The girl who was dying lay in an invalid chair piled up with cushions in a sheltered corner of the lawn. The woman who had come to visit her had deliberately turned away her head with a murmured word about the sunshine and the field of buttercups. Behind them was the little sanitarium, a gray stone villa built in the style of a château, overgrown with creepers, and with terraced lawns stretching down to the sunny corner to which the girl had been carried earlier in the day. There were flowers everywhere—beds of hyacinths, and borders of purple and yellow crocuses. A lilac tree was bursting into blossom, the breeze was soft and full of life. Below, beyond the yellow-starred field of which the woman had spoken, flowed the Seine, and in the distance one could see the outskirts of Paris.
"The doctor says I am better," the girl whispered plaintively. "This morning he was quite cheerful. I suppose he knows, but it is strange that I should feel so weak—weaker even day by day. And my cough—it tears me to pieces all the time."
The woman who was bending over her gulped something down in her throat and turned her head. Although older than the invalid whom she had come to visit, she was young and very beautiful. Her cheeks were a trifle pale, but even without the tears her eyes were almost the color of violets.
"The doctor must know, dear Lucie," she declared. "Our own feelings so often mean nothing at all."
The girl moved a little uneasily in her chair. She, also, had once been pretty. Her hair was still an exquisite shade of red-gold, but her cheeks were thin and pinched, her complexion had gone, her clothes fell about her. She seemed somehow shapeless.
"Yes," she agreed, "the doctor knows—he must know. I see it in his manner every time he comes to visit me. In his heart," she added, dropping her voice, "he must know that I am going to die."
Her eyes seemed to have stiffened in their sockets, to have become dilated. Her lips trembled, but her eyes remained steadfast.
"Oh! madame," she sobbed, "is it not cruel that one should die like this! I am so young. I have seen so little of life. It is not just, madame—it is not just!"
The woman who sat by her side was shaking. Her heart was torn with pity. Everywhere in the soft, sunlit air, wherever she looked, she seemed to read in letters of fire the history of this girl, the history of so many others.
"We will not talk of death, dear," she said. "Doctors are so wonderful, nowadays. There are so few diseases which they cannot cure. They seem to snatch one back even from the grave. Besides, you are so young. One does not die at nineteen. Tell me about this man—Eugène, you called him. He has never once been to see you—not even when you were in the hospital?"
The girl began to tremble.
"Not once," she murmured.
"You are sure that he had your letters? He knows that you are out here and alone?"
"Yes, he knows!"
There was a short silence. The woman found it hard to know what to say. Somewhere down along the white, dusty road a man was grinding the music of a threadbare waltz from an ancient barrel-organ. The girl closed her eyes.
"We used to hear that sometimes," she whispered, "at the cafés. At one where we went often they used to know that I liked it and they always played it when we came. It is queer to hear it again—like this…. Oh, when I close my eyes," she muttered, "I am afraid! It is like shutting out life for always."
The woman by her side got up. Lucie caught at her skirt.
"Madame, you are not going yet?" she pleaded. "Am I selfish? Yet you have not stayed with me so long as yesterday, and I am so lonely."
The woman's face had hardened a little.
"I am going to find that man," she replied. "I have his address. I want to bring him to you."
The girl's hold upon her skirt tightened.
"Sit down," she begged. "Do not leave me. Indeed it is useless. He knows. He does not choose to come. Men are like that. Oh! madame, I have learned my lesson. I know now that love is a vain thing. Men do not often really feel it. They come to us when we please them, but afterwards that does not count. I suppose we were meant to be sacrificed. I have given up thinking of Eugène. He is afraid, perhaps, of the infection. I think that I would sooner go out of life as I lie here, cold and unloved, than have him come to me unwillingly."
The woman could not hide her tears any longer. There was something so exquisitely fragile, so strangely pathetic, in that prostrate figure by her side.
"But, my dear," she faltered,—
"Madame," the girl interrupted, "hold my hand for a moment. That is the doctor coming. I hear his footstep. I think that I must sleep."
Madame Christophor—she had another name, but there were few occasions on which she cared to use it—was driven back to Paris, in accordance with her murmured word of instruction, at a pace which took little heed of police regulations or even of safety. Through the peaceful lanes, across the hills into the suburbs, and into the city itself she passed, at a speed which was scarcely slackened even when she turned into the Boulevard which was her destination. Glancing at the slip of paper which she held in her hand, she pulled the checkstring before a tall block of buildings. She hurried inside, ascended two flights of stairs, and rang the bell of a door immediately opposite her. A very German-looking manservant opened it after the briefest of delays—a man with fair moustache, fat, stolid face and inquisitive eyes.
"Is your master in," she demanded, "Monsieur Estermen?"
The man stared at her, then bowed. The appearance of Madame Christophor was, without doubt, impressive.
"I will inquire, madame," he replied.
"I am in a hurry," she said curtly. "Be so good as to let your master know that."
