by the time you go to the bank to-morrow morning.”
“I hope to Heaven they will!” said the poor fellow, putting his head down in his hands, in an attitude of the deepest dejection.
Audrey passed a loving hand through her young husband’s soft curly hair. Light hair it was, though many shades darker than her own pale golden tresses. And his slight figure, which scarcely reached the middle height, his beardless face and grey eyes, made him look younger than his age, which was twenty-five. So that he looked absolutely boyish in his utter despair.
“Listen,” whispered Audrey, as she tucked her hand under his arm, and nestled against him, “listen, Gerard, I have an idea. You and I are a pair of great babies, who don’t know what to do, or what to say, or how to get out of a difficulty. Let us go and see Mr. Candover, and ask his advice as to what we ought to do.”
Gerard sat up.
“By Jove, you’re right,” said he. “It’s—it’s a nasty thing to have to go about though,” objected he the next minute, as he began to fumble with the door-handle irresolutely.
“Well, you don’t supposehewill suspect you!” cried she brightly.
“No, I suppose not. Still—I wish we had some one else to go to, some one nearer and——”
“You wouldn’t like to go to your uncle, would you?”
“Lord Clanfield! Not likely!”
“Well, then, whoarewe to go to? Who is older and cleverer than we are, I mean!”
Gerard nodded.
“You’re right, Audrey, your brains are better than mine. But I tell you, I was so knocked on the head, as it were, by what they said that—that I don’t feel as if I should ever be able to think again!”
“Poor boy, poor boy!” she said softly.
She had bravely kept back the tears, but now she had a hard struggle for it, and she dashed out of the room to fetch hat and cloak to avoid breaking down.
Two minutes later they were in a hansom, driving to Victoria Street. Audrey indeed suggested the Underground, for they had been awakened rudely of late to the fact that they were exceeding their income; but Gerard was in no mood for small economies, and indeed every minute was precious, for Mr. Candover was a man of money and of pleasure, and they would be lucky if they caught him at home.
So they drove along fast in the pleasant April evening, not noting the fresh breeze or the soft sunset light, indeed, but each holding the hand of the other furtively, tightly, with a resolute endeavour to keep down ugly doubts and anxieties, and to believe that all would come right.
This Mr. Candover, whom they were going to consult, was their most intimate friend. Meeting him about eight months before, when they were enjoying their honeymoon abroad, they had attracted the older and rather blasé man of the world by their delight in life, by their devotion to each other, by the boyish high spirits of the young husband, the surpassing beauty of the wife.
For Audrey was no ordinary pretty woman. Tall, but not of an unmanageable height, with a good and well-developed figure, she was gifted also with a lovely face, of which the most striking feature was a pair of big blue eyes which made her look a good deal more artless than she was. With hair so fair that all the other women said it was dyed, and a complexion that had no fault save that it was a trifle pale, Audrey had been acclaimed a beauty everywhere, and Mr. Candover was one of the most enthusiastic and open of her admirers.
With the superiority given by his forty-five years, which he only admitted—so he said—because he had two great girls growing up at home who would “give away” any attempts at juvenility on his part, Mr. Candover had taken the young folk under his wing, introduced them to his friends, given luncheons and dinners in their honour, and driven them about in his splendid motor-car, proceedings which the bride and bridegroom found pleasant enough, but which had undoubtedly led them into spending more than they were quite justified in doing at the outset of their married life.
For Gerard had only his salary as clerk at the bank, and a small patrimony of seven thousand pounds, into which matrimony was making great inroads.
Audrey, the orphan daughter of a Lancashire manufacturer who had lost a fortune by unlucky speculation, had indeed two or three thousand pounds of her own, well invested and at her own disposal. But that, Gerard said, was to be looked upon as a nest-egg, not to be touched even when creditors pressed and times grew anxious.
They were lucky in finding Mr. Candover at home. He was dressing for dinner, so they were told by the man in livery who opened the door, and they were shown into the drawing-room, where, even at that anxious moment, Audrey could not forbear casting an admiring glance round at the priceless pictures, the exquisitely harmonious tapestries, the grand piano in its painted case, and the old French furniture which looked, as she said, “as if it had come out of a glorified museum”. Mr. Candover’s taste was exquisite, and his wealth was enormous, a combination which had produced the best results.
They felt their spirits rise on finding themselves in the neighbourhood of their powerful friend; and when the door was thrown open by the valet, and their host came quickly in, handsome, perfectly dressed, and with a smile of welcome on his face, both felt their hearts beat faster with the certainty that he would be as willing as he would be ready to help them in their trouble by sound advice and counsel.
“This is a delightful surprise,” said he, as he took Audrey by the hand, with a certain gentle courtesy of manner which was cosmopolitan rather than British, and met her eyes with chivalrous admiration in his own. “I was going out to dinner. But I shall now stay at home and you must dine with me. I hope it is some pleasant errand that brings you here, as pleasant as the sight of you is to me?”
And he looked from the one to the other with the smile dying away from his face.
His very courtliness, his perfect manner, checked the two blunter, less sophisticated young people on the threshold of their confession. There was something remote from trivial worries, from sordid cares, about this genial, gentle, low-voiced, kindly gentleman, whose trim figure, small fine features, gentle brown eyes and slight dark moustache all seemed to belong rather to a prince who passes his life in cotton-wool than to an ordinary citizen of this work-a-day world.
“Come, what is it? You alarm me!” said he, after a moment’s pause, during which the cloud on their usually bright faces had made itself evident.
