Kitabı oku: «Devil's Dice», sayfa 3
At last, however, a month after that fatal night and just when the prospect of misery which my future offered seemed too terrible for endurance, I suddenly made a discovery. It was in the London office of the Woking Cemetery Company that I found in the register an entry of an interment on the second day following the midnight ceremony, of “Sybil Ridgeway, wife of Stuart Ridgeway, of Shaftesbury Avenue.” The address whence the body was removed was not given, but, taking the next train from Waterloo to Woking, I was not long in finding, by aid of the cemetery-keeper’s plan, away in a far corner of the ground a newly-made grave.
Overcome with emotion, I stood before it in the fast-falling wintry twilight, and saw lying upon the mound of brown earth a magnificent wreath of white immortelles. Attached to it was a limp visiting-card. Eagerly I took it up and inspected it.
Upon it, traced in ink that had become blurred and half-effaced by the rain, there appeared some words. As I read them they seemed to glow in letters of fire; they held me spell-bound.
I lost courage to pursue my cold, calm, reasonable deductions; a kind of hallucination came upon me – a mental picture of her tragic end – and I felt my reason reel.
A vertigo of terror seized me, as though the breath of destiny swept over my brow.
The card secured to the great wreath was my own – the one I had given Sybil on the first evening we had met in the Casino Garden – but the words written upon it amazed me. I stood breathless, dumbfounded, holding it between my trembling fingers, utterly unable to realise the truth.
A portion of the writing upon it was in a well-formed man’s hand, the remainder in a heavy calligraphy totally different. The rains had rendered the writing faint and brown, yet in the fast-falling gloom I was enabled to decipher that one side bore the inscription —
“From your heart-broken husband – Stuart.”
Then, turning it over, I read in a distinctly feminine hand the strange exhortation —
“Seek, and you may find.”
What did it mean? Was it an actual message to me from the grave? Did it not appear like a declaration from my dead love herself that some mysterious crime had been committed, and that she left its elucidation in my hands? I became lost in bewilderment.
The inscription, purporting to be written by myself, was not in my handwriting, and I was puzzled to divine its meaning. That it had been penned at a date prior to the mysterious woman’s words appeared certain, as the lines were almost obliterated. Yet on reflection I saw that this fact might be accounted for if that side of the card had been uppermost, and thus more exposed. But the mysterious words, “Seek, and you may find,” were written in a different ink, upon which the action of the weather had had but little effect. The exhortation stood out plainly before my wondering eyes. By whose hand had it been traced? True, it was not addressed personally to me, yet so ominous were the words that I could not rid myself of the conviction that they were meant as an appeal to me.
Why the wreath had been so carefully placed upon the grave, as if it were a tribute from myself, was an inscrutable mystery; and the five firmly-written words on the reverse of the card contained a mystic meaning that I could not follow.
For a long time I remained there until night closed in and the wintry mists gathered; then, detaching the card and placing it in my pocket-book, I wended my way between the white, ghostly tombs towards the cemetery gate, plunged deep in thought.
Suddenly, as I turned a corner sharply, I came face to face with an ill-dressed man, who had apparently been lurking behind a great marble monument. In the gloom I could not distinguish his features, and as he turned and walked in the opposite direction I concluded that he was a grave-digger or gardener, so dismissed the incident from my mind. Yet half an hour later, while waiting on the platform of Woking Station, a man who passed me beneath a lamp gave me a swift inquisitive look. His strange expression attracted my attention, and as I turned and watched his retreating figure it seemed familiar. Then I remembered. It was the same individual who had apparently been watching my movements beside Sybil’s grave. Was he “shadowing” me?
Again I passed him, but he was wary, and bent feigning to eagerly scan a time-table, thereby hiding his features. Nevertheless, before the train arrived I managed by means of a ruse to obtain an uninterrupted view of his pale, sad-looking countenance.
At first I was prompted to approach him boldly and demand the reason he watched my actions, but on reflection I became convinced that my suspicions were groundless, and that after all he was merely a lonely mourner like myself. Perhaps he, too, had come from London to visit the last resting-place of some dearly-loved friend; perhaps, even while I viewed him with unjust suspicion, he had actually been sympathising with me. No, I felt certain that my apprehensions were absurd, and that the man had no sinister motive.
Alone in my room some hours later I placed the card carefully in the fender to dry, and sat smoking and thinking over the strangely ominous words upon it.
