There are hours in our lives which are apparently without importance, but which, nevertheless, exercise an influence on our destiny.
Little wonder was it that at this instant I stood before my visitor voiceless in amazement, for in her erect, neat figure I recognised the broken idol of those long-past summer days — Mary Blain.
Of all persons she was the one I most desired at that moment to meet. Her letter to me, and her presence in my chambers that evening, were two facts that appeared pre-arranged with some ulterior motive rather than mere coincidence. Not an hour before Boyd had made a most puzzling statement regarding her mother, and here she was, confronting me with that smile I knew so well, as if anxious to make explanation.
“I believe I’ve startled you, Frank,” she exclaimed, laughing, as she held out her gloved hand in greeting. “Is it so long since we met? Perhaps it is indiscreet of me to come here to your chambers, but I wanted to see you. Mother would be furious if she knew. Why didn’t you answer my letter?”
“Forgive me,” I said in excuse. “I’ve been busy. The life of a daily journalist leaves so very little time for correspondence,” and I invited her to be re-seated in our only armchair.
She shrugged her shoulders, smiling dubiously.
“You men are always adepts at the art of excuse,” she remarked.
She was pretty — yes, decidedly pretty. As I sat looking at her, there came back to me vivid recollections of a day that was dead, a day when we had exchanged vows of undying affection and had wandered in secret arm-in-arm along those quiet leafy lanes. She was a girl then, and I not much more than a stripling youth. But we had both grown older now, and other ideas had sprung up in our minds, other jealousies and other loves. Almost four whole years had passed since I had last seen her. She had grown a little more plump and matronly, and in her dark, luminous eyes was a look more serious than in her old hoydenish days at Harwell. How time flies! It did not seem four years since that autumn evening when we parted in the golden sunset. Yet how great had the change been in the fortunes of her purse-proud family, and even in my own life.
There was no love between us now. None. The days were long-past since a woman’s touch and words would make me colour like a girl. Even this meeting when she pressed my hand and her eyelids fluttered, did not re-stir within me the chord of love so long untouched. I had heard of her only as a flirt and fortune-hunter, and had read in the newspapers a paragraph announcing her engagement to the elder son of a millionaire ironfounder of Wigan. Nevertheless, a month ago the papers contained a further paragraph stating that the marriage arranged “would not take place.” Since we had parted she had evidently been through many love adventures. Still, she was nevertheless uncommonly good-looking, with a grace of manner that was perfect.
“I’ve often wondered, Frank, what had become of you,” she said, leaning her elbow on the table, raising her veil and looking straight into my eyes. “We were such real good friends long ago that I’ve never failed to entertain pleasant recollections of our friendship. Once or twice I’ve heard of you through your people, and have now and then read your articles in the magazines. Somehow I’ve felt a keen desire for a long time past to see you and have a chat.”
“I feel honoured,” I answered, perhaps a trifle sarcastically, for mine was but a bitter recollection. “It is certainly pleasant to think that one is remembered after these years.” Then, in order to add irony to my words, I added: “I’ve heard you are engaged.”
“I was,” she responded, glancing at me sharply. “But it is broken off.”
“You found some one you liked better, I presume? It is always so.”
“No, not at all,” she hastened to assure me. “The fact is there was very little love on either side, and we parted quite amicably.”
“As amicably as we did ourselves — eh?”
“No, Frank,” she said with a sudden seriousness, dropping her eyes to the table. “Do not refer to that. With years has come wisdom. We were both foolish, were we not?”
“Perhaps I was when I believed your vow to be a true one,” I responded a trifle bitterly, for I had thought the summer of my life over and at an end.
“Ah, no!” she cried. “I did not come here to reopen an incident that has been so long closed. You love another woman, no doubt.”
“No,” I answered. “I loved you once, until you forsook me. I have not loved since.”
“But I was a mere girl then,” she urged. “Ours was but a midsummer madness — that you’ll surely admit.”
I was silent. I had believed myself proof against all sentiment in this respect, for of late I had thought little, if at all, of my lost love. Yet alone with her at that moment all the bitter past flooded upon me, my wild passion and my shattered hopes, with a vividness that stirred up a great bitterness within me. Not that I loved her now. No. On the contrary, I hated her. She had played others false and treated them just as she had treated me.