Gerard broke into his tale without ceremony, baldly, stupidly, incoherently, as he felt. Audrey listened mutely, sitting on a sofa, very upright, clasping her hands.
Mr. Candover, who remained standing as Gerard did, heard the story with deep attention, but without the amazement and distress they had expected. When Gerard paused, Mr. Candover pulled aside a heavy portière, went into the next room, and returned with a spirit decanter and a glass.
“Drink that,” he said, as he poured out a wine-glassful of brandy. “You’re shaken, upset, not yourself.”
Gerard obeyed, swallowed the brandy in gulps, frightened beyond measure at the way in which his story had been received. Audrey tapped her foot impatiently.
“Well, what do you think?” she said.
“I think,” said he, “that you have no need to worry yourselves about this. This Sir Richmond is a very old man, and is, as you admit, full of crotchets. My own idea is that the cheques were genuine, and that he has forgotten all about them and who he gave them to. If I’m right, it will only take a few days to find out the truth, and to trace the money to the people to whom he’s given it. Secretaries of real charities, or charitable impostors, very likely.”
“I never thought of that!” cried Gerard, with sudden relief.
Audrey shook her head.
“The cheques were not all together,” said she. “They were torn out of different parts of the book. And he wouldn’t forget all three, you know.”
Gerard’s face fell again. Mr. Candover filled up the glass again; but Audrey, rising quickly from her seat, shook her head and gently checked her husband’s hand.
“No,” said she. “No more, Gerard. You’ve had nothing to eat and you want your best brains. Mr. Candover,” and she turned to him, with a new dignity and peremptoriness surprising in such a young woman, “you’ve disappointed me. I thought you would have something better to suggest than—brandy.”
Gerard was rather surprised, even alarmed, by his wife’s daring.
“I’m afraid, Audrey, it’s because there is nothing to be done that Mr. Candover suggests nothing,” said he.
Audrey leaned over the little table by which she was standing.
“Can you tell us,” she said earnestly, “whether it was on Saturday the third of last month, or Saturday the tenth, that you were with us just after luncheon?”
He looked surprised.
“I don’t remember without looking at my diary. But I’ll find out if you like,” said he.
“Because,” she went on, “the bank people are very anxious to know who was at our house that day, when Gerard was carrying the cheque-book down to Sir Richmond. If we could say that you were the only person who was in the flat while Gerard was there, it would help.”
“I see.” Mr. Candover went over to a writing-table, unlocked a drawer and turned over the leaves of a small diary.
“It was on the third,” said he, “that I was with you.”
“And it was on the tenth,” said she, “that Gerard took the cheque-book down. Well then, it was Mrs. Webster who was with us. And there was nobody else.”
“No, I don’t think poor old Mrs. Webster would be accused by anybody of stealing blank cheques and forging Sir Richmond’s signature,” said Mr. Candover, smiling. “And my dear Mrs. Angmering, do calm your fears. Your husband is no more likely to be seriously suspected of such a thing than I or Mrs. Webster. Depend upon it, in the morning, when he gets to the bank, he will find that poor Sir Richmond has wired again to say he’s solved the mystery. If not, the bank will set a detective to work, and the crime will be traced to its perpetrator. Do, do be persuaded not to pucker up that lovely face into such sad little frowns. Angmering, comfort your wife; don’t let her worry herself. And look here: I’ve got to go to Paris the first thing to-morrow morning. But if you want any help or advice, wire to me at the Hotel Bristol, or get my secretary, Diggs, to do anything you may want done.”
They thanked him, rather dolefully, refused again his entreaties that they would dine with him, and went away, trying to feel comforted, but not succeeding very well.
And after a weary night of fears and doubts, neither husband nor wife was much surprised when a police-officer arrived at the flat, the first thing in the morning, with a warrant for Gerard’s arrest.
Theyoung man himself was resigned, quiet, dignified. Only the trembling of his lip as he turned to speak to his wife betrayed the terrible strain.
Audrey was flushed, bright of eye, strangely composed of manner.
“I’m going,” she said in a low voice, “straight to Victoria Street. I’ve been thinking it all over—all night I was thinking—thinking—of what there was to be done—and I know that you will want some one to—to——”
“I see. To be bail for me?”
“Yes. I’ll go to Mr. Candover.”
“But he was going to Paris!” objected Gerard, with a frown. He did not like his wife to go on this errand. “He will have started by this time.”
“It’s early yet,” retorted Audrey. “At any rate I must try.”
The energy and spirit she displayed put some heart into her husband, and their parting was very quiet, very composed. Within half an hour Audrey was at Mr. Candover’s flat, only to find, however, that he was already on his way to Paris. His secretary, Durley Diggs, a little keen-eyed American with green and gold teeth, asked if he could do anything for her.
“Yes,” said Audrey promptly. “My husband has been arrested on a charge of fraud. Mr. Candover knows all about it, and told me to come to you if I wanted help. Now I suppose they will want bail, and I want you to find it.”
Mr. Diggs was very courteous, very business-like, very anxious to be of use. But Audrey was keen enough to see that he did not want to do this thing. But she insisted so steadily, refused so persistently to listen to his various excuses, that finally he said suddenly: “I’ll see if the duchess will do it,” and, seizing his hat, was going to rush out, when she insisted upon accompanying him.
“I’ve got to go out to Epsom. Madame de Vicenza lives at ‘The Briars,’ a big house out there,” objected Diggs, disconcerted by her persistency.
