Kitabı oku: «The Pauper of Park Lane», sayfa 8
Chapter Fifteen.
More about Marion
The following Sunday afternoon was warm and bright, perfect for up-river excursions, and, as was their usual habit, Max and Marion were spending the day together.
Released from the eternal bustle of Oxford Street, the girl looked forward with eager anticipation to each Saturday afternoon and Sunday – the weekly period of rest and recreation. To the assistant in shops where the “living-in” system pertains, Sunday is the one bright interval in an otherwise dull, dreary, and monotonous life, the day when he or she gets away from the weariness of being businesslike, the smell of the “goods,” and the keen eye of the buyer or shop-walker, and when one is one’s own master for a few happy hours.
To those not apprenticed in their youth to shop-life who, being born in a higher status, have been compelled to enter business as a means of livelihood, the long hours are terribly irksome, especially in winter, when artificial light is used nearly the whole day. The work is soul-killing in its monotony and the pay very meagre, therefore customers need hardly be surprised when a tired assistant does not take the trouble to exert herself unduly to satisfy her requirements.
In summer, Marion loved the river. The air was fresh and healthful, after the vitiated atmosphere of the costume department at Cunnington’s. Usually Max brought his little motor-boat from Biffen’s, at Hammersmith Bridge, where he kept it, up to Kew, and there they would embark in the morning and run up to Hampton Court, Staines, or even Windsor, getting their luncheon or tea at one or other of the old riverside inns, and spending a lazy afternoon up some quiet, leafy backwater, where, though so near the metropolis, the king-fishers skimmed the surface of the stream and the water-lilies lay upon their broad, green leaves.
Those lazy hours spent together were always delightful, therefore, to the devoted pair, a wet Sunday was indeed a calamity. On the afternoon in question they had met at Kew Bridge at four o’clock, and as she sat upon the crimson cushions in the stern, they were ascending the broad Thames, the motor running as evenly as a clock, and leaving a small wash in their wake. Marion could not meet her lover before, because she had spent the morning with a poor girl who had been a fellow assistant at Cunnington’s, and was now in Guy’s Hospital. The girl was friendless and in a dangerous condition, therefore Marion had given up her morning and taken her some grapes.
There were not many people on the river, for pleasure-seekers usually prefer the reaches above Richmond. The craft they passed was mostly sailing boats, belonging to the club Chiswick, and the inevitable launch of the Thames Conservancy.
In a well-cut gown of plain white cotton, with lace and muslin at the throat, a straw hat of mushroom shape, with a band of pale blue velvet, and a white sunshade over her shoulder, she looked delightfully fresh and cool. He was in navy serge suit and a peaked cap, and in his mouth a pipe.
Seated sideways in the boat, with the throbbing motor at his feet, he thought he never had seen her looking so chic and indescribably charming. Those stiff black dresses, which custom forced her to wear in business, did not suit her soft beauty. But in her river dress she looked delightfully dainty, and he tried to conjure up a vision of what figure she would present in a well-cut evening gown. The latter, however, she did not possess. The shop-assistant has but little need of décolleté, and, indeed, its very possession arouses comment among the plainer, more prudish, and more elderly section of the girls in the “house.”
More than once Max had wanted to take her to the stalls of a theatre in an evening gown, but she had always declared that she preferred wearing a light blouse. As a man generally is, he was a blunderer, and she could not well explain how, by the purchase of evening clothes, she would at once debase herself in the eyes of her fellow-assistants. As was well-known, her salary at Cunnington’s certainly did not allow of such luxuries as theatre gowns, and from the very first she had always declined to accept Max’s well-meant presents.
The only present of his that she had kept was the pretty ring now upon her slim, white hand, a ring set with sapphires and diamonds and inscribed within “From Max to Marion,” with the date.
As she leaned back enjoying the fresh air, after the dust and stifling heat of London, she was relating how pleased the poor invalid had been at her visit, and he was listening to her description of her friend’s desperate condition. A difficult operation had turned out badly, and the surgeons held out very little hope. Not a soul had been to see the poor girl all the week, the nurse had said, for she had no relatives, and all her friends were in business and unable to get out, except on Sunday.