A moment later she was ushered into a sitting-room—a man's apartment, untidy, reeking of cigarette smoke and stale air. There were photographs and souvenirs of women everywhere. The windows were fast-closed and the curtains half-drawn. The man who stood upon the hearthrug was of medium height, dark, with close-cropped hair and a black, drooping moustache. His first glance at his visitor, as the door opened, was one of impertinent curiosity.
"Madame?" he inquired.
"You are Monsieur Estermen?"
He bowed. He was very much impressed and he endeavored to assume a manner.
"That is my name. Pray be seated."
She waved away the chair he offered.
"My automobile is in the street below," she said. "I wish you to come with me at once to see a poor girl who is dying."
He looked at her in amazement.
"Are you serious, madame?"
"I am very serious indeed," she replied. "The girl's name is Lucie
Rénault."
For the moment he seemed perplexed. Then his eyebrows were slowly raised.
"Lucie Rénault," he repeated. "What do you know about her?"
"Only that she is a poor child who has suffered at your hands and who is dying in a private hospital," Madame Christophor answered. "She has been taken there out of charity. She has no friends, she is dying alone. Come with me. I will take you to her. You shall save her at least from that terror."
It was the aim of the man with whom she spoke to be considered modern. A perfect and invincible selfishness had enabled him to reach the topmost heights of callousness, and to remain there without affectation.
"If the little girl is dying," he said, "I am sorry, for she was pretty and companionable, although I have lost sight of her lately. But as to my going out to see her, why, that is absurd. I hate illness of all sorts."
The woman looked at him steadfastly, looked at him as though she had come into contact with some strange creature.
"Do you understand what it is that I am saying?" she demanded. "This girl was once your little friend, is it not so? It was for your sake that she gave up the simple life she was living when you first knew her, and went upon the stage. The life was too strenuous for her. She broke down, took no care of herself, developed a cough and alas! tuberculosis."
The man sighed. He had adopted an expression of abstract sympathy.
"A terrible disease," he murmured.
"A terrible disease indeed," Madame Christophor repeated. "Do you not understand what I mean when I tell you that she is dying of it? Very likely she will not live a week—perhaps not a day. She lies there alone in the garden of the hospital and she is afraid. There are none who knew her, whom she cares for, to take her into their arms and to bid her have no fear. Is it not your place to do this? You have held her in your arms in life. Don't you see that it is your duty to cheer her a little way on this last dark journey?"
The man threw away his cigarette and moved to the mantelpiece, where he helped himself to a fresh one from the box.
"Madame," he said, "I perceive that you are a sentimentalist."
She did not speak—she could not. She only looked at him.
"Death," he continued, lighting his cigarette, "is an ugly thing. If it came to me I should probably be quite as much afraid—perhaps more—than any one else. But it has not come to me just yet. It has come, you tell me, to little Lucie. Well, I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do about it. I have no intention whatever of making myself miserable. I do not wish to see her. I do not wish to look upon death, I simply wish to forget it. If it were not, madame," he added, with a bow and a meaning glance from his dark eyes, "that you bring with you something of your own so well worth looking upon, I could almost find myself regretting your visit."
She still regarded him fixedly. There was in her face something of that shrinking curiosity with which one looks upon an unclean and horrible thing.
"That is your answer?" she murmured.
The man had little understanding and he replied boldly.
"It is my answer, without a doubt. Lucie, if what you tell me is true, as I do not for a moment doubt, is dying from a disease the ravages of which are hideous to watch, and which many people believe, too, to be infectious. Let me advise you, madame, to learn also a little wisdom. Let me beg of you not to be led away by these efforts of sentiment, however picturesque and delightful they may seem. The only life that is worth considering is our own. The only death that we need fear is our own. We ought to live like that."
The woman stood quite still. She was tall and she was slim. Her figure was exquisite. She was famous throughout the city for her beauty. The man's eyes dwelt upon her and the eternal expression crept slowly into his face. He seemed to understand nothing of the shivering horror with which she was regarding him.
"If it were upon any other errand, madame," he continued, leaning towards her, "believe, I pray you, that no one would leave this room to become your escort more willingly than I."
She turned away.
"You will not leave me already?" he begged.
"Monsieur," she declared, as she threw open the door before he could reach it, "if I thought that there were many men like you in the world, if I thought—"
She never finished her sentence. The emotions which had seized her were entirely inexpressible. He shrugged his shoulders.
"My dear lady," he said, "let me assure you that there is not a man of the world in this city who, if he spoke honestly, would not feel exactly as I do. Allow me at least to see you to your automobile."
"If you dare to move," she muttered, "if you dare—"
She swept past him and down the stairs into the street. She threw herself into the corner of the automobile. The chauffeur looked around.
"Where to, madame?" he inquired.
She hesitated for a moment. She had affairs of her own, but the thought of the child's eyes came up before her.
"Back to the hospital," she ordered. "Drive quickly."