“Well, I’ll go with you. I can explain better than you, can’t I?”
He was overpowered by her determination, and together they went down to Epsom, drove to “The Briars,” which was a large, stately old house standing secluded in its own grounds, where Audrey waited downstairs while Durley Diggs was escorted into the presence of the duchess, as she supposed.
He came down again in the company of a tall, shambling man with round shoulders and a protruding jaw, whom he introduced as Mr. Johnson, the duchess’s steward. And this gentleman having stated that he was prepared to give any undertaking on the part of the duchess which might be necessary, to serve any friend of Mr. Candover’s, they all three went back to town, and to the Guildhall, where they found, as Audrey had expected, that bail for Gerard was wanted to the amount of two hundred pounds.
Her two companions having satisfied the magistrate, the necessary formalities were entered into, and Gerard and his wife were free to leave the court together.
Audrey was struck by the terrible change which a few hours had made in her husband. That morning he had been anxious indeed, worried, puzzled, distressed beyond measure by the situation in which he found himself. But now she saw at once that his position must be worse than she had supposed.
For in place of anxiety, she saw in his eyes despair, instead of being worried and irritable, he was bowed down by a terrible weight of depression which no tender words, no gentle caresses, no loving looks could remove.
“Gerard, Gerard,” whispered she in a passionate outburst of misery and longing to help, when they were in the close cab he insisted on taking, “what is it, dear? What have you heard that makes you so wretched?”
He turned his heavy eyes towards her; he was oppressed, stupefied by the weight of the calamity which had fallen upon him.
“I’ve found out,” said he hoarsely, “that there’s something more in all this than we thought. This is no ordinary theft. There’s a conspiracy to ruin me—Heaven knows why. A man has sworn that I gave him one of the cheques to get cashed, and that he gave me the money.”
Audrey stared incredulously.
“But you can disprove that, can’t you?” she said.
“I can deny it; I have denied it, I shall go on denying it. But as for disproving it, there’s only my word against his, and the question is which of us will be believed.”
“And who is the wretch who says this awful thing?”
“A man whom I’ve known by sight and to speak to, for a long time I never heard his name or knew who he was till to-day. It appears his name is Gossett, and he’s a solicitor’s clerk. What it all means or how it has all come about, I don’t know. But I feel as if a net had been spread for my feet, that it’s tightening, and that there is no escape.”
Audrey’s brave heart quailed. She, too, had vague suspicions that they must have unseen enemies, to find themselves so suddenly in such a sea of difficulties. But she would not let her fears appear. She affected to laugh at his despair, to feel sure that all that was needed was a good solicitor and a clever counsel to find out the truth and to set everything right. But it was excitement and not hope that kept her spirits so high, and that dried up the tears that it would have done her good to let flow.
The horrible fear was stealing into her heart too that all their efforts might not be enough to save her darling husband from the fate that threatened him.
It was the mystery which hung over every step of the great crime which had been committed which paralysed their brains and stupefied them. Who was the culprit who had stolen the cheques? When had the theft been committed? Was this man Gossett the thief and forger?
Audrey, however, recognised at once that their own brains were not clever enough to solve the puzzle, and she would be content with nothing less than the very best legal advice.
“If it costs every shilling we have in the world, Gerard,” said she, “we can afford nothing less than the best brains in England.”
She had not exaggerated the difficulties they had to contend with. Not only the eminent firm of solicitors they consulted, but the counsel whom they employed, admitted the amazing nature of the case. Nay, the poor young couple both felt vaguely, though they would scarcely acknowledge it to each other, that the questions Gerard had to answer pointed to the fact that even his own lawyers suspected him of having been concerned in the theft and in the forgery.
Gerard had received a large number of letters from Sir Richmond, so that he was well acquainted with his handwriting and signature. While the most searching inquiries failed to elicit the fact of any person’s having had access to the cheque-book with the exception of Gerard and Sir Richmond himself.
Moreover, the man Gossett, who was prepared to swear that Gerard had asked him to take one of the cheques to be cashed, was proved to be a man against whom nothing was known except that he occasionally drank to excess; he lived simply in lodgings off the Tottenham Court Road, and had not been known to indulge in any expense since the date of the cashing of the cheque.
His story was that he had long known Gerard Angmering by sight but not by name, through frequenting the same luncheon-bar. He had often spoken to him, though he had no idea that he belonged to the Bank of the Old Country and Colonies. When the young man had asked him to cash a cheque for him at that bank, Gossett asserted that he agreed to do so, without any thought of harm; that he brought the money in gold and notes to Gerard, who was waiting for him outside Stott’s, the luncheon-bar in question. He further alleged that he had received nothing for his trouble, and that he had thought nothing further of it until he was challenged by one of the senior clerks in the bank, who happened to meet him in the street in that neighbourhood, as the man who had cashed the cheque.
That was the whole sum and substance of the information at the disposal of both sides. The cheque had been made payable to Joseph Partridge, “to order,” and the amount was seven hundred and sixty-five pounds. This had been paid in gold and notes, but not one of the notes had been traced.
Gerard denied the whole story of the man Gossett as a fabrication from beginning to end. But there was this fact against him, that, whereas there was no sign whatever that Gossett had been spending money freely or that he betted or was addicted to suspicious company, Gerard and his wife, on the other hand, had undoubtedly been living somewhat beyond their means, that they had got into debt, and that they were being harassed by creditors.