I could not rid myself of the conviction that my well-beloved had been the victim of foul play. The words “Seek, and you may find” rang for ever in my ears, yet in face of the declaration of the doctor I had no proof that murder had actually been committed. I could discover no report of an inquest having been held, and as the police had declined to assist me I knew that I must work single-handed and unaided.
Noticing that the card was now dry, I knocked the ashes from my pipe, then slowly stooping, picked it up. I turned it over to re-read the mysterious words of entreaty, but a cry of dismay escaped me when next instant I found the back of the card a perfect blank. On that side not a trace of writing remained.
The puzzling mystic sentence had faded. The words had been wholly obliterated as by some unseen hand.
The card fell from my nerveless fingers.
Presently it occurred to me that by again damping it the mysterious entreaty might be rendered visible, and, taking the ewer that Saunders had placed beside the tantalus stand, I dipped the precious document in water. For half an hour I alternately wetted it and carefully dried it with my handkerchief, but all effort to restore the writing proved unavailing. The surface became rubbed by continued immersions, but the words had utterly vanished, as if by magic.
Some hours afterwards I found myself doubting if I had ever actually seen those strange words, and wondering whether after all they were not a mere chimera of my disordered imagination. So strangely ominous were they that I could not help feeling a trifle uncertain that they had actually existed, and I remember that as I sat brooding over my sorrow I feared lest I had been the victim of one of those strange hallucinations which I had heard were precursory of insanity.
Twice I visited the grave of my dead love, but inquiries of the cemetery-keeper elicited no clue. Times without number I felt prompted to explain the strange circumstances to Jack Bethune, but always hesitated, deeming silence the best course. Whether this secrecy regarding my heart-sorrow was beneficial to my interests, I cannot say, but the occurrence of at least one incident caused me self-congratulation that my friends were unaware of the strange drama that wrecked my happiness and overshadowed my life. It is, alas! true, as François Coppee has said, “Pour le mélancolique, le soleil se couche déjà le matin.”
Chapter Five
Dora’s Engagement
One night Jack dashed into my chambers and carried me off to a reception at the house of John Thackwell, the well-known Lancashire millionaire, at Hyde Park Gate. He would hear no excuses, for Dora was to be there, and he pointed out that I had not yet congratulated her upon her engagement. This fact alone induced me to accompany him, but, truth to tell, I had only once before accepted Thackwell’s hospitality, and on that occasion had been terribly bored.
Thackwell had risen from a carding-hand to be sole proprietor of extensive mills at Oldham, and a dozen other great spinning mills in the neighbourhood of Manchester. This Lancashire cotton-king was bluff, honest, and unassuming, and still retained all the peculiarities of the dialect of his youth. He had tried to enter the gate of Society by the Parliamentary pathway, but the electors of Bamborough had returned a young sprig of the aristocracy by a narrow majority, notwithstanding the fact that the cotton-king had built a fresh wing to one of the hospitals, and presented the town with a brand new red-brick free library. In chagrin he had come to London, bought one of the finest mansions overlooking Hyde Park, and was now endeavouring to enter the charmed circle by entertaining all and sundry on a scale lavish even for millionaires.
Although the bluff old bachelor was fond of placing his “J.P.” after his name, dropping his “h’s,” and referring on inopportune occasions to the fact that when a lad he had assisted to build his great mill at Oldham by carrying hods of mortar up a ladder, he was nevertheless popular among a certain set. Many scheming and impecunious mothers with titles and marriageable daughters coveted his wealth, and it was no secret that several of the men registered in “Debrett,” who “looked in” at his monthly functions, were indebted to him for substantial financial assistance.
On arrival, we found the great magnificently-furnished rooms crowded almost to suffocation by a brilliant but decidedly mixed throng. Some of the men who nodded to us were high-priests of Mammon, officers who lounged in clubs without any visible means of subsistence, and idlers about town; but there was also a fair sprinkling of those leisurely well-dressed people who constitute what is known as London, and I noticed at once that on the whole the guests were of a much better set than when I had before partaken of the millionaire’s hospitality. Society resembles a bal masqué, where the women never unmask themselves.
At the moment we were announced, Thackwell, a burly, florid-faced, grey-bearded man in ill-fitting clothes, and with an enormous diamond solitaire in the centre of his crumpled shirt-front, was talking loudly with old Lady Stretton, who was congratulating him upon the completion of the beautiful frescoes by the Italian artists he had employed. As I approached, I heard the millionaire reply:
“It’s shaping gradely weel, but after all I get no more pleasure out of life than when I wor a journeyman. Yet a chap with any spirit likes to get on, and when he has put his heart into a job, feels as if he would rayther dee than be bet. It’s cost me a sight o’ money, but it doesn’t pay to scamp.”