“I very much fear she won’t live to see next Sunday,” Marion was saying, with a sigh, a cloud passing over her bright face. “It is so very sad. She’s only twenty, and such a nice girl. Her father was a naval officer, but she was left penniless, and had to earn her own living.”
“Like you yourself, dearest,” he answered. “Ah! how I wish I could take you from that life of drudgery. I can’t bear to think of you being compelled to slave as you do, and to wait upon those crotchety old cats, as many of your customers are. It’s a shame that you should ever have gone into Cunnington’s.”
“Mr Statham, Charlie’s employer, holds the controlling interest in our business. It was through him that I got in there. Without his influence they would never have taken me, for I had no experience. As a matter of fact,” she added, “I’m considered very lucky in obtaining a situation at Cunnington’s, and Mr Warner, our buyer, is extremely kind to me.”
“I know all that; but it’s the long hours that most wear you out,” he said, “especially in this close, muggy weather.”
“Oh! I’m pretty strong,” she declared lightly, her beautiful eyes fixed upon him. “At first I used to feel terribly tired about tea-time, but nowadays I can stand it very much better.”
“But you really must leave the place,” Max declared. “Charlie should so arrange things that you could leave. His salary from old Statham is surely sufficient to enable him to do that!”
“Yes; but if he keeps me, how can he keep a wife as well?” asked Marion. “Dear old Charlie is awfully good to me. I never want for anything; but he’ll marry Maud before long, I expect, and then I shall – ”
“Marry me, darling,” he exclaimed, concluding her sentence.
She blushed slightly and smiled.
“Ah!” she said, in mock reproof. “That may occur perhaps in the dim future. We’ll first see how Charlie’s marriage turns out – eh?”
“No, Marion,” he cried. “Come, that isn’t fair! You know how I love you – and you surely recollect your promise to me, don’t you?” he asked seriously.
“Of course I do,” she replied. “You dear old boy, you know I’m only joking.”
He seemed instantly relieved at her words, and steered across to the Middlesex banks as they approached Brentford Dock in order to get the full advantage of the rising tide.
“Has Charlie seen Maud of late?” he asked, a few moments later.
“I don’t know at all. I suppose he’s in the East. I haven’t seen him since he came to the shop to say good-bye to me.”
“I wonder if the Doctor and his daughter have returned to their own country?” he suggested.
“What! Have you heard nothing of them?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “I have endeavoured to discover where their furniture was taken, or where they themselves went, but all has been in vain. Both they and their belongings have entirely disappeared.”
The girl did not utter a word. She was leaning back, with her fine eyes fixed straight before her, reflecting deeply.
“It is all very extraordinary,” she remarked at last.
“Yes. I only wish, darling, you were at liberty to tell me the whole truth regarding Maud, and what she has told you,” he said, his gaze fixed upon her pale, beautiful face.
“I cannot do that, Max,” was her prompt answer, “so please do not ask me. I have already told you that in this matter my lips are sealed by a solemn promise – a promise which I cannot break.”
“I know! Yet I somehow cannot help thinking that you could reveal to me some fact which might expose the motive of this strange and unaccountable disappearance,” he said. “Do you know, I cannot get rid of the suspicion that the Doctor, and possibly Maud herself, have been victims of foul play. Remember that as a politician he had many enemies in his own country. A political career in the Balkans is not the peaceful profession it is here at St. Stephen’s. Take Bulgaria, for instance, and recall the political assassinations of Stambuloff, Petkoff, and a dozen others. The same in Servia and in Roumania. The whole of the Balkans is permeated by an air of political conspiracy, for there life is indeed cheap, more especially the life of the public man.”
“What! Then you really suspect that both Maud and her father have actually been the victims of some political plot?” she asked, regarding him with a strange expression.
“Well – how can I conjecture otherwise? The Doctor would never have left suddenly without sending word to me. Have you written to Charlie telling him of the sudden disappearance?”
“Yes. I wrote the same day that you told me, and addressed the letter to the Grand Hotel, at Belgrade.”
“Then he has it by now?”
“Certainly. I’m expecting a wire from him asking for further particulars. He should have got my letter the day before yesterday, but up to the present I’ve received no acknowledgment.”