While a more condemnatory fact still came out in the fact that the young clerk and his wife had been at the Epsom Spring Meeting with some friends, and that Gerard, while denying that he had had any but trifling bets, admitted that he had lost money there.
Moreover, no such person as “Joseph Partridge” was to be found or heard of; and the other two cheques, details of the cashing of which were not so complete, were both made out in names equally impossible to trace to any actual person.
It was a foregone conclusion that the case would have to go to trial, and when the eve of the fateful day arrived, the depression and certainty of his conviction grew so strongly upon poor Gerard that Audrey, who remained outwardly calm and brave by a great effort, followed him about from room to room, with an appalling fear at her heart that he would never face the ordeal.
At last he turned suddenly to face her, and his haggard eyes, with all the boyish light gone out of them, looked dismally into her anxious, loving face.
“Why do you follow me?” he asked abruptly.
She tried to answer.
“Because—because——”
Then at last she broke down, and for the very first time in all those dreadful days she let herself go in a violent passion of weeping.
Gerard sat down in a low arm-chair, and strained her to him.
“My girl, my own darling,” he whispered hoarsely, “I know what is in your mind. But you’re wrong, Audrey, you’re wrong, my dear. I shall go through with it, and listen, it’s all up with me. We don’t know how or why, but we’re marked, and hunted down, and done for. I shall have to go to prison, and you—Oh, Audrey, that’s what breaks my heart—you,you! I’ve got to leave you, and I don’t in the least know what I’m leaving you exposed to. For since this awful thing has happened, how can we feel safe for a minute? How can I know what will happen to you, when you haven’t got me to take care of you? Oh, Audrey, Audrey, I wish we could both die to-night!”
And he broke down into violent sobs upon his wife’s breast.
As he broke down, however, she regained command of herself. The fears which possessed him, indeed, were present to her mind also. The very mystery which surrounded the crime which had been committed against Gerard filled her with dread of what might be in store. But this, after all, was but a small matter compared with that terrible parting which seemed to the young husband and wife, lovers still, like the very wrenching of body and soul asunder.
She laid her hand over his mouth to stop him.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “It’s wicked to say that. We must go through with it, even if the worst comes.”
“The worst! Audrey, I’ll tell you what the worst is: it’s the thought of your being left alone. Will you be true to me? Will you, will you? You’re so beautiful that you will be tempted to forget me. Oh, I know! Other men will make love to you, and it will be hard, harder than you think, to stand out.”
Audrey made no indignant answer. She only pressed his curly head against her breast and just whispered, “Trust me, dear.”
The trial was a short one. Accused of forging Sir Richmond’s signature to a cheque, and of fraudulently obtaining the sum of seven hundred and sixty-five pounds, Gerard pleaded “Not guilty” in vain. No evidence of any value could be produced in support of his plea, and in spite of the eloquence of his counsel, who seemed indeed to plead rather for his youth than for his innocence, he was sentenced to a term which was looked upon in the circumstances as a light one, three years’ penal servitude.
As the sentence was pronounced a cry, not loud but piercing, rang through the court. And Gerard, recognising the voice of his wife, turned, clutching the rail in front of him, and cast one agonised look around.
He saw Audrey, and his face, which had been deadly pale, grew livid and ghastly, while his eyes seemed to start out of his head with a sudden access of suspicion and rage.
For the half-fainting Audrey was supported by the arms of a handsome, well-dressed man, who hung over her solicitously, tenderly.
And the man was Reginald Candover, Gerard’s best friend.
Audreywas scarcely more than half conscious when she found herself out in the open air, such air as was to be had on a hot, dusty day at the end of May, with a blazing sun pouring down into the busy streets near the Old Bailey, and a keen east wind waiting round the corner, blowing clouds of paper, straw and dust into the faces of the passers-by.
The blinding glare of the sun revived her, however, and made her blink. Looking round, she found herself supported by the arm of a man, listening to a voice she half remembered, and surrounded by a too attentive and too curious, but decidedly sympathetic, crowd.
“Poor thing!” “She’s his wife!” “Didn’t you see him look at her?” “P’raps he didn’t do it, after all!” “Poor thing!”
These and similar comments reached Audrey’s ears before they carried any sense to them. But remembrance, full, horrible, came back suddenly, and she drew herself up and struggled to regain her self-command.
“Mr. Candover!”
“Yes, yes. You’re all right. I’ve got my car here; only get through this abominable crowd, and you will be all right.”
But Audrey had recovered her wits, and a sudden fierce resentment awoke in her.
This was Gerard’s most intimate friend, and he had known all about their distress, yet they had seen nothing of him all through that dreadful time. She tried to draw away the hand which he held fast within his own arm.
“You might have come to us before!” she said, with bitter reproach. “You knew the trouble we were in, and you professed to be so anxious to help us. Yet never once in all that dreadful time have we seen you!”
“I—I told my secretary to do what he could. He did get bail for your husband!” faltered Mr. Candover in a tone of some contrition but still more reproach.
“Because I insisted. I followed him about till he did,” retorted Audrey sharply.
“As for myself, I was in Paris. I had to go. I told you so.”
“Paris is not at the other end of the world. And you didn’t even write to him!”
“Mrs. Angmering, you overwhelm me! Allow me to do the best I can to make amends for what indeed was not my fault. Let me do what poor Angmering would like best, and take care of his wife.”
“Thank you. Your kindness comes too late. I can take care of myself.”