They rushed from Paris once more into the country, with its spring perfumes, its soft breezes, its restful green, but fast though they drove another messenger had outstripped them. From the little chapel, as the car rolled up the avenue, came the slow tolling of a bell. Madame Christophor stood on the corner of the lawn alone. The invalid chair was empty. The blinds of the villa were being slowly lowered. She turned around and looked toward the city. It seemed to her that she could see into the rooms of the man whom she had left a few minutes ago. A lark was singing over her head. She lifted her eyes and looked past him up to the blue sky. Her lips moved, but never a sound escaped her. Yet the man who sat in his rooms at that moment, yawning and wondering where to spend the evening, and which companion he should summon by telephone to amuse him, felt a sudden shiver in his veins.
The library of the house in Grosvenor Square was spacious, handsome and ornate. Mr. Algernon H. Carraby, M.P., who sat dictating letters to a secretary in an attitude which his favorite photographer had rendered exceedingly familiar, at any rate among his constituents, was also, in his way, handsome and ornate. Mrs. Carraby, who had just entered the room, fulfilled in an even greater degree these same characteristics. It was acknowledged to be a very satisfactory household.
"I should like to speak to you for a moment, Algernon," his wife announced.
Mr. Carraby noticed for the first time that she was carrying a letter in her hand. He turned at once to his secretary.
"Haskwell," he said, "kindly return in ten minutes."
The young man quitted the room. Mrs. Carraby advanced a few steps further towards her husband. She was tall, beautifully dressed in the latest extreme of fashion. Her movements were quiet, her skin a little pale, and her eyebrows a little light. Nevertheless, she was quite a famous beauty. Men all admired her without any reservations. The best sort of women rather mistrusted her.
"Is that the letter, Mabel?" her husband asked, with an eagerness which he seemed to be making some effort to conceal.
She nodded slowly. He held out his hand, but she did not at once part with it.
"Algernon," she said quietly, "you know that I am not very scrupulous. We both of us want success—a certain sort of success—and we have both of us been content to pay the price. You have spent a good deal of money and you have succeeded very well indeed. Somehow or other, I feel to-day as though I were spending more than money."
He laughed a little uncomfortably.
"My dear Mabel!" he protested. "You are not going to back out, are you?"
"No," she replied, "I do not think that I shall back out. There is nothing in the whole world I want so much as to have you a Cabinet Minister. If there had been any other way—"
"But there is no other way," her husband interrupted. "So long as
Julien Portel lives, I should never get my chance. He holds the post I
want. Every one knows that he is clever. He has the ear of the Prime
Minister and he hates me. My only chance is his retirement."
Mrs. Carraby looked at the letter.
"Well," she said, "I have played your game for you. I have gone even to the extent of being talked about with Julien Portel."
Her husband moved uneasily in his chair.
"That will all blow over directly," he declared. "Besides, if—if things go our way, we shan't see much more of Portel. Give me the letter."
Still she hesitated. It was curious that throughout the slow evolution of this scheme to break a man's life, for which she was mainly responsible, she had never hesitated until this moment. Always it had been fixed in her mind that Algernon was to be a Cabinet Minister; she was to be the wife of a Cabinet Minister. That there were any other things greater in life than the gratification of so reasonable an ambition had never seemed possible. Now she hesitated. She looked at her husband and she saw him with new eyes. He seemed suddenly a mean little person. She thought of the other man and there was a strange quiver in her heart—a very unexpected sensation indeed. There was a difference in the breed. It came home to her at that moment. She found herself even wondering, as she swung the letter idly between her thumb and fore-finger, whether she would have been a different woman if she had had a different manner of husband.
"The letter!" he repeated.
She laid it calmly on the desk before him.
"Of course," she said coldly, "if you find the contents affectionate you must remember that I am in no way responsible. This was your scheme. I have done my best."
The man's fingers trembled slightly as he broke the seal.
"Naturally," he agreed, pausing for an instant and looking up at her. "I knew that I could trust you or I would never have put such an idea into your head."
She laughed; a characteristic laugh it was, quite cold, quite mirthless, apparently quite meaningless. Carraby turned back to the letter, tore open the envelope and spread it out before them. He read it out aloud in a sing-song voice.
Downing Street. Tuesday
I had your sweet little note an hour ago. Of course I was disappointed about luncheon, as I always am when I cannot see you. Your promise to repay me, however, almost reconciles me.
The man looked up at his wife.
"Promise?" he repeated hoarsely. "What does he mean?"
"Go on," she said, with unchanged expression. "See if what you want is there."
The man continued to read:
I am going to ask you a very great favor, Mabel. When we are alone together, I talk to you with absolute freedom. To write you on matters connected with my office is different. I know very well how deep and sincere your interest in politics really is, and it has always been one of my greatest pleasures, when with you, to talk things over and hear your point of view. Without flattery, dear, I have really more than once found your advice useful. It is your understanding which makes our companionship always a pleasure to me, and I rely upon that when I beg you not to ask me to write you again on matters to which I have really no right to allude. You do not mind this, dear? And having read you my little lecture, I will answer your question. Yes, the Cabinet Council was held exactly as you surmise. With great difficulty I persuaded B—— to adopt my view of the situation. They are all much too terrified of this war bogey. For once I had my own way. Our answer to this latest demand from Berlin was a prompt and decisive negative. Nothing of this is to be known for at least a week.