Max did not tell her that her brother had not left London on the night when he was believed to have done so, and that it was more than probable he had never started from Charing Cross. He kept his own counsel, at the same time wondering what was the real reason why Marion so steadfastly refused to tell him the nature of Maud’s confession. That it had been of a startling nature she had already admitted, therefore he could only suppose that it had some direct connection with the astounding disappearance of both father and daughter.
On the other hand, however, he was suspicious of some ingenious plot, because he felt convinced that the Doctor would never have effaced himself without giving him confidential news of his whereabouts.
“Have you written to Maud?” he asked, after a fen; moments.
“No. I don’t know her address.”
“And you have not seen her?”
“No.”
“But you don’t seem in the least alarmed about her disappearance?”
“Why should I be? I rather expected it,” she answered; and it suddenly occurred to him whether, after all, she had been with Maud to the concert at Queen’s Hall on the night of the sudden removal.
A distinct suspicion seized him that she was concealing from him some fact which she feared to reveal – some fact that concerned herself more than Maud. He could see, in her refusal to satisfy him as to the girl’s confession, an attempt to mislead and mystify him, and he was just a trifle annoyed thereby. He liked open and honest dealing, and began to wonder whether this pretended promise of loyalty to her friend was not being put forward to hide some secret that was her own!
The two girls had, during the past few months, been inseparable. Had Maud really made a startling confession, or was the girl seated before him, with that strangely uneasy expression upon her beautiful countenance, endeavouring to deceive him?
He tried to put such thoughts behind him as unworthy of his devotion to her. But, alas! he could not.
Mystery was there – mystery that he was determined to elucidate.
Chapter Sixteen.
On Dangerous Ground
In the glorious sundown glinting across the river, and rendering it a rippling flood of gold, Max and Marion were seated in the long upstairs room of that old-fashioned riparian inn, the “London Apprentice,” at Isleworth, taking their tea at the open window.
Before them was the green ait, with the broad, tree-fringed river beyond, a quiet, peaceful old-world scene that, amid the rapidly changing metropolitan suburbs, remains the same to-day as it has been for the past couple of centuries or so.
They always preferred that quiet, old-fashioned upstairs room – the club-room, it was called – of the “London Apprentice,” at Isleworth, to the lawns and string bands of Richmond, the tea-gardens of Kew, or the pleasures of Eel Pie Island.
That long, silent, old, panelled room with its big bow-window commanding a wide reach of the river towards St. Margaret’s was well suited to their idyllic love. They knew that there they would at least be alone, away from the Sunday crowd, and that after tea they could sit at the window and enjoy the calm sundown.
The riverside at Isleworth does not change. Even the electric trams have passed close by it on their way to Hampton Court from Hammersmith but they have not modernised it. The old square-towered church, the row of ancient balconied houses, covered with tea-roses and jasmine, and the ancient waterman’s hostelry, the “London Apprentice,” are just the same to-day as they have ever been in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; and the little square in the centre of the riverside village is as silent and untrodden as in the years when Charles II loved to go there on his barge and dine in that very room at the inn, and when, later, David Garrick and Pope sang its praises.
Max and his well-beloved had finished their tea, and, with her hat and gloves off, she was lying back in a lounge chair in the deep bay window, watching the steamer Queen Elizabeth, with its brass band and crowd of excursionists, slowly returning to London. Near her he was seated, lazily smoking a cigarette, his eyes upon her in admiration, but still wondering, as he always wondered.
The truth concerning Maud Petrovitch had not been told.
He was very fond of the Doctor. Quiet, well-educated, polished, and pleasant always, he was, though a foreigner, and a Servian to boot, the very essence of a gentleman. His dead wife had, no doubt, influenced him towards English ways and English thought, while Maud herself – the very replica of his lost wife, he always declared – now held her father beneath her influence as a bright and essentially English girl.
The disappearance of the pair was an enigma which, try how he would, he could not solve. His efforts to find Rolfe had been unavailing, and Marion herself had neither seen nor heard from him. At Charlie’s chambers his man remained in complete ignorance. His master had left for Servia – that was all.
Max had been trying in vain to lead the conversation again up to the matter over which his mind had become so much exercised; but, with her woman’s keen ingenuity, she each time combated his efforts, which, truth to tell, only served to increase his suspicion that her intention was to shield herself behind her friend.