And Audrey, now that they had come in sight of the smart motor-car which never failed to attract the attention of a crowd when it stopped, refused her companion’s entreaties that she would get into it, and dashed across the street to an omnibus.
Mr. Candover was disappointed, but he took his disappointment with philosophy. His good intentions might be resented now, but they would be better appreciated some day.
So he waited nearly a week, and then he called at the flat at West Kensington, and was told that Mrs. Angmering was not at home.
He felt sure that she was, so he lay in wait for her. And when Audrey, very pale, very quiet, wearing a thick veil, came quickly out and down the stairs and out into the street, she was met by her husband’s friend, who, raising his hat with a courteous and diffident manner, asked humbly:—
“Won’t you speak to me, Mrs. Angmering? Surely, because you’re unhappy yourself, you shouldn’t make your old friends unhappy!”
Audrey stopped, but she did not hold out her hand. In truth she was at war with all the world. With the judge who had sentenced Gerard, the jury who had tried him, the counsel who had led the case against him, the counsel who had failed to defend him successfully; more than all with the relations who had written her letters full of horror at her husband’s supposed misdeeds, accompanied by subdued reminders that, when she left the calm of a Lancashire town for the riot and wickedness of a London life with a London husband, she had only done what she might have expected to lead to misery.
“I don’t want to make anybody unhappy,” said she in a low voice. “But it’s true, Mr. Candover, that just now I don’t feel inclined to hold any intercourse with anybody. I want a little—a little time to—to get over it!”
“Indeed, I can quite understand that. But for Gerard’s sake you must take care of yourself, you know. You mustn’t fret, for one thing. You mustn’t let him see, when you meet him again, that you’ve allowed fretting to mar your beauty.”
She frowned impatiently. What did she care for her looks now Gerard could not see her? She felt that, at that moment, she would have liked to pull out her eyelashes and cut off her hair, and efface the charms which she valued for his sake only.
“I’m not going to waste time in fretting. It’s of no use,” said she.
“Excuse my asking—what are you going to do?”
She hesitated.
“I—I don’t quite know—yet.”
He looked at his watch.
“Look here. I may take the privilege of an old fogey and an old friend, mayn’t I? Let me take you to one of the restaurants—one of the quiet ones,” he went on hastily, as she drew herself up, “where we can talk over the situation, and I may be able to help you to decide upon something.”
“Thank you very much, but——”
“Come, come, you’ve dined with me often enough before.”
“With Gerard, yes. But not without him.”
“Well, do you mean to give up your friends altogether? To live the life of a nun?”
Audrey had recovered her full faculties, and she answered him promptly and steadily:—
“No. I don’t mean to lead the life of a nun, but the life of a widow,” she said. “While Gerard is in prison I’m going to remain in mourning for him, and when he comes back to me I’m going to—to be alive once more.”
“But in the meantime,” urged Mr. Candover gently, “even though you don’t feel that life is worth living, you must live, you know. And the best way to please Gerard is to keep in good health and in good spirits. I don’t mean uproariously high spirits, but the natural ones of youth and beauty. May I ask where you’re going now?”
She hesitated.
“I’m going to try to sublet the flat,” she answered unwillingly at last.
For she still felt aggrieved at his defection, as she considered it, at the fact that, when a powerful friend like himself might have done much to support Gerard and to create a favourable impression by standing up for him boldly, Mr. Candover, who had professed so much affection for them both, should have remained silent and aloof.
“Won’t you let me do the business for you? A man is less likely to be taken advantage of than a woman, you know.”
“Thank you, I would rather arrange it all myself. It gives me something to do.”
“May I come round to-morrow and bring you some books?”
“Thank you, I have no time for reading now.”
“If I were to come, then, should I be told you were out, as I was told just now?” persisted he.
“I—I think so. I leave the same message for all my friends. If they were to persist in seeing me, I should have to go away. Really I should have thought you might understand, Mr. Candover, how very, very retired a life I must live now.”
It was very neatly worded, but Mr. Candover understood. Audrey had to be discreet; she was a good and true woman, and the enjoyments which she had loved, the gaieties in which she had taken a foremost and brilliant part with her young husband by her side to share them, were now to be put away, forgotten, to give place to the austerity of the widowhood she professed to have entered.
The man of the world was nonplussed. Give up the chase he would not; but before this inflexible determination he was powerless. At last a bright thought struck him:—
“If I were to bring my two girls up, now, would you see them? They are hardly more than children, and are still at school. But I should like you to know them. And I should like them to knowyou, to have before them the example of a noble woman and a devoted wife.”
Audrey was conquered. She could hardly refuse such a request as this.
“I should be very happy to see them,” she said gently. “But wait, oh, do please wait a little. To see two happy girls now—would—would——” The tears were so near that she had to collect herself—“would be more than I could bear,” she ended in a whisper.
A week later, therefore, Mr. Candover called at the flat one afternoon, bringing with him two shy schoolgirls, still in the awkward stage between childhood and womanhood, though the elder was a tall, well-developed girl whose hair had just been “put up” to celebrate her eighteenth birthday.
She was a bright-faced girl, this Pamela, with irregular features, little twinkling, merry dark eyes, and manners half-shy, half-hoydenish, but rather sweet.
Babs, the younger girl, was rather silent, rather slow. But the pretty features and fair hair promised to develop into great beauty by-and-by.