I am sorry your husband is such a bear. Perhaps on Monday we may meet at Cardington House?
Please destroy this letter at once.
Ever affectionately yours,
The man's eyes, as he read, grew brighter.
"It is enough?" the woman asked.
"It is more than enough!"
Slowly he replaced it in its envelope and thrust it into the breast-pocket of his coat.
"What are you going to do with it?" she inquired.
"I have made my plans," he answered. "I know exactly how to make the best and most dignified use of it."
He rose to his feet. Something in his wife's expression seemed to disturb him. He walked a few steps toward the door and came back again.
"Mabel," he said, "are you glad?"
"Naturally I am glad," she replied.
"You have no regrets?"
Again she laughed.
"Regrets?" she echoed. "What are they? One doesn't think about such things, nowadays."
They stood quite still in the centre of that very handsome apartment. They were almost alien figures in the world in which they moved, Carraby, the rankest of newcomers, carried into political life by his wife's ambitions, his own self-amassed fortune, and a sort of subtle cunning—a very common substitute for brains; Mrs. Carraby, on whom had been plastered an expensive and ultra-fashionable education, although she was able perhaps more effectually to conceal her origin, the daughter of a rich Yorkshire manufacturer, who had secured a paid entrance into Society. They were purely artificial figures for the very reason that they never admitted any one of these facts to themselves, but talked always the jargon of the world to which they aspired, as though they were indeed denizens therein by right. At that moment, though, a single natural feeling shook the man, shook his faith in himself, in life, in his destiny. There was Jewish blood in his veins and it made itself felt.
"Mabel," he began, "this man Portel—you've flirted with him, you say?"
"I have most certainly flirted with him," she admitted quietly.
"He hasn't dared—"
A flash of scorn lit her cold eyes.
"I think," she said, "that you had better ask me no questions of that sort."
Carraby went slowly out. Already the moment was passing. Of course he could trust his wife! Besides, in his letter was the death warrant of the man who stood between him and his ambitions. Mrs. Carraby listened to his footsteps in the hall, heard his suave reply to his secretary, heard his orders to the footman who let him out. From where she stood she watched him cross the square. Already he had recovered his alert bearing. His shoes and his hat were glossy, his coat was of an excellent fit. The woman watched him without movement or any change of expression.
Sir Julien Portel stood in the middle of his bedroom, dressed in shirt and trousers only. The sofa and chairs around him were littered with portions of the brilliant uniform which he had torn from his person a few minutes before with almost feverish haste. His perplexed servant, who had only just arrived, was doing his best to restore the room to some appearance of order.
"You needn't mind those wretched things for the present, Richards," his master ordered sharply. "Bring the rest of the tweed traveling suit like the trousers I have on, and then see about packing some clothes."
The man ceased his task. He looked around, a little bewildered.
"Do I understand that you are going out of town tonight, Sir Julien?" he asked.
"I am going on to the continent by the nine o'clock train," was the curt reply.
Richards was a perfectly trained servant, but the situation was too much for him.
"You will excuse me, Sir Julien," he said, "but there is Lord
Cardington's dinner tonight, and the reception afterwards at the
Foreign Office. I have your court clothes ready."
His master laughed shortly.
"I am not attending the dinner or the reception, Richards. You can put those things back again and get me the traveling clothes."
The man seemed a little dazed, but turned automatically towards the wardrobe.
"Shall you require me to accompany you, sir?" he inquired.
"Not at present," Sir Julien replied. "You will have to come on with the rest of my luggage when I have decided what to do."
Richards was not more than ordinarily inquisitive, but the circumstances were certainly unusual.
"Do you mean, sir, that you will not be returning to London at present?" he ventured to ask.
"I shall not be returning to London for some time," Sir Julien answered sharply. "Get on with the packing as quickly as you can. Put the whiskey and soda on the table in the sitting-room, and the cigarettes. Remember, if any one comes I am not at home."
"Too late, my dear fellow," a voice called out from the adjoining room. "You see, I have found my way up unannounced—a bad habit, but my profession excuses everything."
The man stood on the threshold of the room opening out from the bedroom—tall, florid, untidily dressed, with clean-shaven, humorous face, ungloved hands, and a terribly shabby hat. He looked around the room and shrugged his shoulders.
"What an infernal mess!" he exclaimed. "Come along out into the sitting-room, Julien. I want to talk to you."
"I should like to know how the devil you got in here!" Sir Julien muttered. "I told the fellow downstairs that no one was to be allowed up."
"He did try to make himself disagreeable," the newcomer replied.
"However, here I am—that's enough."
Sir Julien turned to his servant.
"Get on with your packing, Richards," he directed, "and let me know when you have finished."
Sir Julien followed his visitor into the sitting-room, closing the door behind him. His manner was not in the least cordial.
"Look here, Kendricks, old fellow," he said, "I don't want to be rude, but I am not in the humor to talk to any one. I have had a rotten week of it and just about as much as I can stand. Help yourself to a whiskey and soda, say what you have to say and then go."