Why this horrible misgiving had crept upon him he could not tell. He loved her with his whole heart and soul, and daily he deplored that, while he lived in bachelor luxury in artistic chambers, and with every whim satisfied, she was compelled to toil and drudge in a London drapery store. He wished with his whole heart that he could take her out of that soul-killing business life, with all its petty jealousies and its eternal make-believe towards customers, and put her in the companionship of some elderly gentlewoman in rural peace.
But he knew her too well. The mere offer she would regard as an insult. A hundred times she had told him that, being compelled to work for her living, she was proud of being able to do so.
Charlie, her brother, he could not understand. He had just made a remark to that effect, and she had asked – “Why? He’s awfully good to me, you know. Lots of times he sends me unexpectedly five-pound notes, and they come in very useful to a girl like me, you know. I dare say,” she laughed, “you spend as much in a single evening when you go out with friends to the theatre and supper at the Savoy as I earn in a month.”
“That’s just it,” he said. “I can’t understand why Charlie, in his position, secretary to one of the wealthiest men in England, allows you to slave away in a shop.”
“He does so because I refuse to leave,” was her prompt answer. “I don’t care to live on the charity of anybody while I have the capacity to work. My parents were both proud in this respect, and I take after them, I suppose.”
“That is all to your credit, dearest,” he said; “but I am looking forward to the future. I love you, as you well know, and I can’t bear to think that you are bound to serve at Cunnington’s from nine in the morning till seven at night – waiting on a set of old hags who try to choose dresses to make them appear young girls.”
She laughed, her beautiful face turned towards him. “Aren’t you rather hard on my sex, Max?” she asked. “We all of us try to present ourselves to advantage in order to attract and please.”
“All except yourself, darling,” he said courteously. “You look just as beautiful in your plain black business gown as you do now.”
“That’s really very sweet of you,” she said, smiling. Then a moment later a serious look overspread her countenance, and she added: “Why worry yourself over me, Max, dear. I am very happy. I have your love. What more can I want?”
“Ah! my darling!” he cried, rising and bending till his lips touched hers, “those words of yours fill me with contentment. You are happy because I love you! And I am happy because I have secured your affection! You can never know how deeply I love you – or how completely I am yours. My only thought is of you, my well-beloved; of your present life, and of your future. I have friends – men of the world, who spend their time at clubs, at sport, or at theatres – who scoff at love. I scoff with them sometimes, because there is but one love in all the world for me – yours!”
“Yes,” she said, slowly fixing her eyes upon his, and tenderly stroking his hair. “But sometimes – sometimes I am afraid, Max – I – ”
“Afraid!” he echoed. “Afraid of what?”
“That you cannot trust me.”
He started. Was it not the unconscious truth that she spoke? He had been doubting her all that afternoon.
“Cannot trust you!” he cried. “What do you mean? How very foolish!”
But she shook her head, and a slight sigh escaped her. She seemed to possess some vague intuition that he did not entirely accept her statement regarding Maud. Yet was it, after all, very surprising, having in view the fact that she had admitted that Maud had made confession. It was the truth regarding that admission on the part of the Doctor’s daughter that he was hoping to elicit.
“Marion,” he said presently, in a low, intense voice, “Marion, I love you. If I did not trust you, do you think my affection would be so strong for you as it is?”
She paused for a moment before replying.
“That all depends,” she said. “You might suspect me of double-dealing, and yet love me at the same time.”
“But I do not doubt you, darling,” he assured her, at the same time placing his arm around her slim waist and kissing her upon the lips. “I love you; surely you believe that?”
“Yes, Max, I do,” she murmured. “I do – but I – ”
“But what?” he asked, looking straight into her fine eyes and waiting for her to continue.
She averted his gaze, and slowly but firmly disengaged herself from his embrace, while he, on his part, wondered.
She was silent, her face pale, and in her eyes a look of sudden fear.
“Tell me, darling,” he whispered. “You have something to say to me – is not that so?”
He loved her, he told himself, as truly as any man had ever loved a woman. It was only that one little suspicion that had arisen – the suspicion that she had not been to Queen’s Hall with his friend’s daughter.