Both girls had evidently been told enough to interest them in their beautiful hostess, as poor Audrey felt with a pang. And their shy looks and gently subdued voices cut her to the quick, making her feel indeed that she was lonely with a deeper loneliness than that of a widow, for was not Gerard going through worse than death?
Audrey hoped to dispose of her task as hostess within an hour, but as they all stayed on she presently felt compelled to ask them to stay and dine with her, an invitation which was accepted with so much readiness that she perceived at once that this was the end Mr. Candover had had in view.
She felt rather ashamed of her vague mistrust of this amiable and kind friend when, the girls being engaged at the piano in a “brilliant” duet which afforded a perfect cover for conversation, he said to her in a low voice full of feeling:—
“And now, my dear Mrs. Angmering, let me know something of your plans. Both the girls and I hope that you won’t give us up altogether, however quiet you mean to be.”
Reticence would be out of place, she felt, now that Mr. Candover had so tactfully shown himself in the character of an old friend and a father, instead of the one in which she knew him best, the complimentary, half lover-like man of pleasure and man about town.
“I want,” she said, “to do something for myself, to earn money, I mean. I want to have something to show Gerard when I see him again.”
Mr. Candover raised his eyebrows.
“Well said, like a brave lady. And what do you propose to do? Perhaps I could help you.”
“Well,” said Audrey, “I have a taste, perhaps even a talent, for millinery; I have still a little capital; and I thought I might perhaps start a business as lots of women do now. Too many, perhaps,” she added thoughtfully.
“Too many do it the wrong way. You must do it the right way,” said Mr. Candover with animation. “Now this is a thing I know I can help you in, and you ought to do well. But remember, there must be no half-measures. Don’t be modest. That is the golden rule for every sort of business, from that of the company promoter to that of the keeper of a whelk-stall. Blow the trumpet, beat the drum, tell them yours is the greatest show on earth—and they’ll believe you.”
Audrey laughed nervously.
“Oh, I haven’t either impudence or money enough to make a great noise about it,” said she.
“Never mind. I’ll do that for you. I know of the very woman who would do the hard part of the work; what you have to do is the showy part. You must wear handsome dresses, advertise your own bonnets, and swagger about in a victoria to show them all off.”
“Oh, no, no, I’d no idea of doing anything of that sort,” said Audrey breathlessly.
“I know you had not. Nevertheless, that’s how the thing has to be done. You must take a first floor in the neighbourhood of Bond Street, and you must call yourself by a foreign name, a title for choice.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t like to do that!”
“You have no choice. Either you must leave the thing undone, or do it well. My dear Mrs. Angmering, I advise you in Gerard’s interest as well as your own. Wouldn’t you like to be able to meet him, in not so very long a time, with a house of your own, and a turn-out such as you both have admired in the park a hundred times? Of course you would. And the way to get all those nice things, and to hold up your head in the world besides, is to cut a dash with whatever capital you’ve got, and to begin with a flourish. I’ll get you a good little circle of smart clients to make a start with, and if you’ll be guided by me, you will make your fortune.”
Breathlessly, with many a timid fear, yet with a vague consciousness that there was sound sense in his advice from a worldly point of view, Audrey listened, objected, was talked down and finally conquered.
Within a month, taking step by step, not without caution, but acknowledging the great help of Mr. Candover’s judgment, Audrey found herself the responsible tenant of handsomely furnished first-floor showrooms in a good street in the West End, with a staff of assistants, and over them the “valuable woman” of whom Mr. Candover had spoken.
This woman was a sallow, elderly Frenchwoman, who professed to speak no English. She was thin, gaunt, plain of feature, simple of dress. She had keen, hard eyes and a curious look in her face which reminded Audrey of some one she had seen somewhere, but in an elusive way, so that she was unable to fix the resemblance upon any definite person.
This woman’s name was Marie Laure, and she had the eye of a lynx and the step of a cat. Audrey was sure that Mademoiselle Laure disliked her, but could not say how she knew it. In the meantime the Frenchwoman was clever, business-like and an excellent manager, so that indeed, as Mr. Candover had said, it was only the showy part of the work that was left to the young nominal head of the business.
Little by little Audrey had discovered that she was sliding into complete confidence in Mr. Candover’s advice, so that he was consulted by her in everything, and always with good results.
He fulfilled his promise to bring her customers, and although some of these were not of the type she would have chosen, he laughed at her scarcely expressed scruples, and told her that she did not want to cater for Sunday schools. Then he got her an order for the dresses for a new piece at a theatre, and telling her that she must now advertise herself by the title he had found for her, sent announcements broadcast to the papers that the dresses for the new piece at the Piccadilly Theatre were by that “artistic creator of exquisite motives in millinery and dreams in dresses,” the Countess Rocada.
Audrey had already demurred to the assumption of this high-sounding title, but she had given way, feeling herself to be in safe hands with regard to worldly knowledge on such matters, and being moreover glad to hide herself from public curiosity by dropping her own too well-known name.
So she was known to her employees only as Madame Rocada.
And on the very day when this announcement went forth in the press, Audrey found herself overwhelmed by a surprising flow of evidently wealthy customers, both men and women, all well dressed, all curious, all with money to spend, who crowded her rooms from before luncheon-time to within an hour of dinner.
There was a look about these curious customers, an obvious and haughty inquisitiveness about the women, an elaborate courtesy on the part of the men, which Audrey did not like. And she told herself that they had probably found out who she was, and that they had come to stare at her and to gossip about her and “the way she took it”.