The newcomer nodded. He helped himself to the whiskey and soda, but he seemed in no hurry to speak. On the contrary, he settled himself down in an easy-chair with the appearance of a man who had come to stay.
"Julien," he remarked presently, "you are up against it—up against it rather hard. Don't trouble to interrupt me. I know pretty well all about it. I said from the first you'd have to resign. There wasn't any other way out of it."
"Quite right," Julien agreed. "There wasn't. I've finished up everything to-day—resigned my office, applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and I am going to clear out of the country to-night."
"And all because you wrote a foolish letter to a woman!" Kendricks murmured, half to himself. "By the bye, there's no doubt about the letter, I suppose?"
"None in the world," Julien replied.
"There's nothing that the Press can do to set you right?"
"Great heavens, no!" Julien declared. "No one can help me. I've no one to blame but myself. I wrote the letter—there the matter ends."
"And she passed it on to that shocking little bounder of a husband of hers! What a creature! Did it ever occur to you that it was a plot?"
Julien shrugged his shoulders.
"It makes so little difference."
"You were in Carraby's way," Kendricks continued, producing a pipe from his pocket and leisurely filling it. "There was no getting past you and you were a young man. It's a dirty business."
"If you don't mind," Julien said coldly, "we won't discuss it any further. So far as I am concerned, the whole matter is at an end. I was compelled to take part in to-day's mummery. I hated it—that they all knew. I suppose it's foolish to mind such things, David," he went on bitterly, taking up a cigarette and throwing himself into a chair, "but a year ago—it was just after I came back from Berlin and you may remember it was the fancy of the people to believe that I had saved the country from war—they cheered me all the way from Whitehall to the Mansion House. To-day there was only a dull murmur of voices—a sort of doubting groan. I felt it, Kendricks. It was like Hell, that ride!"
Kendricks nodded sympathetically.
"I suppose you know that a version of the letter is in the evening papers?" he asked.
"My resignation will be in the later issues," Julien told him. "It was pretty well known yesterday afternoon. I leave for the continent to-night."
There was a short silence between the two men. In a sense they had been friends all their lives. Sir Julien Portel had been a successful politician, the youngest Cabinet Minister for some years. Kendricks had never aspired to be more than a clever journalist of the vigorous type. Nevertheless, they had been more than ordinarily intimate.
"Have you made any plans?" Kendricks inquired presently. "Of course, you would have to resign office, but don't you think there might be a chance of living it down?"
"Not a chance on earth," Julien replied. "As to what I am going to do, don't ask me. For the immediate present I am going to lose myself in Normandy or somewhere. Afterwards I think I shall move on to my old quarters in Paris. There's always a little excitement to be got out of life there."
Kendricks looked at his friend through the cloud of tobacco smoke.
"It's excitement of rather a dangerous order," he remarked slowly.
"I shall never be likely to forget that I am an Englishman," Julien said. "Perhaps I may be able to do something to set matters right again. One can't tell. By the bye, Kendricks," he went on, "do you remember when we were at college how you hated women? How you used to try and trace half the things that went wrong in life to their influence?"
The journalist nodded. He knocked the ashes from his pipe deliberately.
"I was a boy in those days," he declared. "I am a man now, getting on toward middle age, and on that one subject I am as rabid as ever. I hate their meddling in men's affairs, shoving themselves into politics, always whispering in a man's ear under pretence of helping him with their sympathy. They're in evidence wherever you go—women, women, women! The place reeks with them. You can't go about your work, hour by hour or day by day, without having them on every side of you. It's like a poison, this trail of them over every piece of serious work we attempt, over every place we find our way into. They bang the typewriters in our offices, they elbow us in the streets, they smile at us from the next table at our workaday luncheon, they crowd the tubes and the cars and the cabs in the streets. Why the deuce, Julien, can't we treat them like those sage Orientals, and dump them all in one place where they belong till we've finished our work?"
Julien lifted his tumbler of whiskey and soda to his lips and set it down empty.
"In a way, you're right, Kendricks," he agreed. "You go too far, of course, but I do believe that women hold too big a place in our lives. I am one of the poor fools who goes to the wall to gratify the vanity of one of them."
The journalist muttered a word under his breath which he would have been very sorry to have seen in the pages of his paper. Julien had moved to the open window. There had been a little break in his voice. No one knew better than Kendricks that a very brilliant career was broken.
"I think you're wise to go away for a time, Julien," he decided. "Look here, it's six o'clock now. I have a taxicab waiting downstairs. Come round to my rotten little restaurant in Soho and dine with me. Your fellow can meet us at Charing-Cross with your things. You won't see a soul you know where I'm going to take you."
Julien turned slowly away from the window. He was looking for the last time from those rooms at the London which he had loved. The setting sun had caught the dome of St. Paul's, was flashing from the dark, placid water of the Thames. The roar of the great city was passing from eastwards to westwards.
"You're a good chap, Kendricks," he declared. "I'll come along, with pleasure. I shall have enough solitude later on. But listen, before we go—listen, David, to a speech after your own heart."
Julien stood quite still for a moment. His pale face seemed suddenly whiter, his eyes were full of fire.