“After madness there is always a reaction,” I answered, recollecting how fondly I had once loved her, and how, since the day we parted, my life, even Bohemian as it must ever be in journalistic London, was nevertheless loveless and misanthropic, the life of one whose hopes were shattered and whose joy in living had been sapped. Shenley was but the tomb of those summer recollections. I never now visited the place.
“But all this is very foolish, Frank,” she exclaimed with a calm philosophical air and a smile probably meant to be coquettish. “Why recollect the past?”
“When one has loved as I once did, it is difficult to rid oneself of the memory of its sweetness or its bitterness,” I said. “Your visit here has brought it all back to me — all that I have striven so long and so strenuously to forget.”
She sighed. For a single instant her dark eyes met mine, and then she avoided my gaze.
“I ventured here,” she explained in a low, apologetic tone, “because I believed that our youthful passion had mutually died, and that I might renew your acquaintance not as lover but as friend. If, by coming here, I have pained you, or caused you any particularly unhappy recollections, forgive me, Frank — forgive me,” and she stretched forth her hand and placed it upon my arm with a gesture of deep earnestness and regret.
“Certainly, I forgive you,” I answered, annoyed with myself for having thus worn my heart on my sleeve. It was foolish, I knew. That idyllic love of ours was a mere dream of youth, like the other castles in the air we build when in our teens. It was unwise to have spoken as I had, for after all, truth to tell, I was at that moment secretly glad of my freedom. And why? Because the mysterious woman, whose beauty was perfect, yet whose very existence was an enigma, had awakened within my soul a new-born love.
Since that bright morning when she had first passed me in St. James’s Park my thoughts had been constantly of her. Although I had not exchanged a single word with her I loved her, and all thought of this dark-eyed woman who had once played me false had passed from me.
Thus, angry with myself at having spoken as I had, I strove to remedy whatever impression my words had made by treating my visitor with a studied courtesy, at the same time seeking to discover the real motive of her call. I recollected the mystery, together with the fact that had been elicited regarding the tenancy of the house, and felt convinced that her visit was not without some strong incentive. She either came to me in order to learn something, or else with the object of satisfying herself upon some point remaining in doubt.
This thought flashing through my troubled brain placed me on the alert, and as we with mutual eagerness changed the topic of conversation, I sat gazing into her mobile countenance, filled with ecstatic wonder.
“As you know,” she chattered on, quite frankly, in her rather high-pitched key, “before we left Shenley father had some very heavy losses in the City. At first we found a smaller house simply horrible, but now we are quite used to it, and personally I’m happier there, because we are right on the river and can have such jolly boating.”
“But Riverdene is not such a very small place, surely?” I said. Dick, who knew the river well, had once told me that it was a fine house situated in one of the most picturesque reaches.
“No,” she laughed, “not really so very small, I suppose. But why not come down and see for yourself? Mother often speaks of you, and you know you’re always welcome.”
Now, in ordinary circumstances I should have refused that invitation point-blank, but when I reflected that I was bound to make certain inquiries of Mrs Blain, I, with apparent reluctance, accepted.
“Mother will be most delighted to see you. We have tennis very often, and boating always. It’s awfully jolly. Come down the day after to-morrow — in the afternoon. I shall tell mother that I met you in the street and asked you down. She must, of course, never know that I came here to see you,” and she laughed at her little breach of the convenances.
“Of course not. I won’t give you away,” I said. Then suddenly recollecting, I added: “May I get you a cup of tea?”
“Oh, no, thanks, really,” she answered. “I’ve been in Regent Street to do some shopping, and I had tea there. I was on my way home, but thought that, being alone, I’d venture to try and find you.”
“I’m very glad we have met,” I said enthusiastically, for, truth to tell, I saw in her opportune invitation a means by which I might get at the truth I sought. There was something extremely puzzling in this allegation that the calm-mannered, affable Mrs Blain, whom I had known so well, was the actual tenant of the mysterious house in Phillimore Place. Then, looking at her steadily, I added: “In future our relations shall be, as you suggest, those of friendship, and not of affection — if you really wish.”
“Of course,” she replied. “It is the only sensible solution of the situation. We are both perfectly free, and there is no reason whatever why we should not remain friends — is there?”
“None at all,” I said. “Tell your mother that I shall be most delighted to pay you a visit. You have a boat, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes. And a punt, too. This season I’ve learned to punt quite well.”
I smiled.