When they were all gone, the lights turned down, when the assistants had filed out, and the costly dresses and plumed hats had been shrouded in wraps and put away, Audrey, worn out, wounded and miserable, flung herself face downwards on one of the luxurious couches which had been crowded that day with idle visitors, and burst into bitter tears.
A rapid step in the next room, which was another showroom, divided from this only by a handsome portière, the sound of a sharply drawn breath, and then a peal of wild, hysterical laughter, startled her and made her spring to her feet.
Standingin the doorway, grasping the portière tightly with her right hand, while her left was pressed against her breast, was a tall, thin woman, dressed from head to foot in white. Seen thus in the dim light of the darkened room, her clinging draperies of some soft, semi-transparent material swathed round her slight form and forming billows of white foam about her feet, her pale face, out of which two great eyes shone like lamps in the darkness, the slow, swaying movement of her body in the opening between the two rooms, all combined to give her an uncanny appearance, to suggest a ghostly vision rather than a woman of flesh and blood.
Even the hoarse laugh she uttered when Audrey sprang up and turned to face her, sounded like the unearthly, weird cry of a lost soul rather than an utterance of living human lips.
Audrey was struck dumb. She saw at once that the strange visitor had come with hostile intent, she read anger, spiteful, bitter anger in her thin face, in the convulsive movements of her gloved fingers.
Was she a madwoman? There was nothing indeed of the disorder of madness about her. From the great white hat, loaded with long white ostrich feathers, which crowned her golden hair, down to the long white gloves which hung in wrinkles on her arms, and the graceful draperies which half-hid, half-revealed, her sinuous and slender figure, the stranger showed every sign of that studied elegance and calculated attractiveness which comes only from taste, care and the long experience of a characteristic but keen feminine intellect.
Audrey, having of late had to study dress as a fine art, acknowledged herself in the presence of a past mistress of it.
No. The lady in the white draperies was not mad, wild as were her eyes, and weirdly alarming as was her mocking laughter.
There was a moment of dead, uncanny silence, when, her laughter having died away on her lips, the stranger, still grasping the dark curtain as if for support, and leaning forward to fix the gaze of her terrible dark eyes on Audrey, stood like a tigress ready to spring, panting, struggling for the breath that came only in painful gasps, preparing herself for an encounter which Audrey felt would be a terrible one.
Audrey looked round her fearfully, wondering whether she could escape the trying ordeal with which she knew herself to be threatened. This woman had, she knew, come to see her, come with some accusation, unguessed at but evidently serious, ready on her lips as it was already burning in her eyes.
There was a door nearly opposite to where Audrey stood by the couch; but it was shut, and there were dress stands and lounges between it and her.
She had a feeling that, if she were to attempt to fly, the tiger-like stranger would spring at her, tear her to pieces with those long, lean, white-gloved hands, that looked claw-like as they moved nervously with every breath she drew.
And Audrey was encumbered with the weight of a magnificent black train, glittering with paillettes and voluminous in its folds, which she put on when she arrived at the showrooms in the morning, and exchanged for a quiet little tailor-made gown to return at night to her two modest rooms on the top floor over a small chemist’s shop in a street off Oxford Street.
This handsome black gown increased the effect of a strong contrast between her and her weird visitor. The lady in white was tall, thin; from golden hair and whitened face to sinuous figure, a work of finished art.
Audrey was in the first freshness of her striking natural beauty, easy and graceful of carriage, well developed of figure, with golden hair that lay in natural rings on her forehead, and in a twisted coil, untidy and loose, on the top of her head.
The contrast was between natural and artificial loveliness, and the glaring, panting stranger seemed to appreciate this fact.
Long as the time seemed, it was in truth but a few moments that they both stood silently watching each other, neither ready to utter the first word.
Then, so quickly that it seemed all to take place in the twinkling of an eye, there came a rapid step in the inner room, a hand dragged the white-clad woman roughly away, and at the same time and by the same movement the curtain was drawn across the opening between the rooms, shutting Audrey out into the twilight of the darkened room.
Then she heard the woman’s voice, savage, passionate, full of an emotion so strong that it seemed to strangle her, weak and ill as she evidently was.
“Madame Rocada! Madame Rocada!” she cried, gasping out the name in withering tones, hoarse and broken, yet eloquent of rage and scorn. “Let me see her, let me speak to her, let me see what she has to say for herself. Do you think you can stop me, you!”
Audrey, bewildered and alarmed, wondering who it was that had seized the stranger and dragged her away from the door, crept close to the curtain to learn more of this intrusion and the cause.
She had fancied herself alone in the long suite of rooms; for Marie Laure, who slept on the premises in a tiny room at the back, had gone out to do some shopping, and it was in her absence that poor Audrey, broken down and miserable, had indulged in the fit of tears which had been so strangely interrupted.
Whose then was the hand that had seized the stranger? A strong one it must have been, to do so much so quickly!
Surely, thought Audrey, it must be the hand of a man. She crept nearer and nearer to the curtain, making ready to pull it sharply back, and to take the two persons within by surprise.
But even as she advanced, she heard by the fainter sound of the woman’s voice that she was being drawn away, and that she was being gagged.
The last words that Audrey caught sounded to her listening ears like the calling of a man by his name:—
“Oh, Eugène, Eugène!”
A chill seized Audrey, and she drew back, frightened, asking herself in a wild impulse of suspicion and dread whether this “Eugène” were some evil genius, the same that had cast his blighting hand upon the fate of Gerard and herself?