"David," he said, "if ever the time comes in the future when I find that a woman is beginning to claim a minute of my thoughts, a single one of my emotions, to govern the slightest throb of my pulses, I'll take her by the throat and I'll throw her out of what's left of my life as I would a rat that had crept into my room. I've done with them. Curse all women!"
There was a silence. Kendricks leaned over to the fireplace and knocked his pipe against the hearth. Then he suddenly paused.
"What's that?" he asked abruptly.
There was a soft knocking at the outside door.
Kendricks rose slowly to his feet. Julien was looking toward the door with a frown upon his face. While they stood there the knocking was repeated, still soft but a little more insistent. Julien hesitated no longer.
"I think," Kendricks said dryly, "that you had better see who is there."
The door was already opened. Julien seemed suddenly transformed into a graven image. He said nothing, merely gazing at the woman who walked calmly past him into the room. Kendricks, who also recognized her, withdrew his pipe from his mouth. This was a situation indeed! The woman, with her hands inside her muff, looked from one to the other of the two men.
"Am I interrupting a very important interview?" she asked calmly. "If not, perhaps you could spare me five minutes of your time, Sir Julien?"
Kendricks recovered himself at once.
"I'll wait for you downstairs, Julien," he declared.
He caught up his hat and departed, closing the door after him. Julien was still motionless.
"Well?" she began.
He drew a little breath. He was beginning to regain his self-possession.
"My dear Mrs. Carraby," he said, "with your wonderful knowledge of the world and its ways, will you permit me to point out that your presence here is a little embarrassing to me and might, under certain circumstances, be a good deal more embarrassing to you?"
Mrs. Carraby smiled. She stood where the sunlight touched her brown hair and her quiet, pale face. She was one of those women who are never afraid of the light. Her face was of that strange, self-contained nature, colorless, apparently, yet capable of strange and rapid changes. Just now the last glow of sunlight seemed to have found a skein of gold in her hair, a queer gleam of light in her eyes. She stood there looking at the man whom she had come to visit.
"Julien," she said, "I wanted a few words with you."
It was impossible for him to remain altogether unmoved. Whatever else might be the truth, she had risked most of the things that were dear to her in life by this visit.
"Mrs. Carraby," he declared, "I am entirely at your service. If you think that any useful purpose can be served by words between you and me, I would only point out, for your own sake, that your visit is, to say the least of it, unwise. These are bachelor chambers."
"You know very well," she replied calmly, "that it was my only chance of speaking with you. If I had sent for you, you would not have come. If I had spoken to you in the street, you would have passed me by—quite rightly. This was my only chance. That is why I have come to you."
"If you think it worth the risk," he remarked gravely, "pray continue."
She shrugged her shoulders very slightly.
"Who can tell what is worth the risk?"
"You have at least excited my curiosity," he admitted, leaning a little towards her. "I cannot conceive what it is that you want to say to me."
She lifted her eyes to his, and though there was nothing unusual about them—there were few people, indeed, who could tell you what color they were—men seldom forgot it when Mrs. Carraby looked at them steadily.
"I do not know, myself," she said. "I do not know why I have come."
Julien laughed unnaturally.
"Pray be seated," he begged. "Would you like to examine my curios or my photographs? I must apologize for the condition of my room. You see, you happen to be the first woman who has ever crossed its threshold."
"That," she remarked, "rather interests me. Still, it is only what I should have expected. No, I do not think that I will sit down. I am trying to ask myself exactly why I have come."
"If you can answer that question," Julien said grimly, "you will appease a very natural curiosity on my part. It is not like you."
"Quite true," she assented. "It is not like me. I have run a great risk in coming here and it is not my métier to run risks. And now that I am here I do not know why I have come. This has been an impulse and this is an hour outside my life. I am trying to understand it. Come here, Julien." He came unwillingly to her side. She held out her hand, but he shook his head.
"Mabel," he said, "you and I do not need to mince words. To-night I am celebrating the ruin of my career. I am leaving England within a few hours. I have you to thank for what has happened. Yet you come to me, you hold out your hand. You must forgive me—I am afraid I am dull."
"No," she replied, "you are not dull. Your feelings towards me are obvious and very natural. Mine towards you I am not so sure of. It is not because I did not understand you that I came here to-night. It is because I did not understand myself. May I go on?"
"Why not?" he answered. "I am at your service."
"From the days of my boarding-school," she continued, "I have known only one Mabel. In her girlhood she had all that she could get out of life and turned everything she could to her own ends. A marriage was arranged for her—you see, I was half a Jewess and my husband was half a Jew, and things are done like that with us. The marriage opened the door to a fresh set of ambitions. For the last few years I have trodden a well-worn path. It was I who advised my husband to refuse a baronetcy. It was I who won his first election. I see that my photographs are in all the illustrated papers, that his speeches are properly recorded, that my visiting list moves within the correct limits. These things have spelt life. To the fulfillment of my husband's ambitions there was one obstacle. That obstacle was you. In life one schemes. It was my husband's wish that I should make myself agreeable to you, even to the extent of a flirtation."