Then, noticing me, he gripped my hand heartily, and to Bethune cried:
“Well, Jack, lad, how goes it?”
“Jack, lad,” smiled as he made polite reply, but did not seem to greatly admire this style of greeting, albeit the soldier-novelist knew the cotton-king intimately. Truly, old Thackwell was an incongruity in Society.
Lady Stretton smiled pleasantly, and bowed to us as we pushed our way forward among the crowd, and we were not long in discovering the Honourable Dora, Jack’s adored, comfortably ensconced in a cosy-corner, chatting with three men we knew.
“Halloa, Ridgeway!” cried one, a club acquaintance. Then dropping his voice he added: “Unusual to find you in the cotton-palace, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been here once before,” I replied briefly, as, turning to Dora, I sank into a low chair near her and began to chat. Soon the others left, and Jack and I were alone with her. When I offered her my congratulations, she clutched my arm quickly, whispering:
“Don’t let anyone overhear you. Remember, no announcement has yet been made, and Ma is quite inexorable.”
“I’m looking for it in the Morning Post each day,” I laughed, while as punishment she playfully tapped me with her ostrich-feather fan.
Though three years had elapsed since she had kissed the hand of her Sovereign, Society had not spoiled her. She was just as fresh, light-hearted, and ingenuous as I remembered her in her hoyden days at Blatherwycke, and as she sat talking with her lover and myself I saw how thoroughly charming and brilliant she was.
Her fund of vivacity was, I knew, inexhaustible. When she wished to do honour to a melancholy occasion, her vivacity turned any slight sorrow she had into hysterical weeping; when the occasion was joyful, it became a torrent of frivolity that is delightful when poured forth by a happy girl of twenty-two. This evening the occasion was distinctly joyful. Men had complimented her upon her dress, and she had a large sense of success.
When she spoke to Jack there was a love-look in her dark brilliant eyes that was unmistakable, and she was altogether handsome and fascinating. Small-featured, hers was a delicately-moulded oval face with pointed chin and pouting lips, while at the back of her well-poised head, her maid had deftly coiled her wealth of dark-brown hair, wherein a diamond aigrette glittered. Her smart gown was of pale pink chine silk, patterned in green and darker pink. The coat bodice of darker pink moiré boasted diamond buttons, kilted frills of ivory lace, the sleeves of kilted pale-green chiffon, and a large bow of green chiffon with draped ends to the waist over a jabot of ivory lace.
Many turned and looked at her as they passed. The glow of excitement and success burned brightly in her cheeks, and no one accused Dora of using rouge. Lady Stretton eyed us viciously once or twice; nevertheless, Jack held in conversation the girl he loved, and they laughed happily together. He was telling us of an amusing incident that had occurred during the exercise of the troopers on Hounslow Heath that morning, and I was feeling myself de trop when Dora, looking up suddenly, exclaimed:
“Why, here’s Mabel!”
Turning quickly I found her elder sister, the Countess of Fyneshade, in a marvellous creation in yellow, leaning over my chair.
“I’ve come across to talk to you, Mr Ridgeway,” she exclaimed, smiling. “I saw that Jack had quite monopolised Dora. Their public love-making is really becoming a scandal.” Then she seated herself in a dimly-lit corner close by, and motioned me to a chair near her.
Chapter Six
The Countess of Fyneshade
Three years Dora’s senior, the Countess was dark, strikingly handsome, an accomplished horsewoman, and accredited one of the smartest women in Society. Wedded to an elderly peer, she flirted outrageously, and always had one or two younger cavaliers in her train. Fyneshade was scarcely ever seen with his wife, and many were the stories afloat regarding the serious differences existing between them. Outwardly, however, the Countess was always gay, witty, and brilliant. She displayed exquisite taste, and men voted her “capital company.” It is true that beside her pretty women seemed plain and middle-aged, and well-dressed women looked dowdy, but since her marriage she had become just a trifle too smart for my taste.
Dora was no doubt pleased that her sister had taken me off, so that she might exchange confidences with Jack, but I confess I was not one of the drivelling crowd that admired Fyneshade’s wife.
When I had known her at Blatherwycke, in the days before her presentation, she had been as frank and merry as her sister, but since her union with the Earl she had sadly changed, acquiring an artificiality and a penchant for flirtation, apparently living only to be flattered and admired. True, she moved in one of the most select circles, and no really smart house-party was complete without her; but, knowing her as intimately as I did, it was not surprising perhaps that I had long ago arrived at the conclusion that her gaiety and recklessness were feigned, and I felt some sorrow for her.