Then she heard a door shut, and peering through behind the portière into the inner room, she saw that no one was there.
The building of which this first floor formed a part had been extended at the back, and behind this second large showroom there were two or three smaller rooms, one of which was that of Mademoiselle Laure, and another a private fitting-room. It was this room the door of which Audrey had heard close, and trying it, she now found that it was locked.
She heard voices within, subdued, angry, the whispering voices of a man and a woman, speaking some language which Audrey could not understand.
She knocked, but there was no reply.
Hurriedly withdrawing, therefore, without speaking a word, Audrey went out upon the staircase, and into her own private room, where she kept her walking dress. Changing quickly into this, she had just put on her hat, with the intention of going downstairs to meet Mademoiselle Laure on her return and to consult with her as to what she had better do, when she was startled by the sound of the unlocking of a door, and then by footsteps running rapidly down the stairs.
She flew to the door and looked out; but she was too late to see more than this: that the person who was dashing down the stairs and disappearing by the side door into the street was a man.
Who was it?
And why was not the white-clad lady with him?
Audrey hesitated only one moment, and then, full of fears she could not have defined, ran up to the fitting-room and went in.
The room was quite dark, but she touched the electric button, and at once a flood of soft light filled the apartment.
A cry of horror broke from her lips when, turning her eyes at once towards a big divan which stood under the window, she saw lying at full length upon it the body of the woman in the white dress.
Her white hat was crushed and bent under her poor lifeless head; one hand, still in its long wrinkled white kid glove, was outstretched as if in a last convulsion; one white kid, high-heeled walking shoe lay on the floor. The white ostrich feather boa which had floated round her shoulders when Audrey saw her alive was twisted round her thin throat. The clinging white dress was bound round her motionless limbs.
And over all, dress, gloves, boa, in startling and awful contrast to the white clothes, were marks of blood: blood which had gushed out from her mouth and streamed over everything.
Audrey was aghast. Was this a murdered woman upon whose body she was looking? She could not tell. For the haggard cheeks, the glassy eyes, the laboured breath, the feeble though passionate movements, all of which signs she had noticed in the living woman, the husky voice, the occasional cough, had betrayed unmistakably the fact that the poor woman was in the last stage of consumption, and her death might well have resulted from the bursting of a blood-vessel in a moment of wild excitement.
On the other hand, the sudden disappearance of the man who had met her and dragged her away from the doorway was horribly suggestive. And the feather boa which appeared to be bound round the poor woman’s thin and wasted throat might, Audrey thought with horror, have been the means of her death.
One long look she gave before she went to call assistance. And in that look she ascertained that the dead woman must have been of surpassing beauty, for the features were regular and perfectly formed; that she was between forty and fifty years of age appeared equally certain, now that powder and paint could hide the marks of time no longer. And Audrey crept downstairs shuddering, and wondering what fate was upon her, that a second and horrible calamity should happen in her experience within little more than six weeks.
At the foot of the private staircase which led out into the street she was lucky in meeting Mademoiselle Laure, to whom she related, in faltering accents, the terrible experience she had just gone through. By this time, however, poor Audrey, giddy and faint with the scene she had gone through, could scarcely articulate, scarcely make herself intelligible to Mademoiselle Laure, who could or would speak no English.
Audrey, indeed, spoke French well. But excitement either confused her utterance or affected her voice, for it was a long time before the Frenchwoman gathered the gist of her words.
Then Mademoiselle laughed at her.
“You dream, Madame,” she answered in her rapid French. “Such things do not happen. The busy day has got on your nerves, and you have imagined horrors which have no existence! Bah! A dead woman—all in white—lying upstairs! No, no. You want your dinner. That is all.”
And she laughed, actually laughed, while poor Audrey, stupefied by this unexpected reception of her dreadful news, leaned back against the wall of the narrow passage for a few moments, unable to speak.
At last, seeing that the Frenchwoman remained looking at her in a far from sympathetic manner, she roused herself, and staggering towards the door, said in a whisper:—
“I—I shall go for the police!”
“For what?” echoed Mademoiselle Laure incredulously. “The police! A nice thing for the business that would be,ma foi! To have the police here, to hunt and turn the place upside down in their search for the effects of Madame’s weak nerves! The police! Oh, no. We will have no police here, be sure of that!”
And the voluble Frenchwoman, with the same expression of mocking incredulity on her thin features, seized Audrey by the arm and held her as she would have gone out.
But the younger woman had a will of her own too.
“Mademoiselle,” said she, “you forget that I am the head of this business, the tenant of these premises, and that I have a right to do as I please.”
“And I,” retorted the Frenchwoman, always using her native language, and speaking fast and with determination, “have a duty to do in protecting you from your own folly. Look here, Madame. I knew when I went out that something would happen to you. You looked as white as a ghost, you were trembling, and on the verge of tears. The worry and fatigue of the busy day, during which you have eaten and drunk nothing, has made you ill. I see the marks of tears upon your face; your hair is in disorder; your hat is not pinned on properly. You are not yourself. I did not like to leave you, and I wish to Heaven I had not done so. You are nervous, unstrung. Come across the road with me, to the confectioner’s opposite. You shall drink a glass of wine and swallow a mouthful of food, and then we will come back together.”
“Back! Oh, no, no,” cried Audrey, shuddering.
The reaction after intense excitement had set in, and she was weak, tremulous and almost hysterical. Still, with all this, she knew what she had to do, what she must do.