She raised her eyes.
"Your obedience to your husband is most touching," he said.
"It is true, I suppose," she went on, "that we have flirted. I looked upon it as the means to an end. The end came. I played my cards quite ruthlessly, I gathered in the reward. I got your letter, I handed it to my husband. Your career was finished, my husband's begun."
"This is most interesting," Julien muttered.
"Is it?" she answered. "I suppose it should have been an hour of triumph with me. It simply isn't. I have come to a place in my life which I don't understand. When I told myself that it was over, that I had flirted with you, that I had won your friendship and your confidence, betrayed you, ruined you for a peerage and that my husband should take office, I should surely have been satisfied! It was for that I had worked. I gave my husband the letter and I watched him walk off in triumph. Since then I have not been myself. I have come to you, Julien, to ask if there is no other end possible to this?"
Once more she raised her eyes. Julien came a step nearer to her. They were standing now face to face.
"All of a sudden," she murmured, "I looked back and I saw the way I have lived and the way I am living and the life that spreads itself out before me. I saw myself a peeress, I saw myself receiving my husband's guests, I saw the gratification of all those ambitions which have seemed to me so wonderful. And I locked the door and I shrieked and it seemed to me that there was a new thing and a new thought in my life. I have done you a hideous wrong, Julien. There is only one way I can set it right. There is only one moment in which it can be done, and that moment is now. Tomorrow I shall be back again. For this one hour I see the truth. I am a very rich woman, Julien. My husband's future, indeed, is largely bound up with my wealth. Remember that in all I have done I have been his agent. He hates you, has hated you from the first because you were a gentleman and he never was. This is my one moment of madness in a perfectly well-ordered life."
One of her hands stole from her muff, stole out half-hesitatingly towards him. Julien took it in his and raised it to his lips. Then he looked her in the eyes.
"Dear Mabel," he said, "you are forgiven. I understand perfectly the reasons for your coming. Go back to your husband, wear your coronet and receive his guests with a free conscience. I forgive you."
Her hand slipped back into her muff. She began to tremble a little.
"As for me," he went on, "I played the fool and I pay willingly. I was engaged to marry a very charming girl who believed in me and whom I cared for as much as it was possible for me to care for anything outside my career. I flirted with you because it was a piquant thing to do. You were a woman whom other men found difficult, you were the wife of a man whom I despised and who was trying all the time to undermine my position. I sacrificed my self-respect every time I crossed your threshold. To-day I pay. I am willing. As for you, Mabel, your visit here shall square things between us. I wish you the best of luck. You must let me ring for my servant. He will find you a taxicab."
He moved toward the bell. Mrs. Carraby, with her hands inside her muff, stood exactly as though she were part of the furniture of the room. With his finger upon the ivory disc, he hesitated. She was not looking towards him and her eyes were half closed.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "you would rather find your way out alone? I will not offer my escort, for obvious reasons."
She turned slowly round.
"Do not ring," she ordered sharply. "Come here."
He came at once towards her. She took both his hands in hers, she leaned towards him. She was a tall woman and they were very nearly the same height.
"Julien," she whispered, "is this all that you have to say to me?"
"It is more," Julien replied frankly, "than I expected ever to have to say to you again in this world. What do you expect? You don't think that I am the kind of man to—but that is absurd! Come. We'll part friends, if you like. Here's my hand."
"We must part, then?" she said.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Unless a walking tour in Normandy for a month appeals to you. You see, I am going to take a holiday, and I have a fancy that our ideas on the subject of holidays might not exactly agree."
"A holiday," she repeated. "I am not sure—do you know, Julien, I sometimes believe that I have never had a holiday in my life?"
He looked at her doubtingly.
"After all," she continued, "can't you see that I have come here to ask you one question? You are different from the people I have known intimately and the people with whom I have been brought up, different from my husband. You know what my life has been. I have told you just now that the great doubt has come to me within the last few days. Won't you tell me what I want to know? Is there anything better, anything greater, anything more wonderful in life than these things which I have known, these ambitions, this social struggle? Tell me, Julien, is there anything else? Can you tell me how and where to find it?"
Once more her fingers had crept out of her muff.
Her hands were upon his shoulders, she seemed to be drawing him to her. Julien kissed her lightly on the forehead.
"For you, my dear Mabel," he decided, "I should say that there was nothing better. A leopard cannot change its spots. The life into which you have been brought and for which you have qualified so admirably, is the only life which would suit you. If you fancy sometimes in your dreams, or in your waking hours, that you hear cries and calls from another country, don't listen to them. You would never be happy outside the world you know of. You see, one who has made such a failure of life himself is yet well able to advise. Forgive me."
The telephone on his writing table was ringing. He turned aside to answer it. It was a question regarding the whereabouts of some papers at the office and it took him a few minutes to explain. When he set the receiver back and turned around, he was alone. There was nothing to remind him of her visit but a bunch of violets which seemed to have fallen from her muff, and the faint perfume from them. He took them up, smelt them for a moment, and flung them lightly into the hearth. Then he touched his bell.