She was lounging back talking nonsense at the highest possible speed, for ever exchanging greetings and salutations in the same breath, and as I calmly contemplated her I wondered whether her domestic unhappiness was the sole cause of the secret trouble which she strove to mask.
“Jack and Dora are really too absurd,” she was saying, glancing over to them. “They are childishly fond of one another, but what the result will be I dread to think.”
“The result? Why, marriage,” I said laughing.
She shrugged her shoulders, causing the diamonds at her white throat to sparkle, elevated her dark arched brows, and exclaimed:
“Of course Jack is popular, and has a fair income, and everybody likes him, but Ma is absolutely determined that Dora shall marry a title.”
“Which means a loveless union with an elderly husband, and no happiness within her own home – eh?”
She looked at me inquiringly, and her lips quivered slightly.
“You are cruel, Stuart,” she answered seriously. “You mean that I am an illustration of the victim of a loveless marriage.”
I nodded. Then I said: “We are such old acquaintances, Mabel, that I feel myself permitted to speak candidly. I have watched you for a long time, and I know that you do not, you cannot love Fyneshade; you are unhappily married, and all the pleasure of life lies beyond your own home. Gossips’ tongues try to wound your reputation – well, that’s not my affair, but – ”
“Gossips’ tongues!” she echoed hoarsely. “What care I for the lies of scandalmongers? True, men admire me, flatter me, and say pretty things that please me, but surely I am mistress of my own actions? If I chose to flirt with my coachman it would be of no concern to anybody except Fyneshade.”
“You misconstrue my meaning,” I said quietly. “It was my intention to ask you whether you would desire Dora to lead a life similar to yours, or whether you would allow her to seek happiness with the man she loves.”
In hesitation she opened and closed her fan. At last, in a harsh, strained voice, quite unusual to her, she answered:
“Now that you have spoken so plainly, Stuart, I am compelled to admit the truth,” and with a sigh she continued: “You are quite right when you say that mine was a loveless marriage, but even you cannot imagine how bitter is my misery. Once I was as happy as my sister there, and believed that I could love a man as devotedly as she does Jack, but my mother led me to believe that wealth brought love, and I sacrificed myself to rescue her from her creditors. The result has been three long years of wretchedness and duplicity, of sorrow, misery, and despair. Wealth and luxury are mine, it is true, and my diamonds are the envy of the feminine half of London, but – but I have no happiness, no object in life, no love. I hate everything, and most of all I hate myself.”
“And why do you hate yourself?” I asked sympathetically.
“For reasons known only to myself,” she answered evasively. “Ah! you little dream, Stuart, what a life mine is – at least, the life I am leading now. Another year of it will kill me, or drive me mad.”
“Am I then to understand by your words that there is truth in this gossip about Prince Starikoff and yourself at Royat?” I asked seriously.
She drew a deep breath and bit her lip. I saw I had approached a delicate subject. Her words had aroused my suspicions that there was some foundation for the scandal freely circulated regarding a fracas that had taken place at the little French watering-place of Royat, a month or so before, between Fyneshade and a Russian Prince named Starikoff.
“You have no right, Stuart, to question me upon my private affairs,” she said frigidly. “Les calomnies n’ennuient jamais. I know the Prince, it is true, but I had no intention that my words should convey the meaning you choose to put upon them, and I have no wish that we should pursue the subject further.”
“I bow to your desire, of course,” I said. “My sole object in speaking to you thus was to urge you to plead Jack’s cause with your mother. I know well enough that Lord Wansford admires Dora, and that Lady Stretton looks upon him with favour. But surely his is an unenviable reputation. If you were a man I could speak more plainly, but to you I can only say that I would never allow a sister of mine to become his wife. I would rather see her marry an honest working man.”
The Countess’ seriousness suddenly vanished, and she laughed lightly as she answered:
“I really believe that after all, dear old boy, you are in love with Dora yourself. I know you used to be rather fond of her in the old days, and am inclined to think that in reality you are Jack’s rival.”
“No, not at all,” I said. “Bethune is my friend; so is Dora. I merely desire to see them happy, and if I can save your sister from a life of wretchedness with Wansford, I shall feel that at least I have acted as her friend.”
“Rubbish!” the Countess exclaimed impatiently. “Marriage nowadays is a mere commercial transaction; very few people marry for love. An affectionate husband is apt to be jealous, and jealousy is decidedly bourgeois. Besides, Jack hasn’t the means to keep Dora as she should be kept. It would mean a red-brick villa in a remote suburb with a couple of servants, I suppose. Why, she would leave him in six months.”