He took her hand lightly in his and raised it courteously to his lips, but she drew it away, crying, “No! No, Max! No.”
“No?” he gasped, staring at her. “What do you mean, Marion. Tell me what you mean.”
“I – I mean that – that though we may love each other, perfect trust does not exist between us.”
“As far as I’m concerned it does,” he declared, even though he knew that his words were not exactly the truth. “Why have you so suddenly changed towards me, Marion? You are my love. I care for no one save yourself. You surely know that – have I not told you so a hundred times? Do you still doubt me?”
“No, Max. I do not doubt you. It is you who doubt me!”
“I do not doubt,” he repeated. “I have merely made inquiry regarding Maud, and the confession which you yourself told me she made to you. Surely, in the circumstances, of her extraordinary disappearance, together with her father, it is not strange that I should be unduly interested in her?”
“No, not at all strange,” she admitted. “I am quite as surprised and interested over Maud’s disappearance as you are.”
“Not quite so surprised.”
“Because I view the whole affair in the light of what she told me.”
“Did what she tell you in any way concern the Doctor?” he asked eagerly.
“Indirectly it did – not directly.”
“Had you any suspicion that father and daughter intended to suddenly disappear?”
“No; but, as I have before told you, I am not surprised.”
“Then they are fugitives, I take it?” he remarked, in a changed tone.
“Certainly. They were no doubt driven to act as they have done. Unless there – there has been a tragedy!”
“But the men who removed the furniture must be in some way connected with the Doctor’s secret,” he remarked. “There were several of them.”
“I know. You have already described to me all that you have discovered. It is very remarkable and very ingenious.”
“A moment ago you were about to tell me something, Marion,” he said, fixing his gaze upon hers; “what is it?”
“Oh!” she answered uneasily. “Nothing – nothing, I assure you!”
“Now, don’t prevaricate!” he exclaimed, raising his forefinger in mock reproof. “You wanted to explain something to me. What was it?”
She tried to laugh, but it was only a very futile attempt, and it caused increased suspicion to arise within his already overburdened mind. Here he was, endeavouring to elucidate the mystery of the disappearance of a friend, yet she could not assist him in the least. His position was sufficiently tantalising, for he was convinced that by her secret knowledge she held the key to the whole situation.
Usually, women are not so loyal to friends of their own sex as are men. A woman will often “give away” another woman without the least compunction, where a man will be staunch, even though the other may be his enemy. This is a fact well-known to all, yet the reason we may leave aside as immaterial to this curious and complex narrative which I am endeavouring to set down in intelligible form.
Marion, the woman he loved better than his own life, was assuring him that she had nothing to tell, while he, at the same moment, was convinced by her attitude that she was holding back from him some important fact which it was her duty to explain. She knew how intimate was her lover’s friendship with the missing man, and the love borne his daughter by her own brother. If foul play were suspected, was it not her bounden duty to relate all she knew?
The alleged confession of Maud Petrovitch struck him now more than ever as extraordinary. Why did Marion not openly tell him of her fears or misgivings? Why did not she give him at least some idea of the nature of her companion’s admissions? On the one hand, he admired her for her loyalty to Maud; while, on the other, he was beside himself with chagrin that she persistently held her secret.
In that half-hour during which they had sat together in the crimson sundown, her manner seemed to have changed. She had acknowledged her love for him, yet in the same breath she had indicated a gulf between them. He saw in her demeanour a timidity that was quite unusual, and he put it down to guiltiness of her secret.
“Marion,” he said at last, taking her hand firmly in his again, and speaking in earnest, “you said just now that you believed I loved you, but – something. But what? Tell me. What is it you wish to say? Come, do not deny the truth. Remember what we are both to each other. I have no secrets from you – and you have none from me!”
She cast her eyes wildly about her, and then they rested upon his. A slight shudder ran through her as he still held her soft, little hand.
“I know – I know it is very wrong of me,” she faltered, casting her eyes to the floor, as though in shame. “I have no right to hold anything back from you, Max, because – because I love you – but – ah! – but you don’t understand – it is because I love you so much that I am silent – for fear that you – ”
And she buried her head upon his shoulder and burst into tears.