"My hat, stick and gloves, Richards," he ordered. "Bring my things to
Charing-Cross at half-past eight. Have them registered only to
Boulogne. You understand?"
"Perfectly, sir," the man replied.
Julien glanced once more around his sitting-room. The little bunch of violets was smouldering upon the hearth. In a sense they seemed to him symbolical.
"Kendricks is right," he muttered. "It is the women who play the devil with our lives!"
Kendricks was waiting below in the taxicab, leaning back in the corner with his feet upon the opposite seat, and smoking his very disreputable pipe with an air of serene content.
"Sorry to have turned you out into the street like this," Julien remarked.
"Thank you," Kendricks replied, "under the circumstances I preferred the street."
Julien hesitated for a moment and glanced at his watch.
"There is one more call that I must pay, David," he said. "You won't mind, will you? We've plenty of time."
"Mind? Of course not," Kendricks answered, stretching himself out in the cab. "Do what you please with me, only leave an hour or an hour and a half for dinner. I am the best-tempered person in the world so long as no one interferes with my regular meal hours."
"It's just a little farewell call," Julien explained, "that I want to pay. I've told the man where to go."
Kendricks nodded silently. He knew all about that little call, but if he felt any sympathy he was careful not to show it. They drew up in a few minutes before a large and solemn-looking house at the corner of Hamilton Place.
"Don't hurry," Kendricks advised, stretching himself out once more in the cab. "I'll smoke another pipe and thank heaven we are not in New York! You wait an hour there and take your choice of paying the fare or buying the taxicab!"
Julien ascended the steps and rang the bell at the door of the house. It was immediately opened by a manservant, who recognized him with a bow and a smile, for which, somehow or other, he felt thankful.
"Is Lady Anne in, Robert?" he inquired.
The man stood on one side.
"Please to walk in, Sir Julien," he invited. "Lady Anne is with some young people in the drawing-room. Will you go in there to them, or would you prefer that I announce you?"
"Is there any one in the waiting-room?" Julien asked.
"No one at present, sir."
"Let me go in there, then. I want to speak to Lady Anne alone for a moment. You might let her know that I am here."
"Certainly, sir."
Julien walked restlessly up and down the small, uncomfortable apartment, the room which he had always hated. There were illustrated papers arranged in a row upon a leather-topped table, two stiff horsehair easychairs, and various views of Clonarty, the country seat of the Duke of Clonarty, around the walls. Presently he heard the laughter in the drawing-room cease. There was a short silence, then the sound of footsteps across the hall and the abrupt opening of the door of the room in which he was waiting. Julien looked up quickly. It was, after all, what he had expected! A somewhat vivacious-looking little lady in a muslin gown and elaborate hat held out both her hands to him. In the darkened light of the room she might very well have passed for a younger and less serious edition of her own daughter.
"My dear Julien!" she exclaimed, in a tone which was manifestly sympathetic. "This is terrible news we are hearing about you. But what an odd time you have chosen to come and tell us all about it!"
"I have not come to tell you all about it, Duchess," Julien assured her. "The newspapers will tell you everything that is worth knowing. They are so much better informed."
"The newspapers sometimes exaggerate," she objected.
"In my case," he replied, "I do not think that exaggeration is possible. Everything has happened to me that could possibly happen to any one in my unfortunate position."
"You mean that these stories are all true, then?"
"Every one of them. I really don't suppose that I ought to show my face here at all. I have simply come to say good-bye. There is just a single word that I want to say to Anne."
"Tell me, Julien," she demanded, "you really did write that letter to
Mrs. Carraby?"
"I did."
"And she gave it to her husband?"
"Yes!"
For once the Duchess was perfectly and delightfully natural.
"That woman," she declared, "is a detestable cat! Mind, Julien," she added, "I don't mean by that that you were not hideously and entirely to blame. I can't feel that you deserve a single grain of sympathy. All the same, a woman who can do a thing like that should not be tolerated."
Julien smiled grimly. He was perfectly well aware that at that moment
Mrs. Carraby was passing from the list of the Duchess's acquaintances.
It was all so inconsequent.
"Can I have that one word with Anne?" he begged.
The Duchess looked doubtful.
"Why?"
"I am going abroad to-night. I should like to say good-bye to her."
"Isn't it a little foolish?" she asked. "I don't mean your going abroad—that, I suppose, is almost necessary—but why do you want to see Anne? I can give her all the proper messages."
Julien laughed bitterly.
"There are some things," he said, "which can scarcely be altogether ignored. It may have escaped your memory that Anne was to have been my wife."
"Not at all," the Duchess replied. "The only thing I do not understand is why, as any such arrangement is of course now ridiculous, you should want to see her again. What can you possibly have to say to her?" "An affair of sentiment," he explained. "I have a fancy to say good-bye."
The Duchess shook her head.
"Those sort of things don't belong to us," she declared. "You ought to know better, my dear Julien. I can see no possible object in it. I will give her any message you like, and so far as she is concerned I can assure you that she has not the slightest ill-feeling. She is really quite angelic about it."