“No,” I said. “Surely love and sufficient to provide comfort is better than loathing and thirty thousand a year! Scarcely a man in England or America is better known than Jack Beaune.”
“I was only aggravating you,” she said with a tantalising smile a moment later. “I quite admit the force of your argument, but to argue is useless. Mother has set her mind upon Lord Wansford, and, although I should like to see Dora marry Jack, I’m afraid there’s but little chance of the match – unless, of course, they throw over the maternal authority altogether and – ”
The words froze upon her lips. With her eyes fixed beyond me, she started suddenly and turned deathly pale, as if she had seen an apparition. Alarmed at her sudden change of manner, and fearing that she was about to faint, I turned in my chair, and was just in time to come face to face with a tall military-looking man who was sauntering by with a fair, insipid-looking girl in pink upon his arm.
For an instant our eyes met. It was a startling encounter. We glared at each other for one brief second, both open-mouthed in amazement. Then, smiling cynically at Mabel, he hurried away, being lost next second in the laughing, chattering crowd.
I had recognised the face instantly. It was the mysterious individual who had met me at Richmond and conducted me to Sybil! My first impulse was to spring up and dash after him, but, noticing the Countess was on the point of fainting, I rushed across to Dora and borrowed her smelling-salts. These revived my companion, who fortunately had not created a scene by losing consciousness, but the unexpected encounter had evidently completely unnerved her, for she was trembling violently, and in her eyes was a wild, haggard look, such as I had never before witnessed.
“That man recognised you,” I said a few moments later. “Who is he?”
“What man?” she gasped with well-feigned surprise. “I was not aware that any man had noticed me.”
“The fellow who passed with a fair girl in pink.”
“I saw no girl in pink,” she replied. “The heat of this crowded room upset me – it caused my faintness.” Then, noticing my expression of doubt, she added, “You don’t appear to believe me.”
“I watched him smile at you,” I answered calmly.
“He smiled! Yes, he smiled at me!” she said hoarsely, as if to herself. “He is the victor and I the vanquished. He laughs because he wins, but – ” She stopped short without finishing the sentence, as if suddenly recollecting my presence, and annoyed that she should have involuntarily uttered these words.
“Tell me, Mabel, who he is,” I inquired. “I have met him before, and to me he is a mystery.”
“To me also he is a mystery,” she said, with knit brows. “If he is your friend, take my advice and end your friendship speedily.”
“But is he not your friend?” I asked.
“I knew him – once,” she answered in a low voice; adding quickly: “If I remain here I shall faint. Do take me to my carriage at once.”
She rose unsteadily, bade good-night to her sister and Jack, then taking my arm accompanied me downstairs to the great hall.
It was an entirely new phase of the mystery that the Countess of Fyneshade should be acquainted with my strange, sinister-faced conductor. That she feared him was evident, for while there had been an unmistakable look of taunting triumph in his face, she had flinched beneath his gaze and nearly fainted. Her declaration that she had recognised no man at that moment, her strenuous efforts to remain calm, and her subsequent admission that he was her enemy, all pointed to the fact that she was well acquainted with him; and although, as we stood while her carriage was being found, I asked her fully a dozen times to disclose his name or something about him, she steadily refused. It was a secret that she seemed determined to preserve at all hazards.
When she grasped my hand in farewell she whispered, “Regard what I have told you as a secret between friends. I have been foolish, but I will try to make amends. Adieu!” Then she stepped into her carriage, and I went up into the drawing-room in search of the mysterious dark-visaged guest, whose appearance had produced such a sudden, almost electric effect upon her. Through several rooms, the great conservatory, and the corridors I searched, but could neither discover my strange companion on that eventful night, nor the pale-faced girl in pink. For fully half an hour I wandered about, my eager eyes on the alert, but apparently they had both disappeared on being recognised.
Did this strange individual fear to meet me face to face?
Though my mind was filled with memories of that fateful night when I had been joined in matrimony to my divinity, I nevertheless chatted with several women I knew, and at last found myself again with Dora, “Jack, lad,” being carried off by our energetic old host to be introduced to the buxom daughter of some Lancashire worthy.
Dora pulled a wry face and smiled, but we talked gayly together until the soldier-novelist returned. Soon afterwards, however, old Lady Stretton came up to us and carried off her daughter, while Jack shared my cab as far as his chambers, where we parted.