“Because that pastime shows off the feminine figure to greatest advantage,” I observed. “Girls who punt generally wear pretty brown shoes, and their dresses just a trifle short, so that as they skip from end to end of the punt they are enabled to display a discreet soupçon of lingerie and open-work stocking — eh?”
“Ah, no,” she protested, laughing. “You’re too sarcastic. Punting is really very good fun.”
“For ladies, no doubt,” I said. “But men prefer sculling. They’ve no waists to show, nor pretty flannel frocks to exhibit to the river crowd.”
“Ah, Frank, you always were a little harsh in your conclusions,” she sighed. “I suppose it is because you sometimes write criticisms. Critics, I have always imagined, should be old and quarrelsome persons — you are not.”
“No,” I responded. “But old critics too often view things through their own philosophical spectacles. The younger school take a much broader view of life. I’m not, however, a critic,” I added, “I’m only a journalist.”
I could hear old Mrs Joad growling to herself because the steak was ready and she could not lay the cloth because of my visitor. Meanwhile, the room had become filled to suffocation with the fumes of frizzling meat, until a blue haze seemed to hang over everything. So used was I to this choking state of things that until that moment I never noticed it. Then I quickly rose and opened the window with a word of apology that the place “smelt stuffy.”
She glanced around the shabby, smoke-mellowed room, and declared that it pleased her. Of course bachelors had to shift for themselves a good deal, she said, yet this place was not at all uncomfortable. I told her of my companion who shared the chambers with me, of his genius as a journalist, and how merrily we kept house together, at which she was much interested. All girls are more or less interested in bachelors’ arrangements.
Our gossip drifted mostly into the bygones — of events at Harwell, and the movements of various mutual friends, when suddenly Dick Cleugh burst into the room crying —
“I say, old chap, there’s another first-class horror! Oh! I beg your pardon,” he said in apology, drawing back on noticing Mary. “I didn’t know you had a visitor; forgive me.”
“Let me introduce you,” I said, laughing at his sudden confusion. “Mr Cleugh — Miss Blain.”
The pair exchanged greetings, when Cleugh, with that merry good humour that never deserted him, said —
“Ladies never come to our den, you know, Miss Blain; therefore please forgive me for blaring like a bull. Our old woman who cleans out the kennels is as deaf as a post, therefore we have contracted a habit of shouting.”
“What is the horror of which you spoke?” she asked, with a forced laugh, I was looking at her at that instant and noticed how unusually pale and agitated her face had suddenly become.
“Oh, only a startling discovery in to-night’s special,” he answered.
“A discovery!” she gasped, “Where?”
He glanced at the paper still in his hand, while she bent forward in her chair with an eagerness impossible of concealment. Her cheeks were pallid, her eyes dark, wild-looking and brilliant.
“The affair,” he said, “seems to have taken place in Loampit Vale, Lewisham.”
“Ah!” she ejaculated, quite involuntarily giving vent to a sigh of relief which Cleugh, quick and observant, did not fail to notice.
My friend threw the paper aside, sniffed at the odour of burnt meat, and suggested that the Hag was endeavouring to asphyxiate us.
“The Hag!” exclaimed Mary, surprised. “Who’s the Hag!”
“Old Mrs Joad,” responded Dick. “We call her that, first, because she’s so ugly; and secondly, because when she’s cooking for us she croons to herself like the Witch of Endor.”
“She certainly is decidedly ugly with that cross-eye of hers. It struck me, too, that she had an ancient and witch-like aspect when she admitted me,” she laughed.
Thus we chatted on until the bell on the Hall struck seven and she rose to go, first, however, inviting Dick to accompany me to Riverdene, an invitation which he gladly accepted. Then she bade him adieu and I accompanied her out into Holborn, where I placed her in a taxi for Waterloo.
On re-entering the room, Dick’s first exclamation was —
“Did you notice how her face changed when I mentioned the horror?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Her name’s Blain, and I presume she’s the daughter of Mrs Blain who is tenant of that house in Kensington?”
I nodded.
“An old flame of yours. I remember now that you once spoke of her.”
“Quite true.”
“Well, old fellow,” he said, “it was quite apparent when I mentioned the tragedy that she feared the discovery had been made in Kensington. Depend upon it she can, if she likes, tell us a good deal.”
“Yes,” I answered thoughtfully, “I agree with you entirely, Dick. I believe she can